Scandinavia Map 1809 Pinkerton Modern Atlas Print - Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Baltic Coast

This sweeping view of Scandinavia and the Baltic was drawn by the Scottish geographer John Pinkerton in 1809, at the height of the Napoleonic Wars. Samuel John Neele engraved it in London, and Lewis Hebert drafted it under Pinkerton's direction. It spans Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland, reaching eastward into the Russian Empire and southward along the Baltic coasts of Prussia, Poland and Livonia. The map was issued as part of Pinkerton's Modern Atlas, published in 1815 by Thomas Cadell Jr., William Davies and the Longman firm, in a project that aimed to match the rigor of his Modern Geography of 1802. The map is large in scale and crisply engraved, and it is one of the most useful single sheets for anyone who wants to follow the north of Europe in the early nineteenth century.

The coastal contours are heavily shaded to bring out the fjords and inlets of the Norwegian seaboard, and vivid hand-coloring sets apart the historical regions of Norway, Sweden and a Finland that was passing from Swedish to Russian control during these very years. The map also takes in the White Sea in the northeast, with Kola, and the Gulf of Riga to the south. The maps of the atlas were celebrated for their large scale and the exceptional quality of Neele's engraving, which made it one of the finest British atlases of its era. It is a thorough map of the whole region.

A collector of British atlases, a family with roots in Norway, Sweden or Finland, or a reader of Napoleonic history will find a thoughtful gift here. TheMapVault's Homann map of about 1720 shows the north in baroque style, whereas this Pinkerton sheet is a precise map of the modern age. Like every print in the collection, it ships unframed and is available in a full range of sizes, from a compact desk piece to a large-format statement print. It would suit a study, a hall or a library.