Wednesday, May 09, 2007
More map info:
Tweening was mentioned when I gave my presentation. I think the smoothness was accomplished by placing keyframes every 5 frames. I endeavored to make each jump about 100 miles. The idea being that the Vikings could travel about that far in a day. Of course this means ideal conditions. It still seems unlikely but if you go by the directions in the quote below that is what you get - about 100 miles a day. I am not sure that I accomplished it but it was the goal.
This quote comes from page 15 of the Introduction of The Vinland Sagas translated by Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Palsson published by Penguin England 1965:
"It (the following quote) is found in Landnamabok (Book of the Settlements), which describes the settlement of Iceland during the period A.D. 870-930 and was originally compiled in the twelfth century:
'According to learned men, it is seven days' sail from Stad in Norway to Horn in the east of Iceland; and from Snaefellness [on the west coast of Iceland] it is four days' sail to Cape Farewell in Greenland. From Hern Island off Norway, one can sail due west to Cape Farewell, passing north of Shetland close enough to see it clearly in good visibility, and south of the Faroes half-sunk below the horizon, and a day's sail to the south of Iceland.
From Reykjaness in the south of Iceland it is five days' sail to Slyne Head in Ireland.
From Langaness in the north of Iceland it is four days' sail to Jan Mayen Island, at the end of the ocean, and a days' sail from Kolbeins Island [to the north of Iceland] to the uninhabited regions of Greenland.' "
So it would seem somewhere between 50 and 100 miles a day. I am sure this was greatly affected by the direction they were going especially with regard to the prevaling winds and so forth.
Yesterday when posting my resources I inadvertantly left off a map that was very helpful to me when making my map. It is to be found here:
►www.wesleyjohnston.com/users/ireland/maps/historical/vikings_ireland_851.gif&imgrefurl
Tweening was mentioned when I gave my presentation. I think the smoothness was accomplished by placing keyframes every 5 frames. I endeavored to make each jump about 100 miles. The idea being that the Vikings could travel about that far in a day. Of course this means ideal conditions. It still seems unlikely but if you go by the directions in the quote below that is what you get - about 100 miles a day. I am not sure that I accomplished it but it was the goal.
This quote comes from page 15 of the Introduction of The Vinland Sagas translated by Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Palsson published by Penguin England 1965:
"It (the following quote) is found in Landnamabok (Book of the Settlements), which describes the settlement of Iceland during the period A.D. 870-930 and was originally compiled in the twelfth century:
'According to learned men, it is seven days' sail from Stad in Norway to Horn in the east of Iceland; and from Snaefellness [on the west coast of Iceland] it is four days' sail to Cape Farewell in Greenland. From Hern Island off Norway, one can sail due west to Cape Farewell, passing north of Shetland close enough to see it clearly in good visibility, and south of the Faroes half-sunk below the horizon, and a day's sail to the south of Iceland.
From Reykjaness in the south of Iceland it is five days' sail to Slyne Head in Ireland.
From Langaness in the north of Iceland it is four days' sail to Jan Mayen Island, at the end of the ocean, and a days' sail from Kolbeins Island [to the north of Iceland] to the uninhabited regions of Greenland.' "
So it would seem somewhere between 50 and 100 miles a day. I am sure this was greatly affected by the direction they were going especially with regard to the prevaling winds and so forth.
Yesterday when posting my resources I inadvertantly left off a map that was very helpful to me when making my map. It is to be found here:
►www.wesleyjohnston.com/users/ireland/maps/historical/vikings_ireland_851.gif&imgrefurl
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
For my final project I have mapped the Viking invasions of the 8th, 9th, and 10th centuries. It took much longer than I thought it would. The map is called Viking Age Expansion. I have a few notes about the map:
The first known Viking attacks which were in Lindesfarne and Jarrow, both on the west coast of England, have been attributed to "Danes"--as in Danes from Denmark. I think it is more likely that they were Norwegians. If you look at this map you will see that the prepoderance of early raiders came from Norway. Denmark didn't really get in on the action until about the 830's. I cannot say this conclusively at this point however because there is more data out there to be mined. Therefore the map is necessarily not complete.
The Dane's are said to have been raiding on the Frisian coast. I do not have dates or any more specifics therefore those raids do not show up on the map.
In the the 850's or so the Norsemen changed thier method of attack. During that time they began to set up local bases and attack from there. That is not on this map. The scale of the map would not allow that kind of detail.
The impacts shown on the map are not representative of any geographical measurement of distance. They are merely an impact point.
I gathered data from many readily available sources. A bibliography will appear at the end of this post.
I think it is very interesting to look at the trade routes in place when the Norsemen were doing thier raiding. Here a couple that I have found...they just loaded to the top of the posting....They provide a good context for what was going on at the time of the Northern expansion. Scandinavia was not an isolated area, they were actively involved with trade networks. They knew what was out there and - when they were ready - they went out and took it.
Below are the links to where I found those maps:
►http://www.mcah.columbia.edu/medmil/pages/non-mma-pages/maps/penguinpg43.html
§http://www.mcah.columbia.edu/medmil/pages/non-mma-pages/maps/penguinpg59.html
►http://www.mcah.columbia.edu/medmil/pages/non-mma-pages/maps/penguinpg43.html
§http://www.mcah.columbia.edu/medmil/pages/non-mma-pages/maps/penguinpg59.html
Bibliography:
Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, trans. Leo Sherley-Price, revised by R.E. Latham (London: Penguin, 1990) 148.
Kenneth O. Morgan, Oxford History of Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) 78.
The Vinland Sagas: The Norse Discovery of America trans. Magnus Magnusson and Herman Palsson (London: Penguin, 1965) 13.
Snorre Sturlason Heimskringla:or The Lives of the Norse Kings, translated by Erling Monsen and A.H. Smith (New York: Dover,1990) 43-76.
Farley Mowat, WestViking: The Ancient Norse in Greenland and North America, (Boston: Little, Brown, 1965) 15.
Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger, The Year 1000: What Life was like at the Turn of the First Millennium (Boston: Little, Brown, 1999) 139.
Sallie Baliunas,PhD and Willie Soon PhD, “Recent Warming is not historically unique,” Enviromenal News Jan.2001
Tryggvi J. Oleson, Early Voyages and Northern Approaches 1000-1632, (London: Oxford University Press, 1964) 119.
Eleanor Guralnick Vikings in the West, Papers presented at a symposium (Chicago: 1982)
Gwyn Jones, The NorseAtlantic Saga:Being the Norse Voyages of Discovery and Settlement to Icleland, Greenland, America, (London: Oxford University Press, 1964)
Jared Diamond Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, (New York: Norton, 1999)
Sallie Baliunas,PhD and Willie Soon PhD, “Recent Warming is not historically unique,” Enviromenal News Jan.2001
Tryggvi J. Oleson, Early Voyages and Northern Approaches 1000-1632, (London: Oxford University Press, 1964) 119.
Eleanor Guralnick Vikings in the West, Papers presented at a symposium (Chicago: 1982)
Gwyn Jones, The NorseAtlantic Saga:Being the Norse Voyages of Discovery and Settlement to Icleland, Greenland, America, (London: Oxford University Press, 1964)
Jared Diamond Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, (New York: Norton, 1999)
Monday, May 07, 2007
Check out Christian Nord's website. These are interesting maps. Very different. He is an artist in England who asks people to walk a circuit while wearing his gear which is a GPS unit and a lie-detector combo. The result is what he calls emotion maps. These maps show emotion reactions to the space where the person walks. While intensity is recorded it is not possible to tell if it is positive or negative. When he first started the project he used paper base maps and a series of dots to illustrate the route taken changing the color of the dots with the emotion level. Now he is using Google Earth.
I thought they were neat to look at.
I thought they were neat to look at.
