Discovery of Forested Areas on Topographic Maps: Development of Orienteering Maps

Abstract

Large-scale topographic maps were first created in the eighteenth century, but in the beginning their real use was limited to military people. Although forested areas were surveyed and shown on these maps, practically there was no military interest in forested areas. Cadastral mapping or engineering surveys focused on urban and rural areas only. In military training schools, cadets had to study field navigation including distance calculation and map-sketching, and cross-country activities became part of the military training. The civilian interest in sports, including cross-country races also became important at the time of Romanticism. This was an intellectual and artistic movement, which originated in the second half of the eighteenth century. It was also a reaction against the material changes in society, which accompanied the expanding industrial capitalism. According to the Romantics, the solution was to go “back to nature”, because nature was seen as the source of renewal. At the end of the nineteenth century, all the prerequisites for orienteering as a sport (including unclassified topographic maps, at least in some Scandinavian countries and in Britain) were present. It was also the time when the first tourist maps were published; although most used only tracks and paths in the forested areas (originally these tracks and paths were created for forestry or hunting purposes). The development of orienteering maps clearly shows the process of the discovery of forested areas. This paper presents the major milestones of this development in the nineteenth, but mostly in the twentieth century.