Supposed size of Westeros?

[Kyriakos]

Looking at the wiki map of Westeros

Spoiler :

it looks really weird that Theon got to Winterfell 'for his father' when Winterfell is so far away from the Iron Islands anyway (could not possibly be kept even with reinforcements).
How big are the lands supposed to be in the novels? Are we talking about Switzerland-sized for the entire Westeros? (at least south of the uncharted areas)

Anyway, are there any 'canonical' maps for the entire world of the series? (not just Westeros). If you have any in mind, maybe post

 

[traius]

That map is definitely not to scale. Robert Baratheon in the first novel refers to the North as larger than all the other kingdoms combined. It stretches down to essentially the twins, so its not very far from the iron islands

 

[Kyriakos]

^Yes, as long as Westeros on the whole is pretty small. But Martin said (til from the Paradox thread on GoT) that Westeros (south of the Wall) is sized roughly as South America. Which makes his realm consising of 3-4 large cities and towns and inns in between huge lands not really believable to be one country in medieval times

 

[Cutlass]

IIRC, they were talking about the whole kingdom, from the Wall to the south, being 10,000 leagues. This would be roughly equivalent to having Stockholm and Madrid being 30,000 miles apart. So the circumference of that world would be over 150,000 miles. It's about 24k miles for Earth.

GRR Martin's just not too good with scale.

 

[Zelig]

Well there's nothing really preventing a planet with similar mass as Earth from being much larger in volume, there's science fiction with that as a central premise.

 

[sophie]

IIRC, they were talking about the whole kingdom, from the Wall to the south, being 10,000 leagues. This would be roughly equivalent to having Stockholm and Madrid being 30,000 miles apart. So the circumference of that world would be over 150,000 miles. It's about 24k miles for Earth.

GRR Martin's just not too good with scale.

It's like JK Rowling with population (whether that be the global wizarding population or the population of Hogwarts) or the GBP-to-Galleon conversion rate: try not to think too hard about it; you'll be happier in the long run

 

[Mise]

It might be that the characters are not good at scales. Or speaking figuratively. Anyway it doesn't really matter what the author thinks, just make it up yourself, whatever scale you prefer.

Personally I like to think of it either as the size and shape of the UK but with the climate of Europe, or the size (north-to-south) and climate of Europe but the shape of the UK. So if they take like 2 days to get from Winterfell to King's Landing, then I'll consider it to be the former, but if they say it takes several months to get the same distance then I'll be like "ok so you're talking about the Westeros that's really big now ok cool I'll go along with that".

C.f. http://orbis.stanford.edu/

 

[Angst]

Somewhere Martin said the premise of GoT was to have a Britain the size of Europe. Didn't he?

 

[Benefactor]

I always thought it was supposed to be roughly the same size as Scotland, England, France and Spain taken and arranged vertically.

 

[Cutlass]

Well there's nothing really preventing a planet with similar mass as Earth from being much larger in volume, there's science fiction with that as a central premise.

At some point it becomes a gas giant rather than a rocky planet.

 

[Gigaz]

I don't think that I can come up with a very accurate guess but astronomic considerations fail in Westeros. The irregular seasons indicate that it's not a planet as we know it because they have no plausible explanation within Newtonian gravitation.
Travelling times might give an indication if they were not so terribly messed up.

My best guess is that each of the 7 kingdoms can on average field 100k soldiers, mostly noble knights and mercenaries. In a proper medieval society, only about 1% of the people are trained soldiers, so that the population might be on the order of 70 million. Medieval countries are about 1/3 as populated as modern ones and one should compare to regions in central Europe.
From this I argue that Westeros is basically as big as Germany, UK and France combined. 1.27 million km²

From the size of the map I estimate it to be approximately 743 km (462 miles) from the east to the west and 1710 km (1062 miles) from the north to the south.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Until proven otherwise, Westeros is currently located in a dresser in some fine Victorian house.

 

[luiz]

GRR Martin's just not too good with scale.

Color me surprised.

 

[Kyriakos]

Himself is out of scale, amirite?

 

[gay_Aleks]

He looks like someone who is on a watch list of one or more government agencies.

Or if nothing else, a hermit living in Oregon who bleaches their food from the bacterias the Commies put.

 

[aelf]

Google is your friend.

The Wall does, however, play a vital part in quantifying Westerosi geography—by acting as a ruler. With a known length of 300 miles, it can be used as a yardstick to measure up the rest of the Seven Kingdoms...

Spoiler :

From here.

 

[Snerk]

Google is your friend.

Spoiler :

From here.

That's pretty cool!

 

[Zack]

I remember hearing it was supposed to be the size of South America.

 

[Akka]

Well there's nothing really preventing a planet with similar mass as Earth from being much larger in volume, there's science fiction with that as a central premise.

There is nothing preventing a planet with similar mass as Earth from being much larger in volume.
But there is a crapton of things that prevent such a planet to look and work even remotely close to how Earth does
(of course, "magic" can be a convenient card)

Anyway, I'm rather of the same opinion as Benefactor :

I always thought it was supposed to be roughly the same size as Scotland, England, France and Spain taken and arranged vertically.

Probably a bit less IMO.
It might have been designed to be the size of South America, but it would wreck havoc with travel time if it were really this size.
I vote for "writers have no sense of scale".

 

[Birdjaguar]

Himself is out of scale, amirite?

He looks like someone who is on a watch list of one or more government agencies.

Or if nothing else, a hermit living in Oregon who bleaches their food from the bacterias the Commies put.

He is short and round, but he is very smart and has a great sense of humor. I think he would fit in nicely here, even if he took up two seats. He lives in Santa Fe NM which is artsy and a bit hoidy toidy.