Cartographic Wonders
Islandia
a dozen lettered sea monsters in the surrounding ocean.
- Map
- Islandia
- Mapmaker
- Abraham Ortelius
- Date
- 1585
- Held by
- National Library of Israel, Eran Laor Collection
Format
The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore.
Size
$29.00
The story
The densest population of sea monsters on any printed map. Ortelius lettered each beast and keyed it to a description, so the ocean around Iceland becomes a bestiary with footnotes — the whale that swallows ships, the creature with the boar's head. Hekla erupts in the interior and bears drift on the floes to the north. It is what the edge of the known world looked like when it was still being argued over rather than surveyed.
About this reproduction
- A faithful reproduction of a public-domain map held by National Library of Israel, Eran Laor Collection — the work is centuries out of copyright.
- Printed to order on archival cotton-rag or textured laid stock, pigment inks rated 100+ years.
- Color-managed to the source scan; we correct nothing and invent nothing.
- Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed and linen-backed pieces ship flat-packed).
- If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.
Why our maps cost more than a poster: we print from the highest-resolution scans in existence, at sizes where the engraving itself becomes visible — the sea monsters, the tiny place-names, the burin lines — on stock made to outlive its owner.
