Iceland;[1] the dubious outline of "Frisland": the removal of "Grislanda" from the Orkneys to the south of Iceland; the placing of St. Thomas's monastery in a situation to the extreme north-east of Greenland, a position which does not suit the narrative and which can certainly have never been reached by the ships of 1410; and some other inaccuracies. The date 1380 on the map, as in the text, is also supposed to have been a mistake of his or of some copyist for 1390, and such an error is quite possible. The best points about the map are its comparative accuracy in depicting the coast of Greenland, though if the Zeno outline be compared with a map of 1467[2] a certain resemblance will be detected. The outline of Iceland is moderately accurate to the west on the Zeno map, but here again a comparison with the Olaus "Magnus" map of 1539,[3] which was prepared, though not printed, at least ten years before the Zeno map was known, will show a slight correspondence. Nicolo Zeno the younger may have seen copies of this map before it was printed. The names given in the Shetland archipelago — supposing Estland to be Shetland — are ahead of Italian knowledge in 1558, when Zeno's map was published. "Podalida" was perhaps a perversion of Pomona in the Orkneys.
Against the narrative, in its present form at any rate, much can be urged. At the very best we must suppose Nicolo Zeno the younger guilty of altering and interpolating. His story of the torn documents, musty with age, is a very common pretext of the fablemonger. The original documents, which would compel belief, have never been produced or discovered. His work was not published till 1558 by Francesco Marcolini, and this was more than a century and a half after the death of the voyagers. In a damp climate such as that of Venice, there would be no small probability of neglected and carelessly treated documents becoming quite illegible after such long neglect. It has been noted by every critic that the text and the map disagree almost hopelessly, which looks as though, in one or other, there had been much interference with the original. At the date when the work was published Venice was extremely eager to claim for herself some share in the credit of Columbus's discoveries as against her old rival Genoa, from whom Columbus had sprung.
- ↑ Owing to confusion between "Islande" (Shetland) and "Island" (Iceland).
- ↑ 'Facsimile Atlas,' pl. xxx. See also Winsor, 'America,' i. 121.
- ↑ Winsor, 'America,' i. 123. The map is reproduced. See also 'Facsimile Atlas.' p. 59. The map dated 1572, Roma, is virtually the same as the old Olaus map of 1539, reproduced in Brenner, O., 'Karte des Olaus Magnus' (Christiania, 1886).
