Rupes Nigra

Posted on Sunday 5 November 2006 to unknown



Septentrionalium Terrarum Description Gerard Mercator, 1595. Description of the Septentrional (Northern) Lands. The northern lands were referred to as septentrional because they were associated with the seven stars of the constellation Ursa Major which lies far to the North.

This map which was made by Gerard Mercator and published posthumously in 1595 represents a very modern way of viewing the world. At its periphery the map incorporates the very latest information from English and Dutch explorers such as John Davis and Martin Frobisher.

But at the same time at its heart this map remains essentially Mediaeval. At the North Pole stands a majestic though mythical mountain named Rupes Nigra or Black Precipice. This mountain, said to be more than 183 km across and high enough to reach the sky, was made of black magnetic material which could irresistibly attract the nails and other steel parts of sailing ships. All compass needles were supposed to be attracted to this object.

To make matters even more diabolical for navigators the mountain was surrounded by a large landmass that was broken into quarters by four in-rushing rivers which were said to draw ships into a whirlpool that surrounded the Pole and suck them down beneath the surface of the earth. Apparently 4,000 men of an expeditionary force sent by King Arthur to lay claim to these islands met their doom this way.

On one of the islands it was said that there lived a race of pygmies that were "not at the uttermost above four foot high".

Many of these stories were based on the writings of a Franciscan friar from Oxford who wrote a book called Inventio Fortunatae which made a detailed description of his travels to these northern lands at the behest of King Edward III. This book has been lost but this tale was related by another Franciscan at the court of the King of Norway in Bergen. This was then recorded in 1364 by Jacobus Cnoyen of Boise-le-Duc in his native Belgica Lingua. As with the original Inventio Fortunatae, Cnoyen's report of it was also lost however extracts of it were preserved in a letter by Mercator to the English polymath and mystic John Dee, astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I. John Dee was interested in Arthurian legends, partly because of his own Welsh background but also because he was trying to interest the Queen in his own modest proposal: to establish a "Brytish Impire" over most of North America.

In his letter to Dee, Mercator wrote
"we have taken [the Arctic geography] from the Itinerium of Jacobus Cnoyen of the Hague, who makes some citations from the Gesta of Arthur of Britain; however, the greater and most important part he learned from a certain priest at the court of the king of Norway in 1364. He was descended in the fifth generation from those whom Arthur had sent to inhabit these lands, and he related that in the year 1360 a certain Minorite, an Englishman from Oxford, a mathematician, went to those islands; and leaving them, advanced still farther by magic arts and mapped out all and measured them by an astrolabe in practically the subjoined figure, as we have learned from Jacobus. The four canals there pictured he said flow with such current to the inner whirlpool, that if vessels once enter they cannot be driven back by wind."
Mercator then quotes from Cnoyen
Anno Domini 1364 came 8 of these persons to Norway to the King. Among them were two clerics. One of them had an astrolabe who in the fifth generation was descended from Brusselites. These 8 were of the orginal party who had penetrated into the northern regions...

The priest who had the astrolabe related to the king of Norway that in AD 1360 there had come to these Northern Islands an English Minorite from Oxford who was a good astronomer etc. Leaving the rest of the party who had come to the Islands, he journeyed further through the whole of the North etc, and put into writing all the wonders of those Islands, and gave the King of England this book, which he called in Latin Inventio Fortunatae...
Writing about the North Pole:
In the midst of the four countries is a Whirlpool into which there empty these four Indrawing Seas which divide the North. And the water rushes round and descends into the earth just as if one were pouring it through a filter funnel. It is 4 degrees wide on every side of the Pole, that is to say eight degrees altogther. Except that right under the Pole there lies a bare rock in the midst of the Sea. Its circumference is almost 33 French miles, and it is all of magnetic stone. And is as high as the clouds, so the Priest said, who had received the astrolabe from this Minorite in exchange for a Testament. And the Minorite himself had heard that one can see all round it from the Sea, and that it is black and glistening.
Other curiosities included in Mercator's map are the mythical islands of Frysland (which is also shown as an inset in the top left corner) and Groclant (possibly Baffin island). A second magnetic rock appears north of the Straits of Aniam (the supposed but as yet undiscovered Bering Strait) and the legendary land of Gog and Magog is situated in north-eastern Siberia and is therefore explicitly associated with the Mongols.

Finally, the Spanish possession of "Califormia" is situated above the Arctic circle!

See also:
John Dees's Polar Map
Mercator's Projection
A completely different story about Gog and Magog