Tuesday, May 4, 2010

OMG Maps! Strange Maps!

I love maps. And I love strangeness. So imagine my delight to discover the blog, "Strange Maps."

If you liked the Great Soda Divide, or you find yourself constantly referring to the map of strange lands printed on the inside cover of your fantasy fiction to figure out where the characters are, or if you like to look at familiar things in new and interesting ways...

... then check out Strange Maps. I am so totally hooked.


In honor of cool maps, I give you a detail of the c. 1639 "Manatus" map, zoomed in on Manhattan. Probably done by Vinckeboons; I love his Delaware River map as well.

Detail, from the Stony Brook University website. The original is at the Library of Congress -- search the Digital Map Collections for Manatvs.

3 comments:

RPS77 said...

My favorite maps are the old ones that are a mix of good information and wishful thinking (the Northwest passage must be just beyond the next range of mountains, right?) It's like getting a historical map and a fantasy world map at the same time.

I also like alternate history maps, with borders, nations, cities, etc., that never actually existed, but that's just part of my fascination with "what if?" history.

squadratomagico said...

My favorite map site:
http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/EMwebpages/EML.html

Ink said...

That's really beautiful.

You know what I love? How someone wrote "Hic sunt dracones" (here be dragons) on the Lenox Globe back in the day.