I must confess, this is easily one of the most creative blogs out there.
If I told you that I want to start a blog on maps. You would probably laugh at me. And then say, “You blog won’t last more than a month! You’ll run out of things to write”
Enter – Strangemaps. This website basically provides a peek into the geographical anomalies, and offers a fresh perspective to regional boundaries. This combined with current politics, past historical events and creativity gives you a site that you can admire for hours.
Some of the posts, that I found very creative:
a) Iceland crushed by Europe: The post centers around the recent economic downfall of Iceland, and Europe’s role in it.
With a society prospering in splendid isolation and a population smaller than one-thousandth of the EU total (1), Iceland until recently had little incentive to be subsumed by the Brussels bureaucracy, an institution judged by many to be like the bus in Speed: racing towards an undesirable outcome, but unable to stop.
[contd..]
As illustrated by this map, sent in by Icelander Anna Rögnvaldsdóttir. She explains that it is the product of Fiton, an Icelandic ad agency. “Recently, [they] held an in-house poster competition (just for the fun of it, I gather). The challenge: To design a propagandistic poster either in favour of Iceland joining the EU or against.”
[contd..]
Iceland - Europe
b) Strangling of Hitler-Germany
A hand reaching out from the west is seen strangling a Germany in its pre-war borders – a shape cleverly concomitant with Hitler’s silhouette. The Weser estuary doubles as Hitler’s contorted mouth, the Schleswig region near the Danish border is his nose. His cap is captured by the winged layout of German territory in the east, with Pomerania in the north and Silesia in the south. Berlin is Hitler’s eye. Hitler’s throat, being strangled by the Allied hand, is the industrial area of the Ruhr, no doubt a reference to Allied air raids meant to cripple Nazi Germany’s capacity to wage war.
Hitler - Germany
c) Accidental Maps: Cartocacoethes or blatant Pareidolia – Stuff you’d find in email forwards. I thought the Aussie pic was cool.
d) Gandhi as India – Stamp issued by Indian Govt. in 2000. Hadn’t seen it before. Felt proud.
Gandhi as India
The website can just take hours of your time. Sit back and enjoy. Although there are a few technical, contrived and boring posts. It’s definitely a website for the geography enthusiast.
