Cartography – Techniques of Digital Heraldry

Mapping the Changing Cantons

Back in 2017 I drew a map of the Crown Province and its neighbors, which I updated a few years later to reflect subsequent changes.

Unsurprisingly, with the passage of time, that version too is on the edge of becoming obsolete, and so I have refreshed it one more time to show the anticipated name change of the Canton of Whyt Whey to the Canton of Appleholm, and the reinstatement of the Canton of Northpass, both of which are expected to occur in the coming months.

It will be interesting to revisit this in a few years and see what else has changed!

A Parochial New Yorker’s Map of the Current Middle Ages

This illustration is a play on SCA geography shown as a medieval T-and-O map crossed with the classic New Yorker cover.

Manhattan is in the center of the world (rightly so), with the West at the top, Long Island in the bottom left, and New England in bottom right.

(Hat tip to Þorfinn for the original idea, Angelica for the New Yorker tie-in, Brían for a great first round of Latin corrections, and Maral for a Canadian vocabulary suggestion.)

Also available in a provincial version that highlights all four modern cantons.

A guide to the labels and placenames, written in Vulgar Latin:

Nova Terra Vetus: The New Ancient World.
Occidens, Meridies, Oriens, Septentrio: Cardinal directions, with West at the top (medieval maps frequently had East at the top).
Mare Oceanum Procellarum: Ocean of Storms.
Atlantia: The Kingdom of Atlantia occupies the southeast of the US.
Caidis: The Kingdom of Caid lies in southern California
Nebulae: San Francisco and the Bay Area are the Principality of the Mists.
Scoutum Boreale: The Kingdom of Northshield covers central Canada and the upper Midwest.
Dracones mediorum: A dragon is the badge of The Middle Kingdom.
AEthelmearcus: The Kingdom of Æthelmearc is located due west of our kingdom.
Salamandrae: A salamander is the badge of the Barony of Bhakail, located around Philadelphia.
Incolae paludis: These “swamp dwellers” are inhabitants of the Barony of Settmour Swamp.
Concordia: The Barony of Concordia of the Snows is located in the Capitol Region of New York, around Albany.
Magnum Portum: New York’s “great harbor” connects the city to the ocean.
Hudsonicum: The Hudson river leads north from the city, and thanks to the Champlain canal, connects to the ocean via the St. Lawrence seaway.
Foramen: The Long Island Sound is the third “opening” connecting the city to the world’s oceans.
Insula Pomorum: The “island of apples” is Manhattan, the Big Apple.
Pontem fractum: The Canton of Brokenbridge is located in Brooklyn.
Leonis finem: The Canton of Lions End fills Nassau County.
Abyssi: The “people of the abyss” reside in the Barony An Dubhaigeainn, “of the dark ones” or perhaps “of the dark abyss,” a description of the waters of the Sound.
Aquilonis silvis: The “northern forests” of Østgarðr.
Draconavis: The Barony of Dragonship Haven lies across the Sound in southern Connecticut.
Carolingea: The Barony of Carolingia is located in and around Boston.
Tir Mara: The Crown Principality of Tir Mara is the Canadian portion of the East Kingdom, the “land of the sea.”

An Updated Map of Østgarðr

Back in 2017, I put together a map of the Crown Province of Østgarðr and its cantons, as well as our neighboring shires and baronies.

Over the winter I updated the map to reflect a few changes in status the have accumulated in the intervening years — the Incipient Shire of Nordfjord has been promoted to the Shire of Old Stonebridges, while the Canton of Northpass and the Shire of Frosted Hills have been dissolved — but I forgot to post the new version to this site, which error I’m now rectifying.

(Click the map for a much-larger version.)

A Geographic History Of The East Kingdom

In AS XXIV (early 1990), Lord Richard the Poor assembled a collection of maps setting forth the growth and evolution of the SCA branches that make up the East Kingdom. Covering two decades, the maps provide a visual reference for the kingdom’s growth from a few isolated groups in New York and Boston to dozens of baronies, cantons, and shires covering the region.

Originally hand-drawn and typeset in the days of dot-matrix printers, the book had fallen out of circulation with only a single copy available online, on the Æthelmark history web site. With Lord Richard’s permission, I am making the original work available for download here (45 MB PDF) and have converted it to a more web-accessible form.

A Map of Østgarðr

I have no particular cartographic skills, but have been meaning to try my hand at a map of the Crown Province and its cantons.

Attached is a halting first step in that direction — not totally wretched, but it leaves a lot to be desired. Perhaps some day I’ll set aside the time to come back to this and try to further beautify it.

(Updated following discussion on Facebook. Thanks to Jeff Morton to pointing out that I had left out the newly-formed Shire of Midland Vale — an omission which has now been corrected. And thanks to the numerous people who hashed out the status of the Bronx, which isn’t formally part of Northpass as had been indicated in the first version of this map. The new version also has “swamp” markings in Settmour, which I think turned out nicely, but I’m not as happy with the modern “forest” indications in Northpass and Midland Vale — maybe someday I’ll get a chance to replace those with little tree markers like the ones from John Speed’s map of 1605.)