Mapping the Mabinogion

Digital humanities is all about maps. Unfortunately, while there are a myriad of programs available for mapping data onto real geography, I have not yet discovered a mapping tool that can handle journeys to and from the Otherworld… (If you know of one, please tell me!)

However, what “mapping” is really all about is discovering patterns. I first tried charting the journeys and events of Pwyll and Owein through graphing them, using Excel spread sheets. This is what I ended up with:

It gives an idea of overall pattern, but unless you know the story cold, it isn’t particularly helpful (or maybe my Excel skills are not all they could be).

I ended up making color-coded charts in an Excel spreadsheet, because that’s what gave me the most control over what I wanted to convey. The first set shows the events of the stories charted by place.

This second set charts the events, focusing on the characters:

I feel like these charts start to illustrate some of the patterning in the stories, but are not entirely satisfactory. For one thing, because they are so large, it’s hard to see what’s happening. Ultimately, what I would really like to do is map the travels of all the characters in the Mabinogion on layers that can be stacked up to see patterns across the stories. For instance, taking just the PKM, the stories alternate between North and South Wales, with characters traveling “within” Dyfed in the First Branch (i.e., to coterminus Otherworlds, the realms of Arawn and Hyfaidd); from Harlech in North Wales west to Ireland and back (with some roundaboutation at the end) in the Second Branch; from Dyfed east to Hereford and environs in England and back in the Third Branch; and from Gwynedd to Dyfed–north to south–and back in the Fourth Branch. Many people have written on the itineraries in these stories, with a great deal of effort to identify the places named, for example, in Gwydion’s pig-drive northwards in the Fourth Branch.

All well and good, but what about when you get to the Arthurian stories? Owein, Peredur, and Geraint all take off for the wildernesses in their respective tales, and while Arthur’s court serves as a focal point for them to come back to (and leave again), all their adventures take place Elsewhere. I am inclined to think that Owein’s adventures, which occur “beyond the limits of the world,” happen in Scotland, beyond the remains of Hadrian’s Wall, but this is an assumption based on the fact that the historical Owein ap Urien belonged to the kingdom of Rheged, which spanned the western end of the Wall. Even with that small assumption, it’s impossible to geographically map the events of these three stories.