Portolan Map Possibilities

[Linda]

Speaking about Spanish maps, and navigation, maybe this is interesting, too. Although a bit later than 15th Century.

If you look closer at the concept, there are some weird coincidences:

But I am known to make stupid comparisons, so don't take it so seriously.

Well, I can't agree, simply because the iconography of the vms examples mean something else to me, tubes are rivers or throughways across larger bodies of water, and containers which nymphs can stand in or recline on are generally bays. 

After seeing your post yesterday I was looking at that Cresques Abraham map and realized it seems to show the item at the top of f82r, which I already thought was a river system that gets you to the Baltic Sea. As you can see there is a M shaped section top right of the Naples Chart where the leftmost arm connects to the Baltic Sea at St. Petersberg.

This example that you have shown is to me the continuation of that, and from St. Petersburg, where the blue nymph is, it says to go straight through the body of water and ignore the open areas to the north or south. If you look at a real map of the Baltic Sea, you can see this would be good advice, as you would approach the opposite shore and follow it past  Denmark, where there are various straits, but easiest to keep following the shore through the Øresund strait. 

The strait is called Øresund in Danish (and Norwegian), and Öresund in Swedish, informally Sundet[10] (lit. 'the Strait') in all three languages. The first part of the name is øre "gravel/sand beach", and the second part is sund, i.e. "sound, strait".



This is shown in the iconography by showing the silt mixed in with the water sprays. 

Then, travel through the Skaggerat strait, where one will eventually reach the north sea, where one will need skillful navigation in order to travel safely. This is warned by the compass rose figure. 

The best bet now is to follow the Danish shore around and towards south, where one can keep following the shoreline of western Europe. This is indicated by the straight line. The real line of the shore is not as straight, but since we are sailing, it is straighter than it would seem by looking at the shore. 



Then there will be a 180 degree circular route to follow the Bay of Biscay, indicated by the turn in the line. It is a 180 but not at the angle of reality from the initial straight line, so therefore doesn't look like the shoreline. However saying it in words to describe the line, it results in a correct path. 

The a curved shoreline to Lisbon from there. The nymph is lying down in a triangle shaped bay, that is correctly positioned if seen from a 45 degree angle counter clockwise. Lisbon is at the center river on the map of Portugal/Spain on the map of western Europe, looks like lips on a face, although today it has silted in somewhat and the wide opening is now thinned.



This is the conclusion of the trip around Europe, it began with the Sagres peninsula just below it, on f76v.

I don't think the nymph is dead, I think she is sleeping after returning home. I am not sure of the star, I guess I kind of took it as a marker, like x marks the spot, except it is a star. Like a "you are here" dot on a map inside a building. Or as an expressive endpoint, as in, this is the end and beginning of the journey we just went on.