I was reading the Infernal City, when I stumbled upon a bit of lore that helped me estimate the size of Nirn.

On page 212 in the book, it is mentioned that the distance from the southern coast of Black Marsh to Lilmoth is approximately 15 miles.

Cross-referencing this bit of information with the map of Stros M'Kai from Redguard (which has a latitude/longitude grid), as seen here:

http://www.imperial-library.info/sites/default/files/gallery_files/redguard_map.jpg

... as well as this map made from the Arena map, which shows the island of Stros M'kai below Hammerfell (one island though, so I estimated distance by pixels to help calculate).

http://www.imperial-library.info/sites/default/files/gallery_files/cyrodiillargelowrescr7.jpg

using the above map, I measured in pixels the distance from the center of Lilmoth to the southern coast of Black Marsh, which was appox. 47 pixels.

ignoring the scale on the bottom of the map, which is clearly wrong based on what the novel tells, I then measured the number of pixels that fit between the two east-west lines on the first map, approx. 3/4 the pixels, so i rounded down to about 10 miles per 0.25 degrees.

Assuming Nirn is spherical (duh), the circumference of Nirn should be approx. 14,400 miles. About 58% the circumference of Earth.

This makes Nirn's total volume about 5x10^10 miles cubed. Compared to earth's 1.09x10^12, this is about 4.5% the volume of Earth, at least according to my math.

Wow, Nirn is tiny.

Wait, Nirn? Are you sure you aren't just referring to Tamriel alone?

Yeah dude, Tamriel is not the whole planet.

And you'll be hard pressed to find any two measurements that make any sense when compared to one another throughout the entire series. Just on a basic level, we can see the Illiac Bay is bigger than Vvardenfell, Cyrodiil, and Skyrim combined, which makes no sense.

I say ignore the arbitrary numbers. How big Nirn is is irrelevant.

How would the comparison I've heard, of Daggerfall's playable area being size of a real-life Great Britain, fit in this calculation?

Just a note. You're using a fan-made map. They're cool because they're more comprehensive then any of the game maps but places in Tamriel have a tendency to float around. Just observe

Even so. I did the same calculation with the 250 miles between Red Mountain and Almelexia as described in the First PGE. IIRC I got to about 50% of Earths circumference. So we're still in the same ballpark.

edit:

You may want to use http://www.imperial-library.info/content/west-tamriel-official though. It also provides longitude and latitude but on a larger scale.



Just fine. Great Britain ain't all the great.


Read it again. He's using miles per degree of longitude. There are 360 of those so once you know how many miles per degree, you know the circumference.


Never the less, I'm glad you took the time to share your ever enlightening opinion.

I think too much time was spent on this.

Wait, I'm confused. How on earth (or on Nirn for that matter) can you calculate using degrees of longitude if you don't know the size of Nirn? Tamriel could cover a small part of it or a large one. How are we to know?

Aaaah missed that info on the map.

Does this account for how Akavir is 4200 (If I remember correctly) miles away from Tamriel?

Well, seeing as how there are only four main continents, being ~1/3 of the way around the world is not so unrealistic.

Keep in mind that the 4200 miles is a an estimate based on the 42 days mentioned in the Ionith report and a guesstimate of 100 miles a day.


The West Tamriel map I linked to above and the map of Stros M'kay map have longitude and latitude notations. So you know the distance between any two locations in degrees. If you also know the distance between those two locations in miles you can calculate the miles per degree. Once you know that you know the circumference.

There is a caveats in that you have fewer miles per degree when you get closer to the poles, but neither maps from Redguard seem to take that into account so neither can we. Tamriel is still quite close to the equator (map ranges from 10-40) so we can be off by ~30% in either direction. But that's fine since we're interested in the ball park.

Nirn could have a 1008° in her wheels.

I may be a bit numpty at this, and probably thinking of some other game, but doesn't Nirn kind of "inflate" and "deflate" over time?

I kind of remember some lore about this, but like I said it may of been a totally different setting.

You're thinking of something else.

Thought so

These are Redguard maps.

Lore trumps games. Cyrodiil on the map is bigger than Daggerfall, but is less than 10 miles across in Oblivion. The same goes for Skyrim and Morrowind.


That's geometrically impossible, but it would be plausible for Sheogorath's realm.

Well this is interesting...

This would put nirn at about the size of mars, which fits fine seeing as the continents of nirn are not like the mega continents on earth.

Well, we don't know that for sure. Nirn could be the size of Jupiter and have a massive ocean that hasnt been crosses since the Ehlnofey

I don't know if it's physically possible to have terrestrial planets the size of jupiter. Besides we know from geography that atmora must be close to the north pole while the southern tip of tamriel is likely near the equator. So it can't be that big.

I threw normal earth&space science out the window long ago. You understand how the planets of Oblivion work right?

What this discussion looks like.

A: I've calculated the size of Nirn. Its circumference is half that of earth.
B: But what about the other continents?
C: They're fine, but they'd be half way around the world.
D: We don't know that! Nirn could be the size of Jupiter!
E: That wouldn't work physically.
D: Don't matter I threw out regular physics.

I suppose the idea that Nirn is flat goes out the window, along with any mytho-giggle suggesting so.