Zuverlässige Nachrichten von Island [with] Landkarte von Island.

>First German edition entitled "Zuverlässige Nachrichten von Island...", translation of Danish book from the previous year. Published in Copenhagen and Leipzig by Pelt in 1753. With the folded map "Landkarte von Island".

Niels Horrebow, was a Danish lawyer who was sent to Iceland by the Danish king in 1749-1751 to conduct a general economic and geographic survey. Horrebow lived in Iceland for two years, studying the animals, plants, weather, and geological features. He also made note of the cultural practices of the Icelandic people. Horrebow's resulting work was published in Danish in 1752, then translated into German (1753), Dutch (1754), English (1758) and French (1764)

Of particular importance are Horrebows measurements, after which the position of Iceland with 4 degrees could be corrected.

"In the year 1730 the Norwegian Army surveyor Thomas Hans Henrik Knoff was sent to Iceland by the Danish government to continue and complete the work of Magnàs Arason who had been instructed to survey the whole of the country but died before the work was finished. The purpose was to make a precise map of the country once and for all. Knoff began work immediately after his arrival in Iceland and carried on for five summers. He had by then completed the work left undone by Magnàs and corrected his maps to some extent, where it seemed necessary. He had also made seven maps of specific districts and an overall map of the whole country which he finished in the year 1734. When the maps were brought to Copenhagen an amazing dispute began over them.
Knoff had sent a copy of some of them to his superior in Norway. Some regarded this as quite outrageous if not actually treasonable. The Danish King put an end to the dispute by deciding that the maps should not be displayed or made use of. Their fate was thereby decided, and they were put away under lock and key in some government department, where they lay unpublished and forgotten by nearly everyone for many years.

>In 1752 the Danish scholar, Niels Horrebow, published his book about Iceland entitled Tilforladelige Efterretninger om Island. He had been sent to the country to explore it and inquire into the state and prospects of the people. The book was accompanied by a map of Iceland, Land-Kort over Island. This time it is not the old version by bishop Gudbrandur Thorlaksson's map which is used as a basis, but an entirely new departure, the Knoff map of 1734, which was now brought out of some cabinet and dusted off.

The map is altogether rather careless and poorly done. But in spite of various obvious flaws, its publication was the most important stage in the history of the cartography of Iceland since the appearance of bishop Gudbrandur Thorlaksson's map more than 150 years earlier. For the first time the public was given a chance to see a map of Iceland which to some extent was based on triangulation and proper surveys of the country, even though in many places rather too much shot through with slipshod observations, guesses, or even fantasies. The book was published in German 1753, English 1758, and French 1764, a copy of the map accompanying all of them. Longer or shorter extracts from it appeared in various collections of voyages during the decades following, including Histoire générale des voyages (1779) by A. F. Prévost which also had a copy of the map."

Reference: Chavanne 2152 - Engelmann 597 - Bruun, Bibl. Dan. III, 617 - Fiske, Icelandic-Coll. I, 258