14 replies to this topic

[Werthead]

Recently stumbled across this map on a Civ4 forum. Someone came up with the idea of overlaying a map of Westeros across Europe for size comparison purposes.

What's interesting is that the guy who did it says it's smaller than it should be canonically because Westeros is the size of South America according to GRRM and he made his map smaller. However, he seems to have not realised that GRRM's size comparison included the many hundreds of miles of territory beyond the Wall. Checking the size of the Wall (at 300 miles long it should be roughly half the length of the island of Britain), it actually turns out he seems to have gotten it right. More or less. Maybe Westeros is a tiny bit smaller than it should be, but well within margins of error (since none of this is an exact science).

[Dukayn]

Quite cool. Makes the whole world seem rather large when you look at this mapthen doesn't it?

[Ran]

George imagines the world is rather bigger than Earth. :)

[Dukayn]

Rather, yes.

[Horiötha]

So, wait the world itself is larger too? Then, with higher gravity, Gregor must way upwards of a ton!

[Dukayn]

Well size doesn't necessarily equal mass, and gravity is measured on the mass of the planetary object.

Also, this is a fantasy world :P

[Werthead]

Martinworld's core is made of candy floss, thus the larger size does not mean higher gravity ;)

GRRM once said it might be like Vance's Big Planet, but that was gargantuam, like seven times the size of the Earth. I don't think Martinworld is that big. Also, on a substantially larger planet the climatic zones would be huge and you would hardly notice a major change in temperature moving 3,000 miles from the Wall to Dorne as they clearly do in the books. That suggests that although it's bigger, it might not be that much bigger. 5% larger, something like that?

Edited by Werthead, 25 October 2009 - 11:07 PM.

[Lord Mord]

Interesting. So it looks like the West is basically about the size of the Iberian Peninsula, yeah? And then the Reach is about the size of France and Germany together, is that what you'd say? I used to always have this impression that the Reach was about the size of Brazil ... this puts it into fresh perspective.

[Brude]

I really think Westeros should be quite a bit bigger than that and some of the assumptions he made seem to be wrong about distances and travel times in the books (something I once did a breakdown about for some reason and found it worked pretty well).

He also seems to assume that South America is closer to to the South Pole (he says Antarctica) than it actually is (well, it's close to the northern most tip of Antarctica, so he's not entirely wrong). But Tierra del Fuego, the southern most tip of the continent is about as far South as central Scotland is North - about 55 degrees.

His Westeros is only about 1/2 or at most 2/3 the size of Europe, but if GRRM's description is accurate, it would be more than half again as big as Europe - approaching twice the size, really. (Europe is about 10 million KM sq., South America is a almost 18 million KM sq).

[Lord Mord]

Brude,

Brude, on Oct 25 2009, 21.55, said:

I really think Westeros should be quite a bit bigger than that and some of the assumptions he made seem to be wrong about distances and travel times in the books (something I once did a breakdown about for some reason and found it worked pretty well).

He also seems to assume that South America is closer to to the South Pole (he says Antarctica) than it actually is (well, it's close to the northern most tip of Antarctica, so he's not entirely wrong). But Tierra del Fuego, the southern most tip of the continent is about as far South as central Scotland is North - about 55 degrees.

His Westeros is only about 1/2 or at most 2/3 the size of Europe, but if GRRM's description is accurate, it would be more than half again as big as Europe - approaching twice the size, really. (Europe is about 10 million KM sq., South America is a almost 18 million KM sq).

Okay, now just to be sure I'm hearing you correctly: you're saying that GRRM got some of his distances incorrect?

You know, from what I understand, apparently Fitzgerals got the name and the age of Daisy's baby very inconsistent in Gatsby. To what extent is this artistic license which should definitely be overlooked, and to what extent is it a thing where you think the author should go back and make corrections?

[Brude]

Brick Pollitt, on Oct 26 2009, 02.26, said:

Okay, now just to be sure I'm hearing you correctly: you're saying that GRRM got some of his distances incorrect?

No, you are hearing me incorrectly. I think the guy who did the map that Wert linked got his distances incorrect.

[Ran]

GRRM also said it wasn't so big as Big Planet. I expect he imagines it's more than 5% bigger, but probably not more than 100% bigger. And as others said, it's a fantasy novel, and GRRM's never been a hard science geek. It's a setting where the seasons last random lengths of time for magical reasons, no great reason why the general climate isn't magical too. ;)

Edited by Ran, 26 October 2009 - 05:06 AM.

[Werthead]

Brude, on Oct 26 2009, 04.55, said:

I really think Westeros should be quite a bit bigger than that and some of the assumptions he made seem to be wrong about distances and travel times in the books (something I once did a breakdown about for some reason and found it worked pretty well).

He also seems to assume that South America is closer to to the South Pole (he says Antarctica) than it actually is (well, it's close to the northern most tip of Antarctica, so he's not entirely wrong). But Tierra del Fuego, the southern most tip of the continent is about as far South as central Scotland is North - about 55 degrees.

His Westeros is only about 1/2 or at most 2/3 the size of Europe, but if GRRM's description is accurate, it would be more than half again as big as Europe - approaching twice the size, really. (Europe is about 10 million KM sq., South America is a almost 18 million KM sq).

I think when GRRM said that, he meant the length of South America, which is about 4,400 miles from the Panama Canal to Tierra del Fuego. The widest part of Westeros is only about 900 miles across, as far as can be told, which is much narrower than the widest part of South America (which is about 3,100 miles). The total area of the continent is radically smaller than South America.

The distance is very easy: just use the Wall as a scale bar, which GRRM once said is valid (if not pin-pointedly accurate: the Wall isn't exactly 300 miles long and is rounded up or down, possibly by quite a bit). On that scale, the Wall to the Summer Sea is 3,000 miles. If you put the Wall somewhere around the area of northern Norway or southern Greenland, than Dorne is about the latitude of Morocco, which works absolutely fine for me. On that basis Westeros in the picture is a little bit too small, but not radically so.

[Datepalm]

Werthead, on Oct 26 2009, 20.28, said:

I think when GRRM said that, he meant the length of South America, which is about 4,400 miles from the Panama Canal to Tierra del Fuego. The widest part of Westeros is only about 900 miles across, as far as can be told, which is much narrower than the widest part of South America (which is about 3,100 miles). The total area of the continent is radically smaller than South America.

The distance is very easy: just use the Wall as a scale bar, which GRRM once said is valid (if not pin-pointedly accurate: the Wall isn't exactly 300 miles long and is rounded up or down, possibly by quite a bit). On that scale, the Wall to the Summer Sea is 3,000 miles. If you put the Wall somewhere around the area of northern Norway or southern Greenland, than Dorne is about the latitude of Morocco, which works absolutely fine for me. On that basis Westeros in the picture is a little bit too small, but not radically so.

Is the tilt of the continent canonical? I find Dorne to be so much further south than old town surprising, if fairly logical, as well as the vast areas of the western North that actually lie further north than the wall. I think Dorne either lies a bit further south, or isn't all that dry, or has some configuration of mountains or sea currents we haven't been shown, to explain the desert climate.

[Werthead]

Datepalm, on Nov 15 2009, 19.02, said:

Is the tilt of the continent canonical? I find Dorne to be so much further south than old town surprising, if fairly logical, as well as the vast areas of the western North that actually lie further north than the wall. I think Dorne either lies a bit further south, or isn't all that dry, or has some configuration of mountains or sea currents we haven't been shown, to explain the desert climate.

I think the tilt is pretty much a straigh north-south direction along the length of the continent, as in the maps (with the North direction bar pointing straight vertically up the continent), not tilted at several degrees as on the comparison map.