History Art / CartaMarina

* MegaMaelstrom:
** There is a large swirl in the sea amid the Lofoten islands, captioned [[AC:Hec est horrenda Caribdis]] ("This is the horrible Charybdis").
** There is also a small ship in the middle of the maelstrom that is apparently just being sucked down. For bonus points, this would seem to be [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moskstraumen the Maelstrom]] itself, the whirlpool that gives us the name.

* MonsterWhale: "Pristers", the monstrous whale-creatures typical of the time, are the most common sea monsters featured in the map. Examples include one large enough to have been mistaken for an island by sailors, and one -- specifically identified as a ''balena'', the Latin word for whale -- being attacked by an equally monstrous ''orca''.
* OceanOfAdventure: With giant monsters, mysterious islands, unexplored lands...

* SeaMonster: There is a sea-serpent, numerous types of gigantic whales, a merman, a marine unicorn, a sea-cow, a kind of giant seahorse, a giant lobster holding a man in his claws, a bizarre "sea-hog", a so-called "sea monk" and various other weird fishes or sea creatures. These monsters, notably, are only in the Atlantic Ocean proper -- the North and Baltic Seas are quite free of them -- due to the Renaissance concept that things grow more strange and monstrous as one heads away from Jerusalem.

* MegaMaelstrom: There is a large swirl in the sea amid the Lofoten islands, captioned [[AC:Hec est horrenda Caribdis]] ("This is the horrible Charybdis"). There is also a small ship in the middle of the maelstrom that is apparently just being sucked down. For bonus points, this would seem to be [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moskstraumen the Maelstrom]] itself, the whirlpool that gives us the name.

* InformedSpecies: Many of the sea monsters are meant to represent real animals-- various whales, a "sea-monk" based on a giant squid, and a "marine unicorn" that was in all probability inspired by a narwhal-- but look absolutely nothing like them from a modern perspective. It's understandable, though, given that the artist would only have known of these creatures from travelers' tales and had no idea what they actually looked like.

* MegaMaelstrom: There is a large swirl in the sea amid the Lofoten islands, captioned [[AC:Hec est horrenda Caribdis]] ("This is the horrible Charybdis"). There is also a small ship in the middle of the maelstrom that is apparently just being sucked down.

* HereThereBeDragons: One of the most notable historic examples of this trope. The map is lavishly decorated with wondrous scenes and creatures -- besides the famous sea monsters, Olaus Magnus included depictions of various unusual peoples, as well as a few land-bound monsters in norther Scandinavia, and added descriptions and warnings to various illustrations. All in all, there's barely an inch of the map that isn't home to some strange thing.

The ''Carta Marina'' was created by Olaus Magnus (1490-1557), a learned and widely travelled Catholic UsefulNotes/{{Swed|en}}ish dignitary who lived in Italy after Sweden had joined the Protestant Reformation. The original was printed in an extremely limited edition of nine copies, so as to increase its value. Only two of these survive today (located in UsefulNotes/{{Munich}} and Stockholm respectively), although a scaled-down replica was produced in 1572, of which several copies survive. The original map was not colored, and none of the two remaining specimens is.

** While Ziphius, a "terrible seamonster" (actually a swordfish), is swallowing a whole seal, it is itself attacked by an unnamed monster which is sinking its teeth into Ziphius' side.
** South of Tile, a whale (balena) is being attacked by an orca.

* SeaMonster: There is a sea-serpent, numerous types of gigantic whales, a merman, a marine unicorn, a sea-cow, a kind of giant seahorse, a giant lobster holding a man in his claws, a bizarre "sea-hog", a so-called "sea monk" and various other weird fishes or sea creatures.

* KrakenAndLeviathan: The map depicts numerous 'pristers', which are whales "as big as mountains" and which can capsize a large ship just by surfacing from the water.
* LoudOfWar: South of Iceland, a ship is being pursued by two 'pristers' (giant whales) while a man standing on the ship is blowing a trumpet. The commentary explains that the sound of trumpets frightens pristers away, which is necessary to prevent them from capsizing ships.

See also Literature/ADescriptionOfTheNorthernPeoples.

* PortentOfDoom: The appearance of the Great Norwegian Serpent ("200 feet long and over 20 feet thick") is a bad omen that betokens a change of rule in Norway, or else an imminent war.

[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/red-sea-monster-serpent.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350: The Great Norwegian Serpent.]]

* EyesDoNotBelongHere: The "monster seen in 1537", called a "sea-hog" in the commentary, has three additional eyes on each side of his body, making eight eyes in total.

You can explore the ''Carta Marina'' of 1539 online as a [[https://www.lib.umn.edu/apps/bell/map/OLAUS/TOUR/indext.html 'virtual tour']] or as [[http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/09/olaus_magnus_carta_marina_sea_monsters_on_a_gorgeous_renaissance_map.html an interactive version]]. There is also an [[https://www.wdl.org/en/item/3037/ interactive version of the 1572 reprint.]]

The ''Carta Marina'' was created by Olaus Magnus (1490-1557), a learned and widely travelled Catholic UsefulNotes/{{Swed|en}}ish dignitary who lived in Italy after Sweden had joined the Protestant Reformation. The original was printed in an extremely limited edition of nine copies, so as to increase its value. Only two of these survive today (located in UsefulNotes/{{Munich}} and Stockholm respectively), although a scaled-down replica was produced in 1572, of which several copies survive. The original map was not colored, and none of the two remaining specimens.