Lost Lands of Arda

 From The Saxon Cross:

My first entry in this series detailed how Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, when correctly scaled, perfectly matches the landscape of Ice-Age Europe. Tolkien’s placement of mythic locations such as Mirkwood also matches their attested locations in ancient Europe.

My theory is that J.R.R. Tolkien meant for his Middle-Earth legendarium to be a literal mythology of ancient Europe. While the professor made vague allusions to his mythology being a telling of our ancient past, I believe he took this more seriously than he ever publicly admitted. I do not believe he meant it only as a frame story.

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Keep in mind that when I talk about my map projection of Middle-Earth onto Europe, I am consistently referring to the map projection from the first article, not picking and choosing different scales to make things work.

Today, I want to expand by going into deeper detail on more locations within Tolkien’s mythology and their real-world counterparts.

I also want to examine some of the issues with the map from my first post. I will examine the issue of the Black Sea, and also explain why I believe the south of Middle-Earth looks so unlike the real Mediterranean. (Read more.)