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A fine seventeenth-century Dutch sea chart of the coast of western Norway, extending northward from Bergen (depicted at the right) to beyond the promontory of Stadlandet. The chart is oriented with east at the top, a convention typical of Dutch marine cartography of the period. It covers one of the most difficult coastal stretches of the North Atlantic seaway, with dense archipelagos, fjords, skerries, and shifting shoals that presented both danger and refuge for vessels navigating to and from Bergen, the principal port of entry for the Norwegian fish and timber trade.
This chart was engraved by Pieter Goos and issued around 1664, based in part on an earlier model by Anthonie Jacobsz. The coastlines are rendered with sharply articulated headlands, numerous soundings, and navigational hazards marked with crosses and pictorially. A dense web of rhumb lines connects compass points, guiding mariners through the islands and into major fjords.
Pieter Goos (ca. 1616-1675) was a Dutch map and chart maker, whose father, Abraham Goos (approx. 1590-1643), had already published numerous globes, land and sea maps together with Jodocus Hondius and Johannes Janssonius in Antwerp. Pieter gained recognition due to the publication of sea charts. He bought the copperplates of the famous guide book for sailors, De Lichtende Columne ofte Zeespiegel (Amsterdam 1644, 1649, 1650), from Anthonie Jacobsz. Goos published his own editions of this work in various languages, while adding his own maps. In 1666, he published his De Zee-Atlas ofte Water-Wereld, which is considered one of the best sea atlases of its time. Goos' sea charts came to dominate the Dutch market until the 1670s, when the Van Keulen family came to prominence.
