345 – Europe’s Continental Divide

“America’s continental divide is known worldwide. However, nobody ever considers the presence of a European’s continental divide. While for America the subdivision seems more obvious (Atlantic and Pacific coasts, though nobody ever talks about the Pacific and Arctic divide!), in Europe the subdivision might be between the two largest water bodies bordering the subcontinent: Atlantic and Mediterranean Europe.”

“This physical (hence, objective) subdivision is interesting per se, since some countries considered Mediterranean actually are mostly looking towards the Atlantic (Portugal fully and Spain mostly), others considered central European actually lie fully within the Mediterranean basin, such as Hungary, or mostly (Slovenia, Austria). Even Germany has a big fraction of its area within the Mediterranean watershed!”

Thanks to Javier Garcia-Perez Gamarra for producing and sending in this map.

 

 

 

 

344 – Adventures in the Land of the Good Groove

“A while back, I found a record album in a thrift store here in NYC, and I just had to buy it,” writes Adam King. As a mapophile, I understand the categoric cartographic imperative at work here. The map in question is the front cover of Nile Rodgers’ 1983 solo album ‘Adventures in the Land of the Good Groove’. The name Nile Rodgers sounded vaguely familiar, but a little research turned up that this was due to my lack of musical knowledge, not Mr Rodgers’ lack of notoriety. He is influential in his own right as well as instrumental in the careers of many other world-class artists.

Nile Rodgers (b. 1952) started out as a session guitarist for the Sesame Street band, Harlem’s Apollo Theater house band and as a backing musician for Aretha Franklin and Parliament Funkadelic, among others. He became famous with the disco band Chic, best known for their hit ‘Le Freak’. A sample of Chic’s ‘Good Times’ was featured in the Sugarhill Gang’s ‘Rapper’s Delight’, which is often cited as the first hip-hop record. After Chic’s demise in 1983, Rodgers founded Sister Sledge (hit: ‘We Are Family’) and focused on producing (for Diana Ross, David Bowie, Madonna, Duran Duran, Laurie Anderson, INXS, and many others). More recently, Rodgers has taken up producing soundtracks for video games, such as the Halo series. He also wrote music for movie soundtracks, among which the song ‘Love Me Sexy’ for the Will Ferrell vehicle ‘Semi-Pro’.

For this Nile Rodgers solo album, the native New Yorker chose to have lower Manhattan represent the ‘Land of the Good Groove’. The map is made to look like an antique map of the 17th century or thereabouts, down to the ornamental ships and ‘monsters’ in the water. The use of (pig) Latin amplifies the old feel of the map, and is used to some humorous effect — Brooklyn is labelled Terra Incognita and New Jersey is Nova Joisea.

Lower Manhattan’s streets and avenues also get the fake Latin treatment, and are rendered as Twenty-Thirdium, Houstanus, Canalus and Via Broadicus. Other locales include Tribeccium, Terra Financicus and Villagius Easticus. Over on the West Side is the intriguing Mysterium. Is anybody familiar enough with Mr Rodgers’ oeuvre to know why?

Many thanks to Mr King for sending in this image of the album cover.

 

 

 

343 – To which Viktor the Spoils? A Tale of Two Ukraines

Russia is no longer the hub of a worldwide Communist empire, nor the main ingredient of the Soviet Union; but the Kremlin still insists on wielding power in its old sphere of influence, an area of special interest to Russian foreign policy that it calls the Near Abroad.

The most recent – and, to Russia’s other neighbours, most intimidating – example of that insistence was this summer’s brief Russo-Georgian war, in which the Russian Army established final control over Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, eventually recognising their independence.

In the years immediately following the Soviet Union’s collapse, Russia was too weak to prevent what it qualifies as EU and NATO ‘encirclement’ (an old Russian geopolitical worry). But now, a resurgent Russia flush with oil money insists on checking what it sees as further encroachment by the EU and(especially) the US.

The term Near Abroad therefore excludes far-flung corners of the worldwide socialist experiment, such as Vietnam or Cuba (although Russia maintains good relations with old-school leftist regimes such as Cuba’s and new ones such as the Venezuela of Hugo Chavez).

It also seems to exclude what used to be called Eastern Europe, states that were independent before 1945 and are again now, almost all firmly lodged in western institutions such as the European Union and NATO (i.e. East Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria; of the former Yugoslav states, only Slovenia is fully integrated).

An interesting twilight zone are the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), in NATO and the EU, but with considerable historical baggage vis-a-vis their giant neighbour to the east – they were independent between the World Wars, but part of the Soviet Union thereafter, and each harbours considerably large Russian minorities.

The Ukraine however, with 45 million inhabitants and about the size of France, is firmly within Russia’s Near Abroad. Its east is ethnically mainly Russian (Ukrainian nationalism tends to be a western thing), and Russia has strategic interests in the Crimea (Russian until 1954, when it was transferred to the Ukraine, but still home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet). The country itself seems divided on whether it is an eastern outpost of the west, or a western outpost of the east.

The 2004 ‘Orange Revolution’, in which pro-western candidate Viktor Yushchenko successfully contested the rigged results of the presidential election that was ‘won’ by his pro-Russian opponent Viktor Yanukovich, seemed to place the Ukraine firmly in the western camp. Ukrainian politics has however seen several reversals of fortune since that time, proving that Ukraine is unique among the former Soviet republics: pro-western and pro-Russian sentiments are almost completely in balance.

That balance is not spread out evenly across the country. This map shows which of both Viktors was the victor in each of Ukraine’s regions in the (contested) November 2004 presidential elections. Each candidate has won in a remarkably contiguous area – Yushchenko winning the northwestern half of the country, Yanukovich the southeastern part. Both Moscow and the West are eager to have the populous, and potentially prosperous Ukraine in their camp. Will the fault line running through the Ukraine become the front line of a Second Cold War?

This election map was taken here from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

342 – “More Typical Than Any Real State of the Union”: Sinclair Lewis’s Winnemac

Winnemac is a real-world North American name of a few persons and places, but also refers to a fictional US state, the brainchild of one of America’s most successful writers of the 20th century, who drew up detailed sketches of the towns and cities of Winnemac — maps which are tantalisingly difficult to find online.

‘Winnemac’ means ‘catfish’ in the language of the Potawatomi Indians, who live in the upper reaches of the Mississippi. The name also refers to three of their chiefs, one of whom signed the Treaty of Greenville (1795) with general ‘Mad’ Anthony Wayne. Wayne defeated the Indians in the Battle of Fallen Timbers, which ended the Northwest Indian War and handed the Americans possession of large parts of Ohio and of the area later home to Chicago. The Windy City is home to a Winnemac Avenue and a Winnemac Park; there is also an Indiana town called Winamac and a school district in Minnesota spelled Win-E-Mac.

Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) was the first American to win the Nobel prize for Literature, in 1930. His breakthrough novel Main Street, depicting the small-mindedness of small towns, was set in Gopher Prairie, a fictionalised version of his own hometown of Sauk Centre, Minnesota. The citizens of Sauk Centre were so appalled at their portrayal in the book that Lewis devised a wholly fictional US state in which to set his subsequent, interrelated novels. He describes the state in his novel Arrowsmith (1925):

“The state of Winnemac is bounded by Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana, and like them it is half Eastern, half Midwestern. There is a feeling of New England in its brick and sycamore villages, its stable industries, and a tradition which goes back to the Revolutionary War. Zenith, the largest city in the state, was founded in 1792. But Winnemac is Midwestern in its fields of corn and wheat, its red barns and silos, and, despite the immense antiquity of Zenith, many counties were not settled till 1860.”
“The University of Winnemac is at Mohalis, fifteen miles from Zenith. There are twelve thousand students; beside this prodigy Oxford is a tiny theological school and Harvard a select college for young gentlemen. The University has a baseball field under glass; its buildings are measured by the mile; it hires hundreds of young Doctors of Philosophy to give rapid instruction in Sanskrit, navigation, accountancy, spectacle-fitting, sanitary engineering, Provencal poetry, tariff schedules, rutabaga-growing, motor-car designing, the history of Voronezh, the style of Matthew Arnold, the diagnosis of myohypertrophia kymoparalytica, and department- store advertising. Its president is the best money-raiser and the best after-dinner speaker in the United States; and Winnemac was the first school in the world to conduct its extension courses by radio.”

Other Sinclair Lewis novels set in Winnemac are Babbitt, Gideon Planish, Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry and Dodsworth. The state has been described as “more typical than any real state in the Union”; it has also been suggested that the name Winnemac might be an amalgamation of Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan. References throughout Lewis’ work seem to indicate that the state’s capital is called Galop de Vache, the largest city is Zenith, and others are Monarch, Sparta, Pioneer, Catawba and Eureka.

This “Map of Sinclair Lewis’ United States” was sent in by Travis (sourced here). It was compiled in 1934 from references in all of the Sinclair Lewis books published up until then, and shows Winnemac as covering the southern quarter of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, the northern half of Indiana and the northwestern quarter of Ohio. But, as Travis remarks, Lewis himself “personally made a ton of maps that detailed Winnemac down to the level of individual neighborhoods.” As early as 1921, wrote Lewis’s then wife in a letter to a friend, he had made “the most astonishingly complete set of maps of Zenith, so that the city, the suburbs, the state” were clear in his mind. Those maps remained unpublished during Lewis’s lifetime — they would have made for fascinating endpaper illustrations of the relevant novels.

Some of Lewis’s own maps of Winnemac were discovered in his Vermont studio in 1961, showing discrepancies with this 1934 map: Winnemac “is much further north than had previously been thought (…) New York City is decidedly southeast of Zenith (…) Lake Michigan is simply ignored by Lewis in creating the state.” According to Wikipedia, “Lewis’ map places Zenith due east of Chicago. Cities and towns on the map include Minnemegantic, Banjo Crossing, Roysburg, Tuttleville, Vulcan, Hamburg, New Paris, St. Ruan, Babylon, Chestnut Grove, Parkinton, Eureka, Aetna, Madrid, St. Agatha, and (of course), a Springfield.”

As Travis mentions in his email, Amazon.com refers to a book called “A Sinclair Lewis Portfolio of Maps, Zenith to Winnemac”, published in 1971, out of print and unavailable. Does anyone have an image of these Winnemac map(s) by Sinclair Lewis?

Click on the map for a larger image.

341 – Hungariform Crossword For Magyarophone Cartophiles

 

Here’s a treat for all you cruciverbally obsessed Hungarian cartophiles out there: a Magyarophone crossword in the shape of Old Hungary, i.e. the other half of the Austrian-led Double Monarchy that ruled much of Central Europe until its defeat in World War I.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire was dissolved after the war, and Hungary descended into chaos. At the Treaty of Trianon (1920), Hungary lost an astonishing 72% of its territory – including its access to the sea – to literally all of its neighbours: the newly formed states of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, Romania, Austria itself and even bits to Poland. Most of these lands were majoritarily non-Hungarian, but the loss was (and to some extent still is) experienced as an unfair humiliation.

So ‘Old Hungary’ lives on, albeit here in the form of an irredentism-flavoured crossword puzzle. It’s hard to tell whether the nostalgic theme extends to the content of the puzzle. Hungarian is a non-Indo-European language, rendering it virtually unintelligible to most other Europeans. The only words I recognise are ‘Mahatma Ghandi’ and (I think) ‘gratulátunk!’

So gratulátunk (I hope) to Pál Szabó for sending in this map.

340 – The Southern Ontario Elephant

Elephants are native to Africa and India and… Canada? Well, not really, but if you tilt your average north-oriented map of Ontario 90 degrees to the right, the province’s southern peninsula will show a more than passing resemblance to an elephant, tooting its trunk.

This Southern Ontario Elephant gains added clarity due to the fact that the peninsula is bounded by lakes (Erie, Huron, Ontario, Simcoe) and other bodies of water, such as Georgian Bay and Niagara Falls.”The only ones who weren’t amused by [the Southern Ontario Elephant] were those in rather unfortunately-placed Owen Sound which, much to our amusement, became known as The Elephant’s b*tth%le,” writes Dave Collins, who sent in this map.

For the record: Owen Sound has been known as the ‘Chicago of the North’ and ‘Little Liverpool’ and at present as ‘the Scenic City’. According to Wikipedia, on the October 18, 2006 episode of The Colbert Report, host Stephen Colbert asked viewers to suggest bad things to say about Owen Sound, not being able to come up with any himself. I guess he had never heard of the Southern Ontario Elephant, let alone the position of its posterior.

Finally, just for fun, here are 10 facts about elephants you might not know:

• Elephants are not only the largest land animals, but also the second-tallest, after the giraffe.
• The Buddha’s mother dreamed a white elephant gave her a lotus flower on the eve of his birth. Possession of a white elephant has since been seen as a blessing by the monarchs of Southeast Asia. Because these animals were exempt from work, their upkeep was very expensive, and therefore also a bit of a curse. Hence the term ‘white elephant’ for prestige projects that cost (a lot) more money than they bring in.
• In South Asia, elephants were used to execute the condemned, by crushing them underfoot.
• The 37 war elephants used by Hannibal in his famous military campaign against Rome (in 218 BC) were probably North African forest elephants, a now extinct, smaller subspecies of the African elephant.
• As humans are either left- or right-handed, elephants are usually left- or right-tusked. The ‘master tusk’ is typically more worn down than the other one.
• The Prophet Muhammad was born in the Year of the Elephant (app. 570 AD), so named because the (Christian) king of Yemen attacked Mecca but failed to reach the Ka’aba because Mahmoud, a white war elephant, refused to enter the city. The story is related in the 105th surat of the Qur’an, entitled al-Fil (‘the elephant’).
• Harun al-Rashid, the caliph of Baghdad, presented Charlemagne, emperor of the Frankish empire, with an elephant in 798. This elephant, named Abul-Abbas, actually only arrived in the empire’s capital of Aachen in 802. It was sent forth in battle against the Danish under king Godfred in 804 and died a few years later of pneumonia, possibly caught while swimming in the Rhine.
• Hunting of tusked elephants has increased the mating chances of elephants with the absent-tusk gene, raising the percentage of tuskless elephants from 1% (1930) to 30% now.
• Old elephants adapt to their last, worn-out set of teeth by moving to marshland with soft foliage. When their last teeth finally fall out, they die of starvation.
• Elephant Appreciation Day is on September 22nd.

 

339 – America’s Hat

Not very correct cartographically, but mildly funny.

338 – The Jeopardy! Map of the US

“A popular game show in which contestants need to answer trivia questions on a variety of topics that has been running on US tv for nearly 45 years, and has been syndicated around the world.”

“What is Jeopardy! ?”

Jeopardy! debuted on NBC in March 1964 and the quiz show has been a top-rated fixture of the American television landscape ever since.

Contestant Ken Jennings holds the record for greatest amount of prize money won in one day ($75,000, on 23 July 2004) as well as the longest winning streak (182 calendar days) and greatest overall amount won ever ($2,522,700).

Jennings (b. 1974) has since become a minor celebrity in his own right (in the world of quiz nerds and trivia buffs, anyway) and has written two books on trivia and continues to be active in the quiz/media world. He also runs a blog, and posted this curious map a while ago.

It was published at the show’s 35th birthday (in 1999) and shows exactly where in the US Jeopardy! at that time was popular and where it was not (or less so).

• Trebekkies (after the host Alex Trebek) watch the show most avidly. These are concentrated in South Dakota and Mississippi (whole state covered), Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, Florida, Vermont, New Hampshire, North Dakota and Montana.
• The most trivia-challenged states are Utah (entirely) and (for a large part) California, Nevada, Colorado, Texas, Minnesota, Indiana and Ohio.

Jennings, for once, doesn’t have an answer for the discrepancies in this map. To be fair, it’s quite unclear how the data on this map were collated. Anyone?

Many thanks to Kathleen Mikulis for sending in this map.

337 – Europe Without Germany

Imagine. Italian songs echoing off the Danube shores. The Netherlands big enough not to have to worry about the sea. A French-Polish border. Imagine Europe without Germany. This map does.

During most of the first half of the 20th century, Germany was seen by much of the rest of the world as a rogue state in the heart of Europe, its incorrigible belligerence a problem not only to be defeated but also to be eradicated – somehow. Inevitably, some on the lunatic fringe called for wiping Germany off the map — literally. One such plan was discussed earlier on this blog (#123).

Although that particular plan was real, and even though the Second World War was contested with more apocalyptic zeal than any other modern-era conflict, simply obliterating Germany was never seriously considered an option. The aforementioned Kaufmann scheme was the work of a lone pamphlettist, and profited Nazi propaganda more than the Allied cause.

Even the Morgenthau plan, used to similar effect by the German propaganda machine, never envisioned dissolving Germany — merely dismembering and dividing it, while neutralising its economic capacity to wage war. This is in effect what happened after the war, albeit that on top of this, the two halves of Germany ended up on opposing sides of the ideological fence now dissecting Europe.

This ‘neutralised’ Germany and relegated questions of its right to exist to the dustbin of history. Some of the old anxieties did resurface in 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell and the West Germans steamrollered German Reunification, much to the dismay of many others. “I like Germany so much that I prefer to have two of them”, was the sarcastic sentiment of many European politicians (the quote is attributed to Francois Mitterrand).

Is this what a Europe without Germany could have looked like? For starters, it doesn’t resemble the Kaufmann map (cf.sup.) And it’s unknown which basis in fact (or fiction) it might have. But the re-drawn borders don’t look like an occupation so much as an absorption: German toponyms have been rendered in the idioms of each conquering country.

• Denmark spills out of Jutland all the way down to Hamborg.
• Poland’s new western border corresponds exactly to the old DDR one, with East German cities renamed Drezno (Dresden), Lipsk (Leipzig) and Berolinsk (Berlin), among others.
• The Czech Republic extends into northern Bavaria, including Nuremhora (Nuremberg).
• Austria has gone completely Italian (Salzburg is now Salcastello) and has overrun southern Bavaria, including Monaco di Baviera (Munich).
• France reaches across the Rhine all the way up to Cassel (Kassel), and has frenchified cities like Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen), Mayence (Mainz) and Charlesrepos (Karlsruhe).
• The Netherlands reach Hamburg and touch Poland, and include Keulen (Cologne), Dusseldorp (Dusseldorf) and Willemspoort (Wilhelmshaven).

Some of the toponyms used here are the accepted translations for German city names already in use in other languages, e.g. Keulen (Dutch), Hamborg (Danish) and Mayence (French). Others are overtranslated: e.g. Eeten for Essen, both of which mean ‘to eat’ in Dutch and German respectively, whereas the city derives its name from a term for the East of for ash trees.

This map found here on the Kalimedia website, which also publishes The Atlas of True Names, discussed in #334. Many thanks to all those who sent in this map.

336 – McZealand

Fast food chains generally don’t have a good rep when it comes to healthy, eco-conscious dining. There is some re-branding going on, though, like at McDonald’s, which is moving heaven and earth to project itself as lean and green instead of mean.

This is how they do it in New Zealand, reports Mark Whybird: “This is what appeared on my tray. The fry in the middle is not real – it is printed on to the paper, and bent into a shape resembling this country, New Zealand. Here’s the text of the caption: Last year over 95% of the produce we used was grown right here in New Zealand. Our fries, for instance, are made from the highest quality Russet Burbank potatoes grown on Canterbury farms. Take a fresh look.“

New Zealand is one of the more easily recognisable countries on a blind world map, owing to its distinct composition of a North and South Island. This iconic shape must invite use in all manner of design — but to have your country represented as a French fry? If I were a kiwi, I don’t know whether I would be amused or offended…

Thanks to Mr Whybird for sending in this picture.

335 – 10,000,000 Hits

This blog reached its 10 millionth hit last Tuesday. That is amazing. I’m speechless. Well, almost:

Thanks to all visitors, casual and regular, for helping Strange Maps reach that incredible number! I am honoured by the continuing interest in the blog. Should you wish to express your appreciation for this blog, please consider Supporting Strange Maps via the link in the right hand column.

Your comments and map suggestions are as appreciated as ever, but due to increasing volume I haven’t been able to reply to all incoming mail — for which I beg your understanding. A quick word about the Atlas of Strange Maps: the manuscript is at the publisher’s, and production is proceeding as planned. The book should be available in the second half of the New Year.

I will be posting a celebratory batch of maps in a few minutes’ time, one for each million. And after that, I think I might see about that can of beer left in the fridge. Then I’ll be off to bed. Here’s to you all, cheers and goodnight!