Islario, Alejandro Polanco’s latest Kickstarter project, is a collection of 16th- to 19th-century maps of islands—some real, some phantom. “In Spanish, the word ‘islario’ means something like a “compendium of islands’ or an ‘atlas of islands’. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, many ‘islarios’ were created, books that contained only maps of islands. Since the traces used to draw these maps were often based on legends or comments from sailors in ports, the problem of distinguishing between real and fantastic islands arose.” In this blog post (in Spanish), Alejandro takes a look at one of the fantastic islands his book will cover: Frisland.

There’s no shortage of books about phantom islands—islands on the map that later turn out never to have existed—but now the Map Men have done a video about them, using as a narrative hook the case of Sandy Island, and how it managed to stay on maps into the Google Maps era.

In their paper, the complete text of which is available online, physical geographer Simon Haslett and professor of Celtic David Willis are trying to reconstruct the post-glacial evolution of Wales’s Cardigan Bay using historical and folklore sources as well as bathymetric data and geological evidence. (It’s pretty obvious which author contributed what.) The Gough Map shows two islands that don’t correlate to any real island in Cardigan Bay; the study suggests that the islands may have in fact existed and have since been lost to flooding, erosion and other post-glacial changes to the shorelines. There are several submarine highs in the bay that may match up with the lost islands. The paper hypothesizes that the Cantre’r Gwaelod legend is a folk memory from when the coast was much different: that there were islands in Cardigan Bay, that they disappeared during the human era, and this legend is one of their traces.

In other words, a bit different from taking an old map at entirely too much face value (which, to be sure, has been enough of a thing that it was first to mind when I saw the story). They’re using the map and the legend to try and figure out the shoreline’s history—not using the map to prove the legend.

When a map has a mistake on it, when it’s wrong, it does something funny to our heads. We obey our phones and dashboard GPS navigators even when they send us off a cliff. We concoct nutty theories about ancient civilizations because a 16th-century portolan chart had a funny bend on a coastline. We wonder, because someone wrote “here be dragons” on a map, whether dragons were actually real. We make brain pretzels trying to force maps to be truthful even when they are manifestly wrong.¹

Maps have to tell the truth. They simply have to. Maybe that’s why stories about mistakes on the map, and the havoc those mistakes cause, fascinate us so much. Which brings me to three books, all published for the first time in 2016, that talk about map errors of an older kind: islands and other features that appeared on maps, sometimes for centuries, that in the end turned out not to exist.

Long before we got this funny idea that maps had to be truthful, before Edney’s ideal of cartography took hold, maps were full of conjectures, rumours, mistakes in surveying and even some outright frauds.

Take, for example, Frisland. A hoax perpetuated by the 14th-century Zeno brothers of Venice, or possibly their 16th century descendent: the latter published a book of the Zeno brothers’ correspondence in which they described their travels to Frisland, a large island south of Iceland in the North Atlantic with a Latin-speaking ruler. (Many phantom islands of the era seem to be full of previously undiscovered Christian realms where Latin is spoken: they’re a westerly variant of the Prester John legend.) The story was swallowed whole, and Frisland appeared on many maps; England claimed it. It took centuries for the Frisland myth to disappear completely. (Previously: The Invention of Frisland.)

Or for a more recent example, the island of Bermeja in the Gulf of Mexico. First sighted in the 16th century (but not since), it remained on maps of the region into the 20th century. In 2009 a Mexican aerial survey determined the non-existence of the island, which led to some conspiracy theories that it had been destroyed by the Americans: its position might have been important in determining who owned the subsurface oil exploitation rights in the Gulf of Mexico, and an agreement with the U.S. had just been completed on that very issue.

“[A]s the story of Bermeja demonstrates, a fascinating characteristic of many of these misbeliefs is their remarkable durability,” writes Edward Brooke-Hitching in The Phantom Atlas (Simon & Schuster UK, Nov 2016; Chronicle, Apr 2018). Indeed, as all three of the books under review today demonstrate, phantom islands continue to be “un-discovered” into the present day.

But where do phantom islands come from? “Among the multitude of non-existent islands that have appeared on maps over the past few centuries,” writes Malachy Tallack in The Un-Discovered Islands (Birlinn, Oct 2016; Picador, Nov 2017), “the vast majority are the result of mistakes. They are accidental phantoms, caused by imperfect navigation, optical illusions or poor recording by mariners and cartographers. Sometimes, though, there is no accident at all. Islands are invented deliberately, often creating inordinate confusion as a result.” To that list Brooke-Hitching adds mythology and religious dogma, which surely must have been at play with not just Frisland, but Hy-Brasil and Saint Brendan’s Island too; as well as volcanic destruction, because that can be a thing; and, because The Phantom Atlas isn’t just talking about islands, copyright traps.

In the end, the solution to a phantom island is more exploration: repeated voyages and surveys. Of course, establishing that something doesn’t exist—proving a negative, in other words—is much more difficult than suggesting that it existed in the first place. “Often, the process of refuting the existence of an island is more exciting, but also more complicated and dangerous, than its discovery,”² writes Dirk Liesemer in Phantom Islands, first published in Germany in 2016 as Lexikon der Phantominseln (Mare), now translated into English by Peter Lewis and published, last October, by Haus.

So, three books, with the same premise, covering the same territory, often using the same examples, and in much the same way, published at more or less the same time. Must have been something in the water.³ These books are more similar than not. It’s tempting to treat them as a whole. So I will.

Each is a collection of short chapters explaining how an island was added to the map, and how it was found out not to exist. I’m glossing over a lot in that sentence: there are some truly fascinating stories in these books. The Un-Discovered Islands covers twenty-four of them (with another ten briefly mentioned), arranged by theme; Phantom Islands covers thirty, in alphabetical order. The Phantom Atlas has sixty chapters, also arranged alphabetically, and goes beyond islands to other geographical features, and indeed to more intangible subjects, with chapters on the various monsters found on maps, and the ideas of a flat earth and an earthly paradise.

Naturally there is some overlap: a total of 11 mythical islands are covered by all three books, for example. (These are, for the record, Antilla, Atlantis, the Aurora Islands, Bermeja, Buss Island, Crocker Land, Frisland, Hy-Brasil, Saint Brendan’s Island, Sandy Island and Thule.)

Both Phantom Islands and The Un-Discovered Islands are relatively short, at 160 and 144 pages respectively. They’re elegantly designed but more illustrated than mapped, if you follow me. The Phantom Atlas is nearly twice as long and has two to three times the chapters (it also costs twice as much); it fills that space with reproductions of maps and art and other illustrations. (I read the ebook version, which in hindsight was a mistake: you get the images, but not the page layout.) The Phantom Atlas has its eye set on the coffee table: it’s the kind of map book you look at as much as you read it. The other two not so much, but they make up for it with stronger prose: each of these little books make for an afternoon’s pleasant reading, with The Un-Discovered Islands being a little more slight, and Phantom Islands having a somewhat different focus owing to its originally being written for a German audience.

In the end it depends on what you’re looking for. Information on phantom islands is readily available online, but these books spin their tales better, and The Phantom Atlas has better pictures. And these books’ overlap (see above) is not so much that you’d be wasting your time or money by reading all three. Particularly if you find this subject fascinating.

I received a review copy of Phantom Islands from the publisher. I bought the other two as ebooks.

The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies and Blunders on Maps
by Edward Brooke-Hitching
Simon & Schuster UK, Nov 2016 (U.K. edition)
Chronicle, April 2018 (U.S. edition)
Amazon | Apple Books | Bookshop

Phantom Islands
by Dirk Liesemer
translated by Peter Lewis
Haus, Oct 2019
Amazon | Apple Books | Bookshop

The Un-Discovered Islands
by Malachy Tallack
Birlinn, Oct 2016 (U.K. edition)
Picador, Nov 2017 (U.S. edition)
Amazon | Apple Books | Bookshop

Speaking of lost islands, invented places, myths and mistakes, our friend Alejandro Polanco’s latest project is this poster map of lost worlds—he calls it “the fantasy map I always dreamed of.” See his blog post (in Spanish) or the project’s Kickstarter page:

Over the last twenty years, in my work as a graphic designer and mapmaker, I have enjoyed reading numerous books on lost continents, mythological animals, phantom islands and cartographic errors. However, I have never found all those ingredients gathered in a single fantasy map. That’s why I decided to create “Lost Worlds,” a poster in which I have compiled some of the main details about lost continents, historical errors on famous maps, islands that once were believed to really exist, fantastic animals. . . . The documentation work has been meticulous and, for the final design, I have chosen the cases that I consider to be the most representative. It is, in short, a map to feed our imagination and our dreams.

Like his previous project, Minimal Geography, it’s full of inset maps and descriptive text. The main map locates lost continents, phantom islands and cryptid creatures; the inset maps include examples of old maps that contain the sorts of imaginary and erroneous features Edward Brooke-Hitching covers in The Phantom Atlas.

Alejandro is, as I mentioned, crowdfunding this map on Kickstarter, where it’s already past its (nominal) target. Available as a digital download; prices start at €6 (higher tiers include other products.

PBS NewsHour talks to Edward Brooke-Hitching about his book The Phantom Atlas, his book about lost islands, invented places, myths and mistakes on old maps. Direct video link, transcript. The Phantom Atlas was published in the U.K. in late 2016 and saw its U.S. edition launch in April of this year. [WMS]

The third edition of Mark Monmonier’s classic How to Lie with Maps (University of Chicago Press, 1o April) “includes significant updates throughout as well as new chapters on image maps, prohibitive cartography, and online maps. It also includes an expanded section of color images and an updated list of sources for further reading.” I reviewed the second edition back in May 2006. Amazon, iBooks

The Phantom Atlas, Edward Brooke-Hitching’s book about fictitious places that were once presented as real places, came out in the U.K. in November 2016. Though North American buyers could get a copy via online sellers, a proper U.S. edition (Chronicle, 3 April) is now available. The Wall Street Journal, of all places, has a review. Previously: The Phantom Atlas; More on Two Books About Nonexistent Places. Amazon, iBooks (U.K. edition, U.S. edition)

New in April

Zayde Antrim’s Mapping the Middle East (Reaktion, 1 April) “explores the many perspectives from which people have visualized the vast area lying between the Atlantic Ocean and the Oxus and Indus river valleys over the past millennium. By analysing maps produced from the eleventh century on, Zayde Antrim emphasizes the deep roots of mapping in a world region too often considered unexamined and unchanging before the modern period. Indeed, maps from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, coinciding with the eras of European colonialism and the rise of the nation-state, have obscured this deeper past and constrained future possibilities.” Amazon

Jeremy Black’s Mapping Shakespeare: An Exploration of Shakespeare’s Worlds Through Maps (Conway, 10 April) “looks at the England, Europe, and wider world in which Shakespeare worked through maps and illustrations that reveal the way that he and his contemporaries saw their land and their place in the world. It also explores the locations of his plays and looks at the possible inspirations for these and why Shakespeare would have chosen to set his stories there.” Amazon, iBooks

The Art of Map Illustration: A Step-by-Step Artistic Exploration of Contemporary Cartography and Mapmaking (Walter Foster, 3 April), an illustrated guide featuring the work and method of four map illustrators (James Gulliver Hancock, Hennie Haworth, Stuart Hill and Sarah King), was reviewed on The Map Room earlier this month. Amazon

Related: Map Books of 2018.

Two items on books about nonexistent places on maps and other map errors, each of which we’ve heard of before:

1. The Santa Fe New Mexican has a piece on The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies and Blunders on Maps by Edward Brooke-Hitching, which came out in the U.K. in late 2016 (previously); that edition is available via Amazon on the U.S. and Canada, but a separate U.S. edition is coming in April from Chronicle. [WMS]
2. Meanwhile, at National Geographic’s All Over the Map blog, Greg Miller takes a look at The Un-Discovered Islands, Malachy Tallack’s book about phantom islands: places once thought real, but later proven nonexistent. Like The Phantom Atlas, it first saw publication in 2016; its U.S. edition came out last November (previously). Miller’s piece includes examples of such nonexistent places on maps from the Osher Map Library.

Atlas Obscura has the odd and fascinating story of how a Venetian named Nicolò Zeno created an island in the middle of the North Atlantic called Frisland, in an apparent attempt to claim that Venetian explorers had discovered the New World. After it appeared on Zeno’s 1558 map, it persisted on other maps for a century afterward (it was even claimed for England in 1580), and the existence of Frisland itself was not fully debunked for a long time after that. “The answer to Zeno’s enduring success lies not with his works, but with his audience. For centuries, people believed Zeno because they wanted to believe him. That was Zeno’s true stroke of genius. He created a story too tantalizing for people to ignore.”

Meanwhile, Tor.com has published an excerpt online.

Previously: Mapping Scottish and/or Nonexistent Islands; The Un-Discovered Islands Reviewed.

Previously: Mapping Scottish and/or Nonexistent Islands.

Speaking of islands that didn’t exist, and maps thereof, there’s a new book about them. The Un-Discovered Islands by Malachy Tallack (Birlinn, October). “Gathered in the book are two dozen islands once believed to be real but no longer on the map. These are the products of imagination, deception and simple human error. They are phantoms and fakes: an archipelago of ex-isles and forgotten lands.” Available in the U.K. for now (or via third-party sellers); the Shetland News story about the book suggests that a U.S. edition is forthcoming. Official website. [WMS]

Previously: New Map Books for October 2016.