Laskaris Kananos

Laskaris Kananos (or Lascaris Cananus) was a 15th-century Byzantine traveler to northern Europe who left an account in vernacular Greek of his travels.[1]

Kananos may have traveled in 1438–1439 (possibly in connection with the Council of Florence),[1][2] or he may have been traveling in 1468 collecting alms for the release of prisoners from the Ottoman Empire.[3] Although he has at times been identified with John Kananos,[4] there is no reason other than their surnames to equate the two obscure figures.[3]

Judging by his interest in the silver coinage minted in Stockholm and the barter trade in Bergen, Kananos may have been a merchant.[1] Besides Stockholm and Bergen, he visited Norway, Schleswig, Copenhagen, Pomerania, Danzig, Prussia, Livonia, Latvia and England, whence he sailed to Iceland.[1][4]

Kananos' surviving account is short, just three pages in the sole surviving manuscript of the 16th century (now in Vienna, Austrian National Library, hist. gr. 113, at folios 174r–175r). It may be a fragment of a once longer work.[1] The Baltic Sea he calls the Venedicos Kolpos ("Wendish Bay"). He noted the subordination of Sweden and Norway to the king of Denmark in the Kalmar Union, since the king lived in Kupanava (Copenhagen).[4] He noted that the cities of Riga and Revel belonged to the Archbishop of Riga and the rest of Livonia to the duke of the grand master of the Teutonic Order.[2] He refers to Iceland as inhabited by "fish-eaters" (ichthyophagoi) and identifies it with the Thule of Claudius Ptolemy.[4]

References
  1. Talbot, Alice-Mary (1991). "Kananos, Laskaris". In Kazhdan, Alexander (ed.). The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-504652-8.
  2. Jerker Blomqvist, "The Geography of the Baltic as Seen by the Greeks: From Claudius Ptolemy to Laskaris Kananos", in Bettina Amden et al. (eds.), Noctes Atticae: 34 Articles on Graeco-Roman Antiquity and Its Nachleben (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2002), pp. 36–51.
  3. Jonathan Harris, "When Did Laskaris Kananos Travel in the Baltic Lands?", Byzantion 80 (2010), pp. 173–187. JSTOR 44173104
  4. Mikhail Bibikov, "Byzantine sources for the history of Balticum and Scandinavia" [archived], in Ivo Volt and Janika Päll (eds.) Acta Societatis Morgensternianae II: Byzantino-Nordica 2004 (Tartu University Press, 2005), pp. 12–28.
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