Arabia felix

A friend of mine, an actor and teacher, bought many years ago a house in what we call "the darkest Småland". Småland is a county in southern Sweden and it's called dark because there is a lot of forest there. Farmers have had a really hard time clearing the forest from trees and stone, to make now land and feed their families. It was an extremely poor part of my country and from here many families emigrated to America during the 1800ds.

His house was used as a "praying house" or "mission house" by the independent church. He uses it as a theatre. The biggest room holds a small stage of maybe four square metres and can take 40 people in the audience, max. This evening he did a one man play that he's written himself, after a book called "The journey to Arabia Felix", Happy Arabia. The name is really a misinterpretation of the Arabic name  for Yemen, and means only southern Arabia. An expedition was sent out by the Danish king in 1761 to find out if it really was paradise on earth and to make maps, mainly to see if the bible was telling the truth. They also collected plants, seeds and animals from the region, a "white" spot on the map. Everything went wrong during the expedition and only one man surved. His report is the basis for the story of the play. 

In the play he uses this instrument, used by cartographers as a measuring tool. He called it an "Astrolabium" but I can't find in on Google under that name. Does anyone know what it's called?

The extra is a present given to me by my landlord. He grows flowers and thought of me when he picked flowers for his family. Not everyone can say they had flowers from their landlord.