Developer dismisses man-eating whale story as sailors’ fiction

A whale depicted standing upright and craving human flesh is the result of a Dutch misunderstanding, while stories that it ate people are pure sailors’ fiction, according to Hjálmar Gíslason, mbl.is reported.

Hjálmar, chief executive of technology and software company GRID, has created an interactive version of the 16th-century map of Iceland drawn by Bishop Guðbrandur Þorláksson.

“I am an insatiable nerd and technology enthusiast,” Hjálmar said. “The background to this project is that the map Guðbrandur Þorláksson drew in the 16th century has always fascinated me.”

Hjálmar said he remembered having a picture of the map as a child, which he believes he cut out of a chocolate box.

“It has a fun style, all kinds of monsters, and looks a bit like a treasure map. That fascinated me when I was little. I have come across it here and there since then. It is the most famous old map of Iceland there is,” he said.

Last week, Hjálmar travelled around the Westfjords and visited the Monster Museum in Bíldudalur, where the map is displayed on a wall.

“There I started studying it once again and trying to read what was difficult to read as a child, where the places were and so on. That was when I decided to create an interactive version of the map when I got home,” he said.

The interactive version is now available on Hjálmar’s website.

Hjálmar said he carried out much of the work with the help of artificial intelligence. He obtained an image of the map from the National Library’s map website and asked the AI to examine all the text, identify what it said and determine which places were marked.

“The artificial intelligence found all the text and did a fairly good job of reading it, although I had to help where the inscriptions were difficult,” he said.

The AI was able to identify about 60 per cent of the place names.