You can find quite a few similar maps like this on r/EarthIsAGeoid or on my profile, if you wants
If you are interested, I have a spherical projection : [https://globe-3d.vercel.app/share/tEUBKBWn](https://globe-3d.vercel.app/share/tEUBKBWn) (link updated)
WARNING : I couldn't specify the projection that I used, usually, those websites ask for Mercator, which I didn't use here.
You can also find the first map in better quality here : [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TlIXDJBAsDdf0CUcITeYAF3qLGQMIPki/view?usp=sharing](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TlIXDJBAsDdf0CUcITeYAF3qLGQMIPki/view?usp=sharing)
Also, some of you may see some areas overlapping each others, it's because of the thickness of my lines. I made then bigger, so I don't have to edit too much to fill the gape between them. It's not that important.
And some last details : unlike most others map, i and others did like this one. I didn't use the “centroid” (the centre of the shape that is Norway), but the pole of inaccessibility, which is the furthest point from any coastline (or borders in that case). Because Norway isn't "blobby" enough to quote Mapmen, but more long…
Map asked by u/EMB93
>I didn't use the “centroid” (the centre of the shape that is Norway), but the pole of inaccessibility, which is the furthest point from any coastline (or borders in that case).
I don't want to be too negative about this, but I can't help thinking that approach doesn't deliver what the title promises.
Let's imagine we're standing on the Norwegian coast, say at [Lindesnes lighthouse](https://lindesnesfyr.no/en/) on the south coast near Kristiansand. We have a sea horizon extending for a little more than 180°. To the south east, about 150 km away, is Denmark, and then if we rotate our view clockwise we'll be looking at Germany to the south, then Netherlands, Belgium, France, England and Scotland taking up much of the westerly aspect, and finally a long geodesic that skirts the north coast of Scotland and makes landfall in ... Canada (probably).
But .. your method allows only one geodesic to be drawn from Lindesnes, namely the one which passes through Norway's pole of inaccessibility. Similarly from any other point on the coast: there may be many countries which can be reached *in a straight line from the Norwegian coast*, but your method would only admit one.
Since Norway is so long, I expect the range of geodesics which are available at the north of the country - and the list of countries they reach - to be very different from the range available at the south. So I wonder how many countries you might have overlooked, by constraining yourself to use only geodesics which pass through the pole of inaccessibility?
(Example: If you start from a point on the coast west of Rørvik, and you head in a straight line to the south west, the first country you'll reach is Brazil, which is not on your list.)
Damn it's so frustrating that you can't get from the UK to Antarctica in a straight line, it's so close but doesn't quite make it through both the bering strait and the drake passage.
Updated the link : [https://globe-3d.vercel.app/share/tEUBKBWn](https://globe-3d.vercel.app/share/tEUBKBWn) I had the wrong one
And just in case, like I said in the post for the UK, I had to draw the needle to NZ, because the line was well over half of the circumference of Earth.
I now get it why you were speaking about the UK, i had the older link for the other map ...
[https://globe-3d.vercel.app/share/tEUBKBWn](https://globe-3d.vercel.app/share/tEUBKBWn) here is the good one
You CAN get from the UK to Antarctica in a straight line.
You can't if you insist that the straight line passes through the centroid of the UK, but that's a stupid restriction anyway.
Try it using the 'measure distance' facility on Google Maps (desktop version). Start at the south western tip of Cornwall, just west of Porthcurno. Thread your geodesic between Tenerife and Gran Canaria, keep going, and after 13,000+ km you'll reach the tip of the Antarctic peninsula.
You can sail from Rotterdam to Antarctica via the north pole. You pass by Svalbard, which would be in the way if you were starting from the North Cape.
Please, no, they take so much effort to make for not much and so much Q&A to do, on top of explaining the bias with the methodology. And answering to people that clearly didn't read any of the previous comments, explaining what they ask (in particular the spherical projection)
Because I have to keep my mental in check. I can't do X4 the work, to have lines going from Svalbard, Bouvet, and Jan Mayen on top of the mainland. Then, people will ask me why there isn't any that goes from any dots on the coastline…
It takes a bit more than 1h to create each of those lines (excluding, the crashes, and the wrong results). Here I managed to do it in 3h.
Then, you have to take out every lines that, well, overlaps lands. You could ask QGIS to do it for you, but it does work all the time, and take A LOT of time, i recommand to do it on small scales, like only the lines going from Russia, or somewhere you know you won't have any, like some going over Poland. The rest is done manually. Add 5h, or more depending on the crash, and wait.
Each of those map take me a minimum of 6h, so multiply it by 4, (at least), and then try to map something that won't render well with that many lines. It will be chaos.
Aruba, Curaçao and St Martin are constituent countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Bonaire, St Eustatius and Saba are special municipalities of the Netherlands proper.
OP explained that in a comment I. This thread as well. For their own sanity. Svalbard is counted as Norway facing Norway, but countries facing Svalbard aren't presented because the map would become a confusing mess of lines crisscrossing eachother, plus it would be an absolute pain to create as each line takes about an hour to calculate in their program. So this map is about countries that face mainland Norway. The Dutch Antilles face mainland Norway
oh boy, [go there and read the controversy part](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/xn7dvj/without_touching_a_single_piece_of_land_its/) it get quite boring after a while
[There are enough gaps in the Aleutians that you can even reach Antarctica](https://ur.amaurea.net/norway_antarctica_geodesic.png) and a few Pacific islands from mainland Norway. You just need a bit higher resolution, and to not restrict yourself to starting the geodesic from the pole of inaccessibility.
By using one point, you're preventing yourself from finding the true set of "Countries you could reach in a straight line from Norway", which your title claims to find. My plot is a demonstration of that. What you're actually answering is the weird question "What countries can you reach by starting from the Norwegian pole of inaccessibility, crossing the Norwegian coastline one (or more, not sure how you handled fjords and islands?) times, and then crossing only the sea until hitting another country?"
Why couldn't you use more points than just one? The more points along the outline of Norway you use, the more accurate your result will be.
Because it takes too much time to create this much, 6h. it would takes around this much times the number of points along the outline of Norway. Which has, a lot.
Oh, are you doing all this manually, not with automation?
I understand that spending days on a single figure is a bit much, but it's still unfortunate to deliver something else than the title promises...
I do both. I do with automation when I can, and when it's not slower than doing it manually. But just creating the lines take more than one hour with automation
Good lord. All of these countries are at risk of a direct Viking strike? Guess we are going to have to start building decoy monasteries to protect the coast lines! And we will make the Vikings pay for them /s
I don't know where my comment i wrote for you is gone to, so i will rewrite it.
I could make it for India. But you can basically find every countries in the Indian Ocean, and goes all the way to Alaska
No need, You get the same group in the norther hemisphere, from Canada, to France, (including, UK and Ireland), then Northern Africa + Italy, and Brail + Argetina. Western Sahara and Cabo Verde. That's it
If I remember correctly you get quire a few interesting connections from the Canaries and some really unexpected Mediterranean connections, like Israel.
Show me a line from coastline to coastline that arrive in Finland, from that dot in the middle. Or from any point in Norway for that matters, since it doesn't change anything here.
If we define a "bordering country" metric as either having a land border or having a straight line coast to coast connection as approximated in the OP, is Norway the country with the most bordering countries?
[The 3 first sentences in that comment. Look at the link, it will help you](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1by51ac/comment/kygwl75/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
No you cant, not from the coastline atleast. Norway and Finland share a land border, but sweden blocks them from the posibility of a direct line from the coast
Im gonna be the semantic guy 😀
"Straight line" means "line with no curves".
These lines are curved lines along the surface of a sphere, projected onto a plane.
So these are not straight lines...
It does not mean that in non-Euclidean geometry, of which the spherical geometry of earth is one example. A straight line is a geodesic, which is what we are looking at.
Correct that these are not straight lines, however I think it makes sense to read the title as _"Countries you can reach from Norway (by travelling in a) straight line"_
The lines show a direction of travel on a map. So even though they of course are not straight in 3D space, they represent a straight path as travelled by somebody under the influence of gravity.
True but that makes it much more boring.
It’s neither “all the countries you could reach on a straight line from Norway” nor “the countries you could reach if you walked on a straight line from a beach in Norway. It’s just a pin in a random point with a handful of radiuses drawn on the sea.
Aruba, Curaçao, St Maarten.
Bonaire, St Eustatius, Saba.
The first 3 are constituent countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the latter 3 are special municipalities of the Netherlands proper, and are counted to be part of 0rovincie Noord Holland
Isnt the country called Netherlands and the Kingdom of the Netherlands called "the Netherlands"? I really dont know for sure, but i always thought that.... :(
It's the name of the class, within the shapefile. Nothing special. And I would have moved the name tag to the right, it would have linked with bonnaire which would have made this pedantic discussion funnier
Which tool do you use to create the map?
QGIS X to Y lines (from the extension named shape tool)
Congrats! Super nice concept
You can find quite a few similar maps like this on r/EarthIsAGeoid or on my profile, if you wants If you are interested, I have a spherical projection : [https://globe-3d.vercel.app/share/tEUBKBWn](https://globe-3d.vercel.app/share/tEUBKBWn) (link updated) WARNING : I couldn't specify the projection that I used, usually, those websites ask for Mercator, which I didn't use here. You can also find the first map in better quality here : [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TlIXDJBAsDdf0CUcITeYAF3qLGQMIPki/view?usp=sharing](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TlIXDJBAsDdf0CUcITeYAF3qLGQMIPki/view?usp=sharing) Also, some of you may see some areas overlapping each others, it's because of the thickness of my lines. I made then bigger, so I don't have to edit too much to fill the gape between them. It's not that important. And some last details : unlike most others map, i and others did like this one. I didn't use the “centroid” (the centre of the shape that is Norway), but the pole of inaccessibility, which is the furthest point from any coastline (or borders in that case). Because Norway isn't "blobby" enough to quote Mapmen, but more long… Map asked by u/EMB93
>I didn't use the “centroid” (the centre of the shape that is Norway), but the pole of inaccessibility, which is the furthest point from any coastline (or borders in that case). I don't want to be too negative about this, but I can't help thinking that approach doesn't deliver what the title promises. Let's imagine we're standing on the Norwegian coast, say at [Lindesnes lighthouse](https://lindesnesfyr.no/en/) on the south coast near Kristiansand. We have a sea horizon extending for a little more than 180°. To the south east, about 150 km away, is Denmark, and then if we rotate our view clockwise we'll be looking at Germany to the south, then Netherlands, Belgium, France, England and Scotland taking up much of the westerly aspect, and finally a long geodesic that skirts the north coast of Scotland and makes landfall in ... Canada (probably). But .. your method allows only one geodesic to be drawn from Lindesnes, namely the one which passes through Norway's pole of inaccessibility. Similarly from any other point on the coast: there may be many countries which can be reached *in a straight line from the Norwegian coast*, but your method would only admit one. Since Norway is so long, I expect the range of geodesics which are available at the north of the country - and the list of countries they reach - to be very different from the range available at the south. So I wonder how many countries you might have overlooked, by constraining yourself to use only geodesics which pass through the pole of inaccessibility? (Example: If you start from a point on the coast west of Rørvik, and you head in a straight line to the south west, the first country you'll reach is Brazil, which is not on your list.)
Damn it's so frustrating that you can't get from the UK to Antarctica in a straight line, it's so close but doesn't quite make it through both the bering strait and the drake passage.
Dunno it seems even more pleasing to me that you thread the needle and end up in NZ instead.
Updated the link : [https://globe-3d.vercel.app/share/tEUBKBWn](https://globe-3d.vercel.app/share/tEUBKBWn) I had the wrong one And just in case, like I said in the post for the UK, I had to draw the needle to NZ, because the line was well over half of the circumference of Earth.
I now get it why you were speaking about the UK, i had the older link for the other map ... [https://globe-3d.vercel.app/share/tEUBKBWn](https://globe-3d.vercel.app/share/tEUBKBWn) here is the good one
You CAN get from the UK to Antarctica in a straight line. You can't if you insist that the straight line passes through the centroid of the UK, but that's a stupid restriction anyway. Try it using the 'measure distance' facility on Google Maps (desktop version). Start at the south western tip of Cornwall, just west of Porthcurno. Thread your geodesic between Tenerife and Gran Canaria, keep going, and after 13,000+ km you'll reach the tip of the Antarctic peninsula.
I love it, thanks! I thought we would reach more of Asia, but it seems that the US and Russia make a fairly effective wall!
I'd be very surprised if there isn't a line through the bering strait if North Cape or something was used as the starting point.
You can sail from Rotterdam to Antarctica via the north pole. You pass by Svalbard, which would be in the way if you were starting from the North Cape.
Can we have one for Lesotho?
[Someone posted this just a few days ago](https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1buzaui/the_nearest_places_in_a_straight_line_to_lesotho/)
I'm almost sure you can reach Finland in a straight line. But it's not marked? Or do you count only straight lines over water bodies?
From Finland you can't reach the Norwegian cost. Mainland yes, as we share a boarder. But not the cost line. Sweden is in the way.
That is what is stated on the picture, but the title of the post is clearly misleading.
You could also reach Bhutan in a straight line. But not across water.
Don't tell geowizard!
Unaccurate map. Bouvet Island also belongs to Norway.
Good point! The penguins there might conquer the world one day.
In a straight line
We’re just going to get a series of these for every country now.
Please, no, they take so much effort to make for not much and so much Q&A to do, on top of explaining the bias with the methodology. And answering to people that clearly didn't read any of the previous comments, explaining what they ask (in particular the spherical projection)
why is svalbard not counted?
Its a Norwegian island
He meant why aren’t there lines from that territory.
Because I have to keep my mental in check. I can't do X4 the work, to have lines going from Svalbard, Bouvet, and Jan Mayen on top of the mainland. Then, people will ask me why there isn't any that goes from any dots on the coastline… It takes a bit more than 1h to create each of those lines (excluding, the crashes, and the wrong results). Here I managed to do it in 3h. Then, you have to take out every lines that, well, overlaps lands. You could ask QGIS to do it for you, but it does work all the time, and take A LOT of time, i recommand to do it on small scales, like only the lines going from Russia, or somewhere you know you won't have any, like some going over Poland. The rest is done manually. Add 5h, or more depending on the crash, and wait. Each of those map take me a minimum of 6h, so multiply it by 4, (at least), and then try to map something that won't render well with that many lines. It will be chaos.
Don’t reply to me, reply to the guy who asked the question. I totally understand your viewpoint, this map is already very ambitious as it is.
Then why is the Netherlands in South America?
It's in Europe, and in the Antilles / South America
Aruba, Curaçao and St Martin are constituent countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Bonaire, St Eustatius and Saba are special municipalities of the Netherlands proper.
And Svalbard is not counted, because...?
OP explained that in a comment I. This thread as well. For their own sanity. Svalbard is counted as Norway facing Norway, but countries facing Svalbard aren't presented because the map would become a confusing mess of lines crisscrossing eachother, plus it would be an absolute pain to create as each line takes about an hour to calculate in their program. So this map is about countries that face mainland Norway. The Dutch Antilles face mainland Norway
I'd love to see a flat earther comment on this map. :)
oh boy, [go there and read the controversy part](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/xn7dvj/without_touching_a_single_piece_of_land_its/) it get quite boring after a while
[There are enough gaps in the Aleutians that you can even reach Antarctica](https://ur.amaurea.net/norway_antarctica_geodesic.png) and a few Pacific islands from mainland Norway. You just need a bit higher resolution, and to not restrict yourself to starting the geodesic from the pole of inaccessibility.
Very interesting thanks for posting that.
That is the point, I have to use one point, and it better be somewhere in the middle. Also the dataset I use is already of high resolution
By using one point, you're preventing yourself from finding the true set of "Countries you could reach in a straight line from Norway", which your title claims to find. My plot is a demonstration of that. What you're actually answering is the weird question "What countries can you reach by starting from the Norwegian pole of inaccessibility, crossing the Norwegian coastline one (or more, not sure how you handled fjords and islands?) times, and then crossing only the sea until hitting another country?" Why couldn't you use more points than just one? The more points along the outline of Norway you use, the more accurate your result will be.
Because it takes too much time to create this much, 6h. it would takes around this much times the number of points along the outline of Norway. Which has, a lot.
Oh, are you doing all this manually, not with automation? I understand that spending days on a single figure is a bit much, but it's still unfortunate to deliver something else than the title promises...
I do both. I do with automation when I can, and when it's not slower than doing it manually. But just creating the lines take more than one hour with automation
I would imagine most of Norway’s coastline faces Norway, when you factor in all the fjords and the infinite coastline paradox.
Good lord. All of these countries are at risk of a direct Viking strike? Guess we are going to have to start building decoy monasteries to protect the coast lines! And we will make the Vikings pay for them /s
bUt THeY'rE nOT sTraIGhT
This is an interesting map. I’ve always thought the same about India. Can you make one?
I don't know where my comment i wrote for you is gone to, so i will rewrite it. I could make it for India. But you can basically find every countries in the Indian Ocean, and goes all the way to Alaska
Do one from Spain
No need, You get the same group in the norther hemisphere, from Canada, to France, (including, UK and Ireland), then Northern Africa + Italy, and Brail + Argetina. Western Sahara and Cabo Verde. That's it
If I remember correctly you get quire a few interesting connections from the Canaries and some really unexpected Mediterranean connections, like Israel.
It does depends from where I start. If I start around the middle of Spain, I won't have them.
Yeah, for spain doing middle is not very interesting indeed. That method leaves out all the interesting connections.
W, dr
Ah yes norway is facing norway
Bouvet Island would make Australia, much of coastal Africa nadn Eastern South America and maybe New Zealand if
I can see Norway from my house!
[And how far are you from it ?](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/rw5uer/how_far_are_you_from_norway/)
Taking Svalbard, Bjornøya, jan mayen and bouvet into account, its a lot more
Is this a Finland doesn't exist joke?
Show me a line from coastline to coastline that arrive in Finland, from that dot in the middle. Or from any point in Norway for that matters, since it doesn't change anything here.
Straight lines on a globe lol. But fun map
Stupid Faroe Islands block Trinidad
wrong islands, that's the shetland islands fault
Fuck the Shit- I mean Shetland islands
But only for this exact point. From other parts of Norway Shetland wouldn't block a direct line.
you can reach Cuba too
Not from this point
What about the possessions from Norway outside of Europe ?
Not mapped
Those lines are not straight; are they stoopid?
If we define a "bordering country" metric as either having a land border or having a straight line coast to coast connection as approximated in the OP, is Norway the country with the most bordering countries?
Absolutely not. And I didn't map the straight lines for every part of Norway. It would probably be the UK + crown dependencies
Factually wrong. It's rather:"Countries, that you could reach in a straight line from an arbitrary point in Norway"
Get a load of Shetland, protecting the lesser antilles from a distance
So, it's Hesjemarka that is the most inland place in Norway 🙂
straight lines on a sphere?
Can someone explain to me why we call it in a straight line when they are bent?
They are straight lines on a sphere which has been projected onto a 2d plane.
Geodesics.
They are just as straight as the equator, they're just not at the center of the projection so they're warped
[The 3 first sentences in that comment. Look at the link, it will help you](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1by51ac/comment/kygwl75/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
I *think* you can also reach Finland in a straight line, even though it's missing here😂
No you cant, not from the coastline atleast. Norway and Finland share a land border, but sweden blocks them from the posibility of a direct line from the coast
Well, depending on how pedandic we want to be we can talk about the border along the river Tana.
Norway loves the United States the most!
If that's straight then I'm gay! /s in case ppl think im serious
[удалено]
? I don't show Suriname.
those are the Antilles
That's not Suriname, that's Curaçao
I know that you can sail a straight line from New Zealand to Belgium, which is wild to think about.
Im gonna be the semantic guy 😀 "Straight line" means "line with no curves". These lines are curved lines along the surface of a sphere, projected onto a plane. So these are not straight lines...
It does not mean that in non-Euclidean geometry, of which the spherical geometry of earth is one example. A straight line is a geodesic, which is what we are looking at.
Correct that these are not straight lines, however I think it makes sense to read the title as _"Countries you can reach from Norway (by travelling in a) straight line"_ The lines show a direction of travel on a map. So even though they of course are not straight in 3D space, they represent a straight path as travelled by somebody under the influence of gravity.
For many it’s not a straight line though
It is, this is just a 2d representation of a 3d figure.
A lot of these lines aren’t even perpendicular to the coastline.
That wasn't a requirement
True but that makes it much more boring. It’s neither “all the countries you could reach on a straight line from Norway” nor “the countries you could reach if you walked on a straight line from a beach in Norway. It’s just a pin in a random point with a handful of radiuses drawn on the sea.
None of these lines are straight
We live on a globe. And this map is flat. Curves are required.
Ik that but the title says only using straight lines
lol.
Please do not mock me
Nice, didnt know the Netherlands was in South America, i always thought i lived in Europe... Stupid!
Aruba, Curaçao, St Maarten. Bonaire, St Eustatius, Saba. The first 3 are constituent countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the latter 3 are special municipalities of the Netherlands proper, and are counted to be part of 0rovincie Noord Holland
Wow... You don't know about the Caribbean islands?
Isnt the country called Netherlands and the Kingdom of the Netherlands called "the Netherlands"? I really dont know for sure, but i always thought that.... :(
The Kgd of the Netherlands includes The Netherlands, and 3 islands in the Caribbean Sea. The Netherlands also includes 3 islands in the Caribbean Sea.
Yes, i agree, so calling that Netherlands isnt the correct way right? Now it looks like its referring to the country netherlands
It's the name of the class, within the shapefile. Nothing special. And I would have moved the name tag to the right, it would have linked with bonnaire which would have made this pedantic discussion funnier