Swedish cartographer Olaus Magnus was an artist with a fertile mind. In 1539 AD he produced a map of the world as he knew it, illustrated with images of sailing ships, ocean currents and various imaginary sea creatures.
The land mass ("Islandia") in the northwest corner of the Magnus map may have been today's Greenland, the largest island in the world. If you wonder why an island with extreme winter weather most of the year is known as "green land," look no farther than the real-estate sales tactics of Erid the Red, a Norseman who was exiled from Iceland for manslaughter in 980 AD; he sailed west with his family and their servants, found inhabitable property on the island's east coast and settled there. Eric called his new home "Greenland" with hopes that a pleasant name would attract more settlers (a precursor of the Florida land boom in the 1920s?).
