134 - Greetings from Bruceville

James Joyce once boasted that, should Dublin ever disappear off the face of the earth, the city could be reconstructed from the references to it in ‘Ulysses’. The maker of this map did something similar: ‘Bruceville’ is New Jersey, as it can be reconstructed out of Bruce Springsteen’s lyrics.

Although one of his most famous albums was called ‘Nebraska’ (and one of his best-stelling singles was ‘Streets of Philadelphia’), Springsteen can’t hide the fact that he’s a real Jersey boy. The lyrics to his songs are peppered with references to the landscape of the Garden State. The Boss’s New Jersey is populated by ominous darknesses, glittering fairgrounds, empty parking lots, pining sweethearts, blinding ad signs – a landscape seen from that most essential machine for American living, the car.

This map was kindly provided to me by Gerry Canavan. As to its ultimate origin, unfortunately he can only add: “A friend of mine discovered it in her office when taking a faculty job at UNCG, where it was taped to a bookshelf. If I had to guess, I’d say it originated in Rolling Stone, though I can’t be sure.” Lyrics found at springsteenlyrics, the premier Lebanese Springsteen site.

The Stratosphere
“I took month-long vacations in the stratosphere, you know it’s really hard to hold your breath.” (sung in an East-European accent in ‘Growin’ Up’, a song off ‘Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ‘ Springsteen’s first album, 1973)

Easy Street
“He tried sellin’ his heart to the hard girls over on Easy Street / But they said, “Johnny, it falls apart so easy and you know hearts these days are cheap.” (from ‘Incident On 57^th Street’, off the album ‘The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle’, 1973)

Mansion on the Hill
“Tonight down here in Linden Town I watch the cars rushin’ by home from the mill / There’s a beautiful full moon rising above the mansion on the hill.” (From the eponymous song off ‘Nebraska’, 1982)

Darkness On the Edge of Town
“I’ll be there on time and I’ll pay the cost / For wanting things that can only be found / In the darkness on the edge of town.” (from the eponymous song and album, 1978)

The Parking Lot Outside the 7/11 Store
“She’s waiting tonight down in the parking lot / Outside the Seven-Eleven store.” (Doesn’t refer to a girl, but to a ’69 Chevy. From the song ‘Racing in the Street’, off ‘Darkness On the Edge of Town’)

The Field Out Behind the Dynamo
“Baby, tie your hair back in a long white bow / Meet me in the fields behind the dynamo” (from ‘Prove It All Night’, on ‘Darkness On the Edge of Town’)

E Street
“Sparks fly on E Street when the boy prophets walk it handsome and hot / All the little girls’ souls grow weak when the man-child gives them a double shot” (opening lines of the ‘E Street Shuffle’, itself the opener of ‘The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle’, 1973. I suppose it’s also this street – and this song – that Springsteen’s regular backup band was named after)

Nothing But Road
”He got dressed in the moonlight and down to the highway he strode / When he got there he didn’t find nothing but road” (from ‘Cautious Man’ off ‘Tunnel of Love’, 1987)

Badlands
“Keep pushin’ till it’s understood / And these badlands start treating us good” (from the eponymous song, off ‘Darkness On the Edge of Town’)

Tunnel of Love
“Cuddle up angel cuddle up my little dove / We’ll ride down baby into this tunnel of love” (from the song and album of the same name)

The Part of Town Where When You Hit A Red Light, You Don’t Stop“Down in the part of town where when you hit a red light you don’t stop / Johnny’s wavin’ his gun around and threatenin’ to blow his top” (from the song ‘Johnny 99’, off the album ‘Nebraska’)

Trouble Busing In From Outta State
“Now there’s trouble bustin’ in from outta state and the D.A. can’t get no relief / Gonna be a rumble out on the promenade and the gamblin’ commissions hangin’ on by the skin of its teeth” (from the song ‘Atlantic City’, off ‘Nebraska’)

The Streets of A Runaway American Dream
“In the day we sweat it out in the streets of a runaway American dream / At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines” (from ‘Born to Run’, off the eponymous album)

Greasy Lake
“Well Billy slammed on his coaster brakes and said anybody wanna go on up to Greasy Lake / It’s about a mile down on the dark side of route eighty-eight” (from the song ‘Spirit In the Night’, off ‘Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ’)

The Other Side
“41 shots, and we’ll take that ride / ‘Cross this bloody river to the other side” (from the song ‘American Skin (41 Shots)’, a song about the shooting dead by the NYPD of Amadou Diallo, an African immigrant. Featured on ‘Live in New York City’, 2002)

Jungle Land
“The hungry and the hunted explode into Rock ‘N’ Roll bands / That face off against each other out in the street down in Jungleland” (from the eponymous song, off ‘Born to Run’)

That Giant Exxon Sign That Brings This Fair City Light
“Well there’s a crazy kind of light tonight / Brighter than the one that sparkles for prophets / Brighter than the Giant Exxon sign that brings this fair city light” (from the song ‘Jungleland’ off the ‘Born to Run’ album, 197x)

Candy’s Room
“In Candy’s room, there are pictures of her heroes on the wall / But to get to Candy’s room, you gotta walk the darkness of Candy’s hall” (From the song ‘Candy’s Room’, off the ‘Darkness On the Edge of Town’ album)

Opera On the Turnpike
“There’s an opera out on the Turnpike, there’s a ballet being fought outside the alley”
(from the song ‘Jungleland’ off the ‘Born to Run’ album)

Somewhere In the Swamps Of Jersey
“My tires were slashed and I almost crashed but the Lord had mercy / My machine she’s a dud out stuck in the mud somewhere in the swamps of Jersey” (from ‘Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)’, off the album The Wild, The Innocent, And The E Street Shuffle)

Little Eden
“Sandy the fireworks are hailin’ over Little Eden tonight / Forcin’ a light into all those stoned-out faces left stranded on this Fourth of July” (from the song ‘4^th of July, Asbury Park’ a.k.a. ‘Sandy’, off ‘The Wild, The Innocent, And The E Street Shuffle’, 1973)

That Old Abandoned Beach House
“Sleeping in that old abandoned beach house / Getting wasted in the heat / And hiding on the backstreets” (from the song ‘Backstreets’, off ‘Born to Run’, 1975)

The River
“That night we went down to the river / And into the river we’d dive / Oh down to the river we did ride” (from the eponymous song and album. In the liner notes, Springsteen calls this a “breakthrough song”, one that eventually led to ‘Nebraska’)

Thunder Road
“Oh oh come take my hand / Riding out tonight to case the promised land / Oh oh oh Thunder Road, oh Thunder Road, oh Thunder Road / Lying out there like a killer in the sun” (from the eponymous song, opener of ‘Born to Run’. In the liner notes, Springsteen admits he stole the title from a film with Robert Mitchum)

A Joint Called Tony’s Body Shop
“He was a bouncer in a joint called Tony’s Body Shop / She was a night cashier down at the Stop ‘n’ Shop” (from the song ‘Angelyne’, written by Springsteen for Gary ‘US’ Bonds’ 1982 album ‘On the Line’, which Springsteen co-produced)

My Father’s House
“I broke through the trees and there in the night / My father’s house stood shining hard and bright” (from the eponymous song off ‘Nebraska’)

10 Ave.
“Turn around the corner things got real quiet real fast / She hit me with a / Tenth Avenue freeze-out, tenth Avenue freeze-out” (from the song ‘Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out’, a.k.a. ‘Tenth Avenue’, off ‘Born to Run’. This song tells the story of Springsteen’s band’s formation; the Boss refers to himself as ‘Bad Scooter’)

The South Side
“And them South Side sisters sure look pretty / The cripple on the corner cries out, “Nickels for your pity.” / Them downtown boys they sure talk gritty / It’s so hard to be a saint in the city” (used in several songs, this reference to the South Side is from the song ‘It’s Hard To Be A Saint In the City’, off ‘Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ’)

Beyond the Palace
“Beyond the Palace hemi-powered drones scream down the boulevard / The girls comb their hair in rear-view mirrors / And the boys try to look so hard” (from the title track of ‘Born to Run’, 1975)

The Boardwalk
“Oh the boardwalk is so quiet at 3 in the morning / Oh and the wind blows life into a sleepy ferris wheel” (Springsteen refers to the boardwalk in several songs, including this one, known as ‘A Night Like This’, but a.k.a. ‘Angel Baby’, a.k.a. ‘Dance On Little Angel’)

That Tilt-A-Whirl On the South Beach Drag
“And me I’m tired working in this dusty old arcade and fixin’ these machines / Chasin’ them factory girls under the boardwalk where they unsnap their jeans / And you know that tilt-a-whirl down on the south beach drag / I got on it last night and my shirt got caught” (from the song ‘4^th of July, Asbury Park’ a.k.a. ‘Sandy’, off ‘The Wild, The Innocent, And The E Street Shuffle’, 1973))

Lucky Town
“I’m going down to Lucky Town / Going down to Lucky Town / I wanna lose these blues I’ve found / Down in Lucky Town / Down in Lucky Town” (title track of ‘Lucky Town’, Springsteen’s 1992 album that was co-released with ‘Human Touch’)

Go-Cart Mozart
“Some silicone sister with her manager’s mister told me I got what it takes / She said I’ll turn you on sonny, to something strong if you play that song with the funky break / And go-cart Mozart was checkin’ out the weather chart to see if it was safe to go outside / And little Early-Pearly came in by her curly-wurly and asked me if I needed a ride.” (from ‘Blinded By the Light’, off ‘Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ’)

133 - New Switzerland – Finally In Need Of A Navy!

 

In 1900, the famous French writer of adventure stories Jules Verne published ‘Seconde Patrie’ (‘Second Fatherland’) in two parts. Like many works at the end of his life, this adventure story was a revisiting of earlier work, though in this case not Vernes own. ‘Seconde Patrie’ is a sequel to a well-known book by Johann David Wyss: ‘Der schweizerische Robinson’ (‘The Swiss Family Robinson’).

Wyss was a Swiss pastor, who wrote this Christian morality story disguised as an adventure novel to teach his four sons about family values, self-reliance and good husbandry. It tells of a shipwrecked Swiss family’s survival on an East Indian island. The family is not called Robinson, by the way; that’s a reference to the earlier, equally fictional Robinson Crusoë, probably still the most famous shipwrecked person this side of Lost.

Vernes book revisits the original shipwreck, and the Swiss family’s final years on the original island. Unnamed in the original, the family is called Zermatt in Verne’s book. The Zermatts have been joined by Jenny, a girl stranded by a different shipwreck and rescued by the Zermatt boys, and the English family Wolston. Aided by the engineering skills of Mr Wolston, the islanders set about to further taming their new home, dubbed ‘New Switzerland’.

Further adventures with unfriendly natives, sea-travel and shipwrecks ensue. At the end, the island is annexed by Great Britain and the flourishing colony soon has over 2.000 inhabitants. This map (in French) shows the shape, names some features and indicates the settlements on Nouvelle Suisse. Situated in the Indian Ocean, the island boast five bays:

• Baie des Perles (Pearl Bay)
• Baie des Nautiles (Nautilus Bay)
• Baie du Salut (Salvation Bay)
• Baie des Eléphants (Elephant Bay)
• Baie des Tortues (Turtle Bay)

A small area at the north side of the island, protected by an encircling mountain range, is named Terre Promise (the Promised Land). There, five settlements are named:

• Prospect Hill
• Waldegg (Forest Edge)
• Eberfurt (Boar Ford)
• Falkenhorst (Falcon’s Aerie)
• Felsenheim (Cliff Home)

The interior of New Switzerland is dominated by a single mountain top, the Pic Jean Zermatt (Mount John Zermatt). A small inset shows the Promised Land in greater detail:

• Outside the mountain range, there is a rivière Orientale (East River), on the right bank of which there is a tour arabe (Arab Tower).
• An additional settlement in the north-west of the Promised Land is called Zukertop (Sugartop).
• Further inland, a Lac des Cygnes (Swan Lake) is connected to the Rivière des Chacals (Jackall River) by a canal.
• Just south of the mountain range, there is a Caverne des Ours (Bear Cavern).
• More coastal features include the Cap de l’Espoir trompé (Cape of False Hope), the Baie des Flamands (Flemish Bay), Isle de la Baleine (Whale Island) and Isle du Requin (Shark Island).

This map was found here, at a German-language Jules Verne site.

132 - Poland’s Wry-Mouthed Duke

Poland at the time of the death of Boleslav the Wrymouthed 1138: how could one resist a map with a title like that? Not that the map isn’t remarkable in its own right. The starkly contrasting colour scheme with sinuous black rivers slicing through Polish white and white streams dissecting the the encircling black lands, the mention of better- and lesser-known lands and tribes (the Kurons and the Jadzvings!) and the delicate amplification of the coastline, making waves deep into the Baltic Sea: it all lends an unreal air to the map.

Surprisingly real, though, is the position and size of Poland. Considering how many times that country would expand, contract, be partitioned (three times, I think) and reconstituted, shifting east and (most recently) west, the Poland of Boleslav the Wrymouthed looks remarkably much like present-day Polska. It seems the only missing parts are the southern part of the area occupied by the Prussians (a Baltic tribe, later displaced by German colonists) and the area hemmed in by the labels Bohemia and Moravia, usually referred to as Silesia.

What kind of king was Boleslav? Actually, no king at all, since he was Duke of Poland. Boleslav defeated the Pomeranians (shaded area on the Polish coast on the map) in 1109, regaining access to the sea. Nominally a liege of the German emperor, Boleslav defeated Henry V in 1109 – must have been a good year to be a Polish duke – and paid tribute in the form of the isle of Rügen and western Pomerania to Lotharius II.

By his second wife, Salome von Berg-Schelklingen, Boleslav had 14 children, some of whom continued the family tradition of carrying silly nicknames. Boleslav IV the Curly and Mieszko III the Old spring to mind. In his testament, Boleslav III divided his lands among four of his sons, providing that the eldest would have supreme power. This didn’t last long, and Poland descended into centuries of feudal fragmentation and German encroachment.

This map was suggested to me by Benjamin; a more precise source is lacking – but for some reason, the colouring seems to suggest the period leading up to the Second World War.

131 - US States Renamed For Countries With Similar GDPs

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a convenient way of measuring and comparing the size of national economies. Annual GDP represents the market value of all goods and services produced within a country in a year. Put differently:

GDP = consumption + investment + government spending + (exports – imports)

Although the economies of countries like China and India are growing at an incredible rate, the US remains the nation with the highest GDP in the world – and by far: US GDP is projected to be $13,22 trillion (or $13.220 billion) in 2007, according to this source. That’s almost as much as the economies of the next four (Japan, Germany, China, UK) combined.

The creator of this map has had the interesting idea to break down that gigantic US GDP into the GDPs of individual states, and compare those to other countries’ GDP. What follows, is this slightly misleading map – misleading, because the economies both of the US states and of the countries they are compared with are not weighted for their respective populations.

Pakistan, for example, has a GDP that’s slightly higher than Israel’s – but Pakistan has a population of about 170 million, while Israel is only 7 million people strong. The US states those economies are compared with (Arkansas and Oregon, respectively) are much closer to each other in population: 2,7 million and 3,4 million.

And yet, wile a per capita GDP might give a good indication of the average wealth of citizens, a ranking of the economies on this map does serve two interesting purposes: it shows the size of US states’ economies relative to each other (California is the biggest, Wyoming the smallest), and it links those sizes with foreign economies (which are therefore also ranked: Mexico’s and Russia’s economies are about equal size, Ireland’s is twice as big as New Zealand’s). Here’s a run-down of the 50 states, plus DC:

1. California, it is often said, would be the world’s sixth- or seventh-largest economy if it was a separate country. Actually, that would be the eighth, according to this map, as France (with a GDP of $2,15 trillion) is #8 on the aforementioned list.
2. Texas’ economy is significantly smaller, exactly half of California’s, as its GDP compares to that of Canada (#10, $1,08 trillion).
3. Florida also does well, with its GDP comparable to Asian tiger South Korea’s (#13 at $786 billion).
4. Illinois – Mexico (GDP #14 at $741 billion)
5. New Jersey – Russia (GDP #15 at $733 billion)
6. Ohio – Australia (GDP #16 at $645 billion)
7. New York – Brazil (GDP #17 at $621 billion)
8. Pennsylvania – Netherlands (GDP #18 at $613 billion)
9. Georgia – Switzerland (GDP #19 at $387 billion)
10. North Carolina – Sweden (GDP #20 at $371 billion)
11. Massachusetts – Belgium (GDP #21 at $368 billion)
12. Washington – Turkey (GDP #22 at $358 billion)
13. Virginia – Austria (GDP #24 at $309 billion)
14. Tennessee – Saudi Arabia (GDP #25 at $286 billion)
15. Missouri – Poland (GDP #26 at $265 billion)
16. Louisiana – Indonesia (GDP #27 at $264 billion)
17. Minnesota – Norway (GDP #28 at $262 billion)
18. Indiana – Denmark (GDP #29 at $256 billion)
19. Connecticut – Greece (GDP #30 at $222 billion)
20. Michigan – Argentina (GDP #31 at $210 billion)
21. Nevada – Ireland (GDP #32 at $203 billion)
22. Wisconsin – South Africa (GDP #33 at $200 billion)
23. Arizona – Thailand (GDP #34 at $197 billion)
24. Colorado – Finland (GDP #35 at $196 billion)
25. Alabama – Iran (GDP #36 at $195 billion)
26. Maryland – Hong Kong (#37 at $187 billion GDP)
27. Kentucky – Portugal (GDP #38 at $177 billion)
28. Iowa – Venezuela (GDP #39 at $148 billion)
29. Kansas – Malaysia (GDP #40 at $132 billion)
30. Arkansas – Pakistan (GDP #41 at $124 billion)
31. Oregon – Israel (GDP #42 at $122 billion)
32. South Carolina – Singapore (GDP #43 at $121 billion)
33. Nebraska – Czech Republic (GDP #44 at $119 billion)
34. New Mexico – Hungary (GDP #45 at $113 billion)
35. Mississippi – Chile (GDP #48 at $100 billion)
36. DC – New Zealand (#49 at $99 billion GDP)
37. Oklahoma – Philippines (GDP #50 at $98 billion)
38. West Virginia – Algeria (GDP #51 at $92 billion)
39. Hawaii – Nigeria (GDP #53 at $83 billion)
40. Idaho – Ukraine (GDP #54 at $81 billion)
41. Delaware – Romania (#55 at $79 billion GDP)
42. Utah – Peru (GDP #56 at $76 billion)
43. New Hampshire – Bangladesh (GDP #57 at $69 billion)
44. Maine – Morocco (GDP #59 at $57 billion)
45. Rhode Island – Vietnam (GDP #61 at $48 billion)
46. South Dakota – Croatia (GDP #66 at $37 billion)
47. Montana – Tunisia (GDP #69 at $33 billion)
48. North Dakota – Ecuador (GDP #70 at $32 billion)
49. Alaska – Belarus (GDP #73 at $29 billion)
50. Vermont – Dominican Republic (GDP #81 at $20 billion)
51. Wyoming – Uzbekistan (GDP #101 at $11 billion)

This map was suggested by Morgan via strangemaps@gmail.com, and can be found here. Please note that the GDP data used for this comparison are not necessarily the same as those used in compiling the original map.

130 - A Ten-State Australia

The Commonwealth of Australia was formed in 1901. Its constitution provides for the creation of new states, also by subdividing extisting ones. Several proposals have been made to alter Australia’s composition, yet no change has been made since the act of Federation in 1901: Australia still consists of 6 states and two mainland territories (Northern and Capital).

This map, dated 1838, shows an earlier proposal for the subdivision of Australia into 10 states. It was published by the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society in London, and accompanied an article entitled Considerations on the Political Geography and Geographical Nomenclature of Australia. In it, the following divisions were proposed:

• Dampieria: North-western Australia
• Victoria: South-western Australia (far from the present-day state in the South-east)
• Tasmania: part of present-day Western Australia and Northern Territory (not the present-day island/state)
• Nuytsland: near the Nullarbor Plain
• Carpentaria: south of the Gulf of Carpentaria
• Torresia: Northern Queensland
• Cooksland: near Brisbane, in New South Wales and Queensland
• Guelphia: present-day Victoria, most of New South Wales, part of Southern Australia
• Van Diemen’s Land: what is now Tasmania

That strange blob of land south of the Victoria/Nuytsland coast? That’s Portugal and Spain, lifted from their spot between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, twisted around and dropped here, for size comparison purposes.

Map found here on wikipedia.

129 - China As A World Power: How Big?

China is flexing its economic muscle nowadays, a process the country itself terms a peaceful rise. One wonders what will happen when China will have ‘risen’: to what degree will China flex its political and military muscle? Will it want to dominate the region – or the world? This map basically outlines two scenarios: China as a regional power, and China as a world power.

The ‘regional’ map shows China’s sphere of influence extending over Mongolia, North Korea, Taiwan, the Indochinese states of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, but also Thailand, Burma/Myanmar and the continental part of Malaysia. A remarkable addition in the west is Pakistan, giving China almost immediate access to the Persian Gulf.

The ‘global’ map sees China’s influence extended beyond the countries just mentioned, to most of the former Soviet Central Asian ‘stans’ (except Turkmenistan), part of Afghanistan, the whole of Indonesia, the rest of Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea and significant parts of the Russian Far East.

In both scenarios, friction remains possible with two other regional powers remaining independent, India and Japan.

128 - The Jireček Line

In 1911, Czech historian Konstantin Jireček drew a line across a map of the Balkan peninsula. The line, running east-west from the Adriatic Sea to the Black Sea, through northern Albania, along the Macedonian-Serbian border, and straight through the middle of Bulgaria, was an imaginary demarcation based on archaeological findings.
To the north, Latin was the dominant language. To the south, Greek dominated. This situation became more fluid after the collapse of the Western half of the Roman empire in the 5th century, eventually leading to the diminishing of Latin’s influence – although it did lead to the creation of Romanian, the only large romance language group of Eastern Europe.

Map found here on wikipedia.

127 - The Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World

On this map, East and West Germany are next to each other, as one would expect. But Romania’s closest neighbour is Armenia? And Poland and India are side by side? Well, this is not a straightforward geographical map, but a cultural one. It plots out how countries relate to each other on a double axis of values (ranging from ‘traditional’ to ‘secular-rational’ on the vertical and from ‘survival’ to ‘self-expression’ on the horizontal scale). This makes for some strange bedfellows – for example: South Africa, Peru and the Philippines occupy almost the same position, although they’re on three different continents.

I’ve found this map on this site, with an accompanying article by Ronald Inglehart, after whom this map is half-named. Inglehart is a political scientist at the University of Michigan and director of the World Values Survey, which charts cultural differences and changes all over the world. The two dimensions mentioned earlier (‘traditional/secular-rational’ and ‘survival/self-expression’) apparently explain more than 70% of cross-national variance in 10 indicators.

Four survey-waves have been executed between 1981 and 2001 in 80 societies. Inglehart’s work demonstrates significant value shifts – and predictable ones at that – especially in those societies moving through a late industrial or to a post-industrial phase. One of those changes is the diminishing role of gender differences, but the predictability extends to attitudes towards religion, politics and family life.

For example, in societies near the ‘traditional’ side of the traditional/secular-rational axis, religion is very important. This usually always implies a strong emphasis on family values, deference to authority, rejection of abortion, divorce, euthanasia and suicide, and even seems to predict a very nationalistic outlook on life. In countries more to the ‘secular-rational’ side of this axis, the attitudes towards these topics is reversed.

The other axis represents the shift from a society dominated by the struggle for survival to one where survival is a given, and the emphasis of the ‘struggle’ is on subjective well-being, quality of life and self-expression.

These shifts from a materialist towards a postmaterialist culture should eventually lead to less dirigist, more democratic societies. And to less religious ones too, consistent with the thesis that an increase in secularism is a by-product of this development. This might have seemed to be the trend throughout most of the 20th century, but that trend has arguably reversed in recent years, in the Muslim world as in the Americas, among others (Europe still being a notable exception). Inglehart points out that secularism coincides with dramatically falling birthrates, thus explaining why the ‘triumph’ of secularism seems to be accompanied by a rising tide of religious traditionalism and fundamentalism: people in those categories constitute a growing proportion of the world’s population.

126 - Hannover On Her Mind - and On Her Back

“I wanted something unique, something nobody else had. But every idea I had – it had already been done,” says Britta Oelschlaeger. The 33-year-old photographer, who hails from the city of Hannover, knew she wanted a large tattoo on her back. Eschewing more popular designs as elves, dragons, dolphins and roses, she looked for ten years until she found this 1896 map of her hometown. “I’m a fan of Hannover’s football team and I’m completely crazy about maps,” the artist explained her choice of tattoo.

It took the tattooist 7 hours to etch the outlines of that late 19th-century city plan on her back, and it will take many more to etch in the various hues of brown and green to give it the exact look as the original map. According to the AP press report, Oelschlaeger’s daughter is absolutely thrilled with her mom’s cool and original tattoo. Hannover is the capital city of Lower Saxony, one of Germany’s constituent Länder. 1896 happens to be the founding year of Hannover 96, Oelschlaeger’s favourite football club.

Image found here on the website of 20 Minuten, a German-language Swiss news service.

125 - Big Bog, Rock Star, Spoon Farm and Other Stops On the Stockholm Metro

This is a map of the Stockholm Metro, with the original Swedish names of all the stops translated into English. Literal translations often make for funny reading, and this map is no exception. My favourites are:

Awful Village Hospital
Exhale
A Spoon Farm
Big Bog
Clog Mountain, and of course:
Rock Star

This map was sent to me by somebody from Denmark (my mail address is in the right hand side column, suggestions are very welcome). As is well known, Danes will grasp every opportunity to ridicule their Swedish neighbours…

124 - Jesus In India: A Road Map of His Lost Years

If I recall correctly from my quite incomplete study of the Bible, Jesus’ biography is missing a big chunk in the middle: nothing is known of his doings between ages 12 and 30. Some have speculated that Jesus must have travelled to the East in those formative years, achieving and imparting wisdom along the way.

In Srinagar, in the Indian state of Kashmir, there’s even a shrine of which it is said that it is Jesus’ tomb - implying that he didn’t die on the cross, nor did he go to heaven (as claimed by the Muslims). The Roza Bal shrine is revered by Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists. The Muslim sect of the Ahmadiyyas positively identifies the shrine as the tomb of Yuz Asaf - i.e. Jesus.

Other beliefs about Yuz Asaf include that:

he married a woman called Meryem (Mary), who bore him a number of children; until recently, the shrine was guarded by the descendants of the sage buried in the tomb.
he lived to be about 110 years old
his mother Mary died when he was 38 and is buried in Mai Mari da Ashtan in the town of Murree (Pakistan)

Apart from figuring prominently in Ahmadiyya religious practice, the ‘Indian’ Jesus has been adopted by some in the New Age movement and by others seeking to distinguish Jesus’ teachings from his divinity. Some find in the story of Jesus’ eastward wanderings proof of links between Judeo-Christian and Buddhist teachings.

This map, documenting Jesus’ supposed trek from Jerusalem over Tehran and Kabul to Srinagar, taken from this Ahmadiyya website.

123 - The Hutt River Principality: What, No Prince Jabba?

Some 75 sq. km of the state of Western Australia form Australia’s oldest micronation. The Hutt River Principality has about 20 permanent residents, but thanks to the fascination exerted by micronations – not to mention the possibilities for propagation of and affiliation to such projects offered by present-day media – it counts an additional 13.000 passport holders worldwide.

The Hutt River Principality, about 500 km north of Perth, declared its independence on 21 april 1970. On that day, the eccentric wheat farmer Leonard George Casley became Prince Leonard I. This was the result of a long-standing dispute with the Australian government over wheat quotas, and of the Treason Act of 1495, a British law Casley felt allowed him to secede from the Commonwealth of Australia (and remain loyal to Queen Elizabeth II).

I don’t know if and how the Principality manages to evade Australian wheat regulations, but Prince Leonard must have made a handsome amount of money off the stamps and coins issued by his micronation – as yet unrecognised by Australia or any other country.

The future seems secure for the Hutt River Principality: the Australian government has accepted it as a ‘business enterprise’, one which generates a fair amount of tourism, and with Crown Prince Ian waiting in the wings, the succession is guaranteed.

This map was scanned from p. 27 of the ‘Micronations. The Lonely Planet Guide To Home-Made Nations’, one of the most hilarious travel-guides out there. More information on the Hutt River Principality on its own website - which indicates that the Principality, although landlocked, has a navy of its own.

122 - The Fro Gymraeg, A Reservation For Welsh

English is the dominant language in the British Isles, also in their Celtic fringe – Ireland, Scotland, Wales. In Scotland but mainly in Ireland, some territorial measures have been taken to protect the indigenous language, especially in the areas where it remains strongest.

Those areas in Ireland are called the Gaeltacht, a collection of non-contiguous rural and mainly western ‘islands’ where Irish Gaelic is the official first language. In Scotland, an almost similar term, Gàidhealtachd, is used to describe the area in the northern Highlands where Celtic culture is strongest – Scottish Gaelic even there being almost extinct.

In Wales, which for centuries formed one legal entity with England (but since a few years elects its own Welsh assembly, which has limited powers), no such ‘language reservation’ has been designated yet. An advocacy group called Cymuned (Welsh for ‘community’) campaigns for setting up an area similar to the Irish Gaeltacht. As with the Celtic languages in Ireland and Scotland, Welsh is under constant assault from English, not just culturally, but also in an economic/demographic way: many English move into Wales, lured by the lower cost of housing.

Cymuned claims an area, to be called Fro Gymraeg and with special provisions for the survival and promotion of the Welsh language (Cymraeg), is necessary, because only 17 Welsh-speaking communities (i.e. with over 80% of Welsh-speakers) remain in Wales.

The Fro Gymraeg is to be made up of those areas where at least 50% of the natives speak Welsh. Those areas are marked red on this map. Unfortunately, no explanation is given for the difference between dark red and light red, although it is reasonable to assume the darker areas count a higher proportion of Welsh-speakers.

In the darker green areas, over 20% of Welsh-born people speak Welsh, and “support should be made available for them to work towards becoming part of the Fro if that is what they desire,” this website states. Inside the Fro Gymraeg, Cymuned would like to implement, among others, these measures:

• An elected Statutory Council to represent the Fro
• Planning permission in the Fro Gymraeg for local people only
• Cymraeg to be the internal language of local government in the Fro Gymraeg
• That individuals who provide statutory public services in the Fro Gymraeg should speak Cymraeg
• Welsh history and language citizenship lessons should be available for incomers to the Fro Gymraeg
• Cymraeg should be the medium of education for all students between 3 and 16 in the Fro
• To aim at extending the Fro Gymraeg through helping electoral wards outside the Fro to vote to become a part of the Fro

The map was taken here, the main site for Cymuned (”Do you want to live in Wales or in West England?”) is here.

121 - Where On Earth Was Middle-earth?

The millionth hit on this blog is as good an occasion as any to finally broach the inevitable subject for a blog about curious cartography: Middle-earth. J.R.R. Tolkien’s invented mythology centred on an epic story of the struggle between Good and Evil, but it also included an elaborate backstory, a complex of languages, genealogies, cultures and peoples – and a map.

Created by Tolkien somewhere in the 1930s, the map shows the ‘mortal lands’ of Middle-earth, which according to Tolkien himself is part of our own Earth, but in a previous, mythical era. At the time of the events described in ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘The Lord of the Rings’, Middle-earth is moving towards the end of its Third Age, about 6.000 years ago.

Tolkien didn’t create Middle-earth ex nihilo: ancient Germanic myths divide the Universe in nine worlds, inhabited by elves, dwarves, giants, etc. The world of men is the one in the middle, called Midgard, Middenheim or Middle-earth. That term doesn’t thus describe the entirety of the world Tolkien thought up. The correct term for the total world is Arda – probably derived from German Erde (’Earth’) and only first mentioned posthumously in the Silmarillion (1977); and Eä (for the whole Universe).

The Hobbits are described as inhabiting ‘the North-West of the Old World, east of the Sea’, and therefore it’s tempting to associate their home with Tolkien’s own, England. Yet, Tolkien himself wrote that ‘as for the shape of the world of the Third Age, I am afraid that was devised ‘dramatically’, rather than geologically, or paleontologically.” Elsewhere, Tolkien does admit “The ‘Shire’ is based on rural England, and not any other country in the world.”

Tolkien at least compares his ‘Old World’ with Europe: “The action of the story takes place in the North-West of ‘Middle-earth’, equivalent in latitude to the coastlands of Europe and the north shores of the Mediterranean (…) If Hobbiton and Rivendell are taken (as intended) to be about the latitude of Oxford, then Minas Tirith, 600 miles south, is at about the latitude of Florence. The Mouths of Anduin and the ancient city of Pelargir are at about the latitude of ancient Troy.”

But, as Tolkien states in the prologue to ‘The Lord of the Rings’, it would be fruitless to look for geographical correspondences, as “Those days, the Third Age of Middle-earth, are now long past, and the shape of all lands has been changed…” And yet, that’s exactly what Peter Bird attempts with the map here shown. Bird, a professor of Geophysics and Geology at UCLA, has overlapped the map of Middle-earth with one of Europe, which leads to following locations:

• The Shire is in the South-West of England, which further north is also home to the Old Forest (Yorkshire?), the Barrow Downs (north of England), the city of Bree (at or near Newcastle-upon-Tyne) and Amon Sul (Scottish Highlands).
• The Grey Havens are situated in Ireland.
• Eriador corresponds with Brittany.
• Helm’s Deep is near the Franco-German-Swiss border tripoint, close to the city of Basel.
• The mountain chain of Ered Nimrais is the Alps.
• Gondor corresponds with the northern Italian plains, extended towards the unsubmerged Adriatic Sea.
• Mordor is situated in Transylvania, with Mount Doom in Romania (probably), Minas Morgul in Hungary (approximately) and Minas Tirith in Austria (sort of).
• Rohan is in southern Germany, with Edoras at the foot of the Bavarian Alps. Also in Germany, but to the north, near present-day Hamburg, is Isengard. Close by is the forest of Fangorn.
• To the north is Mirkwood, further east are Rhovanion and the wastes of Rhûn, close to the Ural mountains.
• The Sea of Rhûn corresponds to the Black Sea.
• Khand is Turkey
• Haradwaith is the eastern part of North Africa, Umbar corresponds with the Maghreb, the western part of North Africa.
• The Bay of Belfalas is the western part of the Mediterranean.

This map taken here from professor Bird’s page at UCLA.

1.000.000 Hits

Today the hit counter of this blog went over one million. I’m at a loss for words. Thanks, all of you, for stopping by. I hope you keep enjoying this blog. In order to further your enjoyment, I’m publishing 10 maps I’ve been saving up for this occasion… Now!