Tinto Maps #11 - 19th of July 2024 - Scandinavia

[Johan]

I see that Östra Götaland/ Östergötland, and Västra Götaland/ Västergötland, still hasn't been fixed. The counties (Landskap), are called Västergötland and Östergötland. They are part of the larger region of Götaland. If you want to refer to regions eastern half, you can say "Östra Götaland", but that's not the same as the county, even if the names mean the same thing. I'm really suprised I have to say this to a Swedish studio (I know the team is Spanish). You'd think some Swede would have seen the map of Scandinavia at some point during development?

In my household when I grew up, my father always said "nice to be back in Sweden" when we got back to Stockholm from being outside Mälardalen.. so yeah

 

[Aethilias]

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Thank you so much!

 

[Johan]

Maybe even finnskoga would be more apropriate

Not sure I agree, as that name feels a few centuries more modern

 

[Millero15]

1. No complaints.

2. Because the game will have dynamic place names, meaning they will be named according to who owns them. What they're called under the hood is not entirely relevant.

3. Innre Österbotten in the sense that it's the inland part of Österbotten, which I'm guessing would be too large of a province. Also, I can see why they use the modern name of Egentliga Finland as to not cause confusion. It's also just a general rule that most locations tend to use modern spellings.

4. I don't disagree on this. Either make the Finnish culture smaller and restricted to its historical area, or just merge the two.

5. Swedes had definitely settled and built settlements on the coast at his time, but I can't find any sources stating to what amounts and the demographics, so I would question you here as to what evidence you have against the coast having a Swedish majority.

6. Impassable forests are meant to represent the fact that the area was virtually uninhabited, and most importantly for gameplay was not, and could not be used for military maneuvering. If you put your army in Finland's south, you should be able to effectively defend it from attacks. Armies marching through the forests, without any supplies or infrastructure. It's the same reason why parts of Siberia are wasteland. Ask yourself this, Is it a wasteland to let players achieve modern day borders, or are the modern day borders the way they are because that part of the world was quite inhospitable?

With the current population setup, Finland is 30-40% Swedish, I did the math. The earliest concrete numbers for Swedish Speakers in Finland (I know of) are from 1610, three whole centuries of Swedish rule after the start date, when 17.5% of Finland spoke Swedish. The current culture breakdown is completely unjustifiable, especially when considering that Swedish settlement and rule would only further spread after 1337.

 

[Frost_f12tdf_]

Guys I think the numbers in the pop size map mode are a little too crowded. Maybe assuming that a unit represents 1k people and just approximating the decimals (or only counting full units, e.g. 10.300 people=10; 10.900 people=10) would make it clearer. I know UI stuff usually comes last in the dev pipeline, but one's got to point out these things early on.

 

[Zakhath]

A few things from a Dalecarlian.

Names and borders:
The borders around Mora/Orsa/Leksand look really weird. Orsa is by the lake "Orsasjön", which is visible here as part of Siljans most northern "blob". The Borders does not even place Orsa inside its location. Theoretically Rättvik should also be an independent area (became its own church village in the 15th century) which would make the borders look more reasonable. However, I respect that there are considerations in terms of density vs population density.

An approximate suggestion for change, Rättvik being optional with the dashed line:

I also think the location of "Kopparberget" would be better named as either "Nya Kopparberg" or "Linde" both being historical names used for the parish during the period with the latter being the name before 1600ish. With Nya Kopparberg being from the 1600 and onward, until the change in 1800s. Stora Kopparberget is after all in Falun.


On the note of copper and other metals.
The location of "Kopparberget" has copper, but unlike Falun, this copper was not yet discovered in 1337. It was discovered in 1624. I hope a Swedish source is ok.

Ljusnarsbergsfältet, Kopparberg - Bergslagen.se

Kongsberg did likewise not start large scale production until 1623. But was known by at least as early as 1400. Source in Norwegian.

Kongsberg sølvverk – Store norske leksikon

Kongsberg sølvverk var et norsk bergverk som var i drift i 335 år, fra 1623 til 1958. Det var landets største bergverk målt i arbeidsinnsats, med anslagsvis 300 000 nedlagte årsverk pluss omfattende sesongarbeid med skogsarbeid og kjøring. Verket var viktig for staten som produsent av myntmetall.

snl.no

If RGOs is going to be placed anachronistically then realistically there is a case to be made that Sala should have its RGO be silver. As mining activity started already in 1400s and had its peak during the early 1500s. Once again a Swedish source.

Historia och fakta - Sala Silvergruva

HISTORIA OCH FAKTA SVEA RIKES SKATTKAMMARE Sala silvergruva har en lång och brokig historia som förstås berättas allra bäst på plats av våra skickliga guider. För dig som vill skaffa dig en uppfattning om platsen innan ditt besök hos oss, följer här ett antal korta fakta och en tidslinje med...

www.salasilvergruva.se

Dalecalian/Elfdalian
I also saw people in the thread talking about Dalecalian or Elfdalian being a separate culture based on linguistics. As far as I am read on the subject, the divergence started first with sound changes for old norse during the 7-800s. It is unclear how much impact this had. But the major word divergence started around the 1300s and only by the 1500s or so were the language at a low enough point for mutual intelligibility to be considered distant enough to be talking about a separate language. Even then it was probably still very intelligible for other Swedish dialects at the time. I speak a dalecalian dialect myself as I am from this region (The region of the "egentliga dalmål" [proper Dalecarlian dialects]). But the current situation is much more complicated than saying Dalecarlians have always been separate.

So while I appreciate the recognition, I don't think it makes sense to represent this as a separate culture. There is a bigger case I think, for making Scanian its own culture. It would actually make more sense to have Dalecarlian exist as a separate culture in Victoria 3.

 

[Lank1]

5 - because they have enough swedes living there

Is this a hint at how non-colonial settlement will work? Pops migrate to unclaimed locations (presumably with some mechanics to increase migration speed) until there are enough to qualify as “ownership”?

 

[Foke]

Regarding the cultures, it looks like the dividing line between Danish and German/Frisian is at the modern border (Aabenraa). But the Germanification of Schleswig hadn't happened yet at this point at least not to this significant degree. At the very least Flensborg and Slesvig should be majority Danish. Husum maybe a Frisian majority and noticeable Danish minority.

 

[DanskRullepølse]

Welcome everyone, today I’ll talk about the Scandinavian region. Part of it was the first maps we drew for Project Caesar back in early spring of 2020. Today we will look at all parts of the Scandinavian Peninsula (including Denmark & the Kola Peninsula). Greenland & Iceland will be looked at in a separate map talk.

Countries
View attachment 1165159
Scandinavia has only five location based countries at the start of the game. Denmark, who is in a bit of a crisis at the moment and their vassal Schleswig is in the south. On the peninsula proper, we have Sweden and Norway who are in a union at the moment as they share the same King. Scania was sold off to Sweden by the Danes five years before the start of the game.

There is no need to show off a Dynasty map, as Denmark does not exactly have a ruling King at the moment, and the rest is ruled by Magnus IV of the Bjälbo Dynasty.

Locations

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While Scandinavia has a lot of locations, we have to remember that this is a huge area, and together with Kola & Karelia, it is the same size as France, Spain, Portugal, Italy & Benelux together.. The size of locations are smaller in the south, particularly where the population was and still is relatively bigger.


Provinces
View attachment 1165169
We have tried to follow historical traditional province borders here, but some ended up too big like Småland, Lappland or Österbotten, which were cut into pieces, and some are just too tiny to matter.

Now I wish I had time to write up a history about each province here, but I’ll just add a few fun tidbits.

Satakunta, which is the Finnish name, is named in Finnish like the old regions of Svitjod, which were divided into “hundreds”. It was also refered to Björneborgs län, named after Björneborg (Pori in Finnish), a town founded by Johan III when Ulfsby was no longer accessible from the sea. The regiment from the area was the last Swedish Army Regiment that has ever won a battle inside Sweden, and their military march is a song I think every Finnish Citizen want to play repeatedly on TV during the Olympics..

Småland, which is divided into Tiohärad and Kalmar Län here, should really be referred to as Småländerna, as there were 12 small countries there.. Compared to the 3 other much larger countries of Svealand, Östra Götaland and Västra Götaland. And now why is Östra Götaland not containing Kinda?

Topograhy
View attachment 1165173
It's mostly flatland.. I went by the rule that if the peaks are less than 500 meters it's flatland, and you need to have over 1,000 meters and rather uneven to be a mountain. Norway is interesting there.. We do have a lot of impassable areas in Norway, making this one of the most fun parts to play in.

Vegetation
View attachment 1165174
There are some farmlands in Denmark, Scania and in Götaland, but the rest is basically a big forest.. And up north it's even worse.

Climate
View attachment 1165176
Yeah, well. There is a reason I moved to Spain..


Cultures
View attachment 1165177
Most of the north east is still Sami, and the Finnish tribes have not unified into the more modern Finnish culture. We decided to call the modern Meänkieli with their more ancient name of Kven. We still have Gutnish on Gotland, but the Norwegian, Danish and Swedish cultures have been becoming more monolithic already.

Religions
View attachment 1165178

The Finnish are mostly Catholic, but the Sami, Tavastian, Savonia, Bjarmian and Karelians are mostly still following their old pagan beliefs. There are still some Norse people in the forests of Dalarna and Västmanland..

Raw Materials
View attachment 1165180
It is mostly lumber, fish, wild game, fur and iron. We of course have the famous copper mountain as well.

Markets
View attachment 1165181
Scandinavia is divided by the rich markets of Lübeck and Riga. A strong Scandinavian country will probably want to set up their own unified market.


Population
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Not many people live up in the north..

Spoiler: Location Pops

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I liked nice round numbers as estimates, but the team I hired for content design are mad men, and wanted the distribution to feel more organic.. For the far north of Scandinavia we know that people were semi nomadic, and that some people lived there.. But if it was 100 there, or 250 there or 20 there it's just guesswork..


And let's end with a quote from the Greatest of Poets..

Jag vill, jag skall bli frisk, det får ej prutas,
Jag måste upp, om jag i graven låg.
Lyss, hör, ni hör kanonerna vid Jutas;
Där avgörs finska härens återtåg.


Next week Pavia is back with some German maps…

Could you add København (Copenhagen) as a province? Beacuse Roskilde was only the danish Capital for a short time, and Copenhagen has been very important for Denmark, beacuse of its location. Also shift the provinces name of Zealand to Sjælland. I don’t Sea Why it should be named in English when everything else isn’t

 

[Bergenboy]

Would be cool to see the location of Ullensvang to have fruit as the raw material, as the region of Hardanger had started in the 13th hundreds to be a major producer of Apples, cherries, pears and plums through firstly cisterian munks before spreading to local farmers. Hardanger cider is also a protected geographical indication to the same degree as champagne wine is.

 

[samporapeli]

There has been a lot of feedback on Finland already, but I would just like to add my two cents.

First, shouldn't the location to the east of Lieksa be called Möhkö? At least that's what the village on the eastern extremity of Finland is called these days. All 30 google results that I found on Mökhö were either foreign outlets obviously misspelling the Finnish village, or references to some word in Mongolian.

Second, it has been pointed out that Siikalatva is misspelt on the map. But I would question whether the name is adequate in the first place, as I struggle to find any particularly old references to the name. Pulkkila would perhaps a better choice then?

 

[Fjellfyr]

Would be cool to see the location of Ullensvang to have fruit as the raw material, as the region of Hardanger had started in the 13th hundreds to be a major producer of Apples, cherries, pears and plums through firstly cisterian munks before spreading to local farmers. Hardanger cider is also a protected geographical indication to the same degree as champagne wine is.

Full agree on this, I got a screenshot from Norwegian Fruit history mentioning Hardanger and specifically Ullensvang as fruit producer on page 16 of this thread backing it up.

 

[ArVass]

500 meters up and down is basically flatlands.

Extremely false

 

[Brynjar]

Would be nice for Hornindalsvatnet (the biggest lake in western norway and the deepest in Europe) and Jølstravatnet could be represented. Other lakeswould be nice too, but they're likely too small.

Considering the fact that we can't see Mjøsa either, that seems unlikely.

In 1337, Bergenshus was not an administrative region. It should be split into Hordaland, Sogn, and Firda, if not further subdivided with more provinces.

Neither Sogn nor Firda were administrative regions in 1337 either. I agree that Bergenhus should be split up more though.

Romsdalen should be Møre og Romsdal, as the people of Møre would get a heartattack hearing they are called Romsdølinger. Unless more locations are added for more subdivisions.

Modern local patriotism should be ignored when considering what may be the most suitable names. I agree Romsdal may not be great though, even though it was the name of an "amt" within the game's timeframe.

3) Locations in the region

First, I'd just post a cleaned up map of skipreide to see the basis I used for this.

Locations are a difficult topic, especially in Norway due to the fairly low population in many areas. It will be pretty much impossible to be consistent, but overall I feel like the granularity of Locations in Southern Norway is about right in Johan's post. There is no good gameplay reasons to have much more granularity, and I suspect making them too small will just make playing Norway more boring as you need people to staff buildings etc. Overall your suggestions for locations feels a bit too much of "please make my local area detailed".

When it comes to wastelands and mountain crossings my initial thought is that the wastelands in southern Norway seems far too big. For example, depicting Setesdal as a wasteland feels wrong. A church in Bykle (one of the more remote places in Setesdal), is first mentioned in 1327, when the pope was trying to collect unpaid taxes from 1274. A church still standing today was built around 1620.

I'm hoping to be able to provide a more in depth post with suggestions for changes for Norway in a few days. As mentioned in a previous post, Norway as it is at the moment is quite a mess.

 

[Fjellfyr]

I definitely think the inner valleys need to be represented, as places like Gudbrandsdalen with areas like Skjåk and Lom really feels wrong to call wastelands



We know there were trade and travel between these inner valleys and west coast norway in the period.

 

[Danskjävel]

Zealand island is 7000 km² according to wiki, so in most of the regions discussed thus far, it would be 7 or 8 locations. Right now it's four. So there's definitely room to add granularity.

Agreed. When I looked at the map, I thought it was an easy fix, but it's actually pretty hard.

Also I was initially almost thrilled to not see Copenhagen, but in the end elongated Roskilde got to me.

Others have already commented on the Danish locations, and I'll just quickly concur with the observations that Bølling, Grindsted and Silkeborg make little sense for the era, and could probably be collapsed into neighboring locations. At the very least Ringkøbing should be at Ringkøbing Fjord, where you have placed Bølling.

Great idea. Sjælland is a bit strange to look at, so we need things to potentially trade for fixing him, even if it means less granular Jylland (which would actually make sense though).

What do you think about collapsing Hjørring and Skagen into Vendsyssel if needed? Fyn needs professional help too.

Another observation is that I am surprised that more of South Western Jutland isn't classified as marsh, given that this was way before the land reclamations that happened after the losses in the 1864 war. Similarly I get that, as explained in the Low Countries maps post, you use modern maps for consistency, and thus use a modern version of Roskilde Fjord, but in return the northern part of the Kalundborg location could be split off (into Holbæk maybe) and turned to marsh, given that Odsherred is basically a reclaimed fjord, and was wet before that. Conversely Lolland and Falster south of Sjælland was quite fertile and might deserve to be classified as farmland. Or at least as producing something more farmlike than Sand.

Agreed, and good observation. It slipped my mind completely.

I do think we could give Holbæk and the majority of the fjords (barring Lammefjord) to Roskilde. And actually Lammefjord was not completely reclaimed before 1943 (!!!), so there's really no argument for not having water present, as the reclamation began in 1873. Parts of Lolland was also reclaimed very late, in the 1770s.

Lammefjord, Sjælland before reclamations started in 1873.

Lolland before reclamations in 1776.

As for vegetation I am a bit uncertain exactly what is definition of Grassland vs. Woods, but all in all this was way before the maximum deforestation that Denmark reached in the 1800, and even then we have places like Rold Skov, roughly in the area you have termed North Jutland (but which should probably be called Himmerland), that have been continually forested for 4000 year. So it might qualify as woods? I mainly mention this because Project Ceasar has such a goods oriented economy, that I am slightly concerned if Denmark didn't have any woodslands for fleets building (And yes I am aware that was also much helped by being Denmark-Norway for the most significant part of the period but still). After all that was part of what drove the eventual deforestation. Even better if there was some sort of vegetation transformation mechanic to represent the deforestation developments

Agree again. In the early game Denmark should have sufficient timber, but potentially face catastrophe if not managed well. Johan has hinted that he would like a deforestation mechanic too, but we're yet to see it confirmed. I've added sources below.

I think Sorø suffers from being too close to Ringsted. Sorø and Ringsted needs to sten-saks-papir about who gets the name.

Kalundborg should be represented, but it could easily be split up towards the south, but whether it should be Slagelse or Korsør, I don't know, both have valid claims.

I fear Næstved and Vordingborg has the same issue as Sorø and Ringsted, they are too close, even if they are both important places historically.

Was Sorø comparably important as Ringsted was? It's not my impression, but other than Sorø being beautiful and three centuries later being more influential than Ringsted for intellectual advances I don't know too much about it. Other than that I think Ringsted wins for it's central position and historical importance in the centuries leading up to the game start. Also having Ringsted better allows for a location to it's south-west, while not having Køge/St. Heddinge (as would probably be overkill).

I think the solution is having Slagelse (could also be Korsør or Skælskør) and Vordingborg and ditching Næstved. Which is sad, as it was a rather large city at the time, but Slagelse was a sort of cross roads town, where several roads to the other market towns (købstæder) met, and Vordingborg was central for rivalry with the Hansa. Also Vordingborg is to me the only place Møn (and Bogø, Nyord and Farø) could belong if they're not their own location.

I have made my latest edition of the revised Denmark map. In one edition I have collapsed Hjørring and Skagen, and I agree that there's a couple of locations in the middle of Jylland that can be merged into neighbourghs, if the increase in locations in Fyn and Sjælland is too much. I'm not familiar enough with the historic regions to do so myself though.


Added Nyborg and Svendborg for Fyn, as Lolland and Falster under no circumstances can be considered part of Fyn. Like Bornholm is not a part of Öland.
Also split of Lolland into Lolland and Falster respectively, they are a part of the closest Area in Sjælland. Visualized Bogø and Nyord around Møn, which are all part of Vordingborg now.


Version with Hjørring and Skagen collapsed into Vendsyssel.


Improved version with visualized Odsherred and Sejerø (Kalundborg), especially the former needs to be present on the map, Sejerø can potentially be ditched. Improved shape of Bogø and Nyord (Vordingborg), Ærø (Svendborg) and separated Als from mainland Jylland (Aabenraa). Also better visualization of Lolland land before 1770s land reclamation.

I'm not advocating merging provinces in Jylland, but if the increase in Fyn and Sjælland is too much, I think this is the way to go. The Assens and Odense locations are a little off, but I opted to refrain from adding another location. For more accuracy Bogense should be added, eating a small bit of the north-western part of Odense, and the upper 40% of Assens.


Sources:

Lammefjorden – Naturen i Danmark | Lex

Inddæmningen og tørlæggelsen af Lammefjorden ved Holbæk er den største landvinding i Danmark med et samlet areal på ca. 56 km2. Den 2,3 km lange Audebodæmning (figur 18-20) blev påbegyndt umiddelbart efter etableringen af „A/S Lammefjordens Tørlægning“ i marts 1873, og dæmningen stod færdig i...

naturenidanmark.lex.dk

Kulturlandskabet i Lolland Kommune – Trap Danmark | Lex

Lolland Kommune er i dag landets mest landbrugsdominerede kommune, og de særlige tunge og frugtbare lerjorder havde og har stor indflydelse på det egnstypiske landbrug og kulturlandskab på øen.

trap.lex.dk

Skovenes historie i Danmark – Trap Danmark | Lex

Det, som i dag udgør Danmark, var skovløst i den første lange tid, mens de sidste rester af istiden Weichsels gletsjere for 14.700 år siden begyndte at smelte bort. Planter og dyr sydfra koloniserede langsomt landet, og blandt dem var mennesket. De første mange generationer af danskere levede...

trap.lex.dk

Byernes fremvækst – Gyldendal og Politikens Danmarkshistorie | Lex

Først henimod vikingetiden begyndte det danske samfund at blive så specialiseret, at der opstod bosættelser, som man kan kalde for byer.

danmarkshistorien.lex.dk

H.K. & Poulsen, B. (2016): Danmarks byer i Middelalderen

 

[rapido]

Super interesting stuff!

I thought I could provide some feedback since I my dayjob is to write papers about the northernmost fenno-scandia during the early modern period. I am most familiar with the 16-hundreds, so keep that in mind. I will start by commenting on the location names. I apologize in advance for the horrendous english found in this comment, I am truly sorry.

First a general comment on the coastal provinces. In most of Northern Norway, stuff where governed fjord-by fjord, which will probably look ugly here, however there is a meaningful difference between the outer islands and peninsulae and the inner fiords and inland areas. The outermost area has permanent Norwegian settlement from early on, whereas the inner areas see no norwegian presence before early 1600-.

Now I started writing something long and boring here, where I went in to detail on the current disputes in the litterature and so on, but for the sake of everyone I deleted this, and decided to draw some suggestion instead, with some short explanations.

From left to right.
The wastland between Troms and Raunala was the most trafficated land-based trading route in the area at the time. Reineer caravans traveled from Tornio to Skibotn at the Norwegian coast. During summer it is a lot harder to cross, since you have to carry everything on your back. A lot of people did it, but rarly armies. I have traversed across that area both winter and summer by foot and it is fine. If this is wasteland then there is also wasteland between modern day Finland and Kautokeino/Karasjok/Deatnu/Varanger. (In terms of how hard it is to traverse by foot, carrying with you stuff). The tax collectors traveled through this area with reindeer sleds that they had confiscated. They could haul surprising amount of stuff.

Raisa - this looks like a saami variant of the area. The economic and administrative center in this location is further out at a fishing village located at Skjervøy. The area is refered to as "Skjervøy parish and court place" in a lot of the source material from the period.

Alta - Alta is the population center in the area today, but during the Period a village called "Talvik" was the earliest administrative center inside the fjord. In the thriteen hundreds, Sørvær or Loppa At the coast, might better reprecent actual centers. The area was often refered to as "Alten", but this does not refer to the outer islands in this location.

Hammerfest - This is also the modern center, but should include the northernmost parts of the islands Seiland and Sørøya, which is now included in Alta. the location should not include the north cape island.

Porsanger - In the period the Administrative center here was Kjelvik, which lies almost at the north cape. It should also include the eastern side of the fjord.

Deatnu - Tana in Norwegian, The name refers to the large river, this is a troublesome area as the inner river is administrated completly different from the coastal area in the period. The swedish crown is taxing the inland of this province, but not the coastal area (some periods). I would consider splitting these in an outer and inner part.

Vardø - The geographical area is refered to as the Varanger peninsula, but Vardø was the town with the "castle" and noblemen (1-3 for the most part) , so Vardø is not unreasonable.

Varanger - This is the southern Varanger fjord often called "sør-varanger". This area was taxed by both russian and norwegian authorithies. They became russian orthodox after the russian munks built the monastary here.

Kautokeino - I have written a Saami naming suggestion here.

Karasjok - I have written a saami and norwegian naming suggestion for what was the earlier trading place and how the location was referenced by swedish and norwegian authorithies in the 1600s. Karasjok became the center later during the 19th century.

I did not have time to attatch sources for this but, Lillienskiolds speculum boraele in "nordnorske samlinger" and "To jordebøker fra 1694" are good primary sources from the period, most of my claims is based in these. I do not have the letters sent from the lord in the province right now, and the archive which have them is closed for the summer so I am afraid I cannot go into more detail on the earlier period. There is also written one book on this in the sixtees, dealing with the administrative history of finnmark, but I have left it at my office so I am sure I don't remeber everything correct. There are also plenty of probate records as well as tax records from the period, giving good indications of population size and "culture", which I will have to comment on another day.

Really cool that you guys do these kind of development diaries, I enjoy them a lot. Thanks.

Best regards.

 

[effy]

Hi! Very nice map as always I love what youre doing with this game

Bergen should have a german culture minority considering that it was an important city for the Hanseatic and recieved a lot of immigrants, or there should be an event withing the first fifty years to add a significant german population in the city, which was at one point compromised of as much as one fourth or one fifth of the population of the city during the late middle ages source 1. The german population of Bergen was a very important part of the city's history and theyve had a lot of power and influence over the city, even today the dialect of Bergen is very different from all sorrounding areas. . Adding a german minority would also make the culture map more interesting and could make for a lot of interesting events, like in the completely unrelated paradox game eu4

Also the lake of Mjøsa in eastern Norway should be added considering it was important for the local area aswell as being roughly the same size (370km^2 vs 362km^2) as lake Garda which is already added in the Italy map. The locations around this lake should be changed aswell. Vestglomma is very inaccurate, it should be moved westward, lose land to elverum and gain from lillehammer and be renamed Ringsaker. Additionally Vardal should be renamed Toten or Vestoppland.
And Hamar and probably also Ringsaker/vestglomma should be flatlands (the traditional name for this area in Norway is even translated "the flat villages" and the landscape is comparably flat except from a few areas to the east which were probably high enough to go higher than 500m. Further on the population distribution, terrain and trade goods of this area around Mjøsa should be revised. Historically this area has been (relatively to Norway) densely populated and fertile: "Farm names and exavations testify to very old settlements on easily farmed, fertile earth on the Flat-settlements (the area around Mjøsa), with large farms compared to the rest of Norway source 2". Many of the largest most productive farms in Norway has historically been and is still located in this area and this has been a very important agricultural area of Norway, this can also be seen by Hamar being the only non-coastal city in Norway to gain city-rights in the middle ages. The soil types in this area is very unique and is dominated by fertile dark soils with organic rich top-soils, the same type that can be found in Ukraine.

source 3

For these reasons I think the terrain in Hamar and Vestglomma/ringsaker should be grasslands, or even farmlands, and Lillehammer and Vardal/Toten should be grasslands/woods. They should definitively not be forests, as this area was very different from the other locations in Hedmark and Oppland at the time. The trade goods should also reflect this and in Hamar and possibly Toten it should be wheat or livestock since this has been/is an important region for growing these types of crops(the farmers in this area even got crazy rich selling overprized wheat during the famine of the 1800s).

Glommadal should either get the suffix -en: Glommadalen, or be renamed Solør

Tønset should be named Tynset

Bragenes should be flatlands

Also I know you are a swedish company but I think the names of the regions lost to sweden should be Bohuslån and Jemtland even without dynamic naming considering they were norwegian settled and owned by Norway for MORE than half the games time period.

Did you consider adding a wasteland east of Lillehammer and Otta to stimulate the valley of Gudrbandsalen and the mountains east of it? some of them reaching more than 2000m?

Anyways very exited to play this game.

Sources:
For some reason paradox wont let me post links as sources but here is the way to acess them:
1. Bergenbyarkiv -> om bergen -> fra kaupang til handelstad
2. store norske leksikon -> search for Ringsaker
3. European enviroment agency -> analysis and data -> search all -> the major soil types of Europe

 

[purplephoton]

Norland is already too big for a province really with 11 locations..

Can’t wait to see what you do about Norra Lappland’s 15, then.

 

[Fjellfyr]

Considering the fact that we can't see Mjøsa either, that seems unlikely.

Neither Sogn nor Firda were administrative regions in 1337 either. I agree that Bergenhus should be split up more though.

Modern local patriotism should be ignored when considering what may be the most suitable names. I agree Romsdal may not be great though.

Locations are a difficult topic, especially in Norway due to the fairly low population in many areas. It will be pretty much impossible to be consistent, but overall I feel like the granularity of Locations in Southern Norway is about right in Johan's post. There is no good gameplay reasons to have much more granularity, and I suspect making them too small will just make playing Norway more boring as you need people to staff buildings etc. Overall your suggestions for locations feels a bit too much of "please make my local area detailed".

When it comes to wastelands and mountain crossings my initial thought is that the wastelands in southern Norway seems far too big. For example, depicting Setesdal as a wasteland feels wrong. A church in Bykle (one of the more remote places in Setesdal), is first mentioned in 1327, when the pope was trying to collect unpaid taxes from 1274. A church still standing today was built around 1620.

I'm hoping to be able to provide a more in depth post with suggestions for changes for Norway in a few days. As mentioned in a previous post, Norway as it is at the moment is quite a mess.

Mjøsa is bigger than quite a few lakes they've added, so it should be added. They've added several lakes in other tinto maps that are smaller than Mjøsa and about the size of hornindalsvatnet. If not for those I'd not have suggested any lakes.

And I agree modern local patriotism should be dismissed, but both møre and romsdal has been considered seperate areas and my comment was a bit tongue in cheek.

I don't think my local area specifically need to be more detailed as much as "I have not had time to research more areas otherwise I'd love to do more." I tried to have Bergen and Fana as references to size and tried to avoid stuff smaller than it, and gave suggestions for what could be combined if needed. But I did a tl;dr of the biggest issues in the second post.

- Too little waterways, nordfjorden is too small, sognefjorden doesn't have most of its branches, sunnfjord's fjords aren't on the map
- Wastelands in areas that very much were settled, like Jølster, Stryn, Olden, Fjærland, Borgund, and even Aurland even though its a location
- Ytre Sogn is in sunnfjord on the map here, which irks me. Even being conservative here, there is more than enough space from the big surrounding provinces to make something more accurate here. At least make one called Lavik or Klævold that contains ytre sogn that is currently in Sunnfjord and Nordhordland.
- Aurland is not in Aurland. If not changed, it should be renamed to Vik.
- Sogndal should at minimum be split into Sogndal and Lærdal, though i'd love more.
- Lack of inner valleys of eastern norway, and the route across filefjell.

If you want to see reference size.

Which I think is a list of points that you'd agree to as well. There is also that having few, large provinces would concentrate population and make infrastructure building easier, while having more that is spread out does the opposite. Whether it is more boring who knows, but I'd say those challenges more accurately reflect the challenge for the country at least. Several parts of road network in this area was built within the last 50 years, if there is two locations in an area with a decently concentrated population it instead becomes a nobrainer to do.

Looking forward to seeing what idea you got cooking, I think we all just want the best map we can get.