Inuit Dragons on European Maps

Posted by Paula Stiles Jun 8, 2006

In 2002, James Robert Enterline wrote "Erikson, Eskimos and Columbus: Medieval European Knowledge of America". In it, he suggested that the "fantasy" coastlines of eastern Asia in medieval maps actually came from Inuit knowledge of the coastlines of eastern Canada.

While educated medieval people knew that the world was round, they had no idea there was a continent between Western Europe and Eastern Asia. Enterline suggests that because the Inuit cartographic information came to them secondhand, the Vikings of Greenland (subjects of this week's article) did not understand this, either. They then may have passed on Inuit knowledge of Canada to European mapmakers who unknowingly used it to draw unreal Asian coastlines.

This brings up a frequent debate among medieval historians-how widespread is the concept of "medieval" in history? Christian Western Europe was neither the most powerful nor the most important civilization before the 19th century. It seems silly to talk about "medieval" China, for example, when the Chinese were only vaguely aware of Europe during the Middle Ages.

The cultures of Asia, Africa, Australia and the Americas did not revolve around Europe at all during the medieval period. Islam spread across South Asia and into the South Pacific unchecked by Christian competition and long before Captain Cook. The Silk Road of Central Asia operated outside the control of Western European kingdoms. The Inuit and other aboriginal groups explored and colonized Canada before Europeans knew Canada even existed.

On the other hand, ignoring non-European influences upon medieval Europe downplays the importance of cultures on the edges of European maps, especially those in the areas where medieval mapmakers put dragons. It gives credit for Inuit exploration to the Vikings, for early Muslim Arab and Bantu explorations of subSaharan Africa coasts to the Christian Portuguese, for the Chinese discovery of the Silk Road to the Italian Marco Polo.

Studying only Europe in medieval studies can create the illusion that only Europeans were exploring the world and making important discoveries between the fourth and 16th centuries C.E. This is inaccurate and unfair to those non-Europeans who got there first.