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.

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.”