Where it is, baby!

[Kiri]

Did Tolkien anywhere specifically write something on the order of "That part of Middle Earth in which The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are set is that part of the Eurasian landmass that corresponds to modern-day western Europe."?

The reason I ask is that many people seem to presume it MUST be the case, but I've never seen it stated as such. Yes, I know about the original intent to set things in and around Britain and France--but that was abandoned. Did Tolkien anywhere state that the Shire isn't actually in modern Washington state? Or that it isn't actually in modern Minnesota (which was a western shoreline at one time in the distant past)? All I've ever seen is a statement of LATITUDE. Where did he define the longtitude?

Or is this yet another thing that has simply been ass-you-meed without anything to back it up?

[Wayfarer]

It was originally going to be europe...

But, in the final legendarium, it was so far in the past as to be unrecognizeable today.

The land has all changed.

[Kiri]

But where did he actually say that the final result would be Europe? After all, I've seen more attempts to superimpose his map of the northwest corner of that particular continent of Middle Earth onto maps of Europe than I care to remember. So where does Tolkien actually write that this is a valid thing to do?

As for "so far in the past that everything has changed"--waaaaaaaaaal now, that would be a great deal further back than the old Professor said.

Of course, it's not our world at any time in the past, though, is it?

[Wayfarer]

In the prelude or whatever to the LOTR regarding hobbits, he writes somethihng like:

Though the lands have no doubt changes so much as to be unrecognizeable, they no doubt live in the same region they always have. That is, in the northwest region of europe.

That's as much support for the idea I can find.

[Ñólendil]

This is the passage:

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.

'Middle-earth' was a word used by people in our past (in various forms), because the world of Mankind was conceived as being in the midst of the Encircling Seas, or between the Northern Ice and Southern Fires. Before the Downfall of Numenor Tolkien uses the word to mean 'all lands other than Numenor, Tol-Eressea and Valinor'. After the Downfall and the removal of the Blessed Realm from the world of the Seen, 'Middle-earth' applied to the whole world; what we call Earth. The North-West of Middle-earth is where The Lord of the Rings takes place. That region is thus the ancient equivalent of modern day Europe. Tolkien talks about this stuff in letters. He verifies that the story takes place in that approximate region, some 6,000 years ago.

[Michael Martinez]

Prior to the Downfall, the world was flat, and Middle-earth was simply the middle continent of several. Aman (where Valinor and Eldamar were found) lay in the uttermost west. Another land lay to the distant east.

Iluvatar made the world "round and inescapable" (Tolkien's words in several letters) when he removed Aman. He did not necessarily make Aman a part of the Unseen (in fact, I'm quite certain he did not -- the Unseen was something else altogether).

Middle-earth is the entire world of Men, and that is what the name meant originally.

[Ñólendil]

I was necessarily vague, I didn't want to go into all the details (though I don't remember the other land in the East you spoke of). It seems to me that when Aman was removed from the Circles of the World it entered into that intriguing Unseen Realm. Or anyway it's hard to imagine the Blessed Realm lying physically outside Middle-earth, on our plane, it just doesn't make sense.

[Michael Martinez]

Originally posted by Inoldonil
I was necessarily vague, I didn't want to go into all the details (though I don't remember the other land in the East you spoke of). It seems to me that when Aman was removed from the Circles of the World it entered into that intriguing Unseen Realm. Or anyway it's hard to imagine the Blessed Realm lying physically outside Middle-earth, on our plane, it just doesn't make sense.

Why shouldn't it make sense? It was a part of the physical world to begin with, and by all accounts remained a physical world. The Straight Road was simply a path along adjoining seas, one being part of the round Middle-earth, and the other leading to Aman, which may itself have become round. It need only be placed somewhere else in Ea, which is immense.

[UnStashable]

According to some maps i have which i admittedly don't trust completely, when the world had "symetry" there was Middle earth, Westernesse and Easterneese. Then Melkor destroyed the lamps and marred the world, the valar moved to westerneese and made it into valinor. Meanwhile Easterneese just kinda hang around and eventually became North and South America (possibly Micronesia as well).

[Ñólendil]

'Westernesse' is the English translation of 'Númenórë'.

"Why shouldn't it make sense? It was a part of the physical world to begin with, and by all accounts remained a physical world. The Straight Road was simply a path along adjoining seas, one being part of the round Middle-earth, and the other leading to Aman, which may itself have become round. It need only be placed somewhere else in Ea, which is immense."

You mean like on another planet, or something like that? What I meant was: I can't imagine going out into space and seeing another continent sticking out from Earth. I didn't imagine Aman simply being removed to a far away place, and the Straight Road leading directly to it. But I suppose it's also a different story going by the 'primitive mythology'.

[Kiri]

Originally posted by Inoldonil
You mean like on another planet, or something like that? What I meant was: I can't imagine going out into space and seeing another continent sticking out from Earth. I didn't imagine Aman simply being removed to a far away place, and the Straight Road leading directly to it. But I suppose it's also a different story going by the 'primitive mythology'.

What you cannot imagine is what happened! Middle Earth does not have our cosmology. Do you expect to find Zeus physically sitting atop Mt. Olympus in Greece, today? No you do not. Do you expect to meet Utgartr when you travel to the South Pole (as far south as one can get, after all)--indeed, the South Pole isn't even properly hot, and the Eddas agree that the further south one gets the hotter it must get.

What I'm getting at is that it may be utterly wrong-headed to attempt to interpret the cosmology and geography of Middle Earth in terms of what we understand and believe to be true today. Tolkien was writing mythology and epic, not history and textbooks. Indeed, did he not ultimately reject the "Ælfwine" convention? Likewise perusal of Gnomish vs. Sindarin vocabularies reveals that there was a systematic purge of "earth-specific" material from the language.

Trying to plot Middle Earth onto modern earth maps completely misses the point. Indeed, I have even seen people so daft, dare I say mindless, that they try to map Middle Earth onto Eurasia and Africa and then claim that the description of the "troll-men" as having "white eyes and red mouths" proves that Far Harad is "really" Africa.

I've worked with Africans from nearly every part of the continent. Berbers do not have white eyes and red mouths. Egyptian do not have white eyes and red mouths. Ethiopians do not have white eyes and red mouths. None of the sub-Saharan Africans have such features. Indeed, the outside of their mouths is brown and the inside (from what I've seen is no more red than my own). As for the eyes--their sclera are no more white than are my own. When I read Lord of the Rings I always took that description literally--they had pure white eyes and vivid red (maybe even crimson) mouths--quite inhuman looking.

Thus, if Middle Earth "really" exists in the distant past, it is in the distant past of a world altogether different and separate from our own.

[markedel]

Tolkien somewhere said Minas Tirith is at the latitude of Northern Italy, and Hobbiton at Oxford.

[Ñólendil]

In my post I was looking at it from the perspective of the 'scientific mythology', Kiri, the one Tolkien came up with to replace to the old one, where the Sun existed before the Earth, which rotates around it, and so forth.

[Laurelyn]

Kiri, I agree: Middle Earth is a world separate from our own.
Now if only I could find the darn portal . . . hee hee.

[Arathorn]

I guess, someone else foresaw all the questions and mail he'd be getting regarding this type of question, hence:

"A long, long, time ago...

...in a galaxy far, far away"

[Laurelyn]

Lol, Arathorn . . . but don't start with that, I'll go crazy. Wait, I'm already quite insane . . . Never mind.

[Kiri]

Originally posted by Inoldonil
In my post I was looking at it from the perspective of the 'scientific mythology', Kiri, the one Tolkien came up with to replace to the old one, where the Sun existed before the Earth, which rotates around it, and so forth.

Who is to say that both are not true, and false, and neither? Reality is provisional. Secondary reality even moreso. Truth is the abyss. Uncertainty is the only comfort. Step off the edge. After all, there really isn't any difference between flying and falling for all eternity...

[Ñólendil]

Are those song lyrics, or something? I don't speak Cryptic. I'll only say (because I think I understood part of what you said, if those aren't song lyrincs {'or something'}) that both (the contradicting 'primitive' and 'scientific' mythologies) cannot be true. Not literally, historically correct [within Tolkien's world]. In the specific sense I'm speaking of, it's one or the other.