Karen Wynn Fonstad's Middle Earth Maps

I was not aware of Karen Wynn Fonstad until a recent article from the New York Times “Overlooked” series. Overlooked are obituaries about people whose deaths (in this case in 2005) were unreported in the Times. Fonstad created the Atlas of Middle Earth to accompany the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.

-via New York Times

She had become enchanted with Tolkien’s works. Having studied cartography and completed a Master’s degree in Geography, she pitched the idea of creating an atlas to Tolkien’s American publisher. While Tolkien and his son drew the original maps* Fonstad’s atlas represents a complete picture of Middle Earth during all of its ages and across all of Tolkien’s books. It discusses the geology behind land formations and includes city maps and floor plans or important buildings. Here is a detail of Frodo and Sam’s route to Mount Doom.

-via Wikipedia

 Her work was well received by Tolkien fans and scholars alike. To illustrate her impressive landscape details, here is the southern section of the Misty Mountains. They have a nice Swiss Topo look.

-from the American Geographical Society

*also note the illustrations of Pauline Baynes

Naismith International Park

Kirk Goldsberry a former geography professor and basketball data visualization specialist has just unleashed a new map, "Naismith International Park". Named after the inventor of basketball, it is a fantasy landscape shaped like the frontcourt of a basketball court.

Cleverly designed with the fonts, symbols and colors of the U.S. National Park Service the map is full of basketball references, some of which I even understand. The elevations are also a nice touch.

I don't follow basketball very closely but I would guess that the placement of player names relates to their shot maps (covered here in a previous post).

As a 76ers fan my favorite spot is the Round Mound of Rebound.

You can purchase a copy of the map (or just admire it some more) here.

The Maps of Pauline Baynes

Pauline Baynes was best known as a children's book illustrator. Her work on some of the most well known maps of the fantasy genre is less well known. She illustrated maps of Tolkien's Middle Earth and C.S. Lewis' Narnia.

Map of Narnia for Puffin Books U.K., 1972

After studying design at the Farnham School of Art, she started illustrating children's books. During World War II she joined the Women's Voluntary Service and eventually began making maps and nautical charts for the Royal Admiralty in Bath. This cartographic training served her well through her career. Her work was shown to J.R.R. Tolkien who was dissatisfied with his original illustrator for Farmer Giles of Ham. He was delighted with her work and hired her to illustrate the book.

Map for Farmer Giles of Ham-Pauline Baynes

Through Tolkien she got to know C.S. Lewis and was hired to illustrate and map his Chronicles of Narnia series.

1998 Narnia right book end sheet-via Peter Thorpe

Baynes made a color map of Middle Earth published in 1970. Tolkien supplied her with various charts he made and annotated a map his son had produced for The Fellowship of the Ring in 1954. The annotated map was recently discovered inside Baynes' copy of the books. 

More details on this map can be found here. The finished product is below.

A little nice detail, including the cartouche.

To see more maps and artwork visit her tribute site.

Landmarks: Maps as Literary Illustration

On Tuesday I got a chance to see an exhibit at Harvard University's Houghton Library called Landmarks: Maps as Literary Illustration. There was a great talk by illustrator and Cinemaps author Andrew DeGraff (whose own work is worthy of a future blog post) followed by a tour of the gallery. I hope to get back to share more before the exhibit closes (April 14th-soon!) but for now here are a couple of crude pictures I took with my phone. The description cards are mostly legible. Maybe I can get better pictures on a future visit.

Here are some Dell Mapbacks - more about Mapbacks here.

Finally, a Nancy Drew mystery.

The Changing Geography of Wakanda

Black Panther is a huge Hollywood hit set in the fictional country of Wakanda. The lead character has been through many iterations since his first appearance in Marvel Comics in 1966, as has his country. Wakanda is the most scientifically advanced country in the world. Isolation has enabled it to resist colonization and to develop its own independent technology. 

The first map, from Jungle Action Volume 2 #6, shows the Atlantic Ocean in the lower left placing Wakanda near the west coast of Africa.

A couple of episodes later the map was re-presented "with new details." The Atlantic Ocean was removed, probably to place Wakanda more in East Africa. Killmonger's Village is no longer a coastal settlement. There is an arrow in the bottom left of the map pointing to the Indian Ocean. There is speculation that they "flipped" the map (south is now up).

This became the definitive version of the map for decades. In 2008, Marvel published its Atlas of Fantastic Places giving a precise location of Wakanda and neighbors between Ethiopia and Kenya.

In 2016, a new version of the comic was written by Ta-Nehisi Coates. He drew a couple of new iterations of the map placing it on the western shore of Lake Victoria.

The map above was created in Photoshop. Coates discusses his process in this article from The Atlantic. A later, more detailed version was done by Coates and Manny Mederos.

In the recent movie Captain America: Civil War, Wakanda appears to the northwest of Uganda, close to the location from Marvel's atlas. Here is a screenshot via comicbook.com

The current movie has it slightly to the southwest of the Coates map bordering on Rwanda's Lake Kivu. The image below is from Marvel's Black Panther: The Art of the Movie

Wakanda's location in Africa revealed in art book

Where will it move next?

Snark Map

It's nice to start a new year off on a clean slate so here is the map of the ocean from Lewis Carroll's nonsensical poem "The Hunting of the Snark."

The poem is divided into eight "fits"-  the map is described in the second.

He had bought a large map representing the sea,

   Without the least vestige of land:

And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be

   A map they could all understand.

"What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators,

   Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?"

So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply

   "They are merely conventional signs!

"Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!

   But we've got our brave Captain to thank

(So the crew would protest) "that he's bought us the best—

   A perfect and absolute blank!"

This was charming, no doubt; but they shortly found out
   That the Captain they trusted so well
Had only one notion for crossing the ocean,
   And that was to tingle his bell.

The poem was published on April Fool's Day in 1876. Artist Henry Holiday created nine illustrations for the poem, including the map. His text along the margins is interesting. Cardinal directions are as expected but the positions of the equator and poles are random. He also included geographic concepts such as Zenith, Nadir and Equinox as if they were places.

The entire poem can be found here.

Maps of the Flat Earth Society

In a world of alternate facts and ridiculous theories, the flat earth alternate fact has stood the test of time despite obvious evidence to the contrary. All NBA star and flat-earther Kyrie Irving needs to do is look out the plane window on his next flight to see the curvature of the earth. He doesn't even need to pay attention to the northward tilt of the flight path.

The Flat Earth Society has various examples of flat-earth maps such as this one by Samuel Rowbotham.

It has a nice letter coding system to help the average flat earther figure out the difference between Land (L) and Water (W). N is the north pole (more on that below) and D is...darkness?

One of the most common maps used by flat earthers is from Wilbur Glenn Voliva, an evangelist who offered a $5,000 prize for anyone who could disprove the earth is flat. By choosing to disbelieve any takers, he never had to pay the money.

What these maps have in common is that they all see the world as round-circular or elliptical. The Sun (as shown above) rotates around the equator, explaining the differences in climate. They believe in the North Pole, but not in the South Pole. The southern edges of the world are conveniently edged by a wall of ice to keep mariners from falling off. Some believe in a dome shaped sky with stars hanging down.

The belief that the South Pole cannot exist, gives rise to many conspiracy theories about why airline flight routes go the way they do. These theories are easily debunked by anyone who has flown between cities in the southern hemisphere.

Yes they don't fly over the South pole because the great circle routes are much further north.

Here is a flat earth globe

For more see the Flat Earth Society's maps page.
 

Metro Santaland

I've always thought of Santa's village as some quaint little place but according to Santa Lives Here, it's a pretty large city.

When you think about it realistically, of course you would need a large city in order to be able to be able to make and deliver toys for over a billion children. You need factories, but also amenities to keep the workers happy such as schools, parks and an eggnog district. So maybe my illusions have been shattered a bit but now I realize how complex the operation is. Enjoy your holidays and appreciate where all the good stuff comes from.

Gotham City Mapped

Batman co-creator Bill Finger first named Gotham in 1940 for Batman #4. However, the city was not mapped until 1998, when a plot involving a catastrophic earthquake required a map. Artist and illustrator Elliot R. Brown was hired for the task.

The city has always had a resemblance to New York but, according to Finger "We didn’t call it New York because we wanted anybody in any city to identify with it." With no formal training in cartography, Brown was tasked with creating a city that had all the necessary diverse elements.

"The DC Comics editors made it clear that Gotham City was an idealized version of Manhattan. Like most comic book constructs, it had to do a lot of things. It needed sophistication and a seamy side. A business district and fine residences. Entertainment, meat packing, garment district, docks and their dockside business. In short all of Manhattan and Brooklyn stuffed into a … well, a nice page layout." - Brown

Early sketches of his map can be seen on his website, including this one.

The city needed to be an island so that federal agents could seal it off from the mainland by dynamiting the bridges and tunnels. In addition to the New York elements, he also added some "Chicago-like" bridges in the middle of town, to "add some story potential."

Here is one version of the final product as it appeared in the comics circa 1999, via Smithsonian.

So where is Gotham City? It is often considered to be on the east coast of the United States but it's an open question due to some contradictory descriptions of it's location. From io9's Is Gotham City Really in New Jersey?

Gotham also has been hit by earthquakes (1999's No Man's Land...), sits in the Central Time Zone (Man-Bat #3), and was a cowboy town in the 1800s (2011's All-Star Western).

The Batman wikia has a modified google map placing Gotham in Great Bay, just north of Brigantine (and Atlantic City), New Jersey.

The io9 page shows this image from a 1978 comic also placing Gotham in South Jersey but on the Delaware Bay, across from Metropolis (Metropolis, Delaware?)

That's a lot of action for an area mainly populated by horseshoe crabs.

Big Ten Games of Thrones Map

Like many Americans, I spent way too much time Monday night watching the NCAA Championship football game. While not paying total attention, this commercial for the Big Ten Conference really jumped out at me. The commercial is called "Maps" and is based on the Game of Thrones intro (with the same music.)

It constructs a flyover of the US, starting at the Rose Bowl. As you pass by iconic buildings, stadiums and landmarks pop up from the landscape. Here is a tour using screen grabs from YouTube.

From the west coast you fly across the mountains to Nebraska, the current westernmost outpost of the conference.

Next comes Iowa, then Minnesota, then Wisconsin.

One of the most dramatic moments is watching the Chicago skyline pop up in front of the Northwestern logo. Note the theater references for Northwestern and Iowa. The mist coming off the Ohio River adds to the medieval theme.

The Michigan-Ohio State rivalry is about as big as it gets.

From there, it makes the jump to the east coast to cover the conference's recent acquisitions. Here are Penn State and Maryland with east coast icons such as the Capitol building, Washington Monument, LOVE statue and the Liberty Bell.

The flyover heads over the Atlantic and turns back to the west to include Rutgers the "birthplace of college football" (according to the ad) along with the NYC skyline and the ferris wheel at Seaside Heights, New Jersey. I like the reflections off the water.  

The full video is at the top - enjoy!

The Wonderground Map

In 1914 London's Underground was frequently overcrowded, filthy and confusing. Frank Pick, the network's commercial director, wanted to lighten up the often tense atmosphere. He hired MacDonald Gill to design the "Wonderground" map, a whimsical cartoon map of the system full of jokes, puns and various other cute touches.

Copies of the map were hung in every station and it became an instant hit. There were reports of people missing trains, sometimes intentionally, because they were too busy looking at the details. The map makes London look like a cheerful medieval town, the feeling partially achieved by the coats of arms along the map's border and the fantasy architecture of the station entrances.

Here's an example of one of the puns, where the giraffe is "fed up."

In another joke, Russia is listed as one of the "villages."

Here, we have a poisonous reservoir and a horse that takes solace in carrots.

On the eve of World War I, the map took on many of the political and cultural events in a lighthearted fashion. For some soldiers leaving for the front, this may have been their last impression of London.

The map can be explored from this BBC News Magazine page.