#tolkien #fantasy #middleearth
Q: Is Middle-earth a Country or A World?
ANSWER: This is a variation on a question I’ve received and answered many times. Google recently suggested this question when I was looking at something else. It’s no wonder, however, that Google would suggest this question because there are Websites where “Is Middle-earth a country or a world?” is answered incorrectly.
Even Wikipedia gets it wrong: “Middle-earth is the main continent of Earth (Arda) in an imaginary period of the Earth’s past, ending with Tolkien’s Third Age, about 6,000 years ago.” That is patent nonsense, as Christopher Tolkien would have said.
J.R.R. Tolkien said it plainly, clearly, and succinctly on multiple occasions:
Middle-earth is just archaic English for οικουμένη, the inhabited world of men. It lay then as it does. In fact just as it does, round and inescapable.
Letter No. 151‘Middle-earth’, by the way, is not a name of a never-never land without relation to the world we live in (like the Mercury of Eddison). It is just a use of Middle English middel-erde (or erthe), altered from Old English Middangeard: the name for the inhabited lands of Men ‘between the seas’. And though I have not attempted to relate the shape of the mountains and land-masses to what geologists may say or surmise about the nearer past, imaginatively this ‘history’ is supposed to take place in a period of the actual Old World of this planet.
Letter No. 165I am historically minded. Middle-earth is not an imaginary world. The name is the modern form (appearing in the 13th century and still in use) of midden-erd > middel-erd, an ancient name for the oikoumenē, the abiding place of Men, the objectively real world, in use specifically opposed to imaginary worlds (as Fairyland) or unseen worlds (as Heaven or Hell). The theatre of my tale is this earth, the one in which we now live, but the historical period is imaginary. The essentials of that abiding place are all there (at any rate for inhabitants of N.W. Europe), so naturally it feels familiar, even if a little glorified by the enchantment of distance in time.
Letter No. 183So I feel that the fiddle-faddle in reviews, and correspondence about them, as to whether my ‘good people’ were kind and merciful and gave quarter (in fact they do), or not, is quite beside the point. Some critics seem determined to represent me as a simple-minded adolescent, inspired with, say, a With-the-flag-to-Pretoria spirit, and wilfully distort what is said in my tale. I have not that spirit, and it does not appear in the story. The figure of Denethor alone is enough to show this; but I have not made any of the peoples on the ‘right’ side, Hobbits, Rohirrim, Men of Dale or of Gondor, any better than men have been or are, or can be. Mine is not an ‘imaginary’ world, but an imaginary historical moment on ‘Middle-earth’ – which is our habitation.
Letter No. 183I have, I suppose, constructed an imaginary time, but kept my feet on my own mother-earth for place. I prefer that to the contemporary mode of seeking remote globes in ‘space’. However curious, they are alien, and not lovable with the love of blood-kin. Middle-earth is (by the way & if such a note is necessary) not my own invention. It is a modernization or alteration (N[ew] E[nglish] Dictionary] ‘a perversion’) of an old word for the inhabited world of Men, the oikoumenē: middle because thought of vaguely as set amidst the encircling Seas and (in the northern-imagination) between ice of the North and the fire of the South. O.English middan-geard, mediaeval E. midden-erd, middle-erd. Many reviewers seem to assume that Middle-earth is another planet!
Letter No. 211I am very grateful for your remarks on the critics and for your account of your personal delight in The Lord of the Rings. You write in terms of such high praise that [to] accept it with just a ‘thank you’ might seem complacently conceited, though actually it only makes me wonder how this has been achieved – by me! Of course the book was written to please myself (at different levels), and as an experiment in the arts of long narrative, and of inducing ‘Secondary Belief. It was written slowly and with great care for detail, & finally emerged as a Frameless Picture: a searchlight, as it were, on a brief episode in History, and on a small part of our Middle-earth, surrounded by the glimmer of limitless extensions in time and space…
Letter No. 328
So Why Do People Think Middle-earth is Europe?
If not Europe, then some imaginary “continent”? Tolkien himself was a bit inconsistent with his explanations of what “middle-earth” refers to, but he did provide context for his explanations.
Middle-earth …. corresponds spiritually to Nordic Europe.
Not Nordic, please! A word I personally dislike; it is associated, though of French origin, with racialist theories. Geographically Northern is usually better. But examination will show that even this is inapplicable (geographically or spiritually) to ‘Middle-earth’. This is an old word, not invented by me, as reference to a dictionary such as the Shorter Oxford will show. It meant the habitable lands of our world, set amid the surrounding Ocean. The action of the story takes place in the North-west of ‘Middle-earth’, equivalent in latitude to the coastlands of Europe and the north shores of the Mediterranean. But this is not a purely ‘Nordic’ area in any sense. If Hobbiton and Rivendell are taken (as intended) to be at about the latitude of Oxford, then Minas Tirith, 600 miles south, is at about the latitude of Florence. The Mouths of Anduin and the ancient city of Pelargir are at about the latitude of ancient Troy.
Letter No. 294 (accompanying drafts of comments on another text)Those days, the Third Age of Middle-earth, are now long past, and the shape of all lands has been changed; but the regions in which Hobbits then lived were doubtless the same as those in which they still linger: the North-West of the Old World, east of the Sea…
Prologue, The Lord of the Rings
These passages are often misconstrued to mean that Tolkien equated Middle-earth with Europe, but he wasn’t saying that. He was saying that the story of The Lord of the Rings took place in what was essentially western Europe, which is only a small part of (Middle-)Earth, both fictionally and in reality.
Hence, every time these passages are cited on the Web with the incorrect assertion that Middle-earth is a continent (or Europe) or something similar, the idea becomes a little more firmly entrenched in the popular imagination. And that ultimately leads to more people misrepresenting what J.R.R. Tolkien meant with his use of Middle-earth as a name for the world.
See also
Is Middle-earth An Island or Continent?
Is Middle-earth Supposed To Be Midgard?
Where On Earth Was Middle-earth?
Where Did J.R.R. Tolkien Find the Name ‘Middle-earth’?
How Long Did It Take to Create Middle-earth?
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Have you read our other Tolkien and Middle-earth Questions and Answers articles?
I have to be honest here
I absolutely love Tolkiens world that he build and probably could’ve added to for another 200 years of his life.
Even if I dislike certain aspects of it (basically everything becomes boring after the 3rd Age because everything fantastical vanishes).
But what I absolutely hate, which is a strong word but it is the truth, is this quest of his that it’s all just a story from times past and actually our secret long forgotten history.
Ugh I hate it so much.
It’s the (almost) perfect fantasy universe that you can lose yourself in.
Why ruin it like that.
😀
Once authors loose the fruit of their imaginations on the world they have surrendered control – their stories spark readers imaginations, and certainly the minds of millions of readers are collectively capable of more than any one mind could have possibly imagined (does anyone seriously believe that JRRT was so omniscient as to anticipate all the questions we’ve asked over the better part of a century?).
What matter what the author intended? The minds of millions of readers can sometimes so twist an author’s intent that the author can’t help but try to untwist those “misinterpretations.” There will be those (I among them) who care to honor the author by reading the story again with the author’s intent in mind. The author’s perspective may shine light into passages or concepts that may otherwise have been murky or simply misunderstood.
But no matter what, any story we read in a modern language of this planet cannot be “pure fantasy.” By its nature, language encompasses our experience of this world and its cultures. We do not name what we have not experienced in some fashion. Without an anchor in the familiar we cannot contemplate the new.
Tolkien’s tales overflow with cultural tropes. His creatures are almost all recognizable either from living example or familiar fantasies, from the midges of the Midgewater Marsh to the eagles of the Misty Mountains. Sentients are nearly all conventionally humanoid – elves, men, dwarves, hobbits, ents, orcs, trolls… Landscapes are based in familiar landforms and populated by familiar flora and fauna. He didn’t invent dragons or even god-like creatures that have no inherent form but can take any form they wish.
Some storytellers weave their fantasies on distant planets, in galaxies far far away, or in a yet-unknowable future, leaving Earth as a comfortable (presumably safe) haven. But the fantastical that occurs within the bounds of our home planet is a much older storytelling tradition, pre-dating the notion that those tiny lights in the night sky were anything more than tiny lights.
The familiar is the shorthand of any storyteller. The fewer words one has to expend on nearly-unimaginable concepts the easier it is to get on with the story. We understand the common folk gossiping in the taverns of the Shire and Bree, we know what helms, swords, broadaxes, chainmail shirts, and stone fortifications look like. Only periodically do the protagonists step out of the familiar into an encounter with the supernatural/magical.
But sure, fantasy, as it lives within our minds, becomes a very personal vision. If you’d rather your mind go unsullied by the intentions of authors or the imaginings of others… make the story yours and yours alone. I, for one, prefer the shared experience.
You must hate a lot of fiction then, as this is often the conceit. 😉
So I assume you have the same thoughts towards R. Howards Conan stories since the Hyborian Age is exactly that as well :). In any case as he says it’s hard to reconcile the ‘real’ history with his tale so he also says it’s at ‘different stage of imagination, as well as being:
“This is a biological dictum in my imaginary world. It is only (as yet) an incompletely imagined world, a rudimentary ‘secondary’; but if it pleased the Creator to give it (in corrected form) Reality on any plane, then you would just have to enter it and begin studying its different biology, that is all.”
So the answer tp question is it really our ‘prehistory’ is as always ‘yes and no’ 🙂 hehe.
I guess the confusion comes from the fact that Tolkien never gave a general name to the area where the Hobbit & LOTR take place, unlike Beleriand or even Harad or Rhûn. One wonders how the Valar or the Númenóreans referred to it.
Can we imagine the rest of Middle-Earth as something like the Old World? Europe, Asia and Africa? Australia and the Americas don’t exist?
That’s what I originally took “Middle-earth” to be, if I thought about it at all. Mainly this was because of the reference in the Prologue to the “northwest of the Old World”. The hobbits and their Shire were so clearly (to me) modelled on rural England. That’s not a fault of course – any literary community will be modelled to start with on something real, past or present, then other characteristics can be added from the author’s own vision.
I think one may assume that Harad IS like Africa while the east is like Asia the other lands are only in things such as maps of Ambarkanta, the Dark Land, the Land of the Sun, being these ‘other continents’ in that vision, with hints of Numenorean sailors reaching those places and if someone would like to imagine so, I guess Dark Land to the south would be like combination of Australia and Antarctica :).
After the Downfall of Numenor, however, Asustralia and the Americas -WOULD- exist as part of Middle-earth. That’s part of the mythology.
I was reading the tale of Aldarion and Erendis in UT when I came across these passages:
“I do not think that I shall often again have the heart to leave my fair house and the blest shores of Númenor; but once more at least I would ride the Great Sea and face the North wind and the East. This year you shall come with me, and we will go to Mithlond and see the tall blue mountains of Middle-earth and the green land of the Eldar at their feet.”
“Here must be told of the custom that when a ship departed from Númenor over the Great Sea to Middle-earth a woman, most often of the captain’s kin, should set upon the vessel’s prow the Green Bough of Return…”
It seems clear from these passages that the term “Middle-earth” is meant to refer to the land that you reach by sailing east from Númenor. Do you think it’s possible to reconcile these passages with Tolkien’s claim from Letter 165 that Middle-earth is simply “the inhabited lands of Men ‘between the seas’”?
Well, “Aldarion and Erendis” is set before the Downfall, and “middle-earth” is presented as a translation for Elvish “endor” (which means “middle land”). So the context for each name is different (“middle-earth” being a Germanic/English word and “endor” being an Elvish word).
That’s the best I can do off the top of my head, but in translation you rarely get a perfect 1-to-1 literal exchange.
I suppose that continent was probably given many names by the various inhabitants of Arda. I could see how Númenoreans in the Second Age might have naturally seen it as being “the middle continent.”