Maplympics

The Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games is a fascinating spectacle. Not the circus before it, but the actual parade of competing states.

It’s a challenge, an Olympic-sized challenge for me as I try and recognise a country’s flag before the announcer informs us. I’ll try and recall the country’s population and capital city before it’s made common knowledge to the common people. Getting the facts right give me far too more pleasure than is socially acceptable for such a trivial pursuit! Despite the pride in my factual prowess, any unsuspecting audience in the living room are, unfortunately, unimpressed.

Maldives team at London Olympics

You see, I’ve never got over the huge disappointment that was the Geography O Level Course at Ysgol Gyfun Gymraeg Glantaf in Cardiff in the 1980s. No fault of the teacher, the fair, friendly but no-nonsense, Mr Ellis Griffiths of course. No I place the blame squarely on the WJEC.

Where I was expecting and Edwardian summer of lessons testing our knowledge of capital cities, population, quirky borders, neighbouring countries  and flags, I came up against the glacially slow and tedious facts of geology – or stones to you and me!

No discussions on the border dispute between land-locked Bolivia with its Peruvian and Chilean neighbours. No seminars on fascinating enclaves and exclaves of Europe – especially Belgium and Switzerland. No jocular rivalry when someone believed that Rio de Janeiro was the capital of Brazil or that Christiana and Oslo were two different places. No, just stones moving very, very slowly. Like the lessons really.

And so, the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games is the O Level exam I never had. Added to that of course is my frustration that there isn’t an independent Welsh team representing us and you’ll see there’s an added competitive edge as I calculate how many countries smaller, or the same size of Wales, march proudly behind their flags. At the the last Olympics in Beijing, Wales would have been about 24^th in the medal list out of 200 had we been competing as ourselves!

And so, I come to the National Library. Before I came to work here I’d regularly spend a quiet Saturday afternoon browsing through the books in the collection. Now, of course, I don’t. That’s a pity for I remember one of my great discoveries of the Library’s collection – its collection of maps.

No, not estate or tithe maps or rambling OS maps of the UK. No, I’m talking of real, ‘dreams are made of these’ maps! The National Library’s collection of International Atlases. Oh, yes! All kinds of atlases. Not just of foreign lands but in foreign languages too. With added graphs! And if you’re lucky, their borders and capital cities may have changed since that particular atlas was published. With added historiographical Schadenfreude!

Now, if there are women reading this blog, I’ll grant it may not give you the same fascination. Maps and atlases, it seems, is a bloke thing. But women be kind to your map-loving boyfriend or husband; it’s harmless and quiet, it’s legal and it keeps him happy – you know, happy like a 6 year old child is playing with Lego.

So, if you’re a map addict then the National Library is also the National Maprary of Wales. Come on! Get stuck in into some maps, and then, when the next Olympic Opening Ceremony is held at Rio you can amaze your girlfriend and family with your encyclopaedic knowledge of some independent island state on a Pacific atoll … if the atolls are still there, that is!

Siôn Jobbins