Sketch map of the north-west of Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age, showing Eriador (left) and Rhovanion (right). Tolkien then equated Arda, consisting of both Middle-earth's planet and the heavenly Aman, with the Solar System, the Sun and Moon being celestial objects in their own right, no longer orbiting the Earth. The Elves could go there only by the Straight Road and in ships capable of passing out of the sphere of the earth. Īfter the destruction of Númenor at the end of the Second Age, Arda was remade as a round world, and the Undying Lands were removed from Arda so that Men could not reach them. Initially, the western part of Middle-earth was the subcontinent Beleriand it was engulfed by the ocean at the end of the First Age.

The western continent, Aman, was the home of the Valar, and the Elves called the Eldar. Aman and Middle-earth were separated from each other by the Great Sea Belegaer, analogous to the Atlantic Ocean. It included the Undying Lands of Aman and Eressëa, which were all part of the wider creation, Eä. Tolkien's Middle-earth was part of his created world of Arda.

Some commentators have seen this as implying a moral geography of Middle-earth.įurther information: Social:Cosmology of Tolkien's legendarium In The Lord of the Rings, Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age is described as having free peoples, namely Men, Hobbits, Elves, and Dwarves in the West, opposed to peoples under the control of the Dark Lord Sauron in the East. In the Second Age, a large island, Númenor, was created in the Great Sea, Belegaer, between Aman and Middle-earth it was destroyed in a cataclysm at the end of the Second Age, in which Arda was remade as a spherical world, and Aman was removed so that Men could not reach it. At the end of the First Age, the Western part of Middle-earth, Beleriand, was drowned in the War of Wrath. Arda was created as a flat world, incorporating a Western continent, Aman, which became the home of the godlike Valar, as well as Middle-earth. Tolkien's fictional world of Middle-earth, strictly a continent on the planet of Arda but widely taken to mean the physical world, and Eä, all of creation, as well as all of his writings about it. The geography of Middle-earth encompasses the physical, political, and moral geography of J.

A middle earth traveller