Where do fairy-tale creatures live: scientists have created a real map and marked each one

06 January 2025, 12:05 | Technologies
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Scientists from Poland have created a map that shows where supernatural creatures from Polish folklore “live” along the Polish-German border, writes IFLScience.

The map is reminiscent of Renaissance maps, which depict such fairy-tale creatures as devils, spirits, the Wild Hunt, gnomes, will-o'-the-wisps, giants, dragons, mermaids, ghosts, werewolves and nightmares.

The publicly released map is part of a wider study that aims to study creatures in the historical regions of Pomerania and Mecklenburg. To create the " Of these, 600 stories were directly related to specific landscape features in the region.

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Scientists tried to clearly show the results of their research. In this way, narratives were translated into visual data that began to appear on maps and atlases before the start of the 20th century.. Such maps indicated places of special cultural significance, as well as the range of these phenomena..

“Images of the supernatural world have long been recognized as valuable for the intangible aspects of heritage, and their mapping has become an integral part of ethnographic work,” explain the authors of the new map.

For this map, the team analyzed local stories of supernatural events associated with certain points on the landscape.. Among these were unusual rocks associated with giants, or hills that were considered a gathering place for witches.



" In our maps, we tried to combine artistic and symbolic elements that would be reminiscent of Renaissance maps,” the researchers explain.

According to the authors, their map is a tribute to cartographers of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Let us remind you that scientists have told how a real story influenced the “relationship” between vampires and garlic.. Scientists suggest that this belief has a logical explanation related to real diseases.

Based on materials: iflscience.com



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