Antique Map of Sweden and Norway, Baltic Sea, Black's General Atlas, 1870

About this sheet

An antique map of Sweden and Norway with the Baltic Sea, engraved on steel for Black's General Atlas of the World and published in Edinburgh by A. and C. Black in 1870. The sheet covers the whole of the Scandinavian peninsula from the Skagerrak and the Sound northward to Lapland and the Arctic coast, together with the Baltic and its gulfs, the Danish islands and the shores of Finland and the Russian provinces on the eastern side of the sea. In 1870 Sweden and Norway were two kingdoms joined in a union under a single crown, an arrangement that lasted from 1814 until 1905, so the map sets out the internal frontier between them as it then stood along with the provincial divisions of each country. The long coastline, the fjords and the lake systems of central Sweden are engraved in the clear line for which the Edinburgh plates are valued, with original hand color separating the administrative divisions. A Scandinavian sheet of this date has a strong following among buyers with Swedish or Norwegian connections, and it hangs well on its own or beside another northern European map.

Black's General Atlas of the World was the standard British household atlas of the middle nineteenth century, issued in Edinburgh by the publishing house of Adam and Charles Black, the firm better known to most readers as the publisher of Sir Walter Scott and of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Its maps were engraved on steel, most of them under the direction of the Edinburgh cartographer John Bartholomew, whose clear lettering and restrained hill shading gave the atlas a legibility that its heavier rivals lacked. Successive issues were revised as boundaries moved and railways spread, so a sheet from Black's records the world as an educated Victorian reader understood it in the year the plate was printed.

Sheets from this atlas are sought after today both as reference cartography and as decorative material, the generous folio format suiting a wall quite as readily as a portfolio. Hung as a pair or a group, the plates make a handsome and genuinely informative wall.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with the center fold as issued and light toning, a few small spots and faint marks in the margins; the map is clean.

This is an original antique map, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed.