Northlands Campaign: Map Design

Looking into this campaign idea has also caused me to examine the history of real world Scandinavia, along with its architecture. Images of real buildings provide great inspiration for both art and cartography designs. 

I found stave churches particularly interesting as they are an example of the evolution of pagan motifs and architecture into later Skandinavian Christian styles. They are the only existing examples of how pre-Christian temples may have looked. For our purposes we can also imagine massive feasthalls for the giants of the North and for great jarls and kings. 

Photo by Micha L. Rieser

The image above is a great example of this, depicting the Heddal Stave Church in Notodden, Norway.

Gol stave church

The image above depicts floor plans and a sketch of a stave church. And you could probably just use it as is for a VTT battle map. 

I’ll be experimenting with drawing some maps depicting this type of structure over the next few weeks and I may post them as additional resources for a Northlands campaign.