This essay is a discussion of the physical relationship of our world (as we know it) and Endor—particularly the Shire and Lindon. As a personal vision, the relationship of the world of Middle-earth to our own was of interest to me since I read The Book of Lost Tales. As the remainder of the History of Middle-earth was released, I continued to investigate this matter, which can have far-reaching implications for our ideas about Middle-earth, and particularly for the Grey Havens.1 Thanks go to Oliver Schick, Chris Seeman and my brother Jeremy for their proofreading and comments.
Tolkien's Vision
Any reader of Lost Tales and the later volumes of the History of Middle-earth (particularly The Lost Road and Sauron Defeated) discovers a number of discarded or obscured elements of Endor's history. One of the most prominent and earliest parts of the legendarium was the Eriol/Ælfwine tale, a story that Tolkien experimented with and refined, but never wholly incorporated into our familiar history of Middle-earth as published in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. Nonetheless, he never turned his back upon it, and thus we may rightly consider the travels of Ælfwine and the related matters of the Notion Club as having a legitimate place within Endor.
I do not have the space to detail the full evolution of the story, but in its earliest form it told of a Dark Age Saxon, Ælfwine, who sailed to the land of Britain, where the Elves yet lingered. In that age, Britain was further removed from the Continent and was called Tol Eressëa, the Lonely Isle, by its Elven population. (More about the geography of this will be discussed later).
Perhaps because of the innate difficulties of such a conception fitting within anything recognizable as recorded history, the tale was eventually revised, so that Ælfwine was a native of England (of a much later era) and sailed across the Atlantic, finding his way across a mystic route to Aman and Tol Eressëa, now the isle of the Elves in the West.
In this form the tale was to continue, shifting in detail, but remaining similar in broad form. The England/Elven association was preserved by the development of a new tradition, which described it as the last settlement of the Elves in the Old World. Similarly, Tolkien identified the Old World with the Hobbit lands: "Those days, the Third Age of Middle-earth, are now long past, and the shape of all lands has been changed; but the regions in which Hobbits then lived were doubtless as those in which they still linger: the Northwest of the Old World, east of the Sea (LotR I: 11)."
Until the publication of Sauron Defeated, there existed scant evidence that Tolkien meant this comment to be more than part of his framework of "translations" and traditions. But "The Notion Club Papers" (which make up a large portion of the latter half of that volume) make clear a much more solid contention: that Tolkien saw his creation, even at that late date (c. 1946) as having a continuing place within the greater conceit of a 'real-world' existence. In essence, the history of Endor was not merely the creation of a linguist and fantasist, but the representation of an ancient and mythological reality.
Of course, the pseudo-mythic/historical element is frequently a vital part to the creation of alternate worlds, particularly in science fiction, although fewer today attempt to justify themselves by making a fabricated niche in the real world. Lesser literary efforts may be seen in the 30s' and 40s' sword and sorcery epics which were superficially influenced by Theosophy and Donnelly's Atlantis. The concept of a primeval world, antedating almost all recorded human history, in which magic (sometimes) works and monsters (often) roam, was a fertile idea for fantasists.
While Tolkien's Notion Club Papers may rightly, I think, be compared to C. S. Lewis' Narnia, which interwove the "real-world" with fantasy, it should be remembered that Tolkien's tales, with their ease of invention and imagination, are ultimately rooted in the fantasies of his own childhood. So, consciously or not, Tolkien may well have tried to infuse a childhood vision with the trappings of veracity and detail, thus rendering it more impervious to the vicissitudes of our cynical world. It has often been noted that the peculiar timelessness of Tolkien's work is a direct result of the years of development he put into it. We can imagine it as being "real," even as having occurred (like the Iliad, say) because it unself-consciously asserts its internal complexity and depth.
Therefore one may suspect that Tolkien recreates the world of his childhood (exaggerated and repopulated) in the Third and earlier ages. His choice of an "Old World" reshaped—but never allegorized or transplanted to a mythical universe of its own—strengthens that idea. Whatever the case, it remains a very real issue whether the "world" to which Middle-earth belongs is the actual world of Northern European folklore or whether Tolkien intended it to merely mesh with our modern universe. In Morgoth's Ring, for instance, Christopher Tolkien printed a series of essays dedicated to rationalizing Endor into a recognizable "possible past" to our scientific age.
But Tolkien either rejected or abandoned the sweeping consequences of such a project. And ultimately, despite the references to the sameness of both worlds, as in "The Lost Road," this remains elusive: "Looking on a familiar hill, [Alboin] would see it suddenly standing in some other time and story: 'the green shoulders of Amon-ereb,' he would say. 'The waves are loud upon the shores of Beleriand,' ....(HoMe V: 38)."2
But the evidence from purely textual material is dense, unhelpful and sometimes misleading.3 The real answer to the placement of Leithian (the Elven name for England in the evolving Ælfwine tradition) in our world lies in the maps and related materials drafted by Tolkien. By analyzing these we may investigate the physical nature of Tolkien's conceptions.
Mapping Leithian
Any discussion of correspondences between the geography of our world and that of Endor must begin with the following passage from Tolkien's letters:
The action of the story takes place in the North-west of 'Middle-earth', equivalent in latitude to the coastlands of Europe and the north shores of the Mediterranean....If Hobbiton and Rivendell are taken (as intended) to be about the latitude of Oxford, then Minas Tirith, 600 miles south, is about the latitude of Florence. The Mouths of the Anduin and the ancient city of Pelargir are at the latitude of ancient Troy. (Letters: 375-376)
It is important to emphasize that The Hobbit was originally an interloper to the world of The Silmarillion. Tolkien often expressed a certain amount of dismay at its heterogeneity and its ill-constructed relationship to "Gondolin" and other artifacts of his earlier writings. Therefore he came to regard the anachronisms of the Shire more as the casual references of a storyteller unbound by the conventions of the Elven legends. But at the writing of The Hobbit, the Shire is obviously a part of "England"—a pseudo-England attached to a murky Norse-Germanic Wilderland.
It is notable that The Hobbit does make reference to the sea being near the western edge of the Shire, but it is hard to discern any concrete reference to Lindon, the Grey Havens or anything recognizable from Beleriand. Indeed, it cannot be said for certain that the Blue Mountains or Lindon were there at all: "Not the Gandalf who was responsible for so many quiet lads and lasses going off into the Blue for mad adventures. Anything from climbing trees to visiting Elves—or sailing in ships, sailing to other shores! (Hobbit: 14)."4
But the idea of Lindon was present in Tolkien's Silmarillion writings. As originally conceived, the broken lands from the War of Wrath would be transformed into something akin to our Europe: "In those days there was a great building of ships upon the shores of the Western Sea, and especially upon the great isles which, in the disruption of the northern world, were fashioned of ancient Beleriand (HoMe V: 331)." This idea was eventually abandoned, out of the necessity for fitting in two subsequent ages. The effect of this was to render the distance (in physical form) of our world from Endor more acute, for Tolkien never described the events that remade his world into the world in which Arry and Ælfwine live.
It is evident from all later versions of the Ælfwine story that, of all parts of Britain, the West Country has the leading role. Here I quote from Tolkien's outline at the time of "The Lost Road" (c. 1937): "Ælfwine and Eadwine live in the time of Edward the Elder, in North Somerset. Ælfwine ruined by the incursions of Danes. Picture opens with the attack (c. 915) on Portloca (Porlock) and Wæced (HoMe V: 80)."5 Here, for the first time, Tolkien's world enters a definite time-frame and begins mentioning identifiable locations. Porlock is in western Somerset. Later, the outline mentions Lundy, an island off the north Devon coast. Of course, the most prominent topographical feature of this region is the deep channel of the Severn estuary.
What is next discovered is hardly accidental. If a map of western Britain is superimposed upon Tolkien's map of Lindon (making adjustments to account for the Earth's curvature), the size and proportions given to the Firth of Lune are found to be nearly identical to those of the real-world Severn channel.6
This identification is bolstered by much circumstantial detail. The early text "Ælfwine of England" (c. 1920) contains references to Déor's wife's country of Lyonesse (the sunken realm off Cornwall in Celtic myth, the birthplace of Tristram) and "the lost land beyond Belerion whence Elves at times set sail." It is from this text that the Britain = Luthany/Lúthien/Leithian reaches its final form.7
Further details now emerge regarding the specific regions involved: "Ælfwine has sailed more seas than you have heard of; and the Welsh tongue is not strange to him....His wife was of Cornwall (HoMe V: 84)." It is important that, in Lost Tales, the land of Cornwall was the last remnant of the Elven lands. It is also in Cornwall that the Errols of "The Lost Road" have their summer home. In "The Notion Club Papers," Arundel lived on the far side of the Severn channel, "in Pembrokeshire, near Penian" (HoMe IX: 234). Both Dyfed and Cornwall are (or were) Welsh regions, on the rim of Britain.8
Later, the following passages occur: "As we crossed the Severn Sea earlier in the summer, Arry had looked back, along the coast to the south, at the shores of Somerset, and he had said something I couldn't quite catch....We arrived in a small boat at Porlock Weir on Saturday....(HoMe XI: 268)." Alwin's dreams begin in earnest here, along the northern shore of Devon, and he somehow recalls the deeds of his ancestors along those shores.
The importance of Cornwall, Devon and Wales is an early conception of Tolkien's, but it is perhaps enduring because of the underlying real mythology of that region—a frontier region of foreign, mystical and pagan beauty. The poem "The Horns of Ylmir" from the Quenta was apparently written based on poetry composed near the tip of Cornwall in the summer of 1914 (HoMe IV: 214).9 Cornwall was also a common vacation destination for Tolkien. It is, of course, one of the regions most associated with Arthur, but it was also accounted by the English to be the home of a variety of fairies.10
Evidently, the Straight Road may still endure here, along the broken shores of Lhûn. The obvious answer to the importance of the channel within the legendarium is that the route remained open here, from the last abode of the Eldar, for any stragglers. The Amon Ereb which Alboin remembers in "The Lost Road" is the weathered hill of Beleriand itself, standing in the west of Britain. While originally, in Lost Tales, it is implied that some Elves yet linger in the west of Britain, it is clear that by "The Notion Club Papers," none remain, leaving only dreams and some few, half-enchanted glades.
The Havens "beyond the Ice-ages"
For the Tolkien enthusiast, after conceiving of a reasonable physical connection between Endor and our own world, it is interesting to consider the intervening ages, after the last ship and the destruction of the One Ring.11 Most obvious of the changes is the shift in the sea-level and the creation of Europe. However, nothing from Tolkien's works can resolve this well. In a marginal note to a letter in 1958, Tolkien wrote that he imagined "the gap [since the Third Age] to be about 6000 years: that we are now at the end of the Fifth Age (Letters: 283)." This is accurate insofar as the peoples of Tolkien's writings could, more or less, be living then. But it neglects the problem of geological time—that, by that time, Europe had already assumed the shape it has today.12
If one were to place Third Age geography within our knowledge of geological and human history, it would fit before the last (Würmian) glacial cycle (about 10,000 years ago). Glacial dynamics can account for most (but not all) geographical change. The ice age can be directly linked to the collapse of civilization in Endor. Note also that any conception of Endor within our "scientific" worldview requires that the majority of the dramatic events of the pre-Sun era be qualified or omitted (as in Morgoth's Ring). While such a significant change is not very intrusive in the Third and later ages, it has a large impact on Eldarin history. Certainly Tolkien experimented with a non-literal version where the folk of Men adopted certain Elven tropes as truth; but, of course, the great part of material written about Middle-earth is literal, taking the Sun, the Moon and so on as true in a physical, non-mythical sense.
It is important to realize that the myths of the Elder Days are devised according to and adhere to the European strata of myth (i.e., the interconnected folktales and legends which European peoples thought of as recognizable and "real"). This is a good enough reason to explore their "mythical" presence in our world—even if contrived in our own century—since that would be as Tolkien intended: not to mislead but to continue. However, I can justify the "physical, scientific" investigation because of the ways in which Tolkien made efforts to present a physical reality, with maps, language and history. Such an effort has been (as can be seen already) a mixed success. But the fact of any success is noteworthy.
Because Tolkien returned several times to that theme, it seems proper to imagine the last Dúnedain as enduring in Lindon, perhaps mixing with the few Elves still there. This would serve to derive the Dúnadan/Elvish strain in Arry and Alboin, and in Ælfwine before them. Whether through the inheritance of actual descent or rather by the lingering Elven character of Britain, a little of the Elder Days has been preserved.
A less effective argument can be made that the Danwaith (Nandor) of Lindon are in some way akin to the Tautha dé Danann of Celtic myth or the mythical (possibly Celtic) proto-Danes. This seems to fit with Tolkien's references to the last lingering companies, doomed to fade. A primitive conception of Tolkien's derived from the fragmentary Germanic tradition about Ing(w), whom he included as a progenitor of the Anglo-Saxons. This aspect of the mythology is overshadowed by the presence of Ingwë of the Vanyar, who has a contradictory past. Since Tolkien eventually created a "translation" device that accounted for the Germanic names and language in his stories, it is unclear whether he conceived of these groups as having a link with the historical Anglo-Saxons.
In the end, the relationship of Endor to our world depends on the reader. Some may prefer something alien, others yearn for myth and the Eldar (as I think Tolkien did), having a place more rooted to European folk traditions, independent and ultimately greater than a mere fiction.
The Map
This map was sketched by hand and thus may contain minor distortions. Underlined places are from Tolkien's Middle-earth; all others are real-world.
It must be indicated that the various maps of Middle-earth, both of Tolkien's devising and not, have somewhat variable scales. The comment that Tolkien makes about the distance between Pelargir and Hobbiton is not reflected in the scale to the ICE map used in MERP and MECCG. It is inaccurate within the bounds of the UT map as well.
It seems likely that Tolkien was looking at the map from The Lord of the Rings at the time, not his own drafts. Nonetheless, I made the perhaps pardonable adjustment of the Lhûn firth region to fit a curved world (as that was the origin of my map of Britain). If one were to use the "flat" map that Tolkien was referring to, Lindon and the Shire would be substantially larger than Britain. (This is the infamous "Greenland" effect of a Mercator projection. Because the Gondor map from The Return of the King seems to be most detailed in scale, the scale from the larger map of all of the northwest may be assumed to be Gondor-centric.
Footnotes
1. The title of this essay derives from an early draft of "The Lay of Leithian," describing the width of Thingol's kingdom (HoMe III: 157; Broceliand = Beleriand).
2. As is described later, the mentioning of these places is critical in our placement of Lindon within our world.
3. Here, for instance, the text is not clearly indicative of a memory awakened by like or by the actual location.
4. Collaborative detail may be found in HoMe IV: 41, 72, 159, 174, 199.
5. Wæced = Watchet.
6. When the maps are superimposed, it becomes apparent that the Shire is also embraced by the isle of Britain. In general outline, the areas surrounding the Shire remained stable as Tolkien worked on The Lord of the Rings. The most prominent feature of the First Map in this region is the Firth of Lune (HoMe VII: 302).
7. Although the meanings of the words change. In the latest form of the "Etymologies," Leithian signified "release from bondage" and Lúthien "enchantress" (HoMe V: 368, 370).
8. Cornwall was historically known by the Anglo-Saxons as "West Wales." Until the 18th century a Brythonic (Welsh) dialect was spoken there.
9. For Tolkien's relationship with Cornwall, see Carpenter's Biography.
10. Tolkien was, in fact, aware of this discrepancy, but found the problem insoluble—the imaginary geography had become too closely interwoven with its mythology for it to be brought into accord with the findings of geological science.
11. To a certain extent, there is some irony that in Lost Tales the Celtic peoples were described as inimical to Elves and the old ways—but this germ was abandoned rather quickly, and replaced by a much more positive characterization.
12. "If you went back beyond the Ice-ages, I imagine you would find nothing in these parts; or at any rate a pretty beastly and uncomely race, with a tooth-and-nail culture, and a disgusting language with no echoes for you, unless those of food-noises.' 'Would you?' said Alboin. 'I wonder' (HoMe V: 40)."