Norway Map 1838 Marmocchi La Norvegia Print with Flag - Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim, Stavanger

This rare map of Norway, titled La Norvegia, was made by Francesco Costantino Marmocchi and published in Florence in 1838. It is embellished with an ornate flag, which gives the sheet a decorative note that sets it apart from a plain geographical map of the country. The Italian lettering and the Florentine imprint make it an unusual find, since most antique maps of Norway on the market come from Dutch, English or German presses. Marmocchi, who lived from 1805 to 1858, was among the Italian geographers of the nineteenth century, and this map was his portrait of a northern kingdom. It is a decorative sheet that sets a country of mountains and fjords beside a bright flag in the manner of Italian atlas work of the 1830s.

In 1838 Norway was joined with Sweden under a single crown, and the flag on the sheet is a small reminder of how a country of the far north was pictured by southern European publishers of the day. The long coast of fjords and islands, the mountain interior and the far northern reaches are the features that make a map of Norway distinctive, and the sheet shows how an Italian atlas of the period organized them for readers who had never seen the country. It is a rare map from a small group of Italian printed maps of the north. It is a fine choice for a collector of Norwegian maps.

A collector of Italian atlas maps, a family with roots in Norway, or anyone drawn to the fjords will find a distinctive gift here. TheMapVault's Marmocchi map of the whole Scandinavian peninsula and Denmark, dated the same year, shows the wider region, whereas this sheet is given to Norway alone. 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.