ABSTRACT
One of the Middle Ages' most famous maps, the Hereford Mappamundi, creates its own universe with God and the angels above and humans exploring and making maps below; the very act of its own making is incorporated into the map. Maps also represent Christian history, connecting the real and the transcendent in a visual form; the medieval T-O formation, the T standing for the Cross and the O for the world, with Jerusalem at the center, creates a narrative of the world subservient to God and narrating the story of salvation. This chapter considers how medieval literature itself dealt with questions of geography and history through an exploration of travelogues, historiographies, and chronicles. Most sagas incorporate stories of marvels into their histories of places and peoples. The Vinland Sagas, consisting of two independent works written in the thirteenth century both contain accounts of the Norse voyages to North America, which they called "Vinland" because they apparently discovered grapevines there.
