Re: KRS: Final thoughts

"m_zalar@xxxxxxxxxxx" <m_zalar@xxxxxxxxxxx> says in
news:1119849510.496410.95450@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

> Please note that my argument was based merely on the accepted
> fact (by scholars) that an exploratory trip beyond Greenland
> took place at the time the KRS was supposedly carved. At no
> other point in the history of Greenland (excepting perhaps the
> early voyages to Vinland) when such a trip is mentioned.

This has been discussed before here, there were trips beyond
greenland, but evidence for a successful trip launched from England
or Norway is unconvincing.

The closest point on Baffin Island to Kensington is about 63'N
and 70'W. Kensington is 47'N and 96'W. That is a difference of 16'N
and 26'W. Obviously at the latitude a degree is about 2/3rds that at
the equator. A distance of 1600 miles. 800 miles over water, and 800
miles overland to minnisota, total, round trip 3200 miles, over
water, though icey seas, upstreams and rivers, through hostile
territory.

The accounts of Inventio Fortunata that I have seen suggests it did
exist, but that it was a collection of stories and favored myths of
the time. There was some discussion of the Astrolabe.
Many of the accounts of the greenland visit are derived from cnoyen
in different directions, and so the connection that I see between the
greenlandic voyage and Inventio Fortunata are tied through Cnoyen,
and cnoyen is no better than a 3rd hand account. I don't think this
can be touted as evidence of anything other than that people wrote
and told myths in the 14th century.

As far as I know this is the most comprehensive estimation of the
inventio fortunata.

http://www.eaudrey.com/myth/Places/Mercator%20Article.pdf

"
Mercator cites his authority for his delineation of the northern
regions: the Itinerarium of a Flemish traveler named Jacobus
Cnoyen (now lost); Cnoyen gave as his sources the Res gestae Arturi
britanni (now lost), and a book written by an English Minorite, a
mathematician from Oxford, who had traveled in the far north in 1360
and recorded what he saw; this work was called the Inventio
fortunata, which also, (ironically, in light of its title) is lost.
"
Note, cnoyen may have never had a copy of the Inventio Fortunata, but
relied either on a read of it, or on an account of the book.
.. . . . .
"
The persistence of the Inventio fortunata geography on maps for, say,
150 years is to some extent a testament to the esteem in which
Mercator and Ortelius were held by other cartographers; it is also, I
think, a testament to the great psychological and mythical power of
the concept of the center. It was well-known that the North Pole was
the true center of the earth, and the author of the Inventio
fortunata gave an account of the geography that was so mythologically
satisfying, that it continued to be believed or at least repeated
well past the time when scholars and explorers knew that the account
was false.
"

"
The Inventio fortunata places a mountain at the Pole, and of course
many sacred centers are mountains; a passage into the depths of the
earth is another common feature of sacred centers. Moreover, the
powerful flow of water from the four corners of the earth in
through the rivers to the Pole, and there down a whirlpool, is the
strongest possible confirmation and emphasis of the Pole's
centrality, as strong almost as the thought of millions of Muslims
facing Mecca from all corners of the earth five times a day in
prayer. This role the North Pole plays in the circulation of the
earth's waters gives the spot the global importance we expect of a
sacred center.
"
. . . .
"
The similarities between the Inventio fortunata and the Brahmanic
Hindu and Buddhist conceptions of the northern polar regions of the
earth should by now be obvious. Both place a large mountain at the
Pole surrounded by four islands aligned as if to the four points of
the compass. From the one mountain radiates the earth's magnetic
field; the other is the pivot of the universe, and the home of the
divine. And while the while the Inventio fortunata has the waters of
the world's oceans flowing in towards the Pole from the four quarters
and then down into the earth, the Buddhist conception has a large
lake with four huge rivers flowing out to the four corners of the
earth.
"

IOW the source of the inspiration might be from other legends. Think
crusades.

-or-

"
To attempt to argue that the Inventio fortunata was by some
circuitous means derived from Buddhist conceptions of the northern
polar regions would be at best a highly precarious undertaking. Quite
aside from the inherent improbability of such an influence, when the
work itself is lost and its author uncertain, no such argume nt can
have a foot to stand on. I am inclined rather to see the fact that
two so similar mythographies of the northern polar regions should
arise and persist in two so different cultures as a testament
to both the creativity of these two cultures, and to the degree to
which these mythographies match our innate transcultural conception
of what a sacred center should be.
"
----http://www.eaudrey.com/myth/Places/Mercator%20Article.pdf---
Van Duzer, Chet, ?The Mythology of the Northern Polar Regions:
Inventio fortunata and Buddhist Cosmology,? At the Edge: Exploring
New Interpretations of Past and Place in Archaeology, Folklore, and
Mythology 9 (March, 1998), pp. 8-16.

-------http://muweb.millersville.edu/~columbus/data/art/QUINN-01.ART
"
The reference to
"Inventio Fortunata" presents some problems. One manuscript, of
which we have many later mentions, though no complete copy
survives, deals with the assumed travels of an English friar,
Nicholas of Lynne, to Greenland in the fourteenth century.[T. J.
Oleson, "Nicholas of Lynne," Dictionary of Canadian Biography, I
(Toranto, 1966), 678-679.] It is less likely to have been of interest
to Columbus than another manuscript he is said to have used, with the
same or a similar name but which appears, from what little we know of
it (it has also disappeared), to have dealt with islands and perhaps
lands lying in more southerly reaches of the Atlantic. Oviedo
and Fernando Colon both refer to it as "Inventio Fortunata."
Oviedo's reference applies to St. Brendan, the supposed first
discoverer of the Canary Islands, and Fernando's to "Juventius
Fortunatus" (probably an imprecise reference to the same
manuscript), who, he says, "tells of two floating islands
supposed to lie to the west and farther south than the Cape
Verdes, well to the south of the Canaries." The identification
is difficult to resolve on the evidence available, so that which
of the two manuscripts Day intended to bring to Spain remains in
doubt.(51)
"
---------http://muweb.millersville.edu/~columbus/data/art/QUINN-
01.ART

IOW, another person's recollection is that the islands being
discussed are in the mid atlantic.

http://www.biographi.ca/EN/ShowBio.asp?BioId=34551&query=Nicholas%20A
ND%20Lynn
"
The earliest mention of this work is on the map of Johannes Ruysch in
the Rome Ptolemy of 1508, where it is said to describe a high
magnetic rock under the Arctic Pole (a mountain in the vicinity of
Thule in Greenland well known to the mediaeval Icelanders, who had by
the 14th century noticed the deviation of the compass). Mercator on
his 1569 world map (Ganong, ?Crucial maps,? I, 104) says that in 1364
a certain priest at the court of Norway told James Cnoyen of Bois-le-
Duc, whose dates are unknown and whose works are lost, that in the
year 1360 a certain English friar, a Franciscan and a mathematician
of Oxford, came into the northern island. He then left, and passing
farther by his magical arts described all those places he saw and
took the height of them with his astrolabe. Hakluyt says the friar
wrote the Inventio fortunata after a voyage he made in 1360.
"
.. . .
"
This same friar ?for sundry purposes after that did five times pass
from England thither, and home again.
?

Ah yes, in Minnesota, the North Pole, back to England to hand off a
book to the King, then on the Norway to entertaine the Norwegian
court and serve up copies of his new book.

"
It is only in recent years, however, that Nicholas of Lynne has
acquired a considerable reputation as an early English explorer of
the Arctic, _in spite of the absurdity of the statements that he
travelled alone to the Pole and later made five further arctic
expeditions_.
"

"
Blundeville seems to have come nearer to the truth when he wrote in
1589 that he did not believe that the friar had made a voyage to the
Arctic ?unlesse he had some colde Devill out of the middle Region of
the aire to be his guide.?
"

Note 1589 is close to the peak of the mini ice age so we can see why
the statment might be made, to be fair.

"
Its author, whether Nicholas of Lynne or not, almost unquestionably
received his information, not first hand by travelling through the
Arctic, but from the priest Ivar Bárdarson, who from c. 1340 to c.
1360 was administrator of the see of Gardar in Greenland and as such
travelled widely and acquired directly or indirectly much information
about the eastern Canadian Arctic.
"

Reality closer to home?

"
Ivar Bardarson was back in Norway, possibly by 1361 and certainly by
1364, and there the Oxford friar may have met him personally and
compiled the Inventio fortunata. In any case the excerpts from the
Inventio found in later works point conclusively to an Icelandic-
Greenlandic source.
"
http://www.biographi.ca/EN/ShowBio.asp?BioId=34551&query=Nicholas%20A
ND%20Lynn


So that we are to consider the Nicholas of Lynn thing worth a grain
of salt, and that the story told, if true, was collected before 1360,
which would make sense since after 1355 the weather in the northern
atlantic began to turn south.

I am not debating the authenticity of the KRS, I am debating the
application of the Inventio Fortunata as support for the KRS. Whereas
if the story proves to be true via 3rd hand sources it might indicate
that greenlandic norse of the mid 14th century were familiarized with
north eastern (Islandic and Peninsular) canada.

So here you have too perspective on the Inventio Fortunata, both are
legitimate. Obviously the Description of the North Pole is in great
error, the magnetic pole is around Thule but no one in the 14th
century could measure it, at best they could aproach the pole, from
my estimates somewhere in NW canada at about 200 miles. The compass
apparently not used, they may have had a compass, as they got passed
greenland they probably put it aside or drank ale and had a few good
laughs. THere are no four islands surrounding the north pole. Again
obviously what account cnoyen had was in error.
The other one is that this is a myth that had favor. We still have
people who write books like 'the hollow earth' giving mythical
qualities to the north pole. Since the Inventio Fortunata appears
from other accounts to be in great error (no magnetic islands with
tides rolling in the same direction), there is obviously some myth or
story telling.
The question is how much of it [that which we don't have, and rely
on various interpretations from different perspectives] is based on
real accounts and how much is fill-in with story telling. Bottom line
is that scholars believe the Inventio Fortunata is myth based on
comparative mythologies from other culture. Do you have a convincing
reason why it should not be [part] myth?

.

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