norumbega/Norumbega.md

The Myth of Norumbega

• The first person to put "Norumbega" on a map was Giacomo Gastaldi.[@KirsNor98, 34]
  • "Once Giacomo Gastaldi had placed a fully fledged country of Nurumberg on his map Tierra Nueva, in an edition of Ptolemy's Geography published in Venice in 1548, geographical ignorance allowed the non-existent land to flourish on innumerable other maps and globes. Thus until well into the second half of the seventeenth century, the mythical country of Norumbega continued to appear on maps."[@KirsNor98, 34]
• "Just about everything concerning Norumbega is in dispute. The two generally agreed facts are: that in the mid-sixteenth century the name Norumbega referred to the Penobscot Bay area and, by extension, to what is now Maine and southern New Brunswick (an area of roughly between 44 and 46 degrees north); and that the name itself was spawned by a small inlet labeled oranbega on the maps drawn by Girolamo de Verrazzano in 1529 to illustrate his brother's account of a voyage made five years previously."[@KirsNor98, 35]
  • As with most myths, the facts such as they are vary widely between sources.
  • The name "Norumbega" has a complicated history, unclear what its origin was. Horsford claimed it was a native word that was a corruption of a viking one.
• "Two other statements are also uncontentious: that in the sixteenth century the region of Norumbega was attracting English would-be colonists, and that once sufficient firsthand knowledge reached Europe from early attempts at settlement and from further exploration, both the cartographical Norumbega and the tales associated with it entirely disappeared."[@KirsNor98, 35]
  • Except by Horsford and others in the later 18th.
• "Many Renaissance cosmographers subscribed to the philosophy of natural harmony. It rested on the idea that the physical world was governed by laws ensuring perfect equilibrium."[@KirsNor98, 35]
  • Cartography wasn't really a science, had philosophical aspects as well.
• "Accordingly, when Europeans heard about the New World, they anticipated that it would contain at least an embryonic counterpart of features of the geography and human behaviour of the Old World."[@KirsNor98, 35]
  • Europeans went to the New World looking for the Old, for what they had known and what was familiar.

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References