VINLAND MAP AND THE TARTAR RELATION

Yale University Press. Very Good+ in Very Good dust jacket. 1966. Fourth Printing. Hardcover. 0300009593 . Book has slight soiling to textblock. Dustjacket is price-clipped. DJ has small tears to corner and chipping to spine ends. Light soiling to DJ. ; Evidence concerning the Viking discovery of North America in the tenth and eleventh centuries is so incomplete, investigation of this area of history will be substantially aided by the discovery of new documents. Such is the claim made for the previously unknown manuscripts here published for the first time. They are two documents copied about 1440 from much earlier originals, now lost. The first is an account of Friar John of Plano Carpini's mission to the Mongols in 1245-47. The second is a world map, including the western ocean, with delineations of Iceland, Greenland, and a land mass named Vinland which represents the North American mainland as known to the medieval Norsemen. This map is the earliest known and indisputable cartographic representation of any part of the Americas. As the editors show, the Tartar Relation provides information on Mongol history and legend not to be found in any known source, and a portion of the Map represents the only surviving medieval example based on Norse cartography - a conclusion with far-reaching implications for the history of cartography and of the Viking navigations. OVERSIZED. ; 291 pages .