[Thuriniel]

I've been working on a fic to take place at the end of 19th century, beginning of 20th. For some reason I had always thought that Middle-earth was England ... but then I keep finding referrences to ME being Europe.

So here's my question: England or Europe? And did Tolkien leave any geographical information as to where places are? If anyone has info as to where Belfalas, Lothlorien and Mirkwood would have been, I would really appreciate it if you share.

Thanks !

[ellisk]

Have a look at this analysis derived from Tolkien's letters:

Did the events in The Lord of the Rings take place on another planet or what?
No. Tolkien's intention was that was that Middle-earth was our own world, though his way of stating this idea was somewhat unusual: he spoke of having created events which took place in an imaginary time of a real place. He made this fully explicit only in Letters, but there were two very strong indications in the published Lord of the Rings, though both were outside the narrative.

The first was in the Prologue. It is there stated: "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." (FR, 11). Since no other reference is made to this matter either in the Prologue or in the main narrative, it makes little impression on most readers, but is clear enough once pointed out.

The second was in Appendix D, which presents lore on calendars in Middle-earth. The discussion begins as follows:


The Calendar in the Shire differed in several features from ours. The year no doubt was of the same length (*), for long ago as those times are now reckoned in years and lives of men, they were not very remote according to the memory of the Earth.
(*) 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 46 seconds.
(RK, 385 (App D))

The quote is clear enough in and of itself, but that the year length specified in the footnote is the precise length of our own year must surely remove all doubt.

There follow excerpts from three letters wherein the matter is further discussed.


'Middle-earth', by the way, is not a name of a never-never land without relation to the world we live in .... 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.
Letters, 220 (#165)

I am historically minded. Middle-earth is not an imaginary world. ... 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.
Letters, 239 (#183)

... 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 ... not my own invention. It is a modernization or alteration ... 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 middan-geard , mediaeval E. midden-erd, middle-erd . Many reviewers seem to assume that Middle-earth is another planet!
Letters, 283 (#211)

The footnote in the first sentence of the last-quoted excerpt offers a fascinating insight:


(*) I imagine the gap to be about 6000 years: that is we are now at the end of the Fifth Age, if the Ages were of about the same length as S.A. and T.A. But they have, I think, quickened; and I imagine we are actually at the end of the Sixth Age, or in the Seventh.
Letters, 283 (#211)

A final note is that not only is the place our own world but also the people inhabiting it are ourselves, morally as well as physically:


... 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.
Letters, 244 (#183)

Was the northwest of Middle-earth, where the story takes place, meant to actually be Europe?
Yes, but a qualified yes. There is no question that Tolkien had northwestern Europe in mind when he described the terrain, weather, flora, and landscapes of Middle-earth. This was no doubt partially because NW Europe was his home and therefore most familiar to him and partially because of his love for the "Northern tradition". As he said himself: "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; ..." (Letters 376 (#294)). Thus, the environment of Middle-earth will seem familiar to dwellers of that region of Europe (see the second letter excerpted in FAQ, Tolkien, 6 (#183)).

However, the geographies simply don't match. This was the result not so much of a deliberate decision on Tolkien's part to have things so but rather a side-effect of the history of the composition: the question did not occur to him until the story was too far advanced and the map too fixed to allow much alteration:


... 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 [FR, 11]. 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; ...
Letters, 283 (#211)

... 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. But that would only have made more trouble with human history.
Letters, 224 (#169)

The remark that there probably would not "have been much gain" is characteristic and perhaps indicates Tolkien's own approach, which would seem to have been to focus on the environmental familiarity at the "local" level (in the sense that any particular scene might have come from somewhere in Europe) and to simply overlook the lack of "global" identity. On the other hand, he made some attempt to address the difficulty in the quote from the Prologue (FR, 11), where it was said: "Those days, the Third Age of Middle-earth, are now long past, and the shape of all lands has been changed...". The conclusion is that it is a matter for each individual reader as to how important is the lack of geographical fit and where one comes down on the continuum between "Middle-earth was northwestern Europe" and "Middle-earth might as well have been northwestern Europe" (or, as Tolkien might have said, "Middle-earth 'imaginatively' was northwestern Europe"). [Thus, recent attempts to force the M-e map to fit the map of the Eurasian land mass, such as in Tolkien: The Illustrated Encyclopedia by David Day, should be discounted.]

In one letter he provided indications to help in visualizing the circumstances of various locales, but this does not help in resolving the above matter, since again northwestern Europe was used for comparison rather than equation:


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. ... 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.
Letters, 375-376 (#294)

Was the Shire meant to be England?
[Webmaster's note: David Salo has pointed out that, contrary to the objection below, England was a part of mainland Europe somewhat recently. See, for example, this map of "Western Europe During the Third Inter-glacial Epoch", from Donald A. MacKenzie's Ancient Man in Britain.]


In this case, the balance between "actually was" and "was based upon" is entirely tipped towards the latter. There is no hint that the Shire was in any sense supposed the be the country now called England in an ancient state. On the other hand, there is plainly a very strong resemblance between the Shire and the rural England of about a century ago.

More precisely, the Shire plainly could not be England in any literal sense: England is an island, and even changes in "the shape of all lands" (FR, 11) is insufficient to explain such a discrepancy (especially since even the westernmost part of the Shire was some 200 miles from the Sea). Nevertheless, the Shire was more exactly based on England than any other part of Middle-earth was based on any part of our world: the climate, place-names, flora and fauna, terrain, food, customs, and the inhabitants themselves, were all English. In effect the Shire was an idealized version of the rural England of Tolkien's childhood. Some of his comments on the matter were:


[The Shire] is in fact more or less a Warwickshire village of about the period of the Diamond Jubilee ...
Letters, 230 (#178)

But, of course, if we drop the 'fiction' of long ago, 'The Shire' is based on rural England and not any other country in the world... [Later in the same letter he implied that the Shire was "an imaginary mirror" of England.]
Letters, 250 (#190)

There is no special reference to England in the 'Shire' -- except of course that as an Englishman brought up in an 'almost rural' village of Warwickshire on the edge of the prosperous bourgeoisie of Birmingham (about the time of the Diamond Jubilee!) I take my models like anyone else -- from such 'life' as I know.
Letters, 235 (#181)

See also RtMe 31-33 for a fascinating suggestion that certain components of Tolkien's early philological studies may have contributed to his later conception of the Shire. Shippey has also suggested that Tolkien's motivation in changing Gandalf's supper request in ch 1 of The Hobbit from "cold chicken and tomatoes" in the first edition to "cold chicken and pickles" in the revised edition was linguistic: that to Tolkien's extraordinarily sensitive ear "tomato" sounded out of place in a country that was a mirror of English, since tomato only entered the language in the sixteenth century and moreover originally came from some Caribbean language. Likewise, tobacco, used in The Hobbit, was changed to "pipeweed", and "potatoes" were usually spoken of only by Sam, who called them "taters" (RtMe, 53-54; Annotated Hobbit, 19).

Finally, great care must be taken not to confound the idea of the Shire's having been based on England with a concept found in Tolkien's earliest writings, that Tol Eressea (Elvenhome) eventually *became* England. This appeared during his early work on the Book of Lost Tales (which eventually evolved into the Silm). Very probably it had been supplanted even before he stopped work on the Lost Tales (1920) (BoLT I, 22-27). In any case, it had long since been abandoned by the time LoTR was begun in 1937, and plays no part in the 'history' of Middle-earth as presented in LotR, Silm, The Hobbit, etc.



I got this from http://tolkien.slimy.com/tfaq/Tolkien.html#Europe

[Thuriniel]

Thanks so much Ellisk! That certainly helps a lot!

[Thuriniel]

Following on this topic ... what about Southorns and Easterlings? I've always thought of the Southorns as being the Moors (North Africans, mostly from Morocco) or maybe Turcs (they were quite a threat in the Mediterranean during the 1600's if I recall correctly), and the Easterlings being Middle-Easterns.

Any other theories or did Tolkien say anything specific about these groups?

[SpaceWeavil]

[Thuriniel]

Pretty interesting, SpaceWeavil!

I did base my ideas of Southrons and Easterlings on the Muslim invasion of Spain (711-1492). Because we have such a heavy muslim heritage in my country we do make clear distinctions between the muslims from Northern Africa and the ones from the Middle-East.

The moors were specially known by being merciless warriors, very strong and cruel.

I like your take on the Easterlings. The Mongols and the Huns did get very close to Western Europe in their conquests. I think I need to brush my ancient history books ... either that or watch the History channel

[SpaceWeavil]

[Thuriniel]

[SpaceWeavil]

[Viv]

I did a lot of research on this topic before I started writing my modern-day elf story. I don't recall the precise source right now (letters, perhaps?), but Tolkien did say once that he envisioned Mt Doom as Stromboli, the volcano in southern Italy. So when I was overlaying a map of Middle-earth over Europe, I used that as a reference point. It does work out nicely. Parts of Greenwood fall generallly in the area of the Black Forest, and the Shire is roughly in England, if you nudge things around a smidge.

[Thuriniel]

[Ningloreth]

There's a very interesting map of Middle Earth here:

http://element.ess.ucla.edu/pictures/Middle-Earth.jpg

It’s drawn by Peter Bird, Professor of Geophysics and Geology at the University of California, and it overlays Middle Earth on Modern Europe.

[VanatheEverYoung]

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you Ellisk!!!! I have been looking everywhere for that information! I'm writing an AU right now, which is heavily dependent on Europe being M-E. I made a lot of assumptions about how the lands would have changed and the lapse in time since the end of LOTR. I guessed right!!! Yay!! You've made me very happy! Would you mind if I used your research in my footnotes? Of course, I'll give you full credit for doing all the research.

Btw, SpaceWeavil, "Bodysnatcher" doesn't sound biased. I think you made very valid links between Egyptians and Southrons.

[Thuriniel]

[ellisk]