Where on Earth is Middle Earth?

[WetaWork]

https://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/06/03/121-where-on-earth-was-middle-earth/

as Tolkien states in the prologue to ‘The Lord of the Rings’, it would be fruitless to look for geographical correspondences, as “Those days, the Third Age of Middle-earth, are now long past, and the shape of all lands has been changed…” 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:

• The Shire is in the South-West of England, which further north is also home to the Old Forest (Yorkshire?), the Barrow Downs (north of England), the city of Bree (at or near Newcastle-upon-Tyne) and Amon Sul (Scottish Highlands).
• The Grey Havens are situated in Ireland.
• Eriador corresponds with Brittany.
• Helm’s Deep is near the Franco-German-Swiss border tripoint, close to the city of Basel.
• The mountain chain of Ered Nimrais is the Alps.
• Gondor corresponds with the northern Italian plains, extended towards the unsubmerged Adriatic Sea.
• Mordor is situated in Transylvania, with Mount Doom in Romania (probably), Minas Morgul in Hungary (approximately) and Minas Tirith in Austria (sort of).
• Rohan is in southern Germany, with Edoras at the foot of the Bavarian Alps. Also in Germany, but to the north, near present-day Hamburg, is Isengard. Close by is the forest of Fangorn.
• To the north is Mirkwood, further east are Rhovanion and the wastes of Rhûn, close to the Ural mountains.
• The Sea of Rhûn corresponds to the Black Sea.
• Khand is Turkey
• Haradwaith is the eastern part of North Africa, Umbar corresponds with the Maghreb, the western part of North Africa.
• The Bay of Belfalas is the western part of the Mediterranean.

 

[KitFisto]

That's kind of interesting.

 

[pixletwin]

That is interesting. Thanks for posting that.

 

[Darth Caedus]

Well, if you read the 13 volume of the history of middle earth, i'm pretty sure somewhere in there, tolkien references england in there. that tol eressa, the lonely isle is suppose to be england. But i don't remember.

Think I read somewhere that the Argonaut is suppose to be The Pillars of Herculse and Numenor is Atlantis.

 

[Captain Faramir]

Numenor is very specifically Atlantis--in fact the elven name is Atalante. Tolkien was very specific about this. The rest I did not know, but it's pretty cool if it's accurate!

 

[pixletwin]

I seem to remember somewhere that Tolkien pretty specifically named Cambridge as the present day Shire.

 

[The Ringer]

Very cool.

 

[Seth Gecko]

 

[carbo-fation]

That's very interesting!

 

[pixletwin]

Someone should do a map of Europe with the ME plot points highlighted in.

 

[shocktrooper_au]

Someone should do a map of Europe with the ME plot points highlighted in.

Umm you might want to take a second look

 

[PosterBoyKelly]

So cool, I mean you could always tell from staring at the Middle Earth map it was based on Europe, but now this is even cooler! I mean the whole story there are nods as to which people of the world are which races in the book, this is really cool man thanks!

 

[pixletwin]

Umm you might want to take a second look

Doh! You mean that wee link at the very top? How could I have missed that. Very silly of me indeed.

 

[WrathofSauron]

Well this is just too cool, you mean all this time I have been living in The Grey Havens woo hoo!!!!

 

[pixletwin]

A buddy of mine was pretty stoked to hear that he served an LDS mission to Mordor (Hungary).

 

[WetaWork]

I knew you guys would eat this up. Very cool stuff indeed...

 

[GrueSam]

Yes, WetaWork- Massively cool.

And I am now very proud to say that I went to Morder on my honeymoon!

 

[Oxfordian]

It's all in the mind, pretty much anywhere you want it to be. Several places were based on places Tolkien had seen/been/wanted to visit; but in the end visualise your way there.

Nice piece though - stimulates the old grey matter.

 

[Darth Caedus]

Yes, WetaWork- Massively cool.

And I am now very proud to say that I went to Morder on my honeymoon!

UHHHHH, Transylvania for the honeymoon, kinda weird, but awesome. Did you go to dracula's castle?

I also found it interesting that Tolkien based the Dead Marshes on the trench warfare graves during WWI, so sad.

 

[GrueSam]

UHHHHH, Transylvania for the honeymoon, kinda weird, but awesome. Did you go to dracula's castle?

You don't know me very well! My family wasn't surprised at all...

Yep. Hubby and I not only went to the touristy "well, maybe Vlad was imprisoned here for a night" pretty castle but we climbed up to a Carpathian mountain peak to rummage through Vlad Tepes' real castle ruins.


We did also go to Italy, Prague, Poland, Budapest and Bavaria. Outside of Munich we found the castle that inspired Mary Shelley for Frankenstein.