Martin Frobisher Mistakes Greenland for the Mythical Island of Frisland (1576)
On July 11, 1576, English explorer Martin Frobisher spotted towering, ice-capped cliffs rising from the North Atlantic and confidently recorded them on his charts as "Frisland," a large island believed to lie south of Iceland. In reality, Frobisher had become the first Englishman in recorded history to sight the coast of Greenland, a landmass Europeans had largely forgotten about since the decline of the Norse settlements centuries earlier. The error, rooted in flawed maps of the era, reveals how thin and speculative European knowledge of the North Atlantic still was on the eve of England's push into transatlantic exploration.
A Voyage in Search of a Shortcut to Asia
Martin Frobisher set sail from England on June 7, 1576, commanding a tiny fleet of three vessels: the Gabriel, the Michael, and an unnamed pinnace crewed by just four men. His goal was audacious—find the Northwest Passage, a hoped-for sea route across the top of North America that would let English merchants reach the riches of China and the East Indies without sailing past hostile Spanish and Portuguese territories. The expedition was backed by the Muscovy Company and financed largely through the efforts of London merchant Michael Lok, who had spent years lobbying investors and the Crown for support. Frobisher, a seasoned but rough-edged mariner with a history of privateering, was an unlikely but determined choice to lead such a scientifically ambitious voyage. Disaster struck almost immediately: a violent Atlantic storm sank the pinnace with all four hands aboard, and the Michael's crew, losing faith in the mission, turned back for England, falsely reporting that Frobisher's ship had been lost as well. Undeterred, Frobisher pressed on alone aboard the 20-ton Gabriel, a vessel barely larger than a modern sailboat, sailing deeper into increasingly icy and unfamiliar waters with a skeleton crew determined to reach uncharted territory that no Englishman had ever mapped.
Did You Know?
The island of "Frisland" that Frobisher believed he had found never existed at all—it originated from a 1558 map published by the Venetian Zeno family that historians now consider largely fictional or badly distorted. Despite this, Frisland continued appearing on European maps for decades, confusing explorers long after Frobisher's 1576 voyage.
Sighting Land: Greenland Mistaken for Frisland
On July 11, 1576, lookouts aboard the Gabriel spotted land rising sharply from the sea, its coastline lined with what one crew member described as forbidding, ice-choked mountains. Frobisher and his men, consulting the navigational charts of their day, concluded they had reached Frisland, a large island that had appeared on European maps since the 1558 publication of the Zeno map, a Venetian chart purporting to document 14th-century voyages by the Zeno brothers. Frisland was placed conspicuously south of Iceland on countless maps for decades afterward, despite the fact that no such island existed. The Zeno map is now understood by historians to have been substantially fabricated or badly garbled, likely conflating real geographic features—quite possibly Greenland itself—into an entirely fictional landmass. Frobisher had no way of knowing this. Contemporary maps simply did not depict Greenland in a location or shape he would have recognized, and memory of the medieval Norse colonies that once thrived there had faded from mainstream European geography. Unable to find a safe harbor amid the coastal ice, Frobisher sailed onward without landing, continuing his westward search. He had unknowingly charted, however briefly and inaccurately, one of the world's largest islands under an entirely wrong name.
Legacy of a Cartographic Error
Frobisher's mistaken identification did little to slow his voyage's momentum. Weeks later, in August 1576, he reached the coast of Baffin Island and entered the waterway now known as Frobisher Bay, initially convinced he had found the entrance to the Northwest Passage itself. He also collected a sample of black rock that assayers in London controversially declared to contain gold, triggering two further, far larger expeditions in 1577 and 1578 aimed at mining the supposed treasure—ore that ultimately proved worthless. The Frisland confusion persisted in European cartography for years afterward, with mapmakers continuing to depict the phantom island well into the early 17th century even as explorers gradually clarified the true geography of the North Atlantic. Frobisher's July 1576 sighting stands as an early example of how badly European explorers still understood the northern reaches of the Atlantic, relying on secondhand, unverified sources like the Zeno map rather than direct observation. His voyages nonetheless marked a turning point, inaugurating sustained English interest in Arctic exploration and the search for a northern trade route that would occupy explorers for the next three centuries, long after Frisland itself had been quietly erased from the world's maps.