Star Tribune Company
This is a map completely unlike maps as we know them. It wasn't intended
to help find places. It relied as much on pictures as on words; many of
its viewers couldn't read. It was to be treated reverentially.
For a few hours after you view it, you hesitate to sloppily fold
and stuff any map into the glove compartment of your car.
Drawn in England in about 1290, it's called the Mappa Mundi ("map of the world"). It's the only complete wall map of Earth to have survived from the Middle Ages.
It's stunningly beautiful and big and complex. But to us today, it's weird and wildly fanciful.
The world is depicted as round and flat. It's populated with such diverse creatures as Adam and Eve, Noah and his beasts, Emperor Caesar Augustus, a man riding a very unrealistic crocodile, and an imaginary being called a Sciapod who shelters himself from the burning sun with one huge foot. Mythological beasts jostle for space. The 12 winds are named and represented by dragons and grotesque squatting figures.
East, not north, is at the map's top. Jerusalem is the center of the world. Countries and oceans are squeezed and stretched to fit into the map's circle. Short descriptions offer such wisdom as, "Here are strong and fierce camels."
Mappa Mundi is on prominent display at the gorgeous cathedral in Hereford, England. If you find yourself in western England (check a modern map), it's certainly worth a stop.
Work of History
More than a reference for geography, the Mappa Mundi is a work of history, zoology, anthropology and especially theology. It reveals how 13th-century scholars interpreted the world in spiritual terms. The map covers all time, from creation to doomsday.
Don't think of it as a map, tourists are told. Think of it as a kind of picture encyclopedia.
Hey, what's that?
The longer you look, the more pops out. See, there's a harvest scene with horse, wagon and a farmer with pitchfork. Who knows why, but over here is a sketch of a performing bear. There's a legendary Norwegian, Gansmir, with his skis and ski pole. On his right are two lifelike animals: a bear, who might well be prowling through that wooded land, and an ape, who certainly would not.
