PUTTING JORVIK ON THE MAP: SIZE AND LOCATION
WHERE IS JORVIK?
Finding Jorvikās exact location is actually pretty easy.
āJorvik, located somewhere between Norway, Iceland, and the British Isles, of which it was once part, is a nexus of worlds.ā - Jorvik Calling, Prologue.
This is still a pretty large area, but one thatās significantly narrowed down by reading Four Stories from Jorvik. Anneās segment Midnight Sun establishes that Jorvik is at the very least partly above the arctic circle, to the point where Anne can see it while riding by Jorvik Stables in the middle of the night. This also puts Jorvik pretty close to the tectonic rift between the European and American continental plates, which handily explains why Jorvik is a volcanic Island.
HOW BIG IS JORVIK?
Jorvikās size requires a bit more speculation, and Iām relying on two book sources.
1: Jorvik stables is a bus trip from Jorvik city.
Anne lives in Jorvik City but goes to school with the other soul riders in Jarlaheim, and has her horse at Jorvik stables. We know that she goes there by bus, so the distance between Jarlaheim and Jorvik City shouldnāt be too large; Iām capping the max length of the bus ride to about an hour.
2: Valedale is less than a dayās ride from the wineyard.
In The Legend Awakens, Elizabeth and the soul riders are heading to Piās Swamp and sleep over at the Wineyard. The soul riders wake up late and leave after having eaten breakfast and lunch. The sun is āat its highest point in the skyā when they leave, so probably around 1-2PM. Itās twilight when they arrive, and the Baroness comments that they showed up in time for the evening feeding of the horses. Since the days are shorter in late October/early November, which is when this chapter takes place, we can guess that they arrived at around 5-6 PM.
Mapping out the most likely routes for these two trips, the route to the Wineyard is about a third of the bus route from Jorvik City to Jarlaheim. Additionally, the bus would drive on average ~70 km/h because of Jorvikās smaller roads. The average walking speed of a horse is 6 km/h.
Now, the Valedale-Wineyard trip could take anywhere between 3-5 hours, but Iām inclined to believe that itās on the lower end of that scale to keep Anneās commute as short as possible. That leaves us with a 18 km long ride, and a 54 km long bus tour that takes 46 minutes. Pretty reasonable!
RESULTS
With these new measurements, we can figure out the actual distance between different places on Jorvik. Most importantly, we can measure the absolute width from Jorviks westernmost to easternmost point: 92 km, or ~57 miles!
Having figured out an estimate of the islandās size and location, we can now put Jorvik on the map!
