In this seminar, our Visiting Researcher Dr. Francesco D'Angelo, medieval historian from La Sapienza University in Rome, will examine and discuss how information could circulate between Scandinavia and Italy in the first half of the 14th century. The starting point will be the recent discovery, made by Prof. Paolo Chiesa, of a reference to a north-western land called Marckalada/Marchalanda in the Cronica universalis (ca. 1340) by the Milanese Dominican friar Galvaneus Flamma. Behind this name, Chiesa reasonably recognized the Markland ("Forest land"), mentioned by the thirteenth-century Norse sagas as one of the North American lands discovered by the Norsemen (perhaps today's Labrador), and argued that Galvaneus got this information in Genoa. At that time, however, there were also other Italian merchants who frequented the ports of northern Europe, and had closer relations with Scandinavia than the Genoese. This presentation therefore explores the possibility that, around 1340, Florentine and Milanese merchants could have acted as an intermediary between Scandinavia and Milan, bringing to Lombardy news of distant lands in the north-western Atlantic.
The Director's Seminar Series at The Norwegian Institute in Rome is open for everyone interested. Kindly register your participation to events@roma.uio.no.
Participants are invited for an aperitivo immediately after the seminar.