The manuscript in Reykjavík's Stofnun Árna Magnússonar with the shelf mark GkS 1812 4to, sometimes called the Viðey book, contains between its covers three of the world maps that come down to us from medieval Iceland. This manuscript is not made up of regular gatherings but is a compilation of fragments written between c. 1200 and the fourteenth century. The zonal map on folio 11v, in the section of the manuscript dated 1315–c. 1400, belongs to a complement of cosmological diagrams that describe the Earth and its cosmic position. In a section of the manuscript dated c. 1225–50 are a further two world maps, drawn on two leaves that have been inserted into the abundantly illustrated section of the book that accommodates the zonal map. The larger map spans an entire manuscript opening on folios 5v–6r, and shows the geographic dispersion of places and people within the kringla heimsins. Its companion on folio 6v is a small schematic T-O map, showing the division of the world into its continental thirds – Africa, Asia and Europe. These two maps – one complex and variegated; the other simple and iconic – are complementary visions of world geography encompassing all miniaturised Creation.

These two maps are unlike the hemispherical and zonal maps in that, taking for granted the Earth's sphericity, they show only the known world. This space had been known, since Herodotus's Histories, as the ecumene (or oikoumene) and compassed the civilised world known to the Greeks and Romans, in contradistinction to those regions at its fringes that were unknown or inhabited by barbarians. This space, which contained all human civilization and history, was called in Latin the orbis terrarum, and in Old Norse the kringla heimsins.

The larger map is one of few maps found in medieval European books to span a full manuscript opening. The manuscript seam divides the map's representations of Asia in the east (f. 5v) and Europe and Northern Africa in the west (f. 6r). This seam has been inscribed, on folio 5v, with the names of the two rivers, ‘Tanakvisl fluvius maximus’ (‘Tanakvísl, the greatest river’) and ‘Nilus flumen egipti’ (‘Nile, the river of Egypt’), which separate Europe from Asia, and Asia from Africa. The ‘Mediterraneum mare’ (‘Mediterranean Sea’, at the middle, medius, of lands, terrae) completes the map's T-O framework, marking the boundary between Europe and Africa.