A multidisciplinary team of scientists, researchers and artists has created a striking map of Pomerania, northern Poland, to illustrate the spots once inhabited by fantastical spirits and creatures.
Prepared on a scale of 1:720,000, the so-called ‘Map of Monsters’ pinpoints the areas where devils, dragons, spirits, gnomes, giants, elves, wraiths and werewolves are said to have roamed, with the team’s findings based upon the careful historical research of ethnologist Dr. Robert Piotrowski of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN).
“We were mainly interested in local stories concerning uncanny events associated with a specific place,” says Piotrowski. “For example, religious legends that referred to witches meeting on a particular mountain, or boulders reputedly thrown by giants, dams built by devils, or swamps inhabited by will-o'-the-wisps.”
By combining existing natural landmarks and pairing them with the arcane beliefs associated with their origins, the team was able to demonstrate how these locations were once viewed and valued by locals.
To identify such legends, Piotrowski and his team trawled through archival 19th and early 20th century texts by German and Polish folklorists such as Otto Knoop, Karol Bartsch, Oskar Kolberg and Stefan Ramułt.
Using these texts as their foundation, the team collected 1,200 examples of supernatural phenomena in the region—of these, 600 are georeferenced on the map.
As unusual as the map’s content might be, it has been made all the more extraordinary by its presentation. Instead of opting for more orthodox and contemporary solutions, the team from PAN chose to adopt a style more in line with the Italian Renaissance period.
According to Dr. Włodzimierz Juśkiewicz, PAN’s cartographer, it was during this era that mapmakers and artists particularly excelled in their depictions of demons and otherworldly beings.
Inspired by this tradition, it was on Juśkiewicz’s pressing that a map was created that not only informed but also visually delighted—as such, the map has a convincing Olde Worlde flavor thanks, in part, to its rich AI-developed illustrations of monsters.
The map—which is available for free download at the Journal of Maps—has won plaudits for the manner in which it has merged modern techniques with 19th-century ethnographic data and Renaissance aesthetics.
“Maps should focus on the recipient; the user should feel comfortable with the topic they are learning about, and they should look through a map with bated breath,” says Dr. Dariusz Brykała of PAN.
That PAN has stepped outside the norm to deliver something exceptional is not lost on Brykała: “We’ve created a new trend,” he says. “We have taken a step forward and shown how to make modern maps. We are at the forefront, and as such some will copy us, others will criticize us—but we are the ones who have shown a new way of presenting scientific content.”
