An ancient map of the North Atlantic - which features sea snakes and other dreadful monsters - may have boasted surprisingly advanced information.

The Carta Marina - published in 1539 - depicts elaborate sea swirls, which, say researchers, closely match a giant ocean front shown in satellite images. If correct, it means the Swedish cartographer Olaus Magnus may have been the first to map such an ocean feature.

The ornate Carta Marina is seemingly crude - and fanciful - by today's standards. Scandinavia is alive with a rich panoply of beasts, doing all sorts of interesting things: wolves urinate against trees and stags rear wildly, while the sea off Scotland boils with dragons and monsters - many of whom are busily eating passing ships.

Olaus Magnus, an exiled Swedish priest living in Italy, was known to dislike blank canvas and covered every available space with ink. But Professor Tom Rossby, from the University of Rhode Island, US, believes not every elaborate quill stroke was artistic licence.

Most of the northeast Atlantic is drawn using more-or-less straight lines. However, things change off the east coast of Iceland, where the lines suddenly morph into a large group of whorls. Magnus's whorls corresponded almost perfectly with the Iceland-Faroes Front - where the Gulf Stream meets cold waters coming down from the Arctic.

Olaus Magnus was a keen traveller around northern Europe and spent time at sea with mariners operating in the northeast Atlantic. It seems likely that he learnt about the eddies from his conversations with them

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