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viabundus.bsky.social
The Viabundus Map
@viabundus.bsky.social
390 followers 180 following 53 posts
This is the international viabundus-project, digitally recreating Northern Europe's route-network around 1500. 🇩🇪🇳🇱🇩🇰🇫🇮🇸🇪More on http://www.viabundus.eu
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viabundus.bsky.social
This would not have been possible without the well-established long-distance road infrastructure. On the side of a road in Lübeck you can still find a cross, which probably had a wooden hand pointing to Wilsnack. How long would you have travelled to Wilsnack? Check it out on viabundus.eu (3/3)
From all over Northern and Central Europe, pilgrims found their way to Wilsnack. They shared the roads with commercial transports, farmers, peddlers and soldiers. Mapped here with viabundus.eu The Klever cross on the road to Wilsnack. Still in situ in Lübeck. The three hosts on the cross lead the way to Wilsnack.
October 31, 2025 at 1:18 PM
viabundus.bsky.social
The Holy Blood became a destination for pilgrims from central Europe, including Denmark, Bohemia and the Netherlands. We know that from the findings of pilgrim badges, which were beautifully mapped by the team of kunera.nl. The famous Margery Kempe tells us, she had been here, too. (2/3)
The three bleeding hosts constitute the pilgrims bagde that you buy and carry on your hat or sleeve to show off, that you had been to Wilsnack. Cheaper than to go to Santiago de Compostella, but still a quality destination... 455 Badges from Wilsnack have been found until today, as registered and mapped by kunera.nl
October 31, 2025 at 1:11 PM
viabundus.bsky.social
Huh, the Blood! Legend has it, that in the 1380s, three bleeding hosts were discovered in Wilsnack in Brandenburg, which quickly became one of Northern Europe's most famous pilgrim’s destinations. The little village built an oversized church, which even today impresses by its sheer size. (1/3)
St Nicolai of Wilsnack, built around the shrine of the bleeding hosts between 1385 and 1400. The wooden shrine of the three bleeding hosts in a small separate chamber in the church. Thousands of pilgrims once stood here, including the famous Margery Kempe. A five meter high St Christopher, painted after 1460, sends off the pilgrims to a safe voyage home.
October 31, 2025 at 1:00 PM
viabundus.bsky.social
Huzzah! Viabundus 2.0 "St. George" is online! We invite you to play around with the updated routing tool and to explore the newly added Finnish roads! www.viabundus.eu
April 25, 2025 at 3:48 PM
viabundus.bsky.social
There it is: The Viabundus Update 2.0 including the new dataset created by the team of Viabundus Finland! 

We celebrate the news with a two-hour virtual event packed with short presentations on Friday, April 25, 10-12 CEST. 

Find the programme and the registration here: 
s.academiccloud.de/FstqOZ
Art by Hugo Simberg (1873-1917), Talvitie I, 1899: A painting of a snowy plain. In the background a hill with trees. In the foreground a horse pulling a sledge. The sky shows a stretch of orange, the only daylight in the northern winter. Part of the Viabundus Map showing some finnish roads
April 12, 2025 at 1:29 PM
viabundus.bsky.social
Thanks to a hint by Andy D., a new and curious user, a bug in the routing tool could be repaired. Everything is back to normal! (that is at least something considering the current state of things, eh?) If you encounter problems, please don't hesitate to drop us a message!
November 12, 2024 at 8:59 AM
viabundus.bsky.social
Bluesky now has over 10 million users, and I was #2,470,700!
September 18, 2024 at 10:06 AM
viabundus.bsky.social
Imagining this session like 👇. Have to be there...
16th century oil painting of a roadside inn in a forest, people sitting in front, a horse and cart at the side, the road populated by a couple
September 10, 2024 at 11:57 AM
viabundus.bsky.social
Viabundus on the Road: Meet our PI Bart Holterman today in Washington D.C. at #DH2024 (dh2024.adho.org). In the panel "Grounding Truth: Critical and Data-Driven Approaches to the History of Travel" @rmidura.bsky.social and other @emdigit.bsky.social members discuss premodern spatial data. Fresh!
A threedimensional digital map of premodern roads winding through a hilly terrain. Roads are red lines, elevation is colored from green to brown. Above a light blue sky.
August 8, 2024 at 10:17 AM
viabundus.bsky.social
Our colleague @muntera.bsky.social presented viabundus at Universität Kassel. A question that always comes up in discussions is that of the impact of seasonality on speed and routes of travelling. It looks like this should be a topic for a future panel or workshop...
Poster advertising the talk about viabundus, attached to a window in the humanities building at Uni Kassel
June 13, 2024 at 6:45 AM
viabundus.bsky.social
More LOD have been added, thanks to the World Historical Gazetteer reconciliation feature. The Viabundus places will be included into the WHG this year soon.
The entry of Malmö shows links to different knowledge bases such as Wikidata, viaf or the German GND.
March 20, 2024 at 10:11 PM
viabundus.bsky.social
Inclusion of all towns in the Burgundian Netherlands as mapped by Jacob van Deventer
(16th c.) and collection of additional information in this region. Ongoing improvement of nodes and roads in the Netherlands and Denmark.
On the osm-basemap Liege and other burgundian places can be seen
March 20, 2024 at 9:34 PM
viabundus.bsky.social
The road networks of the German states Bavaria and Saxony, parts of the Czech Republic, and the former German province East Prussia (now predominantly located in the Russian oblast Kaliningrad) have been checked
for historical accuracy.
The town outlines of historic Prague can be seen, red lines mark the checked road, while grey lines have been taken from other sources without having been checked yet
March 20, 2024 at 9:30 PM
viabundus.bsky.social
Additional roads were mapped in the historical principalities of Flanders and Brabant and the German states Hessen and Rheinland-Pfalz, thus
extending the mapped area southwards to Heidelberg.
The viabundus map shows Frankfurt/Main in a spiderweb of roads
March 20, 2024 at 9:22 PM
viabundus.bsky.social
The display and routing are much faster, as well. We migrated our database to PostgreSQL and are now using the pgrouting package.
March 20, 2024 at 9:10 PM
viabundus.bsky.social
Viabundus 1.3 ("St. Gertrud") is online! The most notable new feature is, that you can include stations to your route, so you can better follow itineraries in your sources.
The viabundus map shows a zig-zag of a velvet line that goes from Aarhus via Gdansk, Leipzig, Görlitz, Prague, Frankfurt/Main, Cologne, Bruges and Magdeburg to Lübeck. This itinerary is absolute bogus, of course. On the other hand, who knows?
March 20, 2024 at 8:55 PM
viabundus.bsky.social
In the Viabundus Map you can choose between two basemaps: the actual OSM and the naked terrain in green shades based on SRTM with recreated coastlines. Which one do you like or use more? That is: which should be the standard basemap?
Detail screenshot of the map with OSM as basemap. The roads are symbolized by red lines, places by symbols in black. Detail screenshot of the map with SRTM terrain in green shades as basemap. Roads are red, places black.
March 13, 2024 at 10:26 PM
viabundus.bsky.social
Coming up:
The Road Goes on - The international conference, hosted by the Viabundus Finland team in Tampere 16-17 Feb 2024. Register now for free to attend online or on site! Programme and info here: projects.tuni.fi/viabundus-fi...
Actual photo of a woman in traditional dress and with a basket as rucksack walks through a snowy landscape.
February 1, 2024 at 3:38 PM
viabundus.bsky.social
A use of viabundus we barely thought of is research for a novel.
What is more painful? To travel long distances in the 17th century or to recreate their circumstances today?
Read more on writer Ilana deBare's blog: ilanadebare.substack.com/p/17th-century…
Stade, ca. 1630, by Leonard Schot, Detail. Stadtarchiv Stade, KB II, Nr. 1037
January 19, 2024 at 11:54 AM
viabundus.bsky.social
If I had a map that shows the roads for my time, or better, something interactive, and with a calculator of travel times. Look no further! We are developing a source based, profoundly researched map of the main road network in Northern Europe between 1350 and 1650. Play around: www.viabundus.eu
Screenshot of the viabundus map showing the extent of the road network that has been recreated so far. It reaches from Bruges to Novgorod, Aalborg to Frankfurt/Main.
December 11, 2023 at 7:03 PM