The Mystery Island of Frisland

The mysterious island of Frisland appeared on many old maps dating from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Yet, there is little or no mention of the island in modern times.

Wikipedia describes the mystery as “Frisland, also called Frischlant, Friesland, Frislanda, Frislandia, or Fixland, as a phantom island that appeared on virtually all of the maps of the North Atlantic from the 1560s through the 1660s.

Note that the mystery island is not to be confused with the Dutch province of Friesland. We are looking at two different entities.

David Johnson also listed Frisland as a phantom island in his book Phantom Island of the Atlantic: The Legends of Seven Lands That Never Were.

Johnson’s book investigates the mapping the unknown seas. The seven places in question include Frisland, The Isle of Demons, Buss Island, Antillia : the Isle of Seven Cities, Hy-Brazil, Saint Ursula, and the Islands of Saint Brendan.

Described by Jackett as “The strange tales of seven…lands, conjured out of myth, human error, and occasionally a captain’s hubris but nonetheless appearing on maps for centuries–even though many of them never actually existed.”

Maps of Frisland

1592 Coronelli Map

Map of Frisland (Frislanda) and Greenland (Groenlanda) by Vincenzo Maria Coronelli. Coronelli was an Italian monk, cosmographer, cartographer from Venice. To the west of Frisland, lies the Isola Lodkve.

Re-constructed Modern Style Map.

The following map was sourced from indocropcircles.com. It shows a modern clean map of what Frisland may have looked like using a modern style projection.