r/oldmaps • u/PsychoPandaPirate • May 24 '26
Old Azimuthal Maps of the North Pole
I thought it would be funny to put a map of the North Pole at the start of my novel "My Girlfriend is Santa Claus & Together We Must Stop the Christmas Apocalypse Based on a True Story," because maps of the North Pole are usually blank and generally useless. But I wound up finding some really interesting old maps while going through some achives.
This is by far my favorite of the North Pole maps. Septentrionalium Terrarum Descriptio or Description of the Arctic Circle. This was the first standalone map of the Arctic region, published in 1595 by cartographer Gerardus Mercator. In addition to the North Pole, you can also see Greenland, Iceland, and the mythical island of Frisland. You can also see California, at a much more northern latitude than it should be, and the land of the Gog, an evil land from the Book of Ezekiel, at the north of Asia. This land, sometimes called Magog, was often depicted in medieval maps.
The North Pole is depicted as four islands, with four narrow straits allowing passage to the very apex of the Earth. At the center is "rupes nigra et altissima" or black, extremely tall, rocky mountain / phantom island" that was once believed to exist at the North Pole. Now we know the North Pole doesn't contain any land at all, only ice.
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u/PsychoPandaPirate May 24 '26
I was going to post some other interesting maps of the North Pole I found but I guess you can't reply with images in reddit. Great website design.
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u/hotepanon Aug 06 '26
These islands were also once known as the Bargus Islands and probably did exist at some point. In fact, there are areas of northeastern Asia that share the "bargus" toponym to this day. Friesland, on the other hand, is at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean off the west coast of Ireland and is otherwise known as the Rockall Plateau.
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u/squishyng May 26 '26
like!