[Illustration: Northern Europe in Vesconte's mappamundi (1320) in the Vatican (Kretschmer, 1891)]
It seems not improbable that the delineation on Vesconte's map may have a connection with this description; it has also very nearly the same forms of names. The regions far in the north and east on his map are pure fancy, and the "rifei montes" are still found there.
Eight other MSS. (in various libraries) of Sanudo's work are known, accompanied by maps, and six of them have the circular mappamundi; but the reproductions differ considerably one from another, especially in the representation of the northern coast of Europe.[218] The mappamundi in the MS. in Queen Christina's collection in the Vatican (Codex Reginensis, 548), and the exactly similar map in the MS. at Oxford, have a remarkably good delineation of the Scandinavian Peninsula (see map, p. 224), with the names "Suetia" [Svealand], "Gotia" [Götaland], and "Scania" on the east, "Noruegia" on the west, "Finlandia" and "Alandia" [Åland, or perhaps Hallandia ?] in the extreme north-east. On the continent is written "Kareli infideles," "Estonia," "Liuonia," etc. In the Baltic are two islands, "Gotlandia" in the middle, and "Ossilia" [Ösel] farthest in. The shape of Jutland [with the names "Dacia" and "Jutia"], the direction of the coast of northern Europe and the Baltic, with Scandinavia parallel to it, remind one a good deal of Edrisi's map, of the Cottoniana and also of Carignano's map. Evidently there is here new information which Vesconte did not possess when he drew the map previously mentioned; the correct placing of the names in Sweden and Norway is especially striking. These names, as also "Jutia," occur in Saxo in approximately the same forms (cf. also Historia Norwegiæ). Marino Sanudo, according to his own statement, had himself sailed from Venice to Flanders, and had also travelled in Holstein and Slavonia. He was thus able to collect geographical information, and, as suggested by Björnbo [1909, pp. 211, f.], may have received communications from North German priests whose picture of the North had been formed by the study of Adam of Bremen and Saxo; but there does not appear to me to be any necessity for such a hypothesis, he may just as well have received direct information from people who knew the localities, while doubtless the names are to a great extent literary. If we suppose that it was Pietro Vesconte who drew all the maps, he may have derived his information about the North through Sanudo himself; but in that case it would be strange that he did not use it for his first map. We must therefore suppose that it was after this that their real collaboration began.