From StrangeMaps comes this map of Australia, Middle-Earth style: “One Ring to Rule Them All, Mate”.
I forget who once pondered the impossibility of believing Shakespeare spoken in an Australian accent. Maybe it’s the implied anachronism, for in Shakespeare’s time there wasn’t an Australian accent, owing mainly to Australia not having been discovered yet.
At first glance this map, transposing Tolkien’s fantasy world on Australia, seems equally out of place. The imagined continent of Middle-Earth has always been taken to represent or at least prefigure Europe. The Hobbits, for example, are, says Tolkien, “just rustic English people, made small in size because it reflects the generally small reach of their imagination.”
Categories: fun & hobbies
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I can’t decide whether my favourite legend is Great Dividing Rangers or Here was of old the witch-realm of Canbrar.
I’ll keep a watch for marauding kangarorcs on my daily rounds.
Tolkien’s larger all-Middle Earth map in the better editions always struck me as Bulgaria, Thessaly, Anatolia, with the not yet filled Black Sea & the Med. giving extended shorelines, then below that “.. Lebininn when the tall trees are..” down to the arid, harsh and disputed lands of Harad. Shades of current ME ‘troubles’.
The doorstopper ‘Cavebear’ series used a similar map of a half filled Black Sea and current, ancient geography research suggests that the Hellespont was only breached in human times, presumably from the melting Euro ice sheets.
An excellent re-examination of the Illiad, “Where Troy once Stood” by Wunderlich, suggests that the saga depicted took place in the Lowlands, Belgium, Holland etc. Worth a read and cogitation.