Finished Hand Drawn Map of Aeglandhorr (size A0)

[Konraw]

This map, is the most abused map I have, or that I have ever heard of even. Not including any that perished at the hands of the Nazi’s, Mongols, Huns, Vandals, arsonists etc.

My very first map was a copy of Middle Earth and the Undying Lands that I found in ‘the Tolkien Bestiary’ when I was 14. I straight away decided to do my own imaginary world on the back. This picture is a close up of part of that imaginary world that I did many years later on a huge sheet (A0 size) of mounting board. Hence, when rolled it is about ten inches across! This was in 1992-4. I then laminated it as I was moving from Australia to Britain and I wanted it protecting. It had its own huge cylinder and when after many weeks my belongings arrived by sea in the UK, the map was missing! After many phone calls and two months it turned up in some warehouse and was sent on to me. To my horror, I found that some of the laminate had been pulled off along with the surface layer of the card leaving a triangular stretch of rough textured, faded map!

To restore it to it’s former glory, I had to pull off the rest of the laminate! Virtually destroying the map in the process. It was like a ghost map! Then I went over every single line and dot in the original colours. It took months. If a forest circle was elongated in a certain direction, I had to draw another one exactly the same over the top. Though no doubt a magnifying glass might show a slight bit of divergence. Since then, the map has been behind my Mum’s bookshelf for nearly 20 years. The glue left behind by the laminate has turned yellow and when i pulled it out to get scanned last week, it was covered in old cobwebs. The guy at the printers who did the scan said to me, when I mentioned the cobwebs,’I’ll give it a good clean, don’t worry about that. I’ll take good care of it, I know it’s your baby.’

So here it is. I hope you enjoy it. Bear in mind that the names were done by a teenager. So some of them reflect my favourite TV programs at the time etc. For instance, on the eastern side of the map along the large river are ‘Cradlop’s Arrows’. ‘Cradlop is ‘Poldark’ backwards!
I also committed an act of mapmaking blasphemy! I have two large rivers coming from the same source. Selipuk Gampa North (flowing west to Venca on the coast)and the Selipuk Gampa South (flowing south west to the Sogne Fjord - sorry Norway!) both come from the Great Lake. Not obvious from the map but it can be inferred from the two identical river names. This doesn’t happen on Earth, or anywhere in reality. Erosion rates at the outlet of the lake would differ ending up with one branch drying up. BUT NOT HERE! There are two bars of magical bronze maintained by the god’s for the very purpose of having one source dividing into two rivers. If we can have Vladimir Putin as Russian president in reality, how can you argue against weird divine geographical features in a fantasy world?

pen and coloured pencil 92 x 67cm