Tolkien’s Middle Earth was the first fantasy world I encountered. As much as I enjoyed the stories, I loved the maps as much or even more. Admittedly as a young child, in addition to dinosaurs, space ships, and castles I also drew maps. Fortunately my mother is a rather fastidious person and none that work remains. Back to Middle Earth. This year marks the 81st anniversary of The Hobbit’s publication. So what, you say? Well, Tolkien lived to be 81. Okay, that’s a bit weak. The truth is I missed the 80th anniversary. While wandering around my hard drive (yeah it’s a thing) I found two interesting interpretations of Tolkien’s Middle Earth maps.
Given the popularity of Tolkien’s stories hasn’t everything been done already? There’s even an entire book dedicated to mapping his world. Karen Wynn Fonstad, a cartographer and author, published what many consider to be the definitive Atlas of Middle Earth. (note this is an Amazon affiliate link which will pay me a small fee if you make a purchase after following it). As you might expect, I own a first edition hard cover copy of the atlas. It cost me a full day’s pay and it’s dust jacket is a little worse for wear. Fonstad also created atlases for other fantasy series including Anne McAffery’s Dragonriders of Pern, Stephen R. Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, and the Dragonlance World. After Tolkien’s son, Christopher, published additional materials about Middle Earth, Fonstad published a revised edition.
Using Fonstad’s meticulous work as a source a Reddit user (space_paradox) created the two interesting maps. Each overlays Tolkien’s Middle Earth over a different part of our world. It’s one thing to know how many leagues Frodo and Sam traveled in a day, but quite another to see it in our world.
Middle Earth Over the United States
All right, if traveling from northeastern Kansas to Youngstown, OH or Jacksonville, FL doesn’t match your view of Bilbo or Frodo’s 970 mile journeys, here’s a European version. Here the journey starts a bit south of Glasgow ending off the coast of Estonia and western Romania respectively.
Middle Earth Over Europe
As always thanks for reading.
Armen
Note to pay the bills: If you’re interested in a James Bond-like thriller set in a high fantasy world, with a map I created, look into The Warders. You can find a summary of the series here or find links to purchase books here.
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