fuck yeah cartography!

willigula:

I saw this seventeenth century map of Bergen by the Dutch cartographer Jan Janssonius and thought it looked an awful lot like Tolkien’s map of Beleriand. Of course I have it all backward, because Tolkien copied Jansson’s style, but I read Lord Of The Rings when I was a kid, so that is how the association works in my mind. To this day when I think about maps, I think about sugarloaf mountains and little trees.