The Mystery of the First Blackmoor Map

 In this POST from a few years ago, I was concerned with the issue of scale and distance in Blackmoor in the course of which I attempted to determine the intended scale of the "original Northern Marches" - the March 1971 map of Blackmoor - by fitting it onto a map of the Netherlands. For those unaware, the reason for doing so is that in the FFC, Arneson said his Blackmoor map was modeled on a map of Holland. Of course, there have been several attempts by different folks over the years, trying to figure out how Blackmoor might fit on a map of the Netherlands. For the most part it was assumed, by me certainly and I think others, that Arneson's "old Dutch map" on which he based his map of Blackmoor was a 19th or 18th century one.

It was purely on a whim, mostly because I wanted an accurate scalebar, that I choose to look for an older 20th century example to use instead, and so I settled on a colorful Rand McNally Atlas map of the Netherlands from the 1930's.

I now think this map I had more or less stumbled on is the very map that Arneson actually used, and I have come to this conclusion in the light of new material from the Fletcher collection.

There were several outstanding maps among the material Ken Fletcher had collected and handed over to Griff Morgan at last years Arnecon, now published in the Blackmoor Foundations book.

Two of these in particular caught my eye, as being truly Foundational.  I wasn't sure if these two maps on separate sheets, one vertical and one landscape in orientation, were part of the same drawing or would go together but shortly after I mentioned they might be related (and that one of the maps had been scanned upside down, the other sideways) Michael Calleia   http://chanceand.com/  demonstrated not only were they related but they fit together seamlessly, like this:

What you are looking at is, almost certainly, the original "proto Blackmoor" map. For the rest of this post I will refer to this map as the "Ur" map for convenience. Of course, this isn't a Blackmoor map at all, but a map of central Holland, drawn by Arneson, most likely on a light table or using a projector or some such.  You would be forgiven if you don't see an immediate resemblance to Blackmoor as you know it, especially considering how "busy" the Arneson map is.  However if you look closely you can clearly see Glendower peninsula with it's funny little finger of land at the northern tip, and that curving western coastline noticeable in Arneson's March of 1971 Blackmoor map but turned to dry land in all later versions. To show you what I mean, here is the same map superimposed on the Rand McNally Netherlands map.

And here it is again ghosted:

And here it is with the March 1971 "Northern Marches" map of Blackmoor, that heretofore was our oldest know map (note I colored in the water on this version to add clarity):

I don't know why the "Ur" map was created. Arneson's Corner of the Table Top newsletter does mention a planned Napoleonics campaign in the Netherlands and it seems quite possible that is what the map was originally made for, before becoming repurposed as a basis for Blackmoor, but at this point I'm only speculating. If that were the case it seems a bit odd to use a twentieth century map for an early nineteenth century campaign, but maybe that was all Arneson had access to and perhaps the inaccuracies seen here and there, the occasional odd line, and the non-matching settlements are a result of imperfect tracing conditions compensated for with creative license. In any case, what this series of map images hopefully demonstrates is that the "Ur map" was traced off of the Rand McNally map, and the 1971 Northern Marches map was then traced off of a portion of that. The Rand McNally map is sure to be the model as can be seen most clearly in the Markermeer/Ljssemeer / Blackmoor Bay region of the Ur map.

Note in particular the red outlined areas with red diagonal lines marked NE, and NW in what is now the Ljssemeer lake region of the Netherlands. These lined areas only appear on Rand McNally maps and I have only found it on maps in atlases with print dates ranging from 1936 to 1941. The one I used was dated 1937.  The red slashed areas represent a land reclamation project begun in 1932, never fully completed and later changed, so you won't see these areas marked on earlier maps at all or in the same shape on later maps of the Netherlands.

However, looking at the Ur map, we see that Arneson traced the red diagonal area marked NE nearly exactly as if it were land:

Identifying these maps is a breakthrough, but only a start.  I notice for example, that many of the roads, rivers and borders in the Rand McNally map line up with lines on the Ur map that could be roads or rivers, but many of the other features such as lakes, forests, mountains and swamp seem to be filled in by Arneson without much regard for the real topography of the Netherlands. Settlements also seem to have been placed by Arneson without regard to the location of actual Ducth towns.

One humorous exception I noted is that there is a city marked on Blackmoor maps at the corresponding location of Amsterdam on the Netherlands map, and that city is none other than the Coots Nest of the Egg of Coot! 

We are only scratching the surface here, but for this post I want to bring in one more observation of particular interest to Greyhawk fans. One the many fascinating bits of information Jon Peterson related in the Dungeons & Dragons - the Making of Original D&D 1970-1977 book sprang to mind as I looked at this map of Blackmoor on Holland. On page 18 Jon offhandedly mentioned that "Arneson was allocated the Northern Marches; he originally planned for this realm to occupy the northwest corner of the map below the Far Ocean, but Gygax placed it at the innermost cove of the Great Bay instead." 

According to Rob Kuntz, who was in charge of the newsletter at the time, Arneson was involved with preparing the images due to Gary Gygax having lost access to the necessary equipment. In this case he would have had the opportunity to pick his spot before the map was published. If one looks at the Great Kingdom map and at the Blackmoor map it is easy to see what Arneson was thinking.  Here is the "official" map as it appeared in the Domesday book Newsletter in 1971:

In fact, we can drop the Netherlands map right into that section like so.

In place ghosted:

That region of the Greyhawk map is now occupied by Ekbir. Placing Blackmoor here further removes it from the sphere of the Great Kingdom and Greyhawk city which may be why Gygax moved it, but it does explain more readily why there were "Paynim" nomad raiders just to the south of Blackmoor. 

 Perhaps we will explore more in future posts.