15 September 2026

Zendrolion’s Norwold, 24 miles per hex v1.5

Just a few days after posting his first labelled version, Norwold 1.4, Simone shared an updated 1.5 map with even more labels. He also incorporated revisions that Michele and others had proposed on the Italian MMB. Among Michele’s suggestions were the change from White Sea to Norzee; the naming of Heldland after the Joshuan’s Almanac river in that region; and a general agreement to using fan-created names where official maps were blank. This last point was likely quite an important one for the development of the map, because both Simone and Michele are known for their attention to detail and adherence to official maps. However, Norwold can’t really be mapped thoroughly without reference to fan creations, suppositions, placements, and so on, because the official information is either too scant, or too ambiguous.

Thus, adding new names and adopting fan-created names was inevitable. Michele’s comments on this subject were fascinating, and well worth a read:

I think a general, reasoned placement of them makes sense.

As for the addition of non-canonical elements, I’ll simply point out that whatever position one decides to take, Norwold as presented in the official supplements is too sparsely populated, and is incongruent with the neighboring regions to the south. Many official designers and enthusiasts have attempted to fill these glaring gaps by inserting new elements (such as the M4, the CM3, Heard’s own work on the Heldann Knights, and then the non-canonical Samaari and Varaana, and the Vantalians).

In this I justify the idea of taking the most popular of these elements (it is not necessarily the most successful, but being famous probably means that they adapt better to the surrounding context) and aligning them a little so that they fit logically into the rest of the canonical context.

It’s true that the resulting work is semi-canonical and disputable, but it has a slightly more shared and reasoned basis than if I alone were to invent the Empire of the Assassin Firs of the Earthshard River from scratch and propose it en masse to the Vaults or to the quest forum or to the WOTC forum.

Simone introduced his revised map as follows:

Without further ado, here’s the map with new place names. Some are from the Vaults, others are my own additions. The only “canon” part is the Ironfoot Mountains (taken from the AC10 adventure “The Pestiferous Castle of Bodor Sordstone,” which was originally intended to be included in Norwold).

For mountain ranges, I took the following approach: all the well-named ranges in Norwold are huge and are “ranges” that include many smaller mountains (just as the Alps or the Rockies include several smaller ranges). So find the name of the largest “range” and the names of the smaller “mountains.”

I added Heldland and Norzee (I checked: it should be the sea that goes from the Frosthaven area to north of Qeodhar) as per Zompa’s suggestion, and expanded the Wyrmsteeth Range to the northeast.

Of course, many of the toponyms are purely my own invention, and criticism, new proposals, and suggestions are welcome, especially to fill in the many places that still don’t have a name.

With place names for terrain features largely done, Simone and his compatriots would next turn their attention to the placement of dominions — another very thorny issue for Norwold, as there is an extensive list of these, but with almost no official locations.

Note that this map should not be confused with Simone’s Norwold 1.5 political map, which belonged to this later dominion placement effort.

Finally, I am now reasonably sure that this version was the one that Simone first posted in his November 2006 MMB thread, Norwold from the Italian MMB. Soon after posting it, Twin Campaigns provided Simone with corrected Finnish names, which he incorporated into the map — likely in a version 1.6, though I have never seen a file with that label. He would then give it one last update in March 2007, bringing it to the familiar version 1.7 that then settled into its position in the community as one of our most definitive Norwold maps.

Edit (17th September 2026): After reading more of the original thread on the Italian MMB, I now believe that the version here was not actually the first posted 1.5 version. Rather, Simone made several updates to the map after posting it, and the last update is the version remaining to us. During the discussion, he mentioned the large lake southwest of Oceansend from M4. Many years later, in 2023, I added this to my Chronological map for Norwold, 24 miles per hex (1987), and at the time I thought I had been the first to notice it. Now, however, it seems that in fact Simone had noticed it a full 17 years earlier, though he decided against incorporating it into his own map.

The first version of 1.5 was from late April 2006, and it had Goddesses’ Diadem rather than Goddess’ Diadem, and no Jotunheimr Hills label. It also likely had all of the Kaarjala and M-Finnish names from 1.4 still intact. The version here comes from a few weeks later in May, with all these revisions in place.

Fan-made Maps by Simone Neri (May 2006)

*Norwold, 24 miles per hex, by Simone Neri, April 2006 (version 1.5)*

This is an original map created by one of Mystara’s excellent fan cartographers. For more information on the cartographer, including a gallery of all their maps, see also Appendix M: Mappers of Mystara.

Sources

Fan Sources

Zendrolion’s Norwold, 24 miles per hex v1.3 (March 2006)
Zendrolion’s Norwold Ethnographical, 24 miles per hex v1 (April 2006)
Zendrolion’s Norwold, 24 miles per hex v1.4 (April 2006)

References

All of Simone’s maps at the Atlas of Mystara
Simone’s entry in Appendix M: Mappers of Mystara (upcoming)
Simone’s author page at the Vaults of Pandius

Chronological Analysis

This is a fan-made map. It was published in May 2006. The updated Atlas version of this map is not yet available. See also Appendix C for annual chronological snapshots of the area. For the full context of this map in Mystara’s publication history, see the upcoming Let’s Map Mystara 2006.

The following lists are from the Let’s Map Mystara project. Additions are new features, introduced in this map. Revisions are changes to previously-introduced features. Hex Art & Fonts track design elements. Finally, Textual Additions are potential features found in the related text. In most cases, the Atlas adopts these textual additions into updated and chronological maps.

Under Construction! Please check back again soon for updates.