Olaus Magnus (October 1490 – 1 August 1557) was a Swedish writer, cartographer, and Catholic clergyman. Biography Olaus Magnus (a Latin translation of his birth name Olof Månsson) was born in Linköping in October 1490. Like his elder brother, Sweden's last Catholic archbishop Johannes Magnus, he obtained several ecclesiastical preferments, among them a canonry at Uppsala and Linköping, and the archdeaconry of Strängnäs. He was furthermore employed on various diplomatic services after his mission to Rome in 1524, on behalf of Gustav I of Sweden (Vasa), to procure the appointment of Olaus Magnus' brother Johannes Magnus as archbishop of Uppsala. He remained abroad dealing with foreign affairs and is known to have sent home a document that contained agreed trade-relations with the Netherlands. With the success of the reformation in Sweden, his attachment to the Catholic church led him to stay abroad for good where he accompanied his brother in Poland. They were both exiled and Magnus' Swedish belongings were confiscated in 1530. Settling in Rome in 1537, he acted as his brother's secretary. At the death of his brother Johannes in 1544, Pope Paul III issued him as Johannes's successor as Archbishop of Uppsala; admittedly nothing more than a title, as Sweden was not Catholic anymore and Olaus was banned. In 1545, Pope Paul III sent him to the Council of Trent where he attended meetings until 1549. Later, he became canon of St. Lambert's Cathedral in Liège. King Sigismund I of Poland offered him a canonry at Poznań and he spent the remainder of his life with the monastery of St. Brigitta in Rome, where he subsisted on a pension assigned him by the Pope. He died on 1 August 1557 at the age of about 67. Name His original Swedish name was Olof Månsson (his last name meaning "son of Måns"; Magnus is a Latinized version of his patronymic second name, and not the literal personal epithet meaning "great"). Works He is best remembered as the author of the famous Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus (A Description of the Northern Peoples), printed in Rome 1555, a patriotic work of folklore and history which long remained for the rest of Europe the authority on Swedish matters. This text on dark winters, violent currents and beasts of the sea amazed the rest of Europe. It was translated into Italian (1565), German (1567), English (1658) and Dutch (1665), and not until