Proto-Surrealist, handy object.

Glove map of London, 1851, by George Shove. Printed map on leather.

Have you ever jotted down directions on the palm of your hand, for lack of a piece of paper? This glove map of London, created by George Shove to help organise the sprawling grounds for visitors to the Great Exhibition of 1851, would be the more sophisticated version of a hand sketch. The Exposition’s Crystal Palace is near the base of the palm, St. Paul’s Cathedral across two fingers and Kensington Gardens near the wrist.

Currently on display in the exhibition Maps: Finding Our Place in the World at the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.

Mapping Surrealist icons.

From the maps-series by Manchester-based artist, writer and curator Heidi Schaefer.

Blown out of proportion.

Surrealist Map of the World, 1929.
From a special issue of Variétés, a Brussels-based magazine, entitled Le Surréalisme en 1929.

The Surrealists amused themselves by creating a map that puts imperialist powers in their place. For example: other than Alaska, the United States are invisible; mainland Britain is dwarfed by Ireland; Easter Island looms over a tiny Australia; and only two cities are marked, Paris and Constantinople, with the rest of France and Turkey missing.

More than anything, this is a map of the Surrealists’ cultural ideals. A 1925 Surrealist declaration stated, “Even more than patriotism - which is a quite commonplace sort of hysteria, though emptier and shorter-lived than most - we are disgusted by the idea of belonging to a country at all, which is the most bestial and least philosophic of the concepts to which we are all subjected… Wherever Western civilization is dominant, all human contact has disappeared, except contact from which money can be made - payment in hard cash.”

Quoted from Katharine Harmon, You Are Here. Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination.

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World map with territories re-sized according to the variable “extinct species”.
From Worldmapper.

Extinction is when there is no reasonable doubt that the last individual of a species has died. Shown here is where over 700 species known to have become extinct last existed. Included are mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates and plants.

Many more species recorded as recently becoming extinct lived in the United States than anywhere else, followed by the United Republic of Tanzania, Uganda and Mauritius.

A large number of species live in Ecuador. The Galapagos Islands, where Charles Darwin developed his theory of evolution, are part of Ecuador. Many islands are prominent because islands are often home to unique species.

Territory size shows the proportion of species worldwide that became extinct between 1500 current era and 2004, that became extinct there.

Quoted from Worldmapper.

The Insatiable and Gluttonous Wolverine

“The insatiable and gluttonous wolverine emptying its stomach by squeezing itself between trees.”

I got my copy of Olaus Magnus’s 1539 commentary to his Carta Marina back from R. last week, so I’m finally able to post some of my favourite passages. Magnus divides the map into nine sections and describes the various scenes depicted on sea and land. Since it is to a large extent the succession of heterogeneous episodes and images that creates the description’s stunning effect (somewhat lost by choosing extracts), click on the following links to read (and see) the whole thing.

section A - section B - section C - section D - section E - section F - section G - section H - section I - whole map

Olaus Magnus Gothus greets the honourable reader.

A Iceland (Islandia), renowned for its unusual wonders

Four springs of very different nature: the first one by means of its eternal heat changes everything thrown into it into stone, while preserving the original shape, the second one is intolerably cold, the third one produces “beer”, the fourth one breathes forth destructive contagion.

White ravens, falcons, magpies, bears, wolves and hares; yet there are also totally black wolves.

The ice sounding like howling human voices and clearly indicating that human souls are being tormented here.

The pasture is so lush that unless the cattle are kept from grazing, they are destroyed through overfeeding.

Sea monsters, huge as mountains, capsize the ships if they are not frightened away by the sounds of trumpets or by throwing empty barrels into the sea.

B Greenland (Gruntlandia)

The insatiable and gluttonous wolverine emptying its stomach by squeezing itself between trees.

D Faroe Islands

Ducks being hatched from the fruit of the trees.

E Island of Scandia, arms of the Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway

A monster looking like a rhinocerus devours a lobster which is 12 feet long.

Plates are fastened as shields to the feet of the horses so that they will not sink down into the snow.

H Frisland (Frisia) and Denmark (Dania)

Collecting amber on the Prussian coast.

The town of Danzig; inhabited by well-to-do and honest citizens.

I Livonia (Livonia), Kurland (Terra Curetum) and Lithuania (Lituania)

Bears poking honey from the trees, are being beaten down by ironspiked clubs which have been hung there.

Is it any wonder Scandinavian countries attract me? Just stay away from contagious springs, sea monsters and insatiable wolverines…

Maps of the Imagination

I am told there are people who do not care for maps, and I find it hard to believe. The names, the shapes of the woodlands, the courses of the roads and rivers, the prehistoric footsteps of man still distinctly traceable up hill and down dale, the mills and the ruins, the ponds and the ferries, perhaps the Standing Stone of the Druidic Circle on the heath; here is an inexhaustible fund of interest for any man with eyes to see, or tuppenceworth of imagination to understand with. No child but must remember laying his head in the grass, staring into the infinitesimal forest, and seeing it grow populous with fairy armies. Somewhat in this way, as I pored upon my map of Treasure Island, the future characters of the book began to appear there visibly among imaginary woods; and their brown faces and bright weapons peeped out upon me from unexpected quarters, as they passed to and fro, fighting and hunting treasure, on these few square inches of a flat projection.

Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

Passage quoted in Katherine Harmon, You Are Here. Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination.

I saw a copy of Olaus Magnus’s Carta Marina at the University Library in Uppsala last November and thought it so fascinating that I bought a black-and-white poster of it (which still awaits being put up somewhere, shamefully). First published in 1539, it is one of the earliest maps of the Scandinavian countries and the Baltic coast line, and while it is largely visionary and imaginary, scientists recently discovered that its depictions of sea swirls and currents are surprisingly accurate. For a closer view of the fabulous sea monsters and details such as amber collectors (section H) or seal hunters (section C), click on the digitalised version here.