Q: Where On Earth Was Middle-earth?
ANSWER: People who ask where Middle-earth is, or which part of our world is supposed to be Middle-earth, don’t understand what J.R.R. Tolkien meant when he used the name “Middle-earth”. Middle-earth was simply the name that ancient Scandinavian and Germanic peoples used for the world in which they lived (Old English gave us middangeard). How that world was envisaged through mythology does not represent how Middle-earth is supposed to look to the reader of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. J.R.R. Tolkien found many occasions to explain that Middle-earth is simply our world, and that the stories are set in an imaginary past time for our world. He included a transition from a “flat world” that vaguely resembled the Norse/Germanic flat world mythology but which was not directly modeled on that mythology.
On September 18, 1954 J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in a letter (No. 151) to Hugh Brogan:
Middle-earth is just archaic English for [OIKOUMENE] the inhabited world of men. It lay then as it does. In fact just as it does, round and inescapable. That is partly the point. The new situation, established at the beginning of the Third Age, leads on eventually ane inevitably to ordinary History, and we here see the process culminating.
On September 25, 1954 Tolkien wrote in a letter (No. 154) to Naomi Mitchison:
Actually in the imagination of this story we are now living on a physically round Earth. But the whole ’legendarium’ contains a transition from a flat world (or at least an [unprintable characters deleted] with borders all about it) to a globe: an inevitable transition, I suppose, to a modern ’mythmaker’ with a mind subjected to the same ’appearances’ as ancient men, and partly fed on their myths, but taught that the Earth was round from the earliest years. So deep was the impression made by ’astronomy’ on me that I do not think I could deal with or imaginatively conceive a flat world, though a world of static Earth with a Sun going round it seems easier (to fancy if not to reason).
The particular ’myth’ which lies behind this tale, and the mood both of Men and Elves at this time, is the Downfall of Numenor: a special variety of the Atlantis tradition. That seems to me so fundamental to ’mythical history’ — whether it has any kind of basis in real history, Pace Saurat and others, is not relevant — that some version of it would have to come in.
I have written an account of the Downfall, which you might be interested to see. But the immediate point is that before the Downfall there lay beyond the sea and the west-shores of Middle-earth an earthly Elvish paradise Eressea, and Valinor the land of the Valar (the Powers, the Lords of the West), places that could be reached physically by ordinary sailing-ships, though the Seas were perilous. But after the rebellion of the Numenoreans, the Kings of Men, who dwelt in a land most westerly of all mortal lands, and eventually in the height of their pride attempted to occupy Eressea and Valinor by force, Numenor was destroyed, and Eressea and Valinor removed from the physically attainable Earth: the way west was open, but led nowhere but back again — for mortals.
Sometime in June 1955 Tolkien wrote in a letter (No. 165) to the Houghton Mifflin Co.:
’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 middengeard: 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, imaginitively this ’history’ is supposed to take place in a period of the actual Old World of this planet.
On September 11, 1955 Tolkien wrote in another letter (No. 169) to Hugh Brogan:
…As for the shape of the world of the Third Age, I am afraid that was devised ’dramatically’ rather than geologically, or paleontologically. I do sometimes wish that I had made some sort of agreement between the imaginations or theories of the geologists and my map a little more possible.
On March 18, 1956 Tolkien wrote a letter (No. 184) to a real-life Sam Gamgee in which he stated:
I 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 middengeard > middel-erd, an ancient name for the OIKOUMENE, 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.
In one of the most important letters (No. 211) for Tolkien researchers, Tolkien wrote to Rhona Beare on October 14, 1958:
May I say all this is ’mythical’, and not any kind of new religion or vision. As far as I know it is merely an imaginative invention, to express, in the only way I can, some of my (dim) apprehensions of the world. All I can say is that, if it were ’history’, it would be difficult to fit the lands and events (or ’cultures’) into such evidence as we possess, archaeological or geological, concerning the nearer or remoter part of what is now called Europe; though the Shire, for instance, is expressly stated to have been in this region (I p. 12). I could have fitted things in with greater versimilitude, if the story had not become too far developed, before the question ever occurred to me. I doubt if there would have been much gain; and I hope the, evidently long but undefined, gap in time between the Fall of Barad-dur and our Days is sufficient for ’literary credibility’, even for readers acquainted with what is known or surmised of ’pre-history’.
I 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] D[ictionary] ’a perversion’) of an old word for the inhabited world of Men, the OIKOUMENE: 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 midden-geard, mediaeval E. middengerd, middle-erd. Many reviewers seem to assume that Middle-earth is another planet!
On July 17, 1971 Tolkien wrote in a letter (No. 325) to Roger Lancelyn Green:
The ’immortals’ who were permitted to leave Middle-earth and seek Aman — the undying lands of Valinor and Eressea, an island assigned to the Eldar — set sail in ships specially made and hallowed for this voyage, and steered due West towards the ancient site of these lands. They only set out after sundown; but if any keen-eyed observer from that shore had watched one of these ships he might have seen that it never became hull-down but dwindled only by distance until it vanished in the twilight: it followed the straight road to the true West and not the bent road of the earth’s surface. As it vanished it left the physical world. There was no return. The Elves who took this road and those ’mortals’ who by special grace went with them, had abandoned the ’History of the world’ and could play no further part in it.
There is one letter where J.R.R. Tolkien apparently equated Middle-earth with Europe: Letter No. 294, which he wrote to Charlotte and Denis Plimmer in February 1967. He was responding to a preliminary draft of her article for the Daily Telegraph Magazine.
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 sout, 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.
Auden has asserted that for me ’the North is a sacred direction’. That is not true. The North-west of Europe, where I (and most of my ancestors) have lived, has my affection, as a man’s home should. I love its atmosphere, and know more of its histories and languages than I do of other parts; but it is not ’sacred’, nor does it exhaust my affections. I have, for instance, a particular love for the Latin language, and among its descendants for Spanish. That it is untrue for my story, a mere reading of the synopses should show. The North was the seat of the fortresses of the Devil. The progress of the tale ends in what is far more like the re-establishment of an effective Holy Roman Empire with its seat in Rome than anything that would be devised by a ’Nordic’.
This appears to be only a lapse, and not a change in position on the matter. He did seem to introduce more inconsistencies into his statements about Middle-earth as he grew older, apparently relying upon his memory when he did not have his notes or books available to consult. So even though many people continue to ask where on Earth Middle-earth was located, the truth is that Middle-earth IS Earth — the entire Earth, including both the Old World (Europe, Asia, and Africa) where his stories are set; and the New World (North and South America), as well as Australia/New Zealand and Antarctica.
See also
Is Middle-earth A Country or A World?
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?
What Lies Beyond Middle-earth?
Is Rhûn a Part of Middle-earth?
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