Icelandic map by Thor

I've collected Iceland for my 'Globe' Project. This is Iceland, as drawn by Thor, a Retro Bar Douze Points regular.

Realising Thor was Icelandic - I don't meet many Icelandic people - I grabbed my chance.

It's also made me realise - I'm unlikely to meet many people from Vanautu, Tonga, and a huge wealth of nations... So I'm going to change this project to be a collection of European countries maps. It will henceforth be EuroRevision.

Maps with borders, by Katharina and Jaan

My project to collect a map of every European country drawn by a citizen of that country is ongoing.

I recently asked Katharina from Denmark & Jann from Estonia to draw their countries.

Both their efforts are interesting, as they differ from what comes before.

Whereas other maps have shown just the country in question, Katharina and Jann's place their countries in context. Thus, Katharina's map shows Germany and Jann's shows Finland, Latvia, Lithuania.

All countries are placed in their bordered contexts, but Jann & Katharina's inclusion of these highlights how those before them had not done this.

Japan,

I asked Tomohiro to draw Japan. He had recently moved from Japan to rural Ireland, and had previously lived in California.

Japan, in his map, is smaller than I expected it to be.

Geometrique France, by Hervé

Hervé has drawn France for me. Hervé has mapped France a l'Hexagone.

Tatiana's map of Russia

I met Tatiana, from Moscow, at a party last week. Tatiana was ace, she has recently arrived in London. We talked about: gays, WWW, Leningrad, countesses, communists, religion, the Russian alphabet, VIA Gra, hair, the Russian for "cat", Dima Bilan, how to say "how are you" in Russian and many other exciting topics.

I asked Tatiana to draw a map of Russia. Here it is.

Also new is another map of the world. Markus, from somewhere near Stuttgart drew this, as he had seen Tatiana drawing her map. I have already 'got' Germany, so I asked him to draw the world.

Map of Finland, by Kaarina

I recently joined PostCrossing, a website for postcard swapping. I send postcards from London to random people, and random people send me postcards from their cities or countries. On my profile, I ask people to send me their country maps for my EuroGlobe map-of-Europe's-countries project.

To my delight, last week I received a map of Finland from Kaarina, who is 19, and lives in the town of Rauma.

Kaarina has drawn Finland and added her own touches, some of which had me searching for random facts about Finland. Along the base, she has drawn evergreen forests, which are an evocative image of Finland. She shows a Nokia phone: I never knew that there is town in Finland called Nokia. Along the side, there is wrapping from sweets called Salmiakki. These are a liquorice sweet, a Finnish delicacy.
Across the top, there is the wrapper from something which appears to be Gifu, but is in fact Sisu. Sisu are liquorice throat sweets, but also much more. Due to its cultural significance, sisu is a popular Finnish brand name. Sisu is a very Finnish concept, meaning 'to have balls'. Kaneli writes that "sisu means will and decisiveness to get the things done against impossible odds, or to succeed even when the chance is slim to make it." I can imagine why the Finnish have this mentality with their harsh weather. And, hey, they even won Eurovision this year after 45 years of entering - a victory for sisu!

This is an ace concept to bring to my project. I still have loads of countries to collect, but every time I see Kaarina's map of Finland, the spirit of sisu will inspire me to keep going.

Ireland by Deirdre, Greece by Daphne, Portugal by Mauro

I watched a TV show last week called A Song for London, which followed musician Ben Roy around London in an attempt to find a person from every nation to sing him a song.

His attempts were mildly successful - he found people from about 70% of the world's countries, an astounding figure. He was seen speaking with embassies, cultural organisations, schools and even football teams in the hope of finding foreigners.

And while Roy attempted to complete his task in a week, I was reminded of my own project. I've collected a few more maps in the past few weeks.

When I was at home in Ireland at the end of August, I asked my good friend Deirdre, who's another geography and travelling fan, to draw Ireland.

Daphne, from Athens, has a blog which I read. She very kindly sent me her map of Greece.

Mauro, from Portugal, left me a comment about his new blog and project to collect 1 Million Love Messages. I like his idea - so in exchange for my message, I asked him for a map of Portugal. He very kindly agreed.

In addition to his map, Mauro also sent me a postcard of his city - doesn't it look fantastic?!

Germany by Novala, Norway, Belgium by Alice

I've collected 3 further maps for my EuroGlobe project.

I asked Novala, a German woman living in Vienna, to draw Germany. She has a very interesting blog here.

I sent two letters to two addresses in Oslo, with envelopes and paper. One recipient has returned a map of Norway. This drawing is by either Erik or Joakim - I don't know which! Hopefully whomever it is will email me so I can attribute them correctly.

Finally, Belgium. Last weekend, I went to a Latin American carnival being held in South London with a vague notion of collecting country maps. I thought I'd maybe meet people from Colombia, Ecuador, Peru - all of which were strongly represented in the carnival. I eventually spoke to a man from Bolivia. I may have inadvertently annoyed him as he was from Santa Cruz, an area which has a growing autonomy movement. He didn't seem keen on drawing the map, but mentioned that the woman with him was from Belgium. So here, the result of a Latin American carnival is Belgium drawn by Alice

EuroRevision: Europe squared.

I want to collect a map for every country in Europe. Get in touch if you want to help.

On conventional world maps, each country is shown with reference to their size.

EuroRevision changes this view by re-positioning each country's map on a 10cm x 10cm piece of paper.

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Site

For the past year or so, I have asked friends and strangers to draw the world. I have, so far, collected 46 images.

In addition to this, I am starting an experimental project in which I ask European people to draw maps of their countries, compiling these together to make one large map of the world. I do not know if this will be successful, but the process of compiling should be interesting. This image would re-draw Europe, with each country given a similar space rather than their geographic, measured areas.