for a 1467 publication of
Cosmographia Claudii Ptolomaei Alexandrini Early Greek and Roman geographers used the name
Scandia for various uncharted islands in
Northern Europe. The name originated in Greek sources and then into Latin , which used it for a long time for different islands in the
Mediterranean region. In the
Iliad the name denotes an ancient city in
Kythira, Greece. The first attested written use of the name for a Northern European island appears in the work of Roman
Pliny the Elder,
Naturalis Historia of c. AD 77. Pliny described "Scandia" as an island located north of
Britannia. This island does not appear to be the same as the island Pliny calls "
Scatinavia", located near
Cimbri. In
Claudius Ptolemy's
Geographia, written in the 2nd century AD, Scandia is described as the most easterly of the Scandiae islands, a group of islands located east of the Cimbrian peninsula. This is the region where Pliny had located "Scatinavia". When Scandinavian scholars became familiar with the Roman records in the
Middle Ages, Scandiae was used as an alternative Latin name for
Terra Scania. The early 13th-century Latin paraphrase of the
Scanian Law bears the title
Lex Scandiae provincialis. Jordanes referred to
Ptolemy's description of
Scandia "as a great island shaped like a juniper leaf" (i.e. long and not round) "having bulging sides and which tapered down in the south at a long end". He also referred to
Pomponius Mela's description of
Codanonia (called
Scatinavia by
Pliny the Elder) which was located in the Codanian Gulf (probably
Kattegat). "This island was in front of the
Vistula and that there was a great lake" "from which sprang the river
Vagus". "On the western and northern side it was surrounded by an enormous sea", "but in the east there was a land bridge which cut off the sea in the east forming the
Germanic Sea". "There were also many small islands" (the Swedish and Finnish archipelagos) "where wolves could pass when the sea was frozen. In winter the country was not only cruel to people but also to wild beasts. Due to the extreme cold there were no swarms of honey-making bees." In the 16th century,
Olaus Magnus, a Swedish cartographer familiar with Pliny's writings, created a map where he placed the name "Scandia" in the middle of today's Sweden. In Olaus Magnus' map, the name denotes an area including "Svecia" (
Svealand), "
Gothia" and "Norvegia" (Norway), where he places various tribes described by the ancient geographers. Although mainly a historical name,
Scandia still occasionally continues in use today as a Latin name for
Scandinavia. The
Scandinavian Bishops Conference, an
Episcopal Conference organized by the
Catholic Church since 1923, is called
Conferentia Episcopalis Scandiae. ==Midsummer sun and the midwinter darkness==