OpenGeofiction
Today is the first anniversary of me joining OGF. It’s been a fun experience, with some great people, and I thought I’d post an update on my activities:
Nearly all my attention at the moment is going on Wesmandy (map here: http://opengeofiction.net/#map=8/57.760/41.976, wiki here: http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Wesmandy). I’m trying a historical approach to mapping the country, creating it was it was in about 1400, after which I’ll update the map and the history in tandem until I get to the present day. It’s a big project if I’m going to keep the whole country in step through the centuries, and I can’t say how long it will take. I had hoped to have the medieval “baseline” complete by Easter, but I don’t think that will happen. After that, going through the centuries should be fairly straightforward until industrialization starts, when things will get complicated!
When I started this I dithered about various things such as how much detail to include, but I think I know where I’m going now, unless anybody comes up with any glaring problems or omissions! :-
Throughout Wesmandy, I have mapped the major rivers and lakes, although I am adding more streams as I get down to detail. I have located and named about 530 cities, towns, hamlets and (mostly) villages, but I’m adding more villages and hamlets as I get down to detail. I also mapped the roads between them, designating roads between cities as Trunk, between towns as Primary, between main villages (centres of manors) as Secondary, and everything else as Unclassified. The designations indicate relative importance of the routes, not the quality of the roads - most will be dirt lanes at this time.
In the northern third of the country (the 13th century Duchy of Wesmandy) I have divided the area into 256 feudal manors, or fiefdoms, with boundary_level=8. These are larger than the typical medieval manors in places like England, but I’m leaving a lot of unoccupied/uncultivated woodland and grassland in each manor (being in a Scandinavian/Baltic-style area, Wesmandy is relatively sparsely populated). For the most part, the manor boundaries will become parish or district boundaries in future, when the feudal system has gone.
In each manor, the settled/cultivated area is mapped as landuse=farmland. This includes pasture, meadows etc as well as arable. I thought about going into more detail – down to field level – but if I did that I would be stuck in the 15th century for ages!
Towns and villages and their surroundings are being mapped to street level, but not buildings except for castles, manor houses, abbeys, churches, mills and some taverns.
So far, the most detailed area is around here, between the rivers Esk and Lan, but not all the towns and villages are done yet. Once I’ve done the whole of the “old Duchy” I’ll move on and “manorize” the rest of the country.
Alongside the map, I’m working out the political structure, putting names to the major players of the time (and giving them coats of arms, because I like heraldry!), and thinking about the major civil war which is about to hit the country. If I’m not so active on the wiki at the moment, it’s because I’m stuck in the past!
My other main country – Tircambry – is somewhat neglected at the moment, but it will be intertwined with Wesman history, and I will get back to mapping it, taking to it the experience of thinking harder about historical settings and development.
Comments and suggestions welcome, including ideas for historical collaboration.
Discussion
Comment from Yuanls on 21 February 2016 at 17:07
I love your mapping approach, especially the detail in which you’ve put in, which can be found all over the country. I hope to see more of it!
Just 1 thing though; I don’t know if you want but realistically, the names of towns and cities change throughout the times, and some of the settlements on the map sound quite ‘modern’, if you get what you mean.
Comment from histor on 21 February 2016 at 19:54
Your idea, to go mapping in the timeline, is interesting. O.k. - many things are to change as in reality - but it looks very good you have done.
Comment from Ūdilugbulgidħū on 21 February 2016 at 21:09
This is really fascinating. I struggled getting my head round using 20th century mapping techniques and ‘interpretations’ to map a 13th century landscape, but it has a unique feel to it. What I found a bit strange looking at it first was that the trunk roads - that I usually think of as being tarmac and having modern vehicles on - must be tracks, like you say. But once I got used to that, it made much more sense. Here are some thoughts that I hope might help: Land use - 13th century. How is the feudal system set up? Is the best land already occupied by the highest tiers of the aristocracy? Do areas of marginalisation where there is less feudal influence (maybe further away from the manors) exist or is it ‘uniform’? Heaths - are these common grazings - and would there then be villages ‘sharing them’? Monasteries - these were very powerful in mediaeval England (I haven’t looked through the map comprehensively, so maybe you have some - or has there been a ‘reformation’ already?). River ports - navigable rivers very important for trade, more than roads probably, so biggest settlements might be located here? Names, as Yuanls says, the names do look modern. There are lots of ways you could make it look more ‘historic’ if that’s what you wanted to do (spelling, letter groups/substitution f/s etc). And ‘rough edges’ - this is what probably distinguished mediaeval from contemporary landscapes as much as anything else - and it would be very hard to map. I think you’re doing the right thing by not going to more detail than this (as well as the amount of time!). All these boundaries in 13th century maybe wouldn’t have fences, and there would have been a lot of ‘fuzziness’. Contemporary maps aren’t good at dealing with this - so the way you’ve done it makes total sense. Finally, historical collaboration: if you want to incorporate Ionadàlban history for 13th century into Wesmandy’s, feel free to do it - shared royal bloodlines/aristocracy or the opposite: border wars/conflict/civil war involvement -anything like that just do it - it can be explained in the wiki for ‘contemporary’ Ionadàlba later. I’m sure anything like that would help Ionadàlba’s mapping later on.
Comment from Pawl on 22 February 2016 at 20:00
Thank you all for the feedback.
Names: I think my names are realistic, allowing for the fact that I am using modern spelling and styles, which is quite normal for a present-day historical map (as opposed to a map produced at the time) ;) I did think about using old spellings, which would add to the character, but I would then have had to change them all as time moves forward. I might re-think this. But please let me know if you see names which are clearly anachronistic.
Feudal manors: So far, the entire country is divided into feudal manors, so the feudal/manorial influence is fairly uniform. But some manors have “subsidiary” villages and hamlets, away from the main centre, and these are likely to be less directly under the day-to-day control of the Lord of the Manor or his Bailiff. I might think about having a bit more variety when I expand the mapping into the rest of the country.
“Unorganized” areas: So far I have included heaths, woodlands and other unfarmed lands within the boundaries of manors, so they would be common ground for the inhabitants of those manors. However, it’s likely that the manorial boundaries in these areas may be less than clear on the ground, and I can imagine lots of boundary disputes! Also, I envisage that some of the spaces would have restrictions on them, e.g. only the King or lord can hunt there.
Monastic lands: In the area mapped so far, nearly 20% of manors are held by the church : 29 by five major monastries (abbeys) and 20 divided between four bishoprics. There will also be minor religious houses – priories – which don’t have their own manors, but may occupy estates within manors. The monastic and diocesan manors are included towards the bottom of the Duchy of Wesmandy wiki page.
Navigable rivers: I think all cities are on rivers, but I hadn’t thought about whether they’re navigable! I will do.
History: @Ūdilugbulgidħū, thank you for letting me include Ionadàlba in my history. I won’t decide anything major without talking to you, though. We agreed a while back that Grum would be a Wesman territory in the 12th/13th centuries, so I should start by fleshing that out.
Comment from Ūdilugbulgidħū on 22 February 2016 at 21:41
Well, I don’t know about anachronistic, but perhaps there are some things missing - that is the messy bits like scrub, wetlands, swamps - these could be the ‘rough edges’? Possibly (though I didn’t have a long look) also bridges over the rivers - this is hard to map, but I would expect most of them to be fords or stepping stones at this time, and you’d have the ferries on the wider rivers. I get your Abbeys/monasteries thing after seeing the coats of arms - one thing to consider is that monastic land-holdings were often widespread and not contiguous. a mapping difficulty in real life maybe, but not a problem in fiction. And what about adding some ruins - of the previous inhabitants settlements? or coastal forts maybe - these could become real features in your future map. I think your approach is the right one to these hunting forests - Droga forest could be one? and then there is a good basis for ‘border raids’ from the Pechts in the Tak Mounth - or Grum?
There is no problem with writing bits of Grum’s history either - only I think it is a bit more ‘inflexible’ as I have done a bit more thinking towards Grum’s wiki and history than I have for Ionadàlba. i.e the Raggarth dynasty has ruled Grum for … a long time. But there can be a lot behind that - and who knows how many of them were bastards - in the ‘illegitimate sense, I mean.
Comment from Pawl on 24 February 2016 at 06:42
I have some scrub and marshland, and there will be more as I carry the detail to the rest of the country. In the real world by the late Middle Ages there were a lot of bridges, many replacing older fords (in England, at least). I don’t know what the proportion of bridges to fords was, but I’ll look further. At the moment I have 167 bridges and 35 fords (the fords don’t render, though). So far I’ve just used “bridge=yes”, without specifying the type of bridge.
My monastic manors are not usually contiguous, although the manors for a particular abbey tend to be in the same region as the abbey itself. This might change, too, as I expand into the rest of the country.
There will be ruins in future as some of my castles etc get wrecked, but, yes, I should probably add some older features, e.g. ancient hill forts which are now no more than grass mounds and ditches.
I’ll be interested to hear your ideas on the history of Grum. At one point I think we had it ruled by Wesmandy until the 1360s (and I was thinking that I should, theoretically, have included it in my 1300 liegelands map). Has that changed? (I don’t mind if it has – it is your territory!).
Comment from Ūdilugbulgidħū on 25 February 2016 at 18:26
Those are all good points.
I think we did have Grum ruled by Wesmandy until the 1360s and it would be fantastic if it was a part of the 1300 liegelands map, though I see the work in it. Maybe if you post on the Grum talk page we can keep track of what’s going on better. I don’t think the boundaries of Grum have to match exactly the present day boundaries either - though they are partly defined by topography.