A cartographic study of the lands of Ice and Fire: the true size of the North

[Turin Turambar]

http://ibbenesecartographer.blogspot.ro/2013/05/the-true-size-of-north.html

an interesting in-depth analysis.

[thecryptile]

Wow, I hadn't realized they were using the Mercator projection for these maps!! That makes a huge difference in the size of the North.

It's cheating to assume because of the show that Westeros is the same mass as Earth, though.

[kkae]

Very cool.

The North looks small and sad on a globe.

[Kienn]

It's cheating to assume because of the show that Westeros is the same mass as Earth, though.

You could say the same for all the assumptions... but that's why they're called assumptions and identified beforehand. It's pretty nice cause if you think an assumption is totally ridiculous you can save time by not reading the rest.

If only people could always state their assumptions on the forums...

[Morienthar]

Didn't GRRM say Planetos is a bit larger than Earth??

[Turin Turambar]

Didn't GRRM say Planetos is a bit larger than Earth??

well then, assuming it has the same density as Earth, the gravitational force would be stronger...which would pose many problems for the humans (I guess they have the same physiology as us, homo sapiens) inhabiting it...

[Free Northman]

This guy's projection is completely flawed, because as he himself states, he comes to a surface area for the North of 415,000 square miles. Yet what he ignores is that the measuring stick that should be applied to scale the map, is in fact situated at the very top of the North, namely the Wall. And it is 300 miles long. Using that, it is clear that the North exceeds 1 MILLION square miles in size. More than twice the size he arrives at.

His mistake is that he assumed that the map of Westeros was drawn based on longtitude and latitude, and that the North South alignment of various areas should remain on the same longtitude as you go North to South.

This is a false assumption, as there is no indication that Maesters in Westeros even know of or in any way use longtitude and latitude to draw their maps.

Instead, the flat map of Westeros most likely is drawn without any reference to longtitude, and is simply based on local estimates of distance. E.G, the Dreadfort and Karhold are 300 miles apart and thus that part of the map is scaled accordingly.

Similarly, Storms End and Kings Landing are 300 miles apart and therefore THAT part of the map is also scaled accordingly. To get a map of the entire Westeros, all of these local maps were just added together. The joins are simply not as seamless as they appear on the map, but that is to be expected of a medieval level society.

On this fellow's map, Winterfell and Deepwood Motte are suddenly only 150 miles apart, despite the fact that we know from Dance that it is 300 miles as the crow flies between the two.

So to conclude, the methodology used to try and fit the map of Westeros onto a globe is flawed in the Westerosi context, and the conclusions drawn therefrom are false.

[The hairy bear]

This is GRRM's regarding the size of his world: "Yes, the world is round. Might be a little larger than ours, though. I was thinking more like Vance's Big Planet.... but don't hold me to that."

That renders the second and the third premises of the study invalid. And as FN says, the fourth can also be discarded as it's directly contradicted by the text. A nice work, though, and beautifully presented.

[koststerg]

If the north and espesially the lands beyond the Wall are that much north shouldn't they have very long days and nights? I don't remember any such reference at least for the places that Jon has been. Turin I think this is a very good efford but It might be better to base it more on given distances as Free Northman says than on climate because we know that the climate is the result of magic. To give you an example think of where the ice was during the ice ages (and the influence of the Others seems to produce this kind of effect). The element of fire (for exampe Assai) could work the same way in the south

[Olligarchy]

Interesting, but flawed as Free Northmans post points out. I do give the guy props for attempting to get accurate size for the world though.

[Turin Turambar]

I liked his attempt in mapping, given the lackluster data available, though, as I already stated, if ASOIAF world is larger than ours, new complications arise. Of course, we can explain any inadequacy by magic, but still...

[Free Northman]

The likely answer is that GRRM simply did not consider the cartographic implications of a global map. He wanted the North to be almost as big as the other kingdoms combined and that's how he drew it on his flat piece of paper. And thus it shall remain.

[Riptide]

This guy's projection is completely flawed, because as he himself states, he comes to a surface area for the North of 415,000 square miles. Yet what he ignores is that the measuring stick that should be applied to scale the map, is in fact situated at the very top of the North, namely the Wall. And it is 300 miles long. Using that, it is clear that the North exceeds 1 MILLION square miles in size. More than twice the size he arrives at.

His mistake is that he assumed that the map of Westeros was drawn based on longtitude and latitude, and that the North South alignment of various areas should remain on the same longtitude as you go North to South.

This is a false assumption, as there is no indication that Maesters in Westeros even know of or in any way use longtitude and latitude to draw their maps.

Instead, the flat map of Westeros most likely is drawn without any reference to longtitude, and is simply based on local estimates of distance. E.G, the Dreadfort and Karhold are 300 miles apart and thus that part of the map is scaled accordingly.

Similarly, Storms End and Kings Landing are 300 miles apart and therefore THAT part of the map is also scaled accordingly. To get a map of the entire Westeros, all of these local maps were just added together. The joins are simply not as seamless as they appear on the map, but that is to be expected of a medieval level society.

On this fellow's map, Winterfell and Deepwood Motte are suddenly only 150 miles apart, despite the fact that we know from Dance that it is 300 miles as the crow flies between the two.

So to conclude, the methodology used to try and fit the map of Westeros onto a globe is flawed in the Westerosi context, and the conclusions drawn therefrom are false.

This.

[Neds Head]

Is King's Landing not meant to be around 1000 leagues from the wall? If that's 3000 miles, then I suppose the North would be around 2000 from top to bottom, give or take?

[FuriousGeorge]

This is GRRM's regarding the size of his world: "Yes, the world is round. Might be a little larger than ours, though. I was thinking more like Vance's Big Planet.... but don't hold me to that."

That renders the second and the third premises of the study invalid. And as FN says, the fourth can also be discarded as it's directly contradicted by the text. A nice work, though, and beautifully presented.

Does not render anything invalid. Note the use of the word 'might' and the phrase 'don't hold me to that'. It seems like whenever anyone asks GRRM to go into more depth about population sizes, economic systems and other structural factors that underlie Westeros and Essos he is evasive. This is because, unfortunately, GRRM is not actually god, and isn't actually building a world he is just writing story. Therefore any speculation like this is just as valid as any other speculation.

[Turin Turambar]

Does not render anything invalid. Note the use of the word 'might' and the phrase 'don't hold me to that'. It seems like whenever anyone asks GRRM to go into more depth about population sizes, economic systems and other structural factors that underlie Westeros and Essos he is evasive. This is because, unfortunately, GRRM is not actually god, and isn't actually building a world he is just writing story. Therefore any speculation like this is just as valid as any other speculation.

After all, he is a writer, not a cartographer/scientist/anthropologist and so on.

[FuriousGeorge]

After all, he is a writer, not a cartographer/scientist/anthropologist and so on.

Exactly.

[The Fallen]

` Do we know if the map is finished? If it is, should the far east wrap around towards Westeros? In the cartographers map there is way too much space in between the two continents. But I'm no expert, so my comments could be foolish.

But I applaud him for taking the time out.

[Penguin king]

I don't see why we should just assume the map uses Mercator, when it's known for distorting sizes greatly on the North-South axis. There are plenty of other projections out there that focus on area conservation at the expense of shape.

[Yukle]

This guy's projection is completely flawed, because as he himself states, he comes to a surface area for the North of 415,000 square miles. Yet what he ignores is that the measuring stick that should be applied to scale the map, is in fact situated at the very top of the North, namely the Wall. And it is 300 miles long. Using that, it is clear that the North exceeds 1 MILLION square miles in size. More than twice the size he arrives at.

...

On this fellow's map, Winterfell and Deepwood Motte are suddenly only 150 miles apart, despite the fact that we know from Dance that it is 300 miles as the crow flies between the two.

So to conclude, the methodology used to try and fit the map of Westeros onto a globe is flawed in the Westerosi context, and the conclusions drawn therefrom are false.

Excellently put. There are other errors in here as well: Robert says that it takes as much time to cross the North as it does the entire South. This would mean that his experiences contradict what should actually happen. so it can be assumed that he hasn't somehow neglected to notice that the trip through the North was only a third of what it was supposed to be.

Another assumption is that the cartographers in Westeros use such a projection. It only makes sense to use a projection when you're aware that you're mapping a sphere and how big the sphere is. They'd probably be aware within Westeros that whole-world maps are somewhat inaccurate but cannot put their fingers on why. But all lines of longitude and latitude are arbitrary; you could make the medians run through any points you like and it'd change the projections. Perhaps they begin their meridians where we place the equator.

It's an interesting analysis, but since it contradicts the experiences within the books, as Free Northman points out much better than I have, it cannot be right. It's clever nonetheless!