What do the little red x's on the Skyrim Physical Map stand for?

[LarenzoAOG]

I preordered Skyrim and got a nifty map, aside from the towns, cities, rivers, and mountains, the map also shows a bunch of red x's, back in the day when I got Morrowind it came with a similar map with similar x's and the x's would represent places with lots of swag and really cool dungeons, do the Skyrim x's represent the same thing?

I tried to look it up but my Google-fu is weak. Also I can't just go head out to one as my father is currently tearing it up for the Companions.

Here's a pic of the map.

http://www.gamepur.com/files/imagepicker/6/skyrim-map-hd.jpg

All right, question answered.

 

[HassEsser]

I Googled it, they appear to be the locations of all the birth stones.

EDIT: Except, apparently, the Serpent Stone. And I almost noticed that myself, found it on that island to the far north east, but it is not on the map. . .

 

[LarenzoAOG]

I Googled it, they appear to be the locations of all the birth stones.

Coolio, alright thread resolved thank you for your help.

 

[Connor2224]

this maybe old but i located the one directly west of dawnstar and it is vokuns crypt so they may be dragonpriest sites

 

[Seishisha]

Just a quick bit of logical deduction, they cannot represent the standing stones atleast not all of them, as the game has thirteen stones but on the map there is more than thirteen X's also bear in mind that three of the stones outside riverwood are all in one place.

Time now for some speculation, when the map was drawn up there may have been plans for more than thirteen stones in the game and when this was revised the map was never recalled or reprinted, that would also explain the absent marker for the serpent stone, it is also possible that the extra x markers are intentional and they indicate hidden treasure or unique items etc and the missing serpent stone marker is merely an error.

 

[WolfThomas]

Cue the complaint that the Skyrim (and Oblivion) maps sucked.

Spoiler: This is what we got with Morrowind

Every X led to something, every Dwemer ruin or Daedric temple was on it, it was damned handy for navigating the whole place on foot.

 

[tutut1356]

So Ive been looking in to this and Ive started from the north-west corner of the map. The first was a deadric shrine that gave me dawnbreaker, the next was some ruins and at the end it lead me to a word wall with a dragon priest. Im thinking the post about the morrowind map might be right.

 

[GundamSentinel]

I don't think anyone knows for sure what all of them mean. All I'm certain of is that all the Guardian Stones are marked as an X (except the Serpent Stone, but that may be because it's too far to the north-east to be on the map).

The other ones I really don't know. Two of them seem to be right over entrances to Blackreach (Mzinchaleft and Alftand), but the other two entrances aren't marked. Also, one of the x-marks is in the middle of an Orc camp for some reason (Largashbur). A couple more are at places with Dragon Walls (Volskygge, Valthume and the Shrine of Meridia). Volskygge and Valthume also have Dragon Priest lairs, which would match with the x-mark at Labyrinthian. And then there are some Dwemer ruins marked for no particular reason (Mzulft, Irkngthand and Kagrenzel)...

A mystery, if you ask me.

Also, my map seems to feature more x's than that digital map...