Is it just me or is the actually planet of LOTR actually tiny?

is it just me or is the actually planet of LOTR actually tiny?

they're all living next door to each other

middle-earth is the same size as europe

middle earth is just a continent, theres more stuff on the planet

Arda is our planet in the past. The story takes place in just a part of it.

The elves, gandalf and frodo took ships to a new continent at the end of the trilogy,

earth never looked like that...

It took the Hobbits a few months to get to rivendale

the planet is huge actually it's the continent thats tiny

Guess what? It's a fantasy novel.

It's not a planet. Middle-earth is a small part of Arda.

then dont make statements like that

Yes

also have can be the king of Rohan be an actual king? have you seen his "kingdom"? its puny.

its like 10 houses

Kill you're self

im really too tired. made the exact same grammatical error twice

In the prologue to Fellowship, Tolkien writes that the lands have changed in between the ending of the Third Age, and the beginning of the Fifth Age, which is the age we currently occupy.

They're going to More Door. :D

Tolkien is such a fucking retard when it comes to maps

it's just you, the movies don't really show it that well but it takes ages to go anywhere even on horseback

It's always irked me how Mordor is basically a rectangle.
Mountains don't abruptly change direction like that.

Elaborate.

Actually a fair point that's probably going to bother me now that you've pointed it out.. but who are we to say there's no possible situation mountains could form like that? There's all sorts of crazy inexplicable shit in nature.

The whole Lotr universe is Tolkien writing a mythology for the English.

The mountain ranges were deliberately formed by Morgoth to counter Orome, a Valar who used to hunt across the plains of Arda. The geography of Middle Earth in the Third Age is the result of the marring of Arda that has occured since its inception.

I remember Melkor could shape terrains and lift mountains when he was buttmad.

the only real life mountains that sort of do that is the Carpathians in Romania

Not the same user but mountains come from tectonic plates which can be pretty straight on a grand scale but this picture would imply that a northern plate pressed itself on a southern plate while skipping a few miles then pressing against each other again all the while some horizontal plate pressed itself against another.
It almost looks like the area inside the mountains was a tectonic plate by itself and somehow expanded on three sides outwards.

He could have shaped Mordor more irregularly Like that and not look so awkward.

It depends on the tectonics, which we don't know. It could end up like that if Mordor was on a small continental plate. If there were convergent continental crust plates on the north and south sides, which would create much taller mountains like the Himalayas. Then the western range could be a result of subduction, like the cascades, which would be smaller relatively, and that's why all the passes are on that side.

>when asked whether the stories take place in a different era, Tolkien stated, "No ... at a different stage of imagination, yes."

>Speaking of Midgard and Middle-earth, he said: "Oh yes, they're the same word. Most people have made this mistake of thinking Middle-earth is a particular kind of earth or is another planet of the science fiction sort but it's just an old fashioned word for this world we live in, as imagined surrounded by the Ocean."

Even Tolkien denies it, LOTR is an allegory. Most stuff based on wars between Christians and Muslims.

I took them one month, and that was with avoiding any roads and encountering a lot of dangerous stuff along the way.

weak bait

I always figured Souron did that with magic or something.

The movie condenses the time scale a lot. It takes them 2 years to get from Rivendell to Mordor.

it is true. White city is Belgrade.

>Belgrade (/ˈbɛlɡreJd/ BELL-grade; Serbian: Бeoгpaд / Beograd, "White city" (beo ("white") + grad ("city")), Serbian

Siege of white city refers to Siege of Belgrade in 1456 which christians won.

>Pope Callixtus III ordered the bells of every European church to be rung every day at noon, as a call for believers to pray for the defenders of the city.[12][13] The practice of the noon bell is traditionally attributed to the international commemoration of the victory at Belgrade and to the order of Pope Callixtus III, since in many countries (like England and the Spanish Kingdoms) news of the victory arrived before the order, and the ringing of the church bells at noon was thus transformed into a commemoration of the victory.[14][15][16] The Pope didn't withdraw the order, and Catholic and the older Protestant churches still ring the noon bell to this day.[13][15][16][17]

in addition, Mordor is Anatolia. That is why it looks like a rectangle. Fall of Osgiliath is fall of Constantinople etc. It is full of allegory.

Why wouldnt they just bury the ring somewhere in the shire and not tell anybody? surely they can keep a secret

>The Orcs are definitely stated to be corruptions of the 'human' form seen in Elves and Men. They are (or were) squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types. - Letters

hmmm

Mordor’s mountains are actually a byproduct of Morgoth and Sauron’s dickery. Same with the Misty Mountains.

>"The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work, unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision." The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien #142

You calling Earth tiny bro? Your friendly reminder Tolkien read old manuscripts in Oxford (or Cambridge dont remember) basement, texts no one had any idea how to read.

>implying this shit isn't ancient fucking history

It's called MIDDLE EARTH, as in the earth in the middle and not the whole thing

It will in the future

oh that makes sense

you are now aware that orc women exist and have orc sex with orcs to make orc babbies

Well that's how most of Europeans cities looked like before late medieval, large cities that you see in pics are from Mediterranean, middle east or asia.

nah Gondor is Italy, Tolkien said so in a letter

Pelargir is Venice

>muh realism
>there are godlike beings that shape the world

the Ring has a will of its own, it would have been found eventually, much like it happened when it fell in the river

You have autism

that's just Edoras, the people of Rohan live in tiny villages like the one that gets raided in the movie. But yeah there aren't many humans around in middle earth

Its a colon. This is where shit happens.

>has a will of its own
>is at the bottom of a lake for 2,000 years

bravo

are the undying lands the americas or do they exist in another dimension?

Sauron was winning without the ring. The point of destroying it was to stop him, not just to keep the ring from him.

the man hated alegory, how can you not know this?
no
>describe how orcs look
>WOW they're an alegory for muzzies LMAO
it's common knowledge that tolkien wove his faith into basically every fassete of his stories. what has that got to do with this?

Sauron wasn't ready to come back yet

he never went anywhere, he's a spirit

>the man hated alegory
>"The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work, unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision." The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien #142
>it's common knowledge that tolkien wove his faith into basically every fassete of his stories. what has that got to do with this?

hmmm. Your love of the tolkien has clearly slowed your mind.

he needed some time anyway, 2000 years isn't that much considering he's like tens of thousand years old. As long as the ring is around he can come back

they were the americas once but Numenor tried to invade them and they got sent to another dimension

My issue isn’t with the mythical formation of the mountains themselves, it’s with Tolien’s lazy mapmaking.

But I'm a geography autist so if it was me I'd have plotted the landscape better.

numenorian FUCKING SHITS

why the fuck isn't it called middle-Arda then

He didn't hate allegory, he hated direct, crude allegory. A famous example is his dislike of his friend C.S. Lewis' Arslan the Lion, who is a blatant Jesus stand-in. Tolkien didn't like how obvious, uninspired, and arbitrary it was, he wanted self-contained settings wherein everything was a reasonable and meaningful part of the world, both explained by it, and contributing to it. The message and such could absolutely reflect real world values, but not just by replacing x real thing with y fictional thing.

>being a dirty q*endi

My degree is in geography, and I see no issues. Unless you know what the tectonics are like.

He likely drew influence from multiple events, it's not like there's any shortage of inspiration for Christians and Muslims killing each other.

Rohan showing up to save Gondor was likely taken from the siege of vienna

BLACK Numenoreans are the most powerful race

>He likely drew influence from multiple events, it's not like there's any shortage of inspiration for Christians and Muslims killing each other.
I agree

i do love tolkien, his writing led me to christ in a way. but basing your OC setting on your christian world view doesn't make it alegorical.

Middle earth started out flat, surrounded by an infinite outer-sea.
When Sauron corrupted numenor they sailed on valinor, and in an effort to avert a disaster Eru "broke" the world and turned it into a globe.
Valinor stayed where it was, and the only wayto get there is "the straight path" which is like sailing at a tangent to earth. If you watched a ship leavethe grey havens it would get smaller and smaller as it approached the horizon until it vanished to a point without ever going over the horizon.
So you can think of it as existing in a two dimensional universe tangential to ours, and there is no way to get there following the geometry of earth.

Agreed. No matter the mythological/fantastical reasoning Tolkien may have had

Is the Simarillion even "fun" to read. Isn't it more like a school history book or the like?

>Flat Middle-Earth Society

Did you really think this wasn't intentional?
Sauron had he ability to magically forge things, it was his entire gift's strength.
He and his master pretty much did this on purpose so that Mordor could not be easily seized.

>history book

those are the best books

It's both. Parts can be really slow, other parts can keep you glued. That was my experience anyway.

you're a dumb fuck, the entire world of middle earth was literally crafted by the Valar, everything is "created" so nothing is "natural" the entire planet is magical and was formed by magic.

>americans

>“I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.”
t. prof. tolkien

If you liked the appendices in LOTR you'll probably enjoy it.
It's comfy, a lot of lore, but expect to lose track of all of feanor's fucking kin. I'd like to think I'm as well versed in the lore as anyone and I still need to refer to the wiki to keep them all straight.

Why did Sup Forums change from being constant argument to all of sudden providing me with answers to questions others had go sail across the world to discover?

middle earth is flat idiot

Yeah perhaps tolkien should have studied for a geography degree instead. Or maybe he should have a consulted a geologist about his map even though the idea of plate tectonics didnt even exist till after tolkien

>black means evil
LITERALLY shaking rite now

Oxford lad

>not having a family tree open that you reference constantly
it's the only way

Geology was a fucking joke in Tolkien's time.

>ITT: People arguing over things that are all explained in the books

It's a fantasy story. The geography doesn't have to make sense in the real world. Also, the maps are all supposedly drawn by Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam, all of whom were not surveyors, had no satellite images, and weren't even very smart. You couldn't have plotted the landscape "better", because it's relative in a fantasy world. Please go back to sucking cock and get off this board.

If big, true

>it's supposed to look childish

It's a fantasty story set in this world - at 'a different stage of imagination'. That is the important qualifier.

>"Middle-earth’, by the way, is not a name of a never-never land without relation to the world we live in (like the Mercury of Eddison). It is just a use of Middle English middel-erde (or erthe), altered from Old English middengeard: the name for the inhabited lands of Men ’between the seas’. And though I have not attempted to relate the shape of the mountains and land-masses to what geologists may say or surmise about the nearer past, imaginitively this ’history’ is supposed to take place in a period of the actual Old World of this planet."

It is, for all intents and purposes, a fictional Northern Europe.

It’s suppose to look like the personification of evil literally made a castle out of mountains with his massive power, middle earth wasn’t made from plates shifting like in the real world, it was hand-crafted by gods representing forces of nature and morgoth was the most powerful god of them all: the god of anger. These mountains were made of rage and spite, they stick out awkwardly in a world otherwise made by the other Valar, it’s suppose to look like a kid literally making his own little sand castle in the corner of the massive multidimensional sand castle the other kids worked together to make. It both literally and figuratively represents a small jealous child failing to emulate he achievements of those he envies, since morgoth could only destroy and corrupt what others had already made and was intrinsically butthurt about his inability to create.

>The land is initially flat
>An entire continent sinks into the sea
>The Valar use a fucking island as a boat to bring the Elves to Valinor
>Melkor literally raises a mountain range to protect Utumno and then Angband
>m-muh inaccurate mountains on a map

You're fucking retarded

ha I see it

A 'mythology for England'. "Mythology".

The creation myths of Arda are not going to reflect modern geological science. That's not what this is, not its purpose. Still, according to the author the story is set in what is effectively Northern Europe.

>"All I can say is that, if it were 'history', it would be difficult to fit the lands and events (or 'cultures') into such evidence as we possess, archaeological or geological, concerning the nearer or remoter part of what is now called Europe; though the Shire, for instance, is expressly stated to have been in this region ( Oxfordshire ). I could have fitted things in with greater versimilitude, if the story had not become too far developed, before the question ever occurred to me. I doubt if there would have been much gain; and I hope the, evidently long but undefined, gap in time between the Fall of Barad-dûr and our Days is sufficient for 'literary credibility', even for readers acquainted with what is known or surmised of 'pre-history'."

The story - being a myth cycle and a story - is not bound to be historically truthful. Its fiction gives it that freedom ; but it is set in our world, some 6000 years ago. When Tolkien mentions 'the long gap between Barad-Dur and our Days', he is saying "I hope this can credibly fit into any modern understanding we have of ancient history on this planet." But it ultimately doesn't matter, because the book is not a geological record or an exercise in archaeology. That's not how it tells its truths.

Its a fantasy map, who cares.