Middle-Earth Geography

Ilana Mushin

Well-Known Member
I wasn’t sure where to put this question. My husband often makes the comment looking at the Lord of the Rings map (and no doubt he would have the Beleriand map), that the geography is not realistic in terms of the primary world (E.g. that the U-shaped mountain ranges surrounding Mordor would be unlikely). But when pressed he admitted that this was an impression rather than based on fact. My sense is that Tolkien took these things seriously, especially in writing LoTR and you can see that in the difference between the Ambarkanta maps and the LoTR maps. So those of you with knowledge of how Geography works - how realistic is M-E geography?
 
He is right - the mountains around Mordor are decidedly Not Natural. His overall impression is also not wrong.

Here is a geologist ranting about the mountains in Middle-earth (specifically the LotR map):

And also the Anduin River:


So what happened here? Tolkien did indeed take his worldbuilding quite seriously, and he has accurate descriptions of erosion all throughout The Hobbit. (No, seriously - I can ask Earth Science students to identify what is happening in a passage based on his descriptions, and they work. The Carrock is a glacial erratic, and is described as such.) So, it's not that he had no interest in geology. He clearly did.

But the question of 'How do mountain ranges form?' is answered by...plate tectonics. While continental drift was first proposed in 1912, there was no accompanying mechanism to explain the process, and so it was not widely accepted or particularly useful at that time. Seafloor spreading was identified based on the ages and flip-flopping of the magnetic poles of rocks on the sea floor of the Atlantic Ocean. That idea was first proposed by Hess...in 1960. WELL after Tolkien did all his worldbuilding maps of Middle-earth. Plate tectonics wasn't fully formulated until 1967 - combining Hess' seafloor spreading mechanism with Wegener's evidence of continental drift. Here is an article where the Princeton geologist who proposed the theory recalls how that came about. So if Tolkien didn't get it right...that is in part because he was working in the 1930's-1950's.

We now know that a mountain range such as the Himalayas is formed by the collision of the subcontinent of India (the Indian plate) with Asia (the Eurasian plate). Similar story for the Brooks Range in Alaska. Continental crust meets continental crust, and rather than subduction, we get orogeny (mountain building).
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That is somewhat straightforward. But a range such as the Appalachians formed when Laurasia (the North American plate) collided into Gondwanaland to form Pangea roughly 300 million years ago. That collision formed the Atlas Mountains of northern Africa, the Caledonian Mountains of Scotland and Scandanavia, as well as the Marathon Mountains in Texas. It would be very difficult to look at a modern map and 'see' the connection between those mountain ranges. A lot has changed in the meantime!
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A. is now; B. is before the Atlantic Ocean formed.

Similarly, this is all the 'same' mountain range, but some of it is rather flat these days! It's covered in sediments from the coastal plain.
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People noticed the continents fit together like puzzle pieces, and found similar ages and types of rocks in mountain ranges that are now on different continents or otherwise separated from each other. But it is hard to piece together what happened. Knowing that the Atlantic Ocean is 'new' is only part of the picture. Next to the Appalachian mountains are the Blue Ridge mountains, which have billion year old rocks and are the result of a continental collision long before Pangea - the formation of the supercontinent Rodinia.

Here's an explanation of the tectonic history of collisional mountain ranges in the US:



Now, one could certainly look at real-world mountain ranges, and incorporate familiar shapes into one's fantasy map. So, one can still say that Tolkien got his mountains wrong and 'should have' known better. But I think this is a case where the mountains existed where the story needed mountains, and he wasn't necessarily putting them all together to make a realistic continent, even if the details of the mountains themselves are more-or-less fine. And I don't think it fair to hold him to standards of accepted geologic knowledge that came after his time. That being said...he doesn't do a great job with non-fantasy orogeny in Middle-earth. A lot of it has to be magic, somehow. Or really, REALLY complicated tectonic history!
 
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Here is a map depicting major mountain ranges and river systems of the world as they are today:

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Source: https://www.euratlas.net/geography/world/mountains/index.html


I'm not sure what conclusions one could draw about what a 'normal' mountain range looks like on a continent from just this image. It's a static image of landmasses that have been moving around like a lava lamp for the past billion years or so.
 
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Tolkien's mythology of Middle-earth contains several world-destroying calamaties that are meant to reshape the geography of Middle-earth. The maps in the Ambarkanta show that he was interested in how these changes would affect the world on a global scale, and also that he has at least some interest in connecting his maps with a real map of the modern world.

For anyone not familiar with the maps in question, they may be viewed here:

The first calamity is the destruction of the Lamps. The maps in the Ambarkanta show that large inland seas formed where once there had been giant pillars holding up the Lamps. There are also 4 very symmetrical mountain ranges, suggesting that the mountains of Middle-earth are constructed by the Vala Aulë during the creation of the world. One exception to that would be the Iron Mountains in the north, which are raised by Morgoth as part of his fortifications. Cuivienen and Hildórien, the first birthplaces of Elves and Men, respectively, are marked on this map as well.

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The next calamity was the War of the Powers, in which Utumno was broken and Morgoth was chained. The general impression is that the shape of the world was altered in this conflict, and it was a significant enough disaster as to discourage the Valar from ever doing that again. The symmetry has been lost - geological forces are at play, and Middle-earth has taken on a new form.

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There is a small change to the map after the alteration of the lands and prior to what comes after - Tol Eressea is moved across the Sea, leaving behind the Isle of Balar to show where it originally stood. The next world-changing event is once more brought on by the Valar, who raise the Pelóri higher and fence out the Noldor with the Enchanted Isles, etc.

We see Beleriand in the upper left of the Ambarkanta maps. Next we see of it, it looks like this (1930's map by Tolkien):

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...which is based on a late 1920's map that looked like this:
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The Blue Mountains of the Ambarkanta Map IV are shown on the far right of the 1930s one. Rather than showing the formation of the mountains, Tolkien seems to be focused on portratying the deformation of an otherwise neat line of mountains. His landscape has shifted...but not due to plate tectonics, per se.

The War of Wrath at the end of the First Age results in the drowning of Beleriand. Most of what is visible here sinks beneath the waves. Several high points survive as islands - Tol Morwen, Himring/Himling, and Tol Fuin. The island of Númenor also appears for the first time, raised by the Valar.

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(Image by Didier Willis, 2014)

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(image by Jef Murray)

The next cataclysmic event is the drowning of Númenor, in which the flat world is made round. We don't really know the details of what effect that had on the geography of Middle-earth. There is some further drowning of the coast of no-longer-Beleriand-but-now-Eriador. The remnants of the Blue Mountains of the other maps are on the left side of this one. I chose the 'annotated' map, because the notes of Pauline Baynes and J.R.R. Tolkien show that they were thinking about latitude and what plants and animals would grow in the various places. These aren't the details of someone who is indifferent to geography!

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It is (somewhat) possible to overlap the maps of Beleriand and Eriador:

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Source: tumblr
 
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(E.g. that the U-shaped mountain ranges surrounding Mordor would be unlikely).

Still you have the Carpathians - an old European mountain range - which are not very far from U-shape:

Carpathian Mountains - Wikipedia

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and the lowlands of the Taklamakan desert in the Tarim Basin just North of the Tibetan Plateau are almost Mordor-shaped and surrounded by mountains from South, West and North:

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Taklamakan - Taklamakan Desert - Wikipedia

The Taklamakan Desert [...] is bounded by the Kunlun Mountains to the south, the Pamir Mountains to the west, the Tian Shan range to the north, and the Gobi Desert to the east.

Actually the Taklamakan contains a now dried up salt lake called "Lop Nur" - "Nur" meaning lake in Mongolian, which is not dissimilar to the "Sea of Núrnen" in sound - so it might be that the Taklamakan was one of the inspirations for Mordor. Those areas were of interest to the British Empire and no doubt Tolkien had access to respective maps of the area in Oxford.
Lop Nur - Wikipedia
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The Tarim Basin would be of lingustic interest to Tolkien as it is where the famous Tocharians - one of the most Eastern Indo-European speaking people - lived Tocharian languages - Wikipedia .

 
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Please note that the complaint made by the geologist fan of LotR linked above (as opposed to Odola's husband!) is not that Mordor is U-shaped, but rather that any mountain ranges should form at right angles to one another, something that occurs more than once on Tolkien's maps (though most prominently in the mountains surrounding Mordor).

Also a reminder that real world plate tectonics is extremely involved and complex. Here's a simulation bringing us from molten earth to the current day:

And several models attempting to predict where we'll be in another 200 million years.

(Pangaea Proxima)

(Aurica)

(all 4 contemporary models)

Currently, the Atlantic Ocean is growing and the Pacific Ocean is shrinking, but naturally it's a bit more complicated than that....is Asia going to rip itself in half? What about Africa? Or Antarctica? Interestingly enough, all the models do predict the formation of another supercontinent in roughly 200-250 million years. I think that means that the models are strongly influenced by the break up of Pangea, but perhaps they are on to something.
 
Well the Iron Mountains aren't exactly a natural creation, didn't Melkor raise them as a defensive wall? Maybe at least one of the mountain ranges surrounding Mordor isn't a natural range...
 
ALL of Middle-earth's mountains are built by Valar. And the cataclysms that shape and reshape Middle-earth are also Vala-induced.
 
Please note that the complaint made by the geologist fan of LotR linked above (as opposed to Odola's husband!)
That was Ilana's husband - my own is not into fantasy. ;)

is not that Mordor is U-shaped, but rather that any mountain ranges should form at right angles to one another, something that occurs more than once on Tolkien's maps (though most prominently in the mountains surrounding Mordor).


This could be just a pseudo-historical mannerism of the cartographer? They did not have satelites in the 3rd or 4th Age so they drew what they could know and see from the ground.

E.g. here you have a map from 1751 of ancient Dacia and Pannonia - so - assumedly at least in part - a redrawing of an ancient Roman map, you see the Carpathians on it more like simple lines of mountains:


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and still there is one right angle in the Carpathians at least:

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So not totally so out of question.
 
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Lots of...

First i took the lotr map and put it unto the shaping of middlw-earth map, then i stretched it into real-life proportions, then added cuivienen and Hildorien according to nature of middle-earth, then adding more details, for the unknown lands.
 
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