Narnia (country)

Coat of arms of Narnia (Golden Age)

Coat of arms of Narnia (later years)

Narnia is a land of rolling hills rising to low mountains in the south. It is predominantly forested except for marshlands in the north. The country is bordered on the east by the Eastern Ocean, on the west by a great mountain range, on the north by the River Shribble, and on the south by Archenland.

The economic heart of the country centres on the Great River of Narnia, which crosses the country from the northwest on an east-southeasterly course to the Eastern Ocean. The seat of government is Cair Paravel, at the mouth of the Great River. Other communities along the river include (from east to west):

• Beruna: One of four named towns in the country of Narnia. Beruna grew as a strategic location because of the fords on the Great River that were located there. When Narnia was conquered by the Telmarines, a town was built at the Fords of Beruna and a bridge over the river was constructed. In Prince Caspian, Susan Pevensie and Lucy Pevensie accompany Aslan to the bridge, and Bacchus destroys it at the request of the river-god ("Loose my chains").
• Beaversdam: A community named for the dam in the area built by Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, helped to escort the four Pevensie children (Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy) to the Stone Table to meet Aslan. (LWW) The name kept alive memory of the beavers, though in later times they became extinct in Narnia. The community was likely developed before the Telmarine conquest (unless the Telmarines named it after the "Old Narnian" story of the Pevensies', which is unlikely), but it still existed under the Telmarine rule, and seemed to have hosted a majority of the Telmarine-descent population. At the time when the usurper Miraz purged the aristocracy of anyone who might threaten his rule, two brothers who were the lords of Beaversdam were locked up as "madmen" (PC)
• Chippingford: One of four towns named in the country of Narnia. It is mentioned briefly at the start of The Last Battle when Shift the Ape sends Puzzle the donkey there to buy oranges and bananas. It is a British English name, made up as if derived from the Anglo-Saxon Cēapungford which means "market ford". (LB)

C. S. Lewis took the name from the Italian town of Narni, whose Latin name was in fact Narnia. Concerning Narnia and Narni Roger Lancelyn Green writes about C.S. Lewis and Walter Hooper:

When Walter Hooper asked [C.S. Lewis] where he found the word 'Narnia', Lewis showed him Murray's Small Classical Atlas, ed.G.B. Grundy (1904), which he acquired when he was reading the classics with Mr Kirkpatrick at Great Bookham [1914-1917]. On plate 8 of the Atlas is a map of ancient Italy. Lewis had underscored the name of a little town called Narnia, simply because he liked the sound of it. Narnia — or 'Narni' in Italian — is in Umbria, halfway between Rome and Assisi.
Narnia, a small medieval town, is situated at the top of an olive-covered hill. It was already ancient when the Romans defeated it in 299 BC. Its thirteenth-century fortress dominates a deep, narrow gorge of the Nera river which runs below. One of its most important archaeological features is a Romanesque cathedral, which contains the relics of a number of Umbrian saints.

• Outline of Narnia