Middle-earth

• 1. Introduction

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  Middle-earth is a name drawn from the oldest roots of the English language, and J. R. R. Tolkien first encountered it not as a fantasy writer, but as a scholar. In 1913 or 1914, while studying an Old English fragment, he came across the lines: "Eala earendel engla beorhtast / ofer middangeard monnum sended" - "Hail Earendel, brightest of angels / above the middle-earth sent unto men." That fragment, from the Crist I poem by Cynewulf, lit a fuse. The name Earendel became Tolkien's mariner Earendil, and the word middangeard became the name of the entire world his imagination would inhabit for the rest of his life.

  What Tolkien built from that spark was not simply a fantasy setting. He described it as "my own mother-earth for place" - meaning the same planet humans live on, but set in an imaginary prehistoric past ending roughly six thousand years ago. The Shire, where his Hobbit heroes lived, corresponded in his mind to the West Midlands of England, and Hobbiton sat at the same latitude as Oxford. Minas Tirith, six hundred miles south of there, fell at the latitude of Florence.

  The questions Middle-earth raises are larger than its maps suggest. How did a word from an eighth-century Old English poem become one of the most elaborate invented worlds in literary history? What peoples inhabited that world, and what forces shaped their fates? And why does a place explicitly described as imaginary feel, to so many readers, uncannily familiar?

• 2. A Word Older Than Tolkien

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  The Old English middangeard descends from a Proto-Germanic word whose second element, gardaz, originally meant "enclosure" - cognate with the modern English word "yard". Over time, folk etymology reshaped it into "middle earth". The same root produced the Old Norse Midgard of Norse mythology, where Middle-earth stood at the center of nine worlds. In some later Christian versions, it occupied the middle position between heaven above and hell below.

  Tolkien was precise about what he meant by the term. He explained in a letter to his publisher that it was "just a use of Middle English middle-erde (or erthe), altered from Old English Middangeard: the name for the inhabited lands of men 'between the seas'." He considered middangeard to mean "the abiding place of men" - the physical world where human life is lived out, as opposed to the unseen realms above and below it.

  He did not begin using the specific phrase "Middle-earth" until the late 1930s. Before that, his fictional lands went by the names "Great Lands", "Outer Lands", and "Hither Lands". The first published appearance of the term in his work came in the prologue to The Lord of the Rings: "Hobbits had, in fact, lived quietly in Middle-earth for many long years before other folk even became aware of them."

• 3. The Architecture of Arda

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  Tolkien placed Middle-earth within a larger structure. The continent was part of a world called Arda, which also included the western continent Aman - home of the angelic Valar and the Elves called the Eldar - separated from Middle-earth by the Great Sea Belegaer. Arda itself was part of a wider physical creation called Ea. In Tolkien's original conception, Arda had a flat-Earth cosmology, with stars, and later the sun and moon, revolving around it. His sketches show a disc-like face for the world looking upward to the stars.

  The legendarium addresses the shift to a spherical Earth through a cataclysm called the Akallabeth, in which Aman became permanently inaccessible to mortal Men. Time within Arda was measured first in Valian Years, then across three broad periods: the Years of the Lamps, the Years of the Trees, and the Years of the Sun. A separate chronology divided history into Ages of the Children of Ilúvatar, beginning with the Awakening of the Elves.

  The creation myth at the foundation of all this is the Ainulindale, or "Music of the Ainur". In it, angelic beings called the Ainur sang for the one god, Eru Ilúvatar, who then created Ea to give material form to their music. The greatest of the Ainur who entered Ea were the Valar. One of them, Melkor - later named Morgoth - became the first Dark Lord, the chief agent of evil. His lieutenant, Sauron, a lesser spirit called a Maia, inherited his role after Morgoth's defeat and expulsion from Arda.

  Geographically, most of Tolkien's stories take place in the north-west of Middle-earth. In the First Age, a subcontinent called Beleriand lay further to the north-west; it was swallowed by the ocean at that Age's end. On the eastern side of the continent lay the Eastern Sea. The north and far south of Middle-earth remain largely unexplored in the published works.

• 4. Peoples and Their Fates

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  Elves were "the Firstborn" of Ilúvatar's Children, created by him alone, and they are immortal unless killed in battle. If slain, they are re-embodied in Valinor. Originally all Elves spoke a single Common Eldarin tongue, but over thousands of years it diverged. The two main branches were Quenya, spoken by the Light Elves, and Sindarin, spoken by the Dark Elves. Physically, Elves resemble humans closely enough that the two can intermarry and have children together, as the small number of Half-elven in the legendarium demonstrates.

  Men were "the Secondborn", waking in Middle-earth well after the Elves. Unlike Elves, Men age and die quickly, usually living forty to eighty years. The Númenóreans were an exception, capable of living several centuries. Their descendants, the Dúnedain, also tended toward longer lives, though that tendency weakened over time through intermingling with other peoples.

  Dwarves were not created by Ilúvatar but by the Vala Aulë, who acted out of impatience before the Firstborn had yet arrived. When Ilúvatar confronted and shamed Aulë for his presumption, he took pity on the Dwarves and gave them life, but required them to be placed in widely separated locations and kept asleep until the Elves had awakened. Dwarves are mortal but long-lived, generally reaching several hundred years. Their language, Khuzdul, was kept largely secret. Both male and female Dwarves are bearded, making them appear identical to outsiders.

  Hobbits, whom Tolkien identified as an offshoot of Men, stood roughly half the height of Men and were also called Halflings. They preferred living in holes underground. By the time of The Hobbit, most had gathered in the Shire, in the north-west of Middle-earth, having migrated there from further east. Tolkien noted that in their lifestyle and habits they closely resembled Englishmen.

  Orcs and Trolls were not original creations but mockeries: Orcs a corruption of Elves, Trolls made from stone as corruptions of Ents. Tolkien was troubled by this. As a Catholic, he recognized that if these beings were sentient and had a sense of right and wrong, they must have souls and could not have been created wholly evil. He considered various origins for Orcs across his writings and never arrived at a fully consistent account. Late in the Third Age, a new strain appeared: the Uruks or Uruk-hai, larger and stronger than ordinary Orcs and better able to tolerate sunlight.

• 5. Conflict as Cosmos

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  Tolkien's legendarium is organized around a sequence of struggles over precious or magical objects. The First Age was dominated by the doomed quest of the Elf Fëanor and most of his Noldorin clan to recover three jewels called the Silmarils, which Morgoth had stolen from them - giving The Silmarillion its title. The Second and Third Ages turned on the forging of the Rings of Power and the fate of the One Ring, which Sauron made to give him control over those who wore the other Rings.

  After Morgoth's defeat and removal from Arda, the Valar withdrew from direct involvement in Middle-earth's affairs. In later years, however, they sent five of the Maiar to Middle-earth in embodied form as the Istari, or Wizards, to aid the free peoples against Sauron. Gandalf the Grey remained true to that mission and proved crucial in the final struggle. Saruman the White became corrupted and sought to supplant Sauron as a rival power rather than defeat him.

  The Dragons of Middle-earth came in several varieties. They are distinguished by whether they have wings and whether they breathe fire. Cold-drakes lacked fire; fire-drakes, called Urulóki in Quenya, possessed it. The first of the fire-drakes was Glaurung the Golden, bred by Morgoth in Angband. He was called "The Great Worm", "The Worm of Morgoth", and "The Father of Dragons".

  Middle-earth also held sapient animals. The Eagles appeared across the legendarium as allies of the free peoples. Huan the Great Hound came from Valinor. The Ravens of Erebor brought news to the Dwarves. Shadowfax, of the horse-line of the Mearas of Rohan and Gandalf's mount, appeared to understand human speech. The Crebain were evil crows who served as spies for Saruman. Giant spiders such as Shelob descended from Ungoliant, whose own origins remained unclear.

• 6. Maps, Adaptations, and Reach

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  Tolkien prepared several maps of Middle-earth during his lifetime, and he insisted they be included in the published books for readers' benefit, even when the cost of doing so gave his publishers pause. The most definitive and widely recognized map appeared in The Lord of the Rings. It was subsequently refined by the illustrator Pauline Baynes, working from Tolkien's detailed annotations, into a stand-alone poster titled "A Map of Middle-earth", with vignette images and larger paintings at top and bottom.

  The first commercial depiction of The Hobbit on screen was the Rankin/Bass animated television special in 1977. The following year, Ralph Bakshi released an animated film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings as the first big-screen treatment of the setting. New Line Cinema released the first part of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy in 2001; it was followed by a prequel Hobbit trilogy with several of the same actors. In 2003, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King received eleven Academy Award nominations and won all eleven, matching the totals previously awarded to Ben-Hur and Titanic.

  Two fan films, The Hunt for Gollum and Born of Hope, were uploaded to YouTube on the 8th of May 2009 and the 11th of December 2009 respectively. Numerous video games drawing on Tolkien's Middle-earth have been produced by studios including Electronic Arts, Vivendi Games, Melbourne House, and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. Fan-made modifications based on Middle-earth have been built for games such as Warcraft III, Minecraft, and both The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

  The oldest Middle-earth text-based online game dates to 1991, known as Middle-earth MUD and run on the LPMUD platform. After it ended in 1992, two successors emerged: Elendor and MUME. The term "Middle-earth" has since expanded far beyond its geographical meaning in the legendarium, becoming shorthand for the entirety of Tolkien's work - reflected in titles such as Christopher Tolkien's twelve-volume series, The History of Middle-earth.