A new 1948 map of Arda by Tolkien!

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

I think he definitely had a latitude for Minas Tirith in his head: Florence, Ravenna, and Belgrade are all within 1 degree of latitude of each other (between 44 and 45 degrees north). The problem is, none of them are 600 miles south of Oxford!

Also:



Minas Tirith is 700 miles east of Hobbiton, according to the scale lines drawn on the Baynes map by Tolkien himself!

What is 900 miles east of Hobbiton, so precisely that I wonder if he used it to determine the scale, is Barad-Dur. The pencil on the Baynes map is quite faint, so I wonder if "but" is actually "b d". They seem easy to confuse. Ravenna is about 650 miles east of Oxford, which is about right for Minas Tirith, so it feels like Tolkien may have actually been using those three as the "real locations" for the map points.

Which would put the Misty Mountains somewhere in eastern France, and make the vertical line on the 1948 map way off the edge of the Third Age Map.

hS

I think that to get the "correct" distances in Middle-earth - aside from where T gave a numeric figure (for example, precisely 296 miles by road from Edoras to Forannest), one should consult the Map, Tolkien's own working map, done on a grid to keep the scale right, and the original of which CT's published FR map was a direct copy.

CT presents a redrawn version in HME VII 297, or you can see the origianal (unfortunately small) in Maker of Middle-earth 378.