Reading the text, walking the terrain, following the map: Do we see the same landscape?

Abstract

Maps and texts are different media. Reading a text gives quite a different understanding of an unknown landscape from the one learned from reading a map. This paper will show in some detail how maps and verbal texts are different media, and how these differences have consequences not only for how things are said, but also for what can be said at all using these two media. In an interview at the farm Solem in August 1742, farmer Ole Nilsen said that ‘North of there, no peasant farms are found’ (Schnitlers 1962: 152). How can we put the knowledge expressed in this sentence on a map? First we need to know where to put the ‘there’ referred to and how far north the ‘north of there’ implies. Given that we are able to decide on that, how do we express the fact that no farms are found? We could make the area north of ‘there’ blank. But blankness on a map does not say ‘no farms’, it rather says ‘nothing of interest’ – after all, we know there are things everywhere; stone, trees, etc., and maybe a farm or two, even if the map is blank. How can we better understand such problems? The method to be presented in the paper includes the creation of a conceptual model of the geographical information read out of a text. By attempting to produce maps from the information modelled, the differences between what can be expressed in the text and what can be expressed as a map is documented.