by Stefan Ekman
By examining the choices of the mapmaker, it is possible to learn how the map relates to the story it presumably supports, but such an examination also sheds light on some of the social norms and constructions behind the map. In the case of the Shire map, the norms and constructions of the fictional cartographer are braided together with those of the implied cartographer. When it comes to the map of the western Middle-earth, which is more clearly a paratext in that it does not refer to any apparent map in the fictional world, the messages communicated by the map are more clearly those of the implied cartographer (or author). Whereas this map has some traits in common with the Shire map, it offers a worldview different from the controlled safety of the hobbit lands: according to the larger map, Middle-earth is a wilder, older place, and the map is much more explicitly made to serve the story.
Reading “The West of Middle-earth”
The general map of the western parts of Middle-earth was first included on a foldout sheet, printed in black and red, in the first edition of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. In paperback editions, this map was printed in black only and divided into four sections.117 Although the Shire map and the general map have in common an abundance of names that strengthen the readers’ secondary belief (as well as allowing them to identify almost any location mentioned in the novel), the story comes across as much more central to the construction of the general map.
Unlike the Shire map, the general map has a compass rose (with north at the top) and a scale bar. For my edition of the map, one inch equals one hundred miles, which corresponds to 1:6,336,000 and yields a map area of about 6.5 million square kilometers, or about twice the size of India. A quarter of the map is covered by water, which gives a land area approximately half that of Europe or the United States. According to the label, the map is of “The West of Middle-earth at the End of the Third Age,” and even though some features are included, much of the eastern and some of the northern side of the map are, in fact, quite empty compared to the western lands. This is a map whose subject is not a nonspecific “west” but a number of regions defined as “The West,” a cultural, political, and historical as well as geographical location, something that is confirmed by how its military leaders are repeatedly referred to as “the Captains of the West” (RK, V, x, 867 et passim). These regions (Eriador, Rohan, Gondor, and Rhovanion) are set against the land of Mordor, which is the only land on the eastern third of the maps to be reasonably detailed. The label is signed CJRT, for Christopher Tolkien, but since it is impossible (and in this discussion irrelevant) to decide which features of the map come from which Tolkien, this map is also considered to have an implied cartographer. However, as the general map is more clearly paratextual than the Shire map and exists only on the threshold to the text, I assume it to have no fictional cartographer; this aspect is therefore left out of the subsequent discussion.
Of all the topography portrayed on the map of the western Middle-earth, the mountain ranges attract the most attention. In the middle of the map, extending from the hills beyond Carn Dûm in the northwest to Minas Tirith in the southeast, runs the sinuous mountain range of the Misty Mountains and Ered Nimrais (I use the English rather than Elvish names if they are given on the map). The inverted S-shape of this range neatly indicates where the story’s action will take place: in the southeast, it points at the mountains around Mordor; and, together with the Blue Mountains, its northern curve embraces Eriador. The shapes of Mordor’s mountain ranges and of the Misty Mountain/Ered Nimrais range give an artificial impression, suggesting that supernatural forces rather than tectonics are behind the very landforms of Middle-earth. This impression is confirmed in The Silmarillion, which describes (in Ainulindalë) how the semidivine Valar worked to create the landscapes of the world and (in Quenta Silmarillion) how the evil Melkor built the Misty Mountains.118 Given their prominence in terms of location, shape, and quantity, it is hardly surprising that negotiating various mountains is central to the plot, such as the Fellowship’s passage through Moria, Aragorn’s passage through the Paths of the Dead, and Sam and Frodo’s passage through Cirith Ungol. The very goal of the quest is a mountain, Mount Doom, inside which the Ring is destroyed.
Another prominent topographical feature is the enormous forest of Mirkwood. Although the great woodlands are never visited by the protagonists of The Lord of the Rings, Mirkwood draws attention to the other forests of the map. Forested areas are far scarcer than would be expected from such a wide stretch of land; apart from Mirkwood, only a few forests are marked on the map, some of them appearing to be quite small. At this scale, however, size becomes tricky to judge. The smallest forest on the map is Chetwood outside Bree, which takes the hobbits and Aragorn more than a full day’s walk to get through (FR, I, xi, 178). There ought to be more forests like Chetwood on the map, for instance Woody End and perhaps even Bindbole Wood in the Shire, or the western parts of Middle-earth would be a bare place indeed. This bareness does not agree with the lack of settlements; if there are no people, what keeps the formerly forested areas119 from turning back into forest? Yet the forests included on the map are not simply those visited in the story, although all forests the hobbits travel through or see outside the Shire are marked, regardless of size. The woodlands along the feet of the Blue Mountains and around the northeast corner of the Sea of Rhûn, which are neither visited nor seen, only add to the impression that most of western Middle-earth is bare, bringing into focus what few forests there are.
Other topographical features reinforce the bareness of the map and consequently bring focus to the few elements that are included. Thus, mostly relevant rivers are found on the map, allowing for easy identification of each river crossed or traveled along. Ultimately, the topography serves the story; that, rather than size, determines what is included and what is left out, with only occasional exceptions, such as the Sea of Rhûn or the Blue Mountain woodlands.
Where the nonverbal map elements serve the story, the verbal ones—the names—serve secondary belief in the world the map portrays.120 In many cases, features are only marked by the linguistic signs; apart from topographical signs, roads and population centers/strongholds are the only features that have nonverbal signs. In other words, the map is mainly about names. Indeed, when Shippey observes how the characters tend to “talk like maps,” he exemplifies this point with characters who tend to list the names and spatial relations of various features.121 Through the red script, the text is highly visible, and it is emphasized how this is a world where every place is known and named, often even with two names. Names are provided in languages from the secondary world (mostly Elvish) as well as in English, sometimes in both (generally with the English translation within parentheses). With the help of all these names, the reader can navigate the world of the story and follow the characters’ journeys; but the names also define the secondary world spatially, by creating a great number of places and spatial relations. Through their multitude and the many translations, these names even allow the reader to puzzle out some of the basic morphemes of the fictional languages, observing, for instance, how mountain ranges are called Ered (Ered Luin/Blue Mountains; Ered Lithui/Ash Mountains; Ered Mithrin/Grey Mountains); how mith-can mean “gray” (Ered Mithrin/Grey Mountains; Mithlond/Grey Havens); and how Emyn Uial/Hills of Evendim, Nenuial/Lake Evendim, and the [Sea of] Núrnen in Nurn give us uial = “evendim,” emyn = “hills,” and nen = “lake/water.” This is not only a map of a world but a key to its languages.
The fact that places and features on the map often have more than one name also suggests a relation between the languages other than the purely linguistic. Generally, an Elvish name is followed by the English version within parentheses. Typical examples are Ered Luin (Blue Mountains), Gwathló (Greyflood), and Baranduin (Brandywine), with Weathertop (Amon Sûl) providing an exception. The English names are often a (nearly always literal) translation—ered = “mountains,” luin = “blue”—but sometimes the English name is only notionally similar, so that gwa
th-in Gwathló becomes “gray” rather than “shadow” and Amon Sûl (“windhill”) is Weathertop in English. There might be a phonetic similarity only—Brandywine for Baranduin (“brown river”)—or no apparent connection to modern English, as when Angren (“of iron”) is translated as Isen (Old English for “of iron”). Numerous names are also left untranslated, appearing either in English or (more commonly) in Elvish. Some of the English names are straightforward (e.g., North Downs, Dead Marshes, the Brown Lands); others use more obscure or old-fashioned language or roots (e.g., Trollshaws, Entwash, Rivendell).122 The Elvish language is made obviously superior to English, partly through its status as the preferred language, partly because although there are a great number of English names, the major names—labeling larger regions and therefore written in larger script—are in Elvish. Middle-earth, we see, contains both the familiar and the alien, although the latter is more prominent.
The variations in script separate the marks on the map into different classes. Small uppercase script indicates names of mountain ranges; regions are written with larger uppercase script, the size of the script increasing with the size of the region (compare, for instance, Eriador and Minhiriath or Mordor and Nurn), although the names of smaller regions (for example, Forlindon, Lebennin, and Lossarnach) are written in uppercase for the initial letter only—as are all other names as well. The script is curved to roughly indicate what region, mountain range, or river it refers to, but the text is straighter when referring to a population center, stronghold, or tower. Outlined capitals are used for the former realm of Arnor and the three kingdoms into which it was divided. The many variations in size, case, and curvature reinforce the impression that this world is fully explored and fully believable. It is not only littered with names; these names appear to be divided into an abundance of categories. Regions are divided and subdivided, rivers have tributaries and marshes, mountain ranges and hills are everywhere: all over the world, the map tells us, there are places whose names are worth knowing.
This profusion of names and categories obscures the fact that there are also places, and kinds of places, apparently not worth knowing about, however. Just as there are actually very few forests on the general map, there are not many places where people live, at least in terms of towns, villages, cities, castles, fortresses, harbors, towers, and so on. These signs of civilization (human or otherwise) are few and far between on the map, giving it an impression not only of bareness but of desolation. Closer examination reveals that the guiding principle for inclusion is, again, the story, not size or social or political relevance. Nor are the respective marks mimetic in relation to a place’s relevance to the story. Tharbad (mentioned a few times in passing) is more prominently marked than the Ford at Rivendell (where Frodo faces—and escapes—the Black Riders); Lond Daer (which does not feature in the story) is as prominently marked as the Grey Havens (where the last Elven ship leaves, marking the end of the Third Age). The addition of places other than those of the story affects the reader’s perception of the story world, regardless of whether the map is seen as a paratextual element or as a doceme. As the former, the map extends the world of the text; as the latter, the world of the total document is the sum of the world as portrayed on the map and in the text. Both perspectives offer insights into how the many places reinforce secondary belief in the world, implying that Middle-earth is more than the setting of a story.
The west of Middle-earth is not a place that crawls with people, at least if we go by the lack of settlements. This impression is corroborated by the small number of roads, the tiny dotted trails that wind across the land. Compared to the Shire map, where roads are given pride of place, the world outside is clearly not a place to go traveling. It is wilderness, untamed and unsafe (but not unknown). This is stressed even further by the fact that no administrative (political or other) borders are to be found anywhere on the general map. Whatever borders there are coincide with natural borders: the Mountains of Shadow suggest the border to Mordor; the end of the respective forests are the borders of Fangorn and Lothlórien. The Ered Nimrais provides a border between Rohan and Gondor (and the different languages reflected in the names suggest another border between them along the Mering Stream, between Eastfold and Anórien).
Where the Shire map subjects the landscape to its culturally constructed borders, the general map does the opposite. It portrays an internal tension between its natural landscape and cultural control of that landscape. While the profusion of names emphasizes how well known, how defined, the secondary world is, the scarcity of cultural constructions, be they roads, villages, or borders, stresses the world’s wilderness and depopulation. This tension runs through Tolkien’s text, clearly visible, for instance, in the ambivalent stance between tame and wild nature, where parklike Lothlórien is set against primeval Fangorn, the entwives’ horticulture against the ents’ forests, even Shire countryside against Old Forest wilderness.123
The map does not, however, encode this tension in the schematic structure that Pierre Jourde proposes when he divides western Middle-earth into one region of civilization and goodness (Gondor and Eriador) and one of wilderness and evil (Mordor and Rhovanion).124 While the conflict between Gondor and Mordor is plain, not least in the text, neither Eriador nor Rhovanion is a region that can easily be interpreted as either wild or civilized, and even less as good or evil. The former region may contain the Shire, Bree, and Rivendell, but it is also a place of lost realms, both good and evil, where Rangers do battle against evil beings in the wilderness. Rhovanion, on the other hand, contains the evil strongholds of Sauron and Saruman but is also dotted with civilized societies such as Erebor, Dale, Lothlórien, and Rohan. Like the conflict between good and evil, the tension between wild and tame is present all over the map—visible, but never simple. Jeremy Black somewhat misses this point when he claims that the map of western Middle-earth “gives no real sense of the spatial range and potency of wisdom and evil, good and ill, that are important themes in [Tolkien’s] narrative.”125 The age-old conflict between the “evil” side of Morgoth and Sauron and the “good” people who oppose them can be traced all over the map: from the notes about Arnor, Angmar, and major battlefields to the very absence of Beleriand west of the Blue Mountains; from Mordor and the empty lands beyond to Dol Goldur and Mirkwood, even to the icebay of Forochel, a remnant of Morgoth’s icy reign—the “spatial range” of evil is stamped on the map, a part of Middle-earth’s history and development.
Middle-earth’s history and the tension between past and present is a theme as clearly visible in the general map as is the secondary world’s topography. The very label of the map ensures that the reader comes to this map with a historical awareness: “The West of a Middle-earth at the End of the Third Age.” Apart from instilling a sense of finality, it accentuates the fact that Middle-earth has a past (three ages of it, at the very least) as well as a future, a Fourth Age from which it is possible to establish the end of the previous age. Already the map label can thus explain why Ricardo Padrón feels that the suspension of Tolkien’s world between a deep past and an impending apocalypse is encoded in the map.126 Parts of this past are then explicitly marked on the map. In a particular kind of script (outlined capitals), the approximate location of “The Lost Realm of Arnor” is given and, with smaller letters, the regions Arthedain, Cardolan, and Rhudaur are marked. Even if nothing is known about the world, the location of a “Lost Realm” gives the map temporal thickness. Along with the note stating that “Here was of old the Witch-realm of Angmar” in northern Eriador, the references to the old kingdom actually cover the history from the founding of Arnor in the year 3320 of the Second Age, through its division into three realms in the year 861 of the Third Age, the establishing of Angmar (circa 1300), the respective falls of Rhudar, Cardolan, and Arthedain (in 1409, 1636, and 1974), and Gondor’s final defeat of Angmar in 1975 (RK, Appx A, 1014–17; Appx B, 1060–61). References to Arnor’s history do more than add three millennia to the map’s duration
, however. Numerous map features are relevant only in connection to the lost realm’s long history, such as the old cities of Annúminas and Fornost and the arrow that points off the map to the icebay of Forochel. The map creates temporal depth through the inclusion of references to Cardolan and Rhudaur in much the same way that the text brings temporal resonance to the story events by including the history of Weathertop and the fall of Rhudaur (cf. FR, I, xi, 181; xii, 196). Similarly, the comment that South Gondor is “now a debatable and desert land” adds to the theme of Middle-earth history with its reference to the Gondor civil war (RK, Appx A, 1022–23; Appx B, 1061), and the “now” emphasizes the diachronic nature of the map.
A handful of other marks similarly draw attention to the map’s diachronicity, but with less focus on a specific time and more focus on how time passes. These marks invoke the past through the word old: Old Forest, Old Ford, and Old Forest Road. In a world where the past is more present than the present, where ancient conflicts and mistakes return to haunt the living, where some of the living actually recall events several millennia in the past, there is, in fact, still a need to refer to a forest, a ford, a road, as old. That which is old has the power to withstand the ravages of time, it seems; the Old Forest Road runs straight through the great Mirkwood forest, obviously remarkable enough not to succumb to the forest. The Old Forest is kept back from the Shire by a hedge and a gate. The forest, in particular, appears to be oldest rather than old. It is associated with Tom Bombadil, who “remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn” (FR, I, vii, 129), but also with Treebeard, “the oldest living thing that still walks beneath the Sun” (TT, III, v, 488); it is a remnant of the primeval woodlands that once covered much of Eriador.127
