Land Masses and Formations

[Stormrider]

The Atlas of Middle Earth by cartographer, Karen Wynn Fonstad, is very interesting. Being a cartographer, she knows about the different land masses and how places were created.

When she began creating this book, she avidly read thru all of Tolkien's works and took clues from his passages to help her develop more clearly and in more detail all the ages of Arda in maps.

Take the Misty Mountains for example. She says that most likely Tolkien was influenced by the European Alps when he placed them in Middle-Earth. Tolkien had hiked in the Alps back in 1911.

If the Misty Mountains were comparable to the Alps she says "they would have been formed by a complex mixture of faulting, folding, doming, and volcanic activity. This ruggedness extended into the area west of the mountains, producing tortuous lands all the way from the Ettenmoors in the North, through the extremely dissected plateau around Rivendell with its many gullies, ravines, and deep valleys, the tumble hill lands traversed by the Nine Walkers in Eregion, and down to the hilly wastelands of Dunland."

There were several processes that could have formed some of the ranges of the Misty Mountains:
1. alpine glaciation Key words used by JRRT that gave Wynstad clues to the possibility that these mountains were formed from abrading ice were horn (sharp pointed peaks cut by ice on 3 or more sides) and trough (a valley eroded by a glacier until it becomes U-shaped and broad with steep walls). Rock steps and recessional moraines could both dam up lakes or tarns that might empty over the dam in falls or rapids--which were found near Moria. The use of the word trough was found describing the Redhorn Pass area and rapids bubbled down the Dimril Stair into the Mirrormere--which is an example of a moraine-dammed lake.
2. cavern formation describes the area where Thorin and Company traveled in and around the Goblin-tunnels. Fonstad states that Gollum's cave and slimy island on the subterranean lake would have been limestone. Also the Dwarves disturbed stones made of limestone when they ran from the Goblins. Even the shelf of the Eagles eyries were made of the same rock.

So it still amazes me that Tolkien even took care in describing all of his lands in such detail to show the Reader that middle-earth was made of very real landscapes.

There are more examples in this book and I hope to be able to add more commentary and examples as I make my way through the book.

[Vanye]

Storm: I bought that book in 2003 & have used it for reference ever since. It is very good-Fonstad was a fan of Tolkien & used her expertise in cartography to do a wonderful job of showing us what Middle-earth would look like. My college degree is in Earth Science & I took classes in Geology, Geography & Geomorphology which is the study of land forms. Her maps & text show that she knows where of she speaks. I have concluded that Tolkien must have been a true Renaissance man-he must have studied Geology & Geography along w/Linguistics, Literature, etc.

I found a website several years ago that shows how all the areas of M-e relate to the geography of Europe, Asia & N. Africa. It has overlays to illustrate the theory. I made copies off the internet of those maps but will have to look them up. 8^)

[Stormrider]

Vanye: Yes, this book is wonderful. She has the dates as the Fellowship travels thru Middle-earth and after they break up. I was able to follow who was where by looking at the dates and the paths she added to her maps.

Yes, after starting the Atlas of M-E, I can see that Tolkien paid attention to lands and the similarities on our real Europe and embedded them in his middle-earth and arda. I would be very interested if you can find that website with the overlays!

[Vanye]

Storm: I found the map online-it was created by Prof. Peter Bird (a Professor of Geography @ UCLA). I Googled Peter Bird to find it.

[e-mail]

It has been online for nearly 10 years. When you go to his website you have to go to the bottom to find it.

Let me know if it works for you or no! 8^)

[Stormrider]

The link you provided is his email address so I plugged in his name and came across this site: peterbird.name/ there is a map of Middle Earth at the bottom, but it is not layed over Europe nor does it explain anything.

So I kept searching now that I knew the Prof's name and found this site. It is the same map, but has some detail about it: bigthink.com/ideas/21172 and says that:

Bird, a professor of Geophysics and Geology at UCLA, has overlapped the map of Middle-earth with one of Europe, which leads to following locations:

• The Shire is in the South-West of England, which further north is also home to the Old Forest (Yorkshire?), the Barrow Downs (north of England), the city of Bree (at or near Newcastle-upon-Tyne) and Amon Sul (Scottish Highlands).
• The Grey Havens are situated in Ireland.
• Eriador corresponds with Brittany.
• Helm’s Deep is near the Franco-German-Swiss border tripoint, close to the city of Basel.
• The mountain chain of Ered Nimrais is the Alps.
• Gondor corresponds with the northern Italian plains, extended towards the unsubmerged Adriatic Sea.
• Mordor is situated in Transylvania, with Mount Doom in Romania (probably), Minas Morgul in Hungary (approximately) and Minas Tirith in Austria (sort of).
• Rohan is in southern Germany, with Edoras at the foot of the Bavarian Alps. Also in Germany, but to the north, near present-day Hamburg, is Isengard. Close by is the forest of Fangorn.
• To the north is Mirkwood, further east are Rhovanion and the wastes of Rhûn, close to the Ural mountains.
• The Sea of Rhûn corresponds to the Black Sea.
• Khand is Turkey
• Haradwaith is the eastern part of North Africa, Umbar corresponds with the Maghreb, the western part of North Africa.
• The Bay of Belfalas is the western part of the Mediterranean.

Mordor is situated in Transylvania, with Mount Doom in Romania (probably) Muhahahaha! Our Dear Prof JRRT seems to have had a sense of humor!

It makes sense that The Shire, The Old Forest, and The Barrow Downs are in England although PJ seemed to relate The Shire with Ireland...well Howard Shore's music sounds more celtic to me anyway.

[Vanye]

Yeah it does show Europe but very faintly-you should have no trouble seeing the shape of Spain & right above it the faint silhouette of UK w/a yellow circle showing the location of the Shire I used to have a hard copy of it but cannot find it.

Anyway, look at it again & if you can get a copy of it tell me how you did it! 8^)

[Stormrider]

Vanye:

OK...I looked again! It is very lightly imposed but I do see it now.

The map is here: bigthink.com/ideas/21172

[Fredeghar Wayfarer]

Not sure how I feel about this idea. Connecting areas of Middle-earth to real world locations comes dangerously close to killing the fantasy for me. I prefer to think of Middle-earth as a purely imaginative construct inspired by real world myths and cultures, not corresponding to real places.

This reverse geography experiment seems more suited to Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age from the Conan stories. Howard actually tried to create a hypothetical ancient world that corresponded with later geography (Cimmeria was Britain and Wales, Asgard and Vanaheim were Scandinavia, Stygia was Egypt, etc.). He was a history buff and this was part of his goal from the start.

Trying to do the same with Middle-earth doesn't feel right to me. It takes something away from the elaborate history and geography that Tolkien created out of whole cloth or that were meant as allusions to ancient myths, not one-to-one substitutions.

But maybe that's just me.

[Stormrider]

Fredegar:

I hear you and agree. I prefer to believe Middle-Earth is a mythical place and is only real in our hearts and minds.

Although JRRT stated once he wanted a tale for Europe, I believe that may be where Prof. Bird got the idea to place the maps over each other and see if he could match anything up.

I do not believe JRRT actually planned Middle-Earth to match with European landmarks himself. I think it is just Prof. Bird's idea to match things up to see if anything fit. I see some similarities but I think it is just coincidence. All the land around Ireland and England is ocean but in Middle-Earth it is land.

From Karen Wynn Fonstad's book, I get the idea that JRRT used his knowledge of real land forms and placed them in his world the way they would best make his story interesting and give himself the map he needed to do his timelines of his characters.

[Fredeghar Wayfarer]

Oct 2, 2010 6:19:35 GMT -6 Stormrider said:

Although JRRT stated once he wanted a tale for Europe, I believe that may be where Prof. Bird got the idea to place the maps over each other and see if he could match anything up.

I believe what Tolkien said was that he wanted to create a tale for England. He felt that the English didn't have their own myths, just stories borrowed from other cultures that lived in Britain -- the British Celts, the Welsh, the Romans, the Norse ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons, etc. I always took Tolkien's statement as meaning he wanted to create a mythology for England, not a fictional history of the actual place.

But I may have been mistaken. I'm reading some of The Book of Lost Tales (which has been on my shelf unread for years) and Christopher Tolkien's notes mention that the original conception of the Elves' island of Tol Eressëa was that it eventually became England!

Don't know if Tolkien kept this idea in his later works. But I guess that overlaid map of Europe might not be as far off as I thought.

[Stormrider]

If Tol Eressea was meant to be England, then Prof. Bird's map is really off because The Shire is located in England and the Grey Havens are in Ireland on his map.

I once played in a role play game in a land called Islandia. The Game Master developed his land by taking the tops of the Appalacian Mountains and made those his islands. So borrowing real land masses isn't too far off of an idea for creating other imaginary places!

[Andorinha]

Just off the top of my head...

As I recollect, the identification of Tol Eressea with Warwickshire England was abandoned some time in 1920. Later, the Beleriand maps were drawn up with the island of Balar now being the source of Tol Eressea. Balar was torn by the gods when they drew the Eldar across the ocean to Valinor. Part of the island remained behind as a portion of Middle-earth, while the rest was anchored thousands of miles away, just off the eastern shore of Valinor, to become Tol Eressea. If Tolkien had kept to his original plan, part of today's Great Britain would have to be thousands of miles west of the rest of it!

Later the rump of Balar left behind could not be used as Britain because it sank "forever" beneath the seas when Morgoth was defeated and most of Beleriand (almost up to the Blue Mountains) went under the waves. So the Shire, in Tolkien's second geographical scheme (post 1920), would have been some four or five hundred miles to the east of Tol Eressea's original position (the area of Balar's rump) and then about 100 to 150 miles further north.

All this makes it difficult to see how the Shire area could become the present island of Great Britain, as all the Third Age lands west of the Shire would have to sink, and the modern French coast would then be somewhere around the Weather Hills and Ammon Sul. I get the feeling that JRRT, by the late period composition of LOTR, was simply saying that the Shire is like Warwickshire, and the Midlands of the real Britain -- alike in topography, vegetation, animals, climate, rivers -- but that the two regions did not actually correspond in physical position?