The Icelandic hemispherical world map is a representation of global space, and the clocked processes that measure time on Earth. It shows the terrestrial sphere divided into climatically distinct regions along lines of equal latitude, or parallels: the two polar circles, the two tropics, and the equator. In the northern hemisphere, the temperate region between the Earth's frozen poles and the scorched equator is anatomized to show the relative positions of the three continents: Asia, Africa, and Europe. The Earth's southern hemisphere – an unknown but theorized mirror image of the northern hemisphere – bears an Old Norse legend that denotes the temperate region south of the equatorial ocean. The sun and moon are shown in two configurations in their orbits around the Earth: in conjunction (on the left of the diagram, where sun and moon are in the same region of the sky) and in opposition (on the right of the diagram, where the moon stands alone opposite the sun). These two depictions of the sun are connected by a narrow band inscribed with the signs of the zodiac, the series of constellations through which it moves in its annual orbit around the Earth. The map is inscribed with twenty-one legends, written in a combination of Latin and Old Norse. In both manuscript versions, the map accompanies two short Old Norse texts: a note on the error in the Julian calendar, and a note on the ebb and flow of the tides and the influences of the sun and moon upon them.

This map survives in two fragmentary Icelandic manuscripts of the early-fourteenth century, now held in Copenhagen's Arnamagnæan Institute. The older version, drawn c. 1300, preserved in a single bifolium, accompanies a geographically-focussed collection of texts and images (AM 736 I 4to, f. 1v). The younger version, drawn c. 1300–25, belongs to a fragmentary illustrated encyclopaedia of nine folios (AM 732b 4to, f. 3v).

The Icelandic hemispherical world map has a long history in literary and map historical scholarship. It first came to attention in the second volume of Rafn's Antiquités Russes (1852), where it was presented, with a slender commentary, as evidence for Icelanders’ familiarity with basic geographical principles such as the Earth's sphericity, the division of its surface into climatic zones, and the positions of the three continents.