Wrong Map of Europe | Hacker News Reader

Wrong Map of Europe

phinjensen.com

42 pointsuncleshelby44 comments

The original map was produced by CIA in 2004, you can see it in Library of Congress.

https://www.loc.gov/resource/g5700.ct001785/?r=-0.179,-0.051...

Interesting - I wonder if it was used as a knowledge test. Everywhere you dig in on the map has inside jokes, plus small and large problems.

The original map doesn't have the jokes, only the modified version in TFA does.

Well then, never mind! :)

> “Vikingfjord” and “Smalahove” aren’t cities

However, "Smalahove" is placed more or less exactly on the Norwegian town of Voss, which - among other things - is known (in Norway at least) for the dish "Smalahove", seared and boiled sheeps head.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vossevangen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalahove

Oh, cool catch! I had Smalahove as a link, so I must have noticed it was a food at some point, but I forgot to actually put the URL in. I didn't realize the connection to Voss, though.

It would have been shorter to list only the correct markings on the map.

The entire top part of Denmark is missing. Everything above Limfjorden is missing, leaving a weird grab between Denmark, Sweden and Norway.

Came here to write this :-) Also known as the Nørrejyske Ø (North Jutlandic Island) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Jutlandic_Island

Thanks for pointing that out. I've updated the post.

"Tromsø is a region of Norway, not a city"

It's a city.

Wikipedia agrees with me: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troms%C3%B8

Spain is totally wrong:

- What is marked as "Andorra" should be "Catalonia", but should not be marked since it's not a country. Andorra is a city and a city-state, which should only be where it's marked as Andorra la Vella.

- What is marked as Catalonia is not even a real area, it's kindof Basque Country but shaped differently.

- All the cities are wrong, basically.

I guess it wanted to piss both independentists and non-independentists, since it's setting the two areas as different countries, BUT setting them wrong.

More errors for France:

- Beaujolais is in place of Lyon. Beaujolais is a wine region just north of it.

- "Tolose" is actually spelled "Toulouse"

- "Anduoillette" is actually Bordeaux. "Andouillette" (without the typo) is a pork sausage made from intestines. Typically french, but the region most associated with this food is in the opposite of the country, in the North-East.

- "Marsupial" is Marseille

> The arctic circle doesn’t pass through Iceland (though this may be a consequence of the rotation)

Not the mainland of Iceland, but it does pass through the Icelandic island of Grímsey, at least for the next couple decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grímsey#Arctic_Circle

Good call. I've update the post to reflect that.

Related Tom Scott

https://youtu.be/hr03xF08qoU?si=XfI-yJSQ6A28QWTm

Found another one: The Hebrides are in the wrong place, should be off the coast of Scotland, not Ireland

EDIT: also, the North Sea and Barentz Sea named are swapped, I think. I’m not 100% that’s where the Barentz Sea precisely is and cant be bothered to check

EDIT 2: Porto is actually a bit further south

Good catch. I've updated the post.

EDIT re: your edit: Wow. You're noticing things faster than I can update the post!

Actually I just noticed that the original map posted in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40652631 also has Porto a bit too far north :-D

> Zürich isn’t the capital of Switzerland, Geneva is…

No.. It's Bern

Oh, thank you for pointing that out! It's fixed now.

No, Switzerland does not have a capital de jure.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland#cite_note-fedcit...

> P.S. I have no idea what the original source of this map is. If you happen to know, please tell me!

There is scatological adage: "Whoever smelt it, dealt it."

It would have been a much shorter list with the actually correct labels. 90% is wrong.

Oliwa is a district of Gdansk and not the city itself. Up to 1926 it was indeed independent but way smaller.

Interesting! I love how much I'm learning from this. Thanks for pointing that out, I updated the post to reflect that.

This. The map could be used in geography class as test.

“ Mousehole are the only correctly placed and named cities in the UK”

Had to smile at the ideal of household being a city!

"Bringmeham" for Birmingham is proof that this is a joke and not some heinous error, right?

Pretty much everywhere you look is wrong, it’s deliberately wrong

So, it's only Liechtenstein and Monaco being the correctly mapped European countries?

As a born Rotterdammer, I find the placement of Amsterdam extremely upsetting. Well done ;)

Probably a variant of the trap streets to detect map copies, but it went a bit too far.

Balearic sea is spelled as Baelish sea. (B2)

Good catch. Thanks!

All's well in Balkans. Moving along...

Turin is now... Turambar!

As a Tolkien fan, I really like this change [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Túrin_Turambar

> Putingrad doesn’t exist

Not yet...

Stalingrad (now Volgograd) looks to be where Kursk is.

Gulf of Finland is marked as "Gulf of Sweden".

But Koskenkorva is actually a town.

Carthago is Carthage in English, the state which existed in present day Tunisia from which Hannibal sailed and crossed the alps on elephants. Carthage was later destroyed by the romans.

Can I guess it's AI-generated?

It has the same forced-to-BS-beyond-real-knowledge feel. It gets most of the outlines right-ish, but just hallucinates a bunch of other stuff.

In the spirit of https://xkcd.com/2945/ , and having heard the adage that "Wars are God's way of teaching Geography to americans", I had just assumed it was some mortal's attempt at a method involving less "collateral damage".

Very unlikely. Many mistakes are small jokes. Norway, for example, has cities named Nynorsk and Bokmål, which are actually the names of two different standards of Norwegian language. Ukraine has a city named Salo, an obvious reference to salo the food. Denmark's capital is called Legoland on the map and located roughly where Billund is (the town with Legoland).

> Norway, for example, has cities named Nynorsk and Bokmål, which are actually the names of two different standards of Norwegian language.

Not only that but the official written languagein the cities named Bokmål and Nynorsk are exactly that, respectively.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com