Map of the “Yle of
Skie,” from Blaeu’s 1654 Atlas of Scotland. “Continue now, look at
Scotland, and enjoy a feast for the eyes.” So writes Joan Blaeu in his 'Greetings to the
Reader,' part of the preliminary material to his 1654 Atlas
novus. (from introductory remarks by Charles
Withers, Professor of Historical Geography at the University of Edinburgh, on
Blaeu’s Atlas of Scotland, at http://maps.nls.uk/atlas/blaeu/)
Joan Blaeu (1599-1673) was a very esteemed and prolific Amsterdam
mapmaker working in the Map-mad 17th century. He received the prestigious appointment as mapmaker
to the Dutch East India Company, which was responsible for opening up new
markets for trade throughout the world, and for whom accurate maps would
obviously have been of paramount importance.
But Blaeu’s maps were also tremendously beautiful and desirable in their
own right as objets d’art. For instance,
in many of Vermeer’s wonderful paintings of everyday life in the Netherlands, a
framed Blaeu map appears in a position of prominence in the interiors of the
homes that are the setting for his paintings, indicating their cherished status
as symbols of wealth and discernment of the occupants, but showing also how
popularized and widely-owned his maps had become with the middle and upper
classes. (See an example of this at http://geographer-at-large.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/geography-beach-books.html)
The Atlas was, for all intents and purposes, more than 70
years in the making, and for an interesting history of how the Atlas came to be,
and all the obstacles, both technical and bureaucratic, impeding its eventual
publication, see the excellent account at http://maps.nls.uk/atlas/blaeu/history_behind_publication.html
When completed, Volume V of Blaeu’s Atlas Novus contained 49 maps of
Scotland and 6 of Ireland. It was published originally with all text in
Latin, and later editions were translated into Dutch, French, Spanish, and
other languages, but never into English!
Blaeu’s Atlas of
Scotland and Ireland was a quite a ground-breaking work. It used the latest in scientific geographic knowledge
(and all that word implied in the 17th century – Geography was
really a catch-word for most of the knowledge about the world) combined with “Chorography.” What is Chorography, you might well ask? It is a term which has gone out of service,
for the most part, but perhaps will enjoy something of a comeback with the
recent interest in more qualitative techniques and mixed-method approaches in
Geography, all of which have seen a resurgence in recent years.
From the good Prof. Withers again: “Geography
in the age of Pont and Blaeu was not as we would now understand the term. Early modern geographical knowledge drew upon
natural history, astrology, even natural magic and was apparent in various
forms: descriptive geography, mathematical geography - of importance to
navigators and in mapmaking - and, notably, chorography. Chorography as understood and practised in the
late 16th and 17th centuries drew upon the work of the classical authority
Claudius Ptolemaeus (known as Ptolemy). In
Book I of his eight-book Geographia, Ptolemy distinguished between
geography and chorography: 'The purpose
of Geography is to represent the unity and continuity of the known world in its
true nature and location ... The aim of Chorography is to represent only a
part'. Crucially, chorography was a
qualitative art: 'Chorography therefore concentrates more on the quality of
places than on their quantity or scale, aware that it should use all means to
sketch the true form or likeness of places and not so much their correspondence,
measure or disposition amongst themselves or with the heavens or with the whole
of the world' (cited in Withers 2001a, 140-1).
The intellectual worlds of the late
16th and 17th centuries recognised and used this crucial distinction between
geography, the accurate representation of the whole known world, and
chorography, the pictorial and written 'impression' of local areas and places,
without regard to what we moderns would take to be quantitative accuracy. Chorography appealed to late Renaissance intellectual
ideas of order. But it did more than
that. For three reasons, 'The
chorographic/geographic distinction was perhaps the most important classifying
scheme for maps in 16th-century Europe' (Mundy 1996, 5). It was a means to
classify existing maps. It created a
standard dual model of how space should in future be mapped. It corresponded to
models of the political state: 'indeed, its contours followed the fault lines
between regionalism and nationalism' (Mundy 1996, 5-6). The distinction was widely employed throughout
the late 16th and 17th centuries in Europe, Japan, Russia and the Portuguese
and Spanish colonies of the New World (Withers 2001a). In England in this
period - and, after 1603, in the newly created geographical entity that was
'Great Britain' - chorography was 'the most wide-ranging of the geographical
arts, in that it provided the specific detail to make concrete the other
general branches of geography' (Cormack 1997, 163).
Chorography's textual features took
several forms. Description of places and
regions very commonly incorporated topographical poetry: 'self-fashioning'
through versifying was a commonplace in Elizabethan accounts of land and nation
(Greenblatt 1980; Helgerson 1986, 1992; Klein 2001). Chorography emphasised the local and did so
historically and geographically: with reference, for example, to the
genealogies of families of note, and to the remarkable features in a place. This attention to place had political
significance in that matters of a local nature - notable families, distinctive
natural features, historical antiquities and such like - were made to appear
part of that place, fixed over time as well as in space. Because of this,
chorography - with geography one of what the late Renaissance and early modern
worlds understood as the 'eyes of history' - was closely associated with
chronology (the other 'eye'), with antiquarianism and with emerging ideas of
public utility and of national identity (Cormack 1991a, 1997; Mayhew 2001).
In sum, chorography was a particular
form of geographical knowledge, rooted in certain intellectual traditions and
apparent in words and maps, that was concerned to capture the 'impression' of a
region or place. It was, textually, an
essentially conservative form of regional description in as much as it assumed
the continued authority of the monarchy and nobility. That fact in turn is why chorographical
writing often lauds leading families and prominent individuals of note:
patronage, patriotism and the political well-being of the realm revealed
through its regional portrayal were closely associated elements in Blaeu's
world.” (From: “A Vision of Scotland,” by Prof. Charles Withers, at http://maps.nls.uk/atlas/blaeu/vision_of_scotland.html)
Works Cited in above Excerpt:
Cormack, L. B., Charting an Empire:
Geography at the English Universities (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1997).
Greenblatt, S., Renaissance
Self-Fashioning from More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1980)
Helgerson, R., 'The Land Speaks:
Cartography, Chorography and Subversion in Renaissance England', Representations
16 (1986), 51-85
Klein, B., Maps and the Writing of
Space in Early Modern England and Ireland (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001)
Mayhew, R., 'Geography, Print Culture and
the Renaissance: "The Road Less Travelled By", History of
European Ideas 27 (2001), 349-369
Mundy, B. E., The Mapping of New Spain:
Indigenous Cartography and the Maps of the Relaçiones Geograficas
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
Withers, C. W. J., 'Pont in Context:
Chorography, Mapmaking and National Identity in the Late Sixteenth Century', in
The Nation Survey'd: essays on late sixteenth-century Scotland as depicted
by Timothy Pont edited by Ian C. Cunningham (East Linton, 2001a), 139-154.
“The
nether ward of Clyds-dail and Glasco” Zoom-able map at: http://maps.nls.uk/atlas/blaeu/page.cfm?id=96
On this map of the Lower Clyde region, north is the right
side of the map, “Glasgva” is shown in the top middle as a major city (in red)
on the banks of the River Clyde, with the location of “The Mills” below it (to
the east of the city, but in this orientation it looks like to the south since
we are used to north being on top rather than to the side. Likewise, the River Clyde runs east-west in
reality, but in this map appears to run north-south, until we get used to the
idea that north is on the right). Many
of the place names on this map still exist on modern maps, with little change,
such as Parthick (now Partick), Blyths Wood (now Blythswood), Burrowsfield (now
Barrowfield), Carntynenoc (now Carntyne), etc.
The map of the Isle of Skye (Yle of
Skia) shown above at the top of this post – zoom-able version at http://maps.nls.uk/atlas/blaeu/view/?id=119 - depicts the largest of the islands in the Inner Hebrides. In old Norse, the name for Skye is skuy (misty isle), skýey or skuyö (isle of
cloud). In Gaelic the name for the Isle of Skye, Ellan Skiannach, means “the winged island,” possibly owing to its many notches and indentations and peninsulas radiating out from the central core of mountains, making it look like feathered wings.
I did find some notes about Loch
Columbkille in an old journal written in 1883 by a well-known (at the time)
travel writer and painter who spent 6 months in the Hebrides, so apparently the
Loch and its islet were still extant 130 years ago or so.
“This fine sea-loch divides itself into an inner and
an outer harbour, perfectly land-locked. The former is still known to the older
fishers as Loch Columbkille, being one of the spots specially dedicated to St.
Columba, who was patron saint of half of Skye, and many neighbouring isles. The
other half was the property of that St. Maelruhba to whom, as we have seen,
were offered such strange sacrifices.' At the further end of the loch, close to
the sheriff's house, is a small rocky islet, where a few fragments of building,
and traces of old graves are all that now remain to mark the spot where once
stood the oldest monastic building in Scotland; so, at least, say certain of
our wisest antiquarians.”
From In the Hebrides, (Chapter 13) by C. F.
Gordon Cumming (1883) at http://www.electricscotland.com/history/hebrides/index.htm
Kilt Rock is a spectacular rock formation south of Staffin on the
Trotternish peninsula, Skye. The 200ft-high cliffs take their name from the
basalt columns which resemble the folds of a kilt. There is also a waterfall
where the River Mealt plunges 200 feet straight down to the shore.
The ruins of Duntulm Castle lie approximately six miles north of Uig on
the Trotternish peninsula of Skye. Duntulm was previously the site of an iron
age broch, a Pictish fort and a Viking stronghold. The castle changed hands
several times between the Macleods and the MacDonalds but it was secured as a
MacDonald stronghold after the Battle of Trotternish in the 16th century. Written in Gaelic as Dun Tuilm, the meaning
is often debated but it is most commonly translated as 'fort of the green
grassy headland'. The castle was abandoned by the MacDonalds in favour of
Monkstadt in the 1730s and stone from the castle was used in building the new
house. This left the castle in a
dangerous state of disrepair and it has only recently been stabilized.
These illustrations were
taken from 'In the Hebrides', by CF
Gordon Cumming (1883) at http://www.ambaile.org.uk/en/item/item_illustration.jsp?item_id=21491
This will be my last blog posting
for a little while. I have to take a
short hiatus for the next few weeks from all extracurricular activities. I will be in Skye for the long Jubilee
weekend, I need to finish my research and prepare and give five presentations in
June based on my work here over the past 6 months, and finally I will then have
to organize myself and pack up my life here in order to return home to
NYC. I hope to be back to full blogging
power in mid-summer, and I’m sure will have a good backlog of interesting
tid-bits of geographica to share.
