Chapter One
The Worlds of Middle-earthIn This Chapter
* The location and origin of Middle-earth
* Tolkien's idea of fantasy
* The underlying mythology of Middle-earth
* Tolkien's strange and wonderful beings
* The historical framework of Middle-earth
* Middle-earth's diverse languages
In its broadest sense, geography is the study of the physical features of the
world as well as its biological and cultural characteristics. When attempting
to deal with the "geography" of a fantasy world like Middle-earth, as envisioned
by J.R.R. Tolkien, you're almost compelled to use this wider definition,
even if your only goal is to get an overview of its many features. For Tolkien's
Middle-earth is never just one of physical geography filled with strange lands,
weird creatures, and unfamiliar cultures. As Tolkien conceived it over the
better part of his life, Middle-earth is also a world rich in its own mythology,
history, and languages.
This chapter gives an overview of the various worlds that await you in your
journey to Tolkien's Middle-earth, while at the same time familiarizing you with
how these realms are covered in the rest of the book. It opens by exploring the
questions of where exactly Middle-earth is located and why Tolkien chose the
name Middle-earth for his fantasy world. The chapter then looks at Middle-earth
as a fantasy realm in light of Tolkien's ideas on the importance of fairytale
in our lives. The chapter concludes with an overview of the creatures,
history, and languages with which Tolkien filled his world of Middle-earth.
Where in the World Is Middle-earth?
You may well wonder why it's important at all to locate Middle-earth. Does it
really matter whether Middle-earth is a future world in another galaxy or a
Europe long gone? Would it really detract from your enjoyment of Bilbo's
journey to the Lonely Mountain or Frodo's quest from the Shire to Mount
Doom if you found out that Middle-earth were nowhere on this earth?
I happen to feel that Tolkien drew Middle-earth so well in The Hobbit and told
the story of The Lord of the Rings so tightly that it wouldn't matter a whit if
he had started off either story with the now famous declaration from George
Lucas' Star Wars saga, "Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away ." On the
other hand, coming to know how much Middle-earth owes to past European
sagas, legends, and languages can only enhance appreciation of his works
and deepen understanding of their many lessons.
Associating Middle-earth with our world and not some alien planet or invisible
dimension was very important to Tolkien. When pressed for the location
of Middle-earth (as fans and critics continually did), Tolkien often replied that
Middle-earth most definitely refers to lands of this world. In his letter commenting
on a review of The Lord of the Rings by W. H. Auden, he wrote,
"Middle-earth is not an imaginary world." He then declared that his Middle-earth
is "the objectively real world" as opposed to an imaginary world such
as Fairyland or invisible ones such as Heaven or Hell.
In another letter responding to a draft of a Daily Telegraph article for which
he was interviewed, Tolkien said that the stories in The Hobbit and The Lord
of the Rings take place in the "north-west of 'Middle-earth,' equivalent to the
coastlands of Europe and the north shores of the Mediterranean." He then
went on to fix some of the primary locations in his books by stating that if
you placed Hobbiton and Rivendell at the latitude of Oxford (which was his
intention), then Minas Tirith, some 600 miles south in Gondor, would be at
approximately the same latitude as Florence, Italy. This puts the Mouths of
the river Anduin and the ancient Gondorian city of Pelagir at about the same
latitude as the fabled city of Troy (made famous in Homer's heroic epic poem
the Iliad and located on the west coast of modern-day Turkey).
To get an idea of these spatial relationships, see Figure 1-1, which shows the
western coastline of Middle-earth and points out the specific parallel locations
that Tolkien pinpointed in his letter. From this map, you'd be hard pressed
to match any of Middle-earth's physical features with those of modern-day
Europe. Tolkien would have explained this obvious discrepancy as the result
of changes in coastal geography during the time that has elapsed since his
epic adventures took place. To me, it's sort of like the difference between
Earth's Jurassic age and the Middle Ages - not too much looks the same, but
it's the same old Earth.
The Meaning of Middle-earth
In the letter commenting on a New York Times book review, Tolkien stated
that the name Middle-earth is a "just a use of Middle English midden-erd (orerthe), altered from Old English Middangeard, the name for the inhabited
lands of Men 'between the seas' ."
The origin of the term "Middle-earth"
Midden-erde (or erthe), however, is good old Middle English for "middle-earth."
As Tolkien pointed out, it hails from an earlier form, middangeard, which literally
means the "middle yard" in Old English or Anglo-Saxon, the language
Tolkien taught at Oxford University. Middangeard was taken to mean, like oikumenos,
the "inhabited world." It is rumored that Tolkien first happened upon
this term as an undergraduate student when he read the following lines in Crist
(Christ), an Old English poem attributed to a bard named Cynewulf:
[infinity] ala [infinity]arendel engla beorhtast ofer middangeard monnum sended
In my translation, this reads, "Hail, Earendel, the brightest of angels sent to
the world of men!" In this early form, Middle-earth was not only the inhabited
lands in the midst of the encircling seas, but also the middle ground between
Heaven above and Hell below. This vertical dimension of the early European
Christian Middle-earth is entirely missing from Tolkien's - even though
you'd be hard pressed to find a more devout Catholic Christian.
"Stuck in the middle again ."
At the time when The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place, the inhabited
lands of Middle-earth are surrounded on three sides by wastelands and
on the west by open sea. To the north lies the Ice Bay of Forochel, and
beyond that is the frozen Northern Waste; to the east is Rhûn, populated by
the barbaric Easterlings. To the south you find the vast deserts of Harad,
populated by dark-skinned peoples called the Haradrim ("Southerns"). In The
Lord of the Rings, both Easterlings and Southrons often make war on the free
peoples of Middle-earth and are allied with Sauron, Dark Lord of the eastern
realm of Mordor, who is the greatest threat to freedom in Middle-earth.
On the west, many of the lands of Middle-earth, just like many lands of Europe,
have borders that adjoin the sea. According to Tolkien's thinking, at the time
of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, you could sail west and not find any
other land masses (you certainly wouldn't discover the Americas). In earlier
ages, though, sailing directly west would bring you to the island of Númenor,
the ancient homeland of the people who end up settling the northern and
southern coasts of Middle-earth. And west of Númenor lay the continent of
Aman - the so-called Blessed Realm or Undying Lands (see Chapter 2). Aman
is where two types of immortal beings, the Valar and Elves, dwell together.
By the Third Age, the one in which The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take
place, the island of Númenor has sunk beneath the sea, and Aman, removed
from the physical plane of the world, is accessible only by the magic White
Ships of the Elves (see Chapter 12).
Viewed from this perspective, you can start to understand how the peoples
of Tolkien's Middle-earth perceive their lands as being encircled by limiting
forces, some of which are hostile. This viewpoint is perhaps not so unlike the
Anglo-Saxons before they came to Britain, when they still dwelt along the
northwestern coast of Europe in the lands now known as Denmark and northwest
Germany. At that time, they were surrounded on three sides by potentially
hostile tribes and the open sea on the other. The situation didn't change
much when they got to England, except that the sea was mostly at their back
with the hostile Celts in front and on either side of them. I think that much of
the orientation of Middle-earth's geography is rooted in the perspective of
Tolkien's Anglo-Saxon ancestors, whose language he knew so well.
Middle-earth as a Fantasy World
Fantasy is an attempt to create a complete, imaginary world with its own creatures,
cultures, and lands that are governed by their own set of physical laws
and guided by their own morals and principles. For Tolkien, fantasy was definitely
akin to the world of the fairies. Fairy comes from the Middle Englishfaerie, perhaps related to Old English faeger, meaning "beautiful," "lovely," and
"fair." Tolkien's fairy world, although certainly containing its share of Elves
and Dwarves, diverges greatly from the modern view of fairies as diminutive
folk - the "little people" of many fairytales. In Tolkien's Middle-earth, you find
no brownies, pixies, Tinkerbell-like fairies, or Snow White-type Dwarves.
Moreover, his trolls don't charge to cross their bridges, although his dragons
do breathe fire and his wizards have magic staffs.
In place of pointy-shoed Elves dressed in green like bonnie leprechauns and
Dwarves in floppy stocking caps shouldering pickaxes and singing "Heigh-Ho,
Heigh-Ho," Tolkien presents tall, shining Elves with a complex, not altogether
beautiful history side by side with serious Dwarves who not only delve into
caves but create magnificent underground cities
Interestingly enough, Tolkien's mythology may well explain the modern,
Disneyesque view of Elves and Dwarves as the natural outgrowth of the great
stresses to which his fairy world had been subjected. For the Middle-earth ofThe Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is in the throes of a great upheaval, a
battle between good and evil that threatens to foist the race of Men (Tolkien's
term, not mine) onto center stage as the dominant culture at the expense of
the other beings of Middle-earth.
As a result of this transition, the fairy or magic aspect of Middle-earth in the
Third Age - especially as embodied in the Elves - is in danger of disappearing
and being replaced by an age of almost total reliance on science and technology,
a world as rich in know-how as it is poor in spirit. This is, of course,
an age we can all readily recognize, for it is the one we live in.
On the nature of the fairytale
Tolkien had definite ideas about the essential nature of fairytales, which he set
forth in a 1939 lecture at St. Andrew's University entitled "On Fairy-Stories." In
this lecture, he argues against the demotion of the fairytale to an insignificant
tale fit only for children (or very childish adults). Doing so, he argues, is neither
fair to the stories nor the children.
According to Tolkien's lecture, a good or successful fairytale exhibits three
important structural characteristics:
Recovery of the appreciation of the simple and humble things in our
world Escape from one's narrow and distorted view of the world Consolation that leads to a kind of joy even in the face of continuing evil
in the world
In Tolkien's three features of a good fairytale, I see also the essential qualities
of religion. This should come as no surprise - Tolkien was a devout Catholic
all his life. Anyone who has read Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings or seen Peter
Jackson's astounding films inspired by the book will instantly recognize the
themes of recovery, escape, and consolation in them.
To many readers, including me, The Lord of the Rings is a fantasy or fairytale of
the highest order simply because it so successfully and completely fulfills the
tasks of recovery, escape, and consolation described by Tolkien. Through its
heroic tales, we recover a deep appreciation of life's simple pleasures, especially
the power of the love and fidelity inherent in fellowship. In this deepened
appreciation, we temporarily escape the fetters of our self-centered
desires that so constrict our idea of the world and distort our place in it. As a
result of this escape, however brief, we find consolation in our broader outlook
on the world, one that puts evil in a place where it is neither understated
nor exaggerated. From that vantage point, we have the chance to experience a
type of joy that transcends the cares of the world by celebrating life's simple
pleasures. See Part V for my thoughts on the particular themes in Tolkien's
works that employ these elements and bring them to life.
Many criticize Tolkien's works as escapist, unrealistic fantasies that promote
the avoidance of responsibility in the real world. I think that these critics
confuse the escape the works are intended to provide with a more generalescapism. In my opinion, a work such as The Lord of the Rings primarily provides
an escape from the distorted viewpoint of utter hopelessness and pessimism
that so often threatens to overtake us in this postmodern age. But it
is a far cry from a call to escape our responsibilities in the world - The Lord
of the Rings is rather a work that enables us to see that each of us can and
does make a difference in the world.
The fairytale as "sub-creation"
In the same "On Fairy-Stories" lecture, Tolkien describes the good fairytale as a
product of "sub-creation," where the author successfully creates a secondary
world that has its own "inner consistency of reality." As a Christian, Tolkien
saw the primary world (what we so often refer to as the "real world") as the
creation of God. Because man specifically was created in the image of God, he
inherited the ability to create imaginary or secondary worlds such as Middle-earth.
The key to this sub-creation is the power of human language, which, of
course, as a linguist, was Tolkien's specialty.
Tolkien argues that "sub-creation" stems from two basic human needs:
To survey the depths of space and time To heal the separation of mankind from nature
It's no wonder, then, that Tolkien's Middle-earth is rich in languages and
detailed geography and history - all of which enable us to explore the
depths of both space and time. Mankind's need to heal our alienation from
nature is often expressed in Western culture as the need to return to the
Garden of Eden (as in Joni Mitchell's song "Woodstock": ". we've got to get
ourselves back to the Garden").
Continues.
