So… I think I found New Berk?
(long post warning. so so long. and lots of pictures so sorry mobile users…) I don’t know if anyone else had pinpointed a possible place that New Berk exists in relation to Hiccup’s map, but I might have somewhat of an answer.
I was doing a bit of extremely major minor world building trying to figure out where the Hidden World and other places are in relation to Old Berk. @redkiteslike actually pointed me to a couple posts she made or added to here that pinpointed a possible area for the Hidden World’s location. And that was incredibly helpful (thanks again, Reddie!)
But then I did more digging and dug back out that interactive map, you know the one dreamworks had on their website and then took down, the Race to the Edge one, the one I’m sure we all have at least seen a reference to before?
Yeah that one :) (ignore the funky looking places, it’s pieces I edited together) ANYWAY
My little nerd butt was trying to calculate some travel timing both by boat and dragon between Old Berk and the Wingmaidens or Old Berk and Berserker Island or Outcast Island to blah blah blah you get the picture.
And then I got to New Berk. And I couldn’t find any point of reference for that. So in trying to figure out how long it would take to get from, say, Old Berk to New Berk, went back to the third movie and took some clues from there. From context clues the Hooligans were able to get to the location that would become New Berk in less than a day. They went west and it wasn’t a previously discovered island, so it would have to be west of the edge of Hiccups current map (above). Dragon’s Edge was also about a day’s flight from Old Berk. So I just drew an imaginary line directly west of Old Berk about the same distance away as Dragon’s Edge but in the opposite direction, and said “Yeah, that good enough!”
So back to the third movie I go for the umpteenth time to see if I somehow missed something after combing through it over and over and over and…
I skipped straight to the part where they’re en route for New-Berk-to-be, but this time I paid more attention to the things Grimmel was saying. Which I hadn’t done before, because although he got lucky, he incorrectly guessed the reasoning behind Hiccup’s decisions about which direction exactly to go.
Now I never paid a whole lot of attention to it before because it was a lot scarcer than Hiccup’s map so I didn’t really think it accurate. And then I noticed this little guy. (Apologies in advance for the awful photo quality, I’m a writer not a digital artist.)
Kinda looks like the shape of Dark Deep on Hiccup’s map. And then this guy…
Not too bad for Berk. And these look a lot like the Rookery and Scauldron Island.
So then this little line of islands here…
Must be Dragon, Thor Rock, Crescent, and Sunstone Islands.
Grimmel’s are slanted differently just because of the angle of the shot. And they’re not exact, but that would make sense because I think it’s safe to assume that Grimmel made this map himself, just like Hiccup made his. So they wouldn’t be exact, they would potentially be skewed by perspective and be dependent on the skill of the creator.
So Grimmel basically says that the Berkians would have to follow the line of Dragon, Thor Rock, Sunstone, and Crescent islands on their path away from Berk. We can assume he’s right because, well, he found them not long after they left. And we know New Berk is northwest of Old Berk as well. So looking at that northwestern corner of Hiccup’s RTTE map…
We’ve got a pretty good view of where they may have been flying.
I wanna talk about this guy.
It’s not named, and I don’t recall it existing anywhere in RTTE or HTTYD2; after all, if it was, we’d have a name for it. It’s directly in line with the islands the Berkians followed. And the shape especially peaked my interest.
We don’t have a clear shot of the entirety of New Berk, but the two views we do get of the side of the island show that it doesn’t seem to have many irregular outcroppings, and almost a corner on the side they approach from (i.e. the southeastern side of the island).
Which is consistent with the shape of the island on Hiccup’s map.
Now, I will say that going off of distance, I wouldn’t have placed New Berk quite that far out from Old Berk. But we all know there’s enough inconsistencies between RTTE and THW (or the movies in general) that I’m not too concerned about it. And the fact that it does already exist on Hiccup’s map makes me a little hesitant. However, Hiccup never said whether or not it was a known island. Just that “this place is very nice, but it’s not the Hidden World,” and that “it’s defensible, hidden.” Which, to be fair, there’s not exactly much else adjacent to that island both in the movie or on Hiccup’s map.
This also fits fairly well with what Reddie said about the location of the Hidden World. Hiccup says its “nine days east of the Edge of the World” which would be the Hidden World, and I would assume nine days would be by ship. So the Hidden World would either be directly west of New Berk… Or directly west of Old Berk. Aka southwest of New Berk. Which there is plenty of space there for the Hidden World to possibly be. That could even place the Hidden World fairly close to the Rookery by dragon-flight standards.
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