NB! · Geography · Nature

Sørvágsvatn: the lake above the ocean on Vágar, one of the Faroe Islands

Geography · Art · Books · Museums · Nature

Andrey Bely’s poem “On the Mountains” about a hunchback and pineapples on a cliff

Mountains in bridal wreaths. I am in raptures and young. On my mountain-tops there is a purifying cold. Here, up to my crag, a white-haired hunchback has dragged himself. He has brought me as a gift pineapples from the subterranean hothouses. He danced in crimson-bright, glorifying the

NB! · Geography · Maps · Nature

A Map of the Ecosystems of the Soviet Union

Archive · Geography · Books · Mores

Stolnik Pyotr Tolstoy describes Venetian gondolas, how they were built and hired

Gondoliers in Venice are an exclusively male profession, but if this engraving of 1610 is to be believed, women were also admitted to the traditional gondola race. A Russian traveller of that time, the stolnik Pyotr Tolstoy, describes what he saw in Venice as follows: In Venice there are hackney

Colour plan of New Amsterdam in 1660 showing the fort, a canal, the town wall, gardens and ships off the shore.

NB! · Geography · Maps · New York

The Dutch colony of New Amsterdam in 1660, renamed New York in 1667

New Amsterdam in 1660. In 1667 this Dutch colony would be renamed New York

NB! · Geography · Science · Nature

Images Published of Water Ice in an 82-Kilometre Crater at Mars's North Pole

Geography · Observations · Mores · Society · Nature

Lobster in America went from food of the poor to a popular product thanks to the railways

Originally, lobsters in America were a very cheap and plentiful food, so much so that they were associated with poverty. They were used as animal feed, and workers campaigned for a limit on the amount of lobster in their weekly rations. The product owed its popularity to the arrival of

Archive · Faith · Geography · Maps · Books

Excerpt from Yelena Shvarts's poem about the nun Lavinia and the abbess's lessons

The Abbess set me a task – To make her map of Paradise more precise. I told her – I am no Swedenborg. She said to me: be humbler and more meek. All night I toiled in vain and wilted, Until my Angel-Wolf flew in, He took pencils, paper, compasses And

Map of Europe with most of the territory in yellow for butter, the south in green for olive oil, and a mixed band between them.

NB! · Geography · Observations · Mores

Map of Butter and Olive Oil Consumption Across European Regions

Olive or butter? Which fat is mainly used in the different countries of Europe? As you can see, butter wins, though neither palm oil nor sunflower oil took part in the sample

NB! · Geography · Art · People

Salvador Dalí at Cap de Creus in Catalonia

Geography · Maps · Observations

Fra Mauro's world map of 1459 and the division of Europe and Asia along the Volga

A two-metre circular map of the world as it was known in 1459. It is known as the map of the Venetian monk Fra Mauro, or the Carta Fra Mauro, from the island of Murano. The cartographer was Andrea Bianco. It was made for the King of Portugal. Please

NB! · Geography · Maps · Observations · Nature

In 1539 the Swedish cartographer Olaus Magnus peopled his Carta Marina of Northern Europe with fantastical beasts

In 1539 the Swedish cartographer Olaus Magnus peopled his Carta Marina of Northern Europe with fantastical beasts. Had the map been drawn in our own day, in place of sea serpents it would have featured garbage patches, oil slicks and offshore platforms