Throughout most of history, people have made maps to help them get where they are going and to document what they have found. Cartographers of the past are in no small part responsible for ensuring ships and people traveling were able to get where they need to go, thus helping humans to spread around the globe.

In the age of GPS, one might think that cartography was no longer useful, but that is certainly not the case.

Researchers in Poland have recently put together a beautiful map that puts together data showing how and where reports of supernatural beings are located along the Polish-German border.

This includes huge amounts of folklore, all put together in one convenient place. The map is publically available and published in the Journal of Maps.

The researchers collected accounts from various places dating back centuries.

In the paper published with the map, the researchers explain:

“Images of the supernatural world are recognised as valuable and important intangible aspects of heritage, and their mapping has been an integral part of ethnographic works. Thanks to the quantitative approach in Computational Folkloristics, databases of verbal folklore are now being created that allow a quick spatial analysis of the occurrence of individual belief motifs, but also capture their socio-cultural-landscape context.”

Gathering all of this data in one convenient place helps to illustrate just how widespread folklore really is. Whether the lore is simply a fun local story, an explanation of phenomena that was not understood, or a strongly held local belief, it can all be found on this map.

Putting it on a classic-looking map not only gives a visual representation of the data that was gathered, but also adds to the whimsey of the important subject. The researchers say:

“Considering the nature of the data obtained, we decided to create a map that would combine different research and artistic perspectives. Our map stems from the aspiration to merge artistic and symbolic elements reminiscent of Renaissance maps with the capabilities afforded by modern [Geographic Information System (GIS)] tools. It serves as both a homage to the distinguished cartographers of the 17^th and 18^th centuries and a manifestation of the postmodern concept of synthesising and juxtaposing diverse forms, structures and methodologies, which facilitates the creation of maps of rich multidimensional significance.”

To see this folklore map overlaid with a modern GPS map of the same area, make sure to check out the following brief video:

This is an impressive piece of work.

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