ABSTRACT
This chapter is a mapping of those ingredients in the geographies of Gunnar Olsson which takes to be major contributions in, of, at, and to the understanding of humans as geo-graphical beings. However, serious problems were soon to bubble up in the muddy waters that the translation of the Earth and human interaction into the language of space had stirred up. As already noted, for him it all boils down to the relationship between society and the individual, the classical theme of social science which has reappeared in his work in many guises. Returning to the two languages outlined above, his analysis had also shown that even though both idioms pivot around the equal sign, they use it in quite different ways. An intrinsic part of Olsson's cartographic orientation is his semiotic understanding of language that evolved after Birds in Egg/Eggs in Bird, and where the semiotics of Ferdinand de Saussure and Jacques Lacan has been particularly important.
