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J. R. R. Tolkien's maps, depicting his fictionalMiddle-earth and other places inhis legendarium, helped him with plot development, guided the reader through his often complex stories, and contributed to theimpression of depth andworldbuilding in his writings.
Tolkien stated that he began with maps and developed his plots from them, but that he also wanted his maps to be picturesque. Laterfantasy writers also often include maps in their novels.
The publisherAllen & Unwin commissionedPauline Baynes to paint a map of Middle-earth, based on Tolkien's draft maps and his annotations; it became iconic. A later redrafting of the maps by the publisherHarperCollins however made the maps look what theJ. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia called "bland, modern, professional",[1] losing the hand-drawn feeling of Tolkien's maps.
The Hobbit (1937) contains two simple maps and only around 50 placenames. In the view of the Tolkien criticTom Shippey, the maps are largely decorative in the "Here be tygers" tradition, adding nothing to the story.[2] The first is Thror's map, in the fiction handed down toThorin, showing little but theLonely Mountain drawn in outline with ridgelines and entrances, and parts of two rivers, decorated with a spider and its web, English labels and arrows, and two texts written inrunes.[T 1] The other is a drawing of "Wilderland", fromRivendell in the west to the Lonely Mountain andSmaug the dragon in the east. TheMisty Mountains are drawn in three dimensions.Mirkwood is shown as a mixture of closely packed tree symbols, spiders and their webs, hills, lakes, and villages. The map is overprinted with placenames in red.[T 2] Both maps have a heavy vertical line not far from the left-hand side, the one on the map of Wilderland marked "Edge of the Wild". This line represented the printed delineation of the margin of the school paper, which came with the printed instruction "Do not write in this margin".[3]
Tolkien's maps were hand-drawn and hand-lettered. The publishers asked for them to be redrawn, to suit line-block printing better, to have sharper lettering, and to use fewer colours.[4]
The Lord of the Rings contains three maps and over 600 placenames. The maps are a large drawing of the north-west part ofMiddle-earth, showing mountains as if seen in three dimensions, and coasts with multiple waterlines;[T 3] a more detailed drawing of "A Part ofthe Shire";[T 4] and acontour map byChristopher Tolkien of parts ofRohan,Gondor, andMordor, very different in style.[3][T 5] Tolkien worked for many years on the book, using a hand-drawn map of the whole of the north-west of Middle-earth on squared (not graph) paper, each 2cm square representing 100 miles. The map had many annotations in pencil and a range of different inks added over the years, the older ones faded until almost illegible. The paper became soft, torn and yellowed through intensive use, and a fold down the centre had to be mended using parcel tape.[7] He made a detailed pencil, ink and coloured pencil design ongraph paper, enlarged five times in length from the main map of Middle-earth. His son Christopher drew thecontour map from the design. The finished map faithfully reproduced the contours, features and labels of his father's design, but omitted the route (with dates) taken by theHobbitsFrodo andSam on their way to destroy theOne Ring inMount Doom. Father and son worked desperately to finish the map in time for publication:[6]
I had to devote many days, the last three virtually without food or bed, to drawing re-scaling and adjusting a large map, at which [Christopher] then worked for 24 hours (6am to 6am without bed) in re-drawing just in time.[8]
Shippey notes that many of the places mapped are never used in the text.[2] The map of the Shire is the only one to include political boundaries, in the shape of the divisions between the administrative districts or Farthings.[3]
The first edition ofThe Silmarillion contains two maps. There is a large fold-out drawing ofBeleriand.[T 6] TheEred Luin mountain range on its right-hand edge approximately matches the mountain range of that name on the left-hand edge of the main map inThe Lord of the Rings. The other is a smaller-scale drawing of the central region of the same area, with coasts, mountains, and rivers but without forests, overprinted in red with the names of the leaders of the Elves in each part of Beleriand.[T 7]
The other continents and regions described inThe Silmarillion are not mapped in the book, but Tolkien drew sketches ofArda in its early stages including ofValinor (Aman), and a map of the star-shaped island ofNumenor, with little detail other than coasts (with waterlining) and mountains, which was eventually printed inUnfinished Tales.[T 8] Some other absences may be significant;Christopher Tolkien wrote that the frequently mentionedDwarf-road over the mountains bordering Beleriand is not shown, because the Noldorin Elves who lived there never crossed the mountains.[3]
The style of Tolkien's maps mixes illustrative principles and purpose with cartographical practice. Alice Campbell, inThe J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, writes that while they have what Tolkien called an "archaic air", they are not authenticallymedieval in style.[9] In particular, he allows for blank spaces between features, an 18th-century innovation that meant that the features that were drawn were reliable.[9] Campbell states that Tolkien's mapping style echoesWilliam Morris'sArts and Crafts: "they are functional, but with an eye to grace and beauty", and in her view lie somewhere betweenillustration andcartography.[9]
Tolkien indeed wrote that "there should be picturesque maps, providing more than a mere index to what is said in the text".[T 9] His maps thus have at least three functions: to help the author construct a consistent plot; to guide the reader; and through the "picturesque", theaesthetic experience, to lead the reader into the imaginedsecondary world.[10]
In 1954, Tolkien wrote in a letter to the novelistNaomi Mitchison that[T 10]
I wisely started with a map, and made the story fit (generally with meticulous care for distances). The other way about lands one in confusions and impossibilities, and in any case it is weary work to compose a map from a story — as I fear you have found.[T 10]
Tolkien developed not only maps but names and languages before he arrived at a plot.[12] He had already used Old Norse for the Dwarves of Dale (to the east) inThe Hobbit, and he was using modern English for the Hobbits of the Shire (in the west); his choice ofOld English for the riders of Rohan implied a linguistic map of Middle-earth, with different peoples, languages and regions.[13]
The cartographerKaren Wynn Fonstad, author ofThe Atlas of Middle-earth,[14] commented that in such a world, writing has to be based on detailed knowledge of each of many types of details; she found herself, as Tolkien had, unable to proceed with the atlas until she had mastered all of them. Distances travelled, the chronology of the quest, geology, and terrain all needed to be understood to create the work.[15]
Campbell stated that the "lovingly detailed" maps helped to shape the stories and create a "believable whole".[9] In Shippey's view, "the names and the maps give Middle-earththat air of solidity and extent both in space and time which its successors [in 20th centuryfantasy] so conspicuously lack".[16] One way that this works, he argues, is that readers, far from analysing theetymology of place-names as Tolkien habitually did, take them as labels, "as things .. in a very close one-to-one relationship with whatever they label".[17] That in turn makes maps "extraordinarily useful to fantasy, weighing it down as they do with repeated implicit assurances of the existence of the things they label, and of course of their nature and history too."[17]
Thegeologists Robert C. Reynolds in 1974,[20] and thenWilliam Sarjeant in 1992, used the information from Tolkien's illustrations, maps, and text to attempt to reconstructMiddle-earth's geology.[21] The geologist Alex Acks, writing onTor.com in 2017, outlines the mismatch between Tolkien's maps and thegeomorphological processes ofplate tectonics which shape the Earth'scontinents andmountain ranges. Mountains form mainly next tosubduction zones whereoceanic crust slides undercontinental crust, or where continents collide and crumple. Stretching of continental crust, by upwelling of magma, creates brokenhorst and graben landforms. Acks comments that none of these create right-angle junctions in mountain ranges, such as are seen aroundMordor and at both ends of theMisty Mountains on Tolkien's maps. Isolated volcanoes far inland, likeMount Doom, are possible but unlikely: most such volcanoes are islands and occur in roughly straight-line groups as the crust moves across ahotspot inEarth's mantle.[18]
Acks identifies a further issue, with Tolkien's rivers. The Earth's major rivers each drain a raised area of land, forming adrainage basin; the river in the basin takes water and sediment down to the sea, or looked at the other way, branches regularly into smaller and smaller streams that lead up into the hills. A river like theAnduin, on the other hand, has very few branches: it runs more or less as a single large stream for hundreds of miles, and parallel to the Misty Mountain range, rather than directly downhill and away from it. Worse, one of its fewtributaries, the Entwash, branches out into ariver delta, a basically flat place where a river ends, usually by the sea; but the Anduin goes on flowing past this spot, downhill. Acks excuses another oddity, namely that the Anduin cuts through a gap (between the White Mountains of Gondor and the Ephel Duath of Mordor); this is unusual but can happen, as when theColorado River cuts across the mountainousBasin and Range Province: the river was there before the mountains, and cut its way down through the rock faster than the mountains grew upwards.[19]
Acks comments that the inlandSea of Rhûn seems to be in the bottom of a drainage basin. Again, this can happen; but there must be awatershed, high ground separating it from neighbouring drainage basins, in particular that of the Anduin. But the rivers ofMirkwood run eastwards towards the Sea of Rhûn, propelled by an invisible slope from invisible Mirkwood hills.[19] Fonstad draws her map of the Dwarves' route from the Anduin to the Forest River completely flat, with only small local topographic features on the way.[23]
Hazel Gibson, for theEuropean Geosciences Union, writes that Serjeant had to take "some very large leaps" to assemble a picture of the geology and geomorphology consistent with Tolkien's text. She concurs with Acks that "Several of the mountain ranges and individual mountains on the map make absolutely no sense."[24] Real mountain chains can meet almost at a right angle, but, she writes, "you have to work really hard to find them."[24] Mordor is the most egregious instance, in Gibson's opinion: a "square plain fenced by mountains at right angles to each other – it's practically impossible."[24]
The Harvard Lampoon's 1969 bookBored of the Rings parodies Tolkien's geomorphology with a double-page map by William S. Donnell. It depicts places such as "The Square Valley Between the Mounts", "The Mulsanne Straight" (a straight-line mountain range), and "The Intermittent Mountains".[22]
The frontispiece toWilliam Morris's 1897The Sundering Flood was a map showing the city on a great river, "The Wood Masterless", a "Desert Waste", and towns with English names like "Westcheaping" and "Eastcheaping".[25] The map appears to have been the first fantasy map in the modern sense, defining a wholly invented world.[26] Tolkien stated that he wished to imitate the style and content of Morris's romances,[27] and that he made use of elements from them.[28][29]Other published examples Tolkien may have had in mind while creating his maps include those ofJonathan Swift, who included maps in his 1726Gulliver's Travels, and those ofRobert Louis Stevenson in his 1883 adventure storyTreasure Island.[10]
![First modern-style fantasy map: the Frontispiece map in William Morris's 1897 The Sundering Flood[26]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=http%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aSundering_Flood.jpg)
Tolkien's maps set a completely new standard for fantasy novels, so that their use has become expected in the genre, which he largely created.[10]Peter Jackson chose to use Tolkien's Middle-earth map in hisLord of the Rings film trilogy.[30][10] Among later bestselling fantasy authors,George R. R. Martin has used maps in all hisA Song of Ice and Fire books, starting withA Game of Thrones.[10]
In 1969, Tolkien's publisherAllen & Unwin commissioned the illustratorPauline Baynes to paint a map of Middle-earth. Tolkien supplied her with copies of his draft maps forThe Lord of the Rings, and annotated her copy of his sonChristopher's 1954 map forThe Fellowship of the Ring. Allen & Unwin published Baynes's map as a poster in 1970. It was decorated with a header and footer showing some of Tolkien's characters, and vignettes of some of his stories' locations. The poster map became "iconic" of Middle-earth. She was one of the fewillustrators of whom Tolkien approved.[31][32][33][34]
Campbell writes that the redrafting of the maps by the publishersHarperCollins for a later edition ofThe Lord of the Rings made the cartography "bland, modern, professional illustration".[1] In her view, this is "an unintentional reversion to decorative but technically inaccurate medieval-style maps",[1] something that she finds misguided, as in his maps "Tolkien desired accuracy more than decoration".[1] In addition, the redrafting loses what she calls "the illusion ofBilbo's own fair copies of older maps and which suggested a culture without printing presses or engraving", through Tolkien's own "charming hand lettering".[1]
The Tolkien universe has been subject to significant cartographic efforts by fans, some of whom have published their works in print. These includeKaren Wynn Fonstad'sThe Atlas of Middle-earth.[35]
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