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The Others in the North, Asshai in the East - Remniscient of Allegorical Maps from the Middle Ages!


Orphalesion

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Hey

 

I was raised bilingual (English and German) while I don't find much use for my knowledge of German I do appreciate the access to a lot of German literature.

One of the German books I have is a really strange collection of medieval texts called "The Traum der Vernunft" (the dream of reason) basically an attempt to assemble a modern day Bestiary (though I assume some pf the texts are penned by the author herself, since I can't find reference to a Alpine figure called "Li-Li the Lava-voiced" anywhere else....) 

 

However one of the sections of the book describes Medieval cosmology,also printing a few maps. And it appears that Medieval Europeans placed the Garden of Eden/ Paradise in the East of the World (one of the printed maps even has it east of Asia where Japan would be on a modern map) while Hell and the devil where associated with the North (apparently this goes back to a passage in Issiah where the devil proclaim that he will sit on a throne in the north) and hell was sometimes located there on allegorical maps. 

(To explain allegorical maps were medieval maps drawn to portray the known world in a theological matter rather than show the world as it really looked, those maps usually showed Europe, Asia and Africa as three landmasses of equal size, with Jerusalem in the center of the "world" rather than having the top of the map point north like nautical maps, allegorical maps also had the east on top, with Eden and also sometimes displayed hell, or the entrance to hell in the north. which would be on the left-hand side on those maps)

 

So in short in the Medieval mindset: North represents darkness and evil, East represents good and light.

Needles to say this kind of reminds me of the way Westeros is partitioned, of course we know R'hllor is not necessarily a force of good and Asshai-by-the-Shadow is no Eden but we do have the two opposing forces (winter and summer, The Great Other and R'hllor) based in the North and East.

 

Does anybody think this was done deliberately by GRRM, or is it just a coincidence?  

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