There are surprisingly few drawings of Venetian cogs in the Venice archives and I found the best way to get a sense of their size and shape was to look at those moored by the Rialto or in Saint Mark’s Basin in the paintings by Carpaccio, the great narrative painter of the early Venetian Renaissance.
The cog had elegant, clean lines. It was built with Dalmatian oak and pinewood logged in the nearby Julian Alps and combined solidity with lightness. It was less expensive to run than a galley, as it carried fewer oarsmen—an average of sixty compared to two hundred. It could also hold more merchandise in relation to its size, a typical midsize cog carrying up to three to four hundred tons. It was more vulnerable to attack at sea, relying mostly on a small contingent of bowmen. But all men on board were expected to seize arms if the ship was under attack.
In Messer Nicolò’s time, shipowners were also mounting fixed bombards on the cog’s fore and aft decks, similar to those used for the first time by the Venetians during the siege of Chioggia. These were stout, stumpy cannons made of rope and wood pressed into a leather casing that was about twenty inches long and eight inches wide. Also on board were sleek, bazooka-like cannons cast in iron and used for shooting small rocks at the assailing enemy.
I pictured Messer Nicolò poring over charts of the Atlantic coast during the winter of 1382–83; gathering information on winds, tides and ports of call from veterans of the route to Flanders; storing merchandise in the capacious hull of his new ship that could be easily sold or exchanged for other goods; interviewing seamen, oarsmen, bowmen, carpenters and caulkers to take on board with him; stocking supplies for the journey: wine, cheese, salted pork, beans and a large quantity of biscotto, the heavily buttered wheat-flour biscuit that formed the basis of nutrition aboard Venetian ships (starting in 1335 the Republic began to mass-produce biscotto in government-run ovens).
Nicolò Zen sailed to the Sea of Flanders in a cog, or round ship, probably similar to the two seen here anchored in the Basin of Saint Mark. Detail from Jacopo de Barbari’s view of Venice. (illustration credit 2.2)
There was one last delay. In May 1383, just as Messer Nicolò was getting ready to leave, the Senate nominated him ambassador to Hungary, an important and politically sensitive post. According to the rules, the appointee had to have enough money to support four servants, a notary and his assistant, two secretaries, a purser and a cook, and to spend an average of six ducats a day on general expenditures for his family. Messer Nicolò could easily have fulfilled those requirements, but evidently his mind was set on going back to sea. He declined the appointment and was fined one hundred ducats—a fairly standard sanction in such cases. He paid the fine and set sail most probably in early June.
The journey to Flanders took about two months. The government convoys usually stopped in Sicily, then crossed over to Majorca, and from there sailed to Málaga. But a private captain was not bound to follow that itinerary. Indeed, it would have been risky for him to make a crossing in open sea from Sicily all the way to Majorca. The choice was either to sail north, follow the southern coast of France and then go down the coast of Spain, with stops for provisions in Marseille, Barcelona, Valencia and Málaga, or else to take the southern route to the Barbary Coast, with stops in Tunis, Tangier and Málaga. He would then sail through the Strait of Gibraltar and along the Bay of Cádiz, round Cape St. Vincent and head north to Lisbon.
Messer Nicolò was of course familiar with navigation in the Mediterranean, but according to the records in the Venice Archives he had never ventured into the Atlantic before. The aim of any captain heading to Flanders was to stay close to shore and follow the Atlantic coastline of Portugal around Cape Finisterre, sail along Asturias and Cantabria in the Bay of Biscay and then head north all the way up to the craggy, treacherous coast of Brittany. Aboard his ship, he would have had a limited number of instruments to help him stay on course, the most important being the thirty-two-point magnetic compass that was commonly used by Venetian merchants in the fourteenth century, and charts describing local coastlines, harbors, sheltered coves and danger zones. In any case, sailing north against the current and the powerful trade winds was bound to be rough on a loaded Venetian cog.
As Messer Nicolò and his men rounded Brittany and entered the English Channel, navigation became more difficult. Choppy seas, steep waves, frequent fog and shifting sandbars: even an experienced old salt like Messer Nicolò must have felt he was advancing into a hostile environment. The tides were far more powerful than anything he had seen in the Mediterranean; they created deep currents and surface currents that changed direction every six hours and made it even more difficult to stay on course.
Stormy weather was frequent in the early summer and a magnetic compass would have been useless in such conditions. And with the skies heavy with clouds not even the stars could have rescued Messer Nicolò when, according to Nicolò the Younger’s narrative, he lost his bearings somewhere in the Sea of Flanders. “He was caught in a fierce storm and drifted for many days, tossed by waves and winds until he no longer knew where he was; at last he sighted land and unable to fight the awful tempest any further, he hit the shore of Frislanda.”
CHAPTER THREE
Frislanda
AFTER MANY days and nights adrift in a hostile sea, Messer Nicolò and his exhausted crew caught sight of looming dark mountains surging through the watery mist. For all their relief at the approaching land, they must have felt in awe of the dramatic scene that suddenly opened up to them. The islands, tall and angular, were separated from one another by narrow, deep-water fjords. Black cliffs cut into the freezing sea. Waterfalls dropped from the uplands, crashing into the ocean swell. Low, fast-moving clouds enhanced the eerie atmosphere surrounding these remote and lonely islands.
After steering through a barrier of treacherous outcroppings, “Messer Nicolò landed with all his men alive and most of the goods safe.” They clambered out of their battered cog, dazed and stiff-limbed. But before they were able to get their bearings and set up camp on the rocky shore they were surrounded by a crowd of threatening, shouting men armed with axes and picks and stones. Weakened by dehydration and malnourishment after so many days at sea, they stood little chance of surviving an attack. Nicolò the Younger, always quick to praise his countrymen’s valor, conceded “they were unlikely to put up a vigorous defense and would have been harshly dealt with had good fortune not come their way.”
Good fortune appeared in the form of a “prince”—a lord and commander who, alerted by the news of the rough landing, rode his horse to the scene and quickly ordered his men to scatter the mob of natives. The prince addressed Messer Nicolò in Latin and, upon learning that he came from Venice, reacted with “grandissima allegrezza”—the greatest joy. He offered the bedraggled Venetians his protection and assured them they would be treated well.
The mysterious island of Frislanda drawn by Nicolò Zen the Younger on the Carta da navegar published by Francesco Marcolini in 1558. (illustration credit 3.1)
At first I found the scene described by Nicolò the Younger somewhat hard to believe—the mysterious prince bursting into effusive gestures of friendship upon hearing that Messer Nicolò hailed from Venice. But even though these two men clearly belonged to worlds that were very far apart, they may well have had more in common than I had initially imagined. The prince’s ability to communicate in Latin suggested he was a well-born, cultivated man; as such, he would indeed have been familiar with the Venetian Republic. Venice was, after all, the great naval power of the time, and news of its historic victory over the Genoese had certainly traveled very far north by the time Messer Nicolò reached Frislanda. Also, in the high Middle Ages Venice served as the gateway to the Holy Land. It was the duty of every good Christian to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem at least once in his lifetime, and the great majority of those who actually made the journey traveled to Venice from all over Europe, and there they boarded the transport ships that took them across the Mediterranean. An educated nobleman like the
prince would have contemplated a journey via Venice to the Holy Land—indeed, he could well have already made it.
NICOLÒ THE Younger claimed the prince’s name was Zichmni—a bizarre combination of phonemes, which, as far as I could tell, had no recognizable etymology. It was probably the result of a wrong transcription from one of the original letters sent home by Messer Nicolò. Zichmni’s true identity remains controversial, as we shall see. But Nicolò the Younger did provide two significant clues: Zichmni was “lord of Sorant, a region near Scotland,” and he ruled over “a group of islands named Porlanda, to the south of Frislanda, which were the richest and most populous in the entire region.”
Zichmni, it turned out, was in Frislanda on a military expedition to quash a rebellion on the part of the natives. He wasted little time in drafting the Venetians to his cause, instructing Messer Nicolò to join the flotilla anchored in the bay (a cog, two longships and ten barks) and to advise the captain on how best to seize control of several smaller islands in the archipelago.
Nicolò the Younger noted with patriotic pride that “Zichmni quickly understood Messer Nicolò was not only wise but very experienced in seafaring matters.” Drawing on the original material, Nicolò the Younger went on to describe in some detail a two-pronged military operation to seize control of Frislanda: “While Zichmni led one contingent cross-country, the small fleet carrying the Venetians sailed west and easily took two outlying islands, Ledovo and Ilofe. The ships then turned toward the Gulf of Sudero and weighed anchor in the village of Sanestol, where they came upon several vessels loaded with salted fish. In Sanestol, they were briefly joined by Zichmni’s forces, which had marched across the main island of Frislanda. Then the fleet sailed to the north of the Gulf of Sudero and after taking control of a few more islets, anchored at Bondendon, a fishing village at the west end of the fjord.”
Nicolò the Younger claimed the contribution of the small Venetian contingent was decisive. “The sea in which they had navigated was so filled with reefs,” he wrote, “that the fleet would have been lost had it not been for Messer Nicolò and his mariners; the other men were less experienced than ours, for whom the art of navigation was second nature.” Of course Nicolò the Younger had a habit of glorifying Venetian prowess in battle, but how naïve to think that his countrymen would be more adept at sailing in those treacherous fjords than local seamen!
At Bondendon, Messer Nicolò and his men learned that Zichmni had completed his campaign victoriously. Nicolò the Younger went on to write, “First the rebel chiefs came to lay down their arms and submit to his authority. Then Zichmni himself arrived and there was much joy and jubilation for the victories on land and those at sea, for which the Venetians in particular were celebrated. In fact one only heard praise for them and for Messer Nicolò’s great valor. The prince greatly admired courageous men, especially those who were well versed in the art of seafaring. He summoned Messer Nicolò and after praising his skill and ingenuity, and paying tribute to the important role he had played in preserving the fleet intact and subjugating so much territory with little effort, he knighted him.”
Such a rush to knight Messer Nicolò sounded to me a little suspect—Zichmni probably did so at a later date. But knight him he did: Messer Nicolò kept the title after his return to Venice a few years later. In most of the family trees I found in the archives he was generally referred to as Nicolò, il Kavaliere—Nicolò the Chevalier.
The Frislanda Enigma
NICOLÒ THE YOUNGER was the first to write about Frislanda and to draw a map of it—there are no traces of such an island on earlier European charts or travel narratives. Evidently his reputation and his social rank were solid enough that this large island he placed with so much confidence to the north of Scotland soon found its way onto the major maps of the sixteenth century. But of course there was no such island where he had placed it, so I wondered where Messer Nicolò and his men could have made their landfall.
Geographers long before me had scratched their heads over this question. When mariners reported they could not find Frislanda some began to think that Nicolò the Younger had made the whole story up; most, however, took the view that the island had probably been submerged by a volcanic explosion since the days of Messer Nicolò. It was not until 1787 that a French geographer, Jean Nicolas Buache, asserted in a scholarly article, “Mémoire sur l’isle de Frislande,” that while Frislanda as depicted in the Zen map did not exist, the latitude of the island in the chart (roughly 62°) indicated Nicolò the Younger was probably describing the Faroes. Five years later, a German geographer, von Eggers, came to the same conclusion after identifying a number of place-names on the map of Frislanda that corresponded to place-names in the Faroes: Monaco for Munk, Sudero for Sutheroy (Suðeroy), Nordero for Northedalur (Norðadalur), Andeford for Arnafjord (Arnafjrður), to name a few.1 Other writers weighed in and by the early nineteenth century it was generally agreed that Frislanda was in fact a deformed and enlarged representation of the Faroes.
It seemed to me a reasonable enough solution to the riddle. In Viking days this remote archipelago in the North Atlantic was known as Faereisland, the Islands of the Sheep. It was easy to imagine how Messer Nicolò, writing home at the end of the fourteenth century, might have contracted and Italianized the old Viking name from Faereisland to Frislanda.
A hundred and fifty years later, Nicolò the Younger, who was neither a geographer nor a cartographer, worked from the scraps of letters and the chart he had found in Palazzo Zen to trace the outline of Frislanda. Contrary to his claim that it “came out rather well,” as he wrote, quite pleased with himself, he did a terrible job of it, soldering the narrow islands that form the archipelago into a single, supersized landmass that hadn’t the faintest resemblance to the actual Faroes. He made matters worse by placing his fanciful Frislanda at the correct latitude, as Buache pointed out, but in the wrong position relative to other important pieces of the North Atlantic puzzle: Shetland, Iceland and Greenland.
Clearly, the letters and chart Nicolò the Younger used were not the only source of his Frislanda. At least one existing map is sure to have inspired him, and to have led him further astray. It is the map of another nonexistent island in the North Atlantic called Fixlanda (the Island of Fish), which Matteo Prunes, a cartographer from Majorca, published in 1553, five years before the Zen map came out. As many as thirteen of the twenty place-names in Prunes’s Fixlanda appear on Frislanda in one form or another, suggesting Nicolò the Younger took a good long peek at it before drawing his own map.2
Nicolò the Younger was later accused of having taken some of his information for the Zen map from the Carta marina (1539), a famous map by Olaus Magnus, a Swedish bishop who sought refuge in Italy after the Reformation, and which was considered at the time to be the most up-to-date depiction of the North Atlantic. I found it a curious charge: in the Carta marina the Faroes are traced quite accurately and there is no Frislanda. If Nicolò the Younger consulted Olaus’s map—and it would have been easily available to him in Venice—he evidently did not think it was very reliable. Indeed, by inserting Frislanda with such assurance in his outline of the North Atlantic and by erasing the Faroes altogether, he must have thought his map a great step forward relative to the Carta marina. Certainly many of his contemporaries believed it to be the case, judging by the influence the Zen map had in shaping the sixteenth-century view of the North Atlantic.
Noregsveldi
The Faroes are a dramatic sight—they surge from the abyss halfway between Shetland and Iceland to form one last anchorage before the vast expanse of the North Atlantic. Several million years ago, an incandescent mass emerged amid thrashing, churning waters and quickly hardened, giving shape to a dozen elongated islands, set one next to the other along a northwest/southeast axis and separated by long, narrow sea arms. The fallout from successive volcanic eruptions built up great layer cakes of lava and turf that are covered with a sprinkling of emerald green.
Mateo Prunes, a cartograph
er from Majorca, placed Fixlanda to the northwest of the British Isles in his 1553 nautical chart. Fixlanda may well have served as a model for Nicolò Zen the Younger’s Frislanda five years later. (illustration credit 3.2)
Even today the approach to these beautiful islands in the middle of the ocean can be as intimidating as it must have been in the time of Messer Nicolò. The Faroes are often shrouded in mist, gales blow hard and ominous grey swells crash furiously against the black rocks. At first sight, it can seem a bleak and lonely world. But then the sun will suddenly break out through the mist, unveiling a vivid, gentler landscape. Sheep graze placidly on the uplands; old farmsteads, their roofs covered with turf and brilliant grass, stand peacefully in generous meadows; and brightly painted fishing villages give an occasional spot of color to the coastline.
Hardy monks from Ireland were the first to reach these islands, in the early part of the eighth century. They came in hide-covered currachs, carrying only a few sheep and other bare essentials, to find a solitary place where they could pray and feel close to God. When the Vikings escaping the tyranny of King Harald Finehair landed in the Faroes in the early ninth century, they found a few old hermits still living in caves; they called them papar, “little fathers.” The new settlers built homesteads, raised sheep and fished. They traded wool and cod for corn, timber, glass, amber beads and soapstone brought over by merchant ships from the Norwegian mainland. The sagas tell us it was a peaceful community governed by local chieftains. But the expanding kingdom of Norway—the Noregsveldi—absorbed the Faroes in 1035 under King Magnus the Good.
Irresistible North Page 5
