DMFF#15 4 - 9 nov 2025

Mapping the Mountains – The Book

Mountain maps rank amongst the most beautiful examples of cartography. Their beauty is intensified when one realises the herculean efforts that went into their making. To create an accurate map of a mountain region, surveyors would have to take measurements of heights, distances and angles from elevated and exposed positions, often compelling them to haul heavy equipment in all weathers to well-nigh inaccessible peaks. These unsung heroes became explorers in their own right, perhaps the first true mountaineers.

 

In Mapping the Mountains, writer, translator, geographer and map-lover, Andrew Davies, has put together a fascinating collection of stories from the history of mountain cartography, from Roman times to the present day. The book is richly illustrated with maps, photographs and diagrams and readers will likely be carried away by tales of heroism and endeavour.

Publication: spring 2025

The book is as good as print-ready: our designer has produced a fully illustrated display copy. ‘Mapping the Mountains’ has already been enthusiastically received at the Dutch Mountain Film Festival and more recently at the Kendal Mountain Literature Festival in the UK.
We will shortly be starting a crowdfunding campaign to get the book into print, so if you’d like to help us reach our target, read on …

Stay in the loop

If you’d like to be kept updated about publication dates and/or would like to take part in the crowdfunding, fill in your details in the form below.

Take, for example, the ‘Pundits’. This was the name given to indigenous surveyors who were sent by the British to secretly explore the regions that lay across the Himalayas and beyond the confines of British India. To do this, they were trained to count their steps – exactly two thousand per mile – and to take measurements with hidden instruments. 

Mapping the Mountains – The book

In 2019, Andrew curated the Mapping the Mountains exhibition to coincide with that year’s Dutch Mountain Film Festival in Heerlen. After the success of this exhibition, a German-language version of the exhibition followed at Tuchwerk near Aachen in 2021. The question then arose: when will the book be published?

The answer to that question is: very soon! Graphic designer Roelant Meijer (who recently won an award for the Neverthought-journal designed for the DMFF) was asked to design a book from Andrew’s stories and maps. This is currently a work in progress. At the end of 2024 a crowdfunding project will be set up to ask lovers of maps and tales of adventure to help towards the printing costs of the book.

Designer Roelant Meijer, initiator Toon Hezemans and author Andrew Davies

Stay informed

If you’d like to be kept informed of the book’s progress and receive notifications about how to order, please leave your email address below.

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We are currently looking for an agent or publisher to help distribute the book in the UK and other territories.
Distributors or publishers who are interested in this are kindly asked to contact:

  • Toon Hezemans
  • Dutch Mountain Film Festival / Moving Mountains
  • Email address: mtm@dmff.eu
  • Telephone: +31 (0)6 54 785 642

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