Skandinavia in 1368

[thamupp]

scandinavialakesnames30.jpg

Here's something I've been working a little bit on for the past few weeks. It's a map of Scandinavia in 1368, before the creation of the Kalmar union, where the danish monarch took control of all three Scandinavian Kingdoms.

The text is in Swedish and the geography of the map is based on a map from 1794.

Currently I'm working on adding towns and cities.

I do hope 'real world mapping' is allowed on this board, if not, I do apologize for posting it here.

[Lingon]

Real world mapping is definitely allowed, and that one is looking awesome! Swedish is really the best language for map labels; few things sound as cool as "Tysk-Romerska Riket"

Do you plan to add anything in the wide border? It looks a little empty now, I think.

[thamupp]

Do you plan to add anything in the wide border? It looks a little empty now, I think.

I haven't really, no. But I'd love a suggestion if you have any good ideas. The to-do list right now goes something like this:
-Add rivers and more lakes
-Add more text
-Add even more text

I really thinks getting the map filled with text will make it look really cool.

Getting mountains on is of course also something I'd love to do. But I just don't feel I have the skills to make it look good.

[vorropohaiah]

that's gorgeous. love the texture used on the paper (is it your own creation or something you downloaded?)

hope you get to add a nice action-packed cartouche to this. not sure what i mean by action-packed, but I do love a full cartouche

EDIT: a quick note about the mountains. this type of political map rarely has very artsy mountains. If even depicted at all it's usually along the line of the marching caterpillars, as some people around here refer to them and that's perfectly acceptable on this sort of map, which is certainly designed to look more like a real-world utilitarian map, rather than a lot of the more arty types we see on here. also, the large empty margin is fine. you'll see loads of similar-styled real-world maps with large empty margins like that.

[thamupp]

that's gorgeous. love the texture used on the paper (is it your own creation or something you downloaded?)

I used two different free paper textures I found online to achieve the current look.

And about the mountains. Yeah, that's what I've been thinking as well. I'll leave them completely out, at least for now.


The trickiest part so far is figuring about what cities to add. I want to keep the map as historically accurate as possible and it's really quite time consuming to figure out what cities were around and which weren't. Not sure what I'll do when I get to the Danish and Norwegian cities, since I don't have that much knowledge (or google search abilities) about those regions.

[thamupp]

hope you get to add a nice action-packed cartouche to this. not sure what i mean by action-packed, but I do love a full cartouche

Having this in mind I've made an attempt at redesigning the cartouche and I think it turned out okay. I'm a bit concerned that perhaps the style of the map is a bit inconsistent now. Maybe it's a bit too much.

Oh, and don't worry, I'll see if I can figure something out to replace the current border as well.

scandinavialakesnames30.jpg

[vorropohaiah]

the new one seems more consistent with the style of map, though the earlier one is fine too. will you be adding in another cartouche with key, scale,and other details?

[thamupp]

the new one seems more consistent with the style of map, though the earlier one is fine too. will you be adding in another cartouche with key, scale,and other details?

Yes, at the bottom right.

[thamupp]

New border and scales added.

scandinavialakesnames30.jpg

[Lingon]

That looks great! The different measurement units is a really nice touch! I actually didn't have any ideas for the area outside of the border, personally I think I'd have cropped it a little, but that's a boring suggestion… Honestly, it doesn't really matter if you do anything with it, the map is fantastic either way I kinda miss some dots or something for the cities though!