Map Tolkien Views
The millionth hit on this blog is as good an occasion as any to finally broach the inevitable subject for a blog about curious cartography: Middle-earth. J.R.R. Tolkienh’s invented mythology centred on an epic story of the struggle between Good and Evil, but it also included an elaborate backstory, a complex of languages, genealogies, cultures and peoples – and a map.
But, as Tolkien states in the prologue to o‘The Lord of the Rings2’, it would be fruitless to look for geographical correspondences, as r“Those days, the Third Age of Middle-earth, are now long past, and the shape of all lands has been changed;…o” And yet, that’s exactly what Peter Bird attempts with the map here shown. 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:
It's fiction and we must treat it as such_ But always - any story somehow always draws upon something personal to the writer_ So Yes - there will be analogies that can be drawn from a map of the British Isles or from the western shores of Europe_ Where did Tolkien live ? Where did he travel during his life ?
If you look at Tolkien's own maps of Middle Earth (or at least the part featured in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , you'll notice that the sea is to the south and west, while to the north and east the land mass of Middle Earth apparently continues. In contrast, C.S. Lewis's Narnia is east-facing: the sea is to the east, and the western side is landlocked.
Map Tolkien Images
