# how big is middle earth?



## WizardKing

does anyone know the distance in miles from the shire to mordor? i wish they had a car?


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## Gil-Galad

> _Originally posted by WizardKing _
> *does anyone know the distance in miles from the shire to mordor? i wish they had a car? *


 \
Long enough.....


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## Niniel

Well, Tolkien meant Middle-Earth to be the same as our own earth. Therefore it would be the same size I guess.


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## Wolfshead

Look at the map, helpfully provided in the book. Look at the scale. Measure the scale, measure the distance from the Shire to Mordor, then work out the distance. Easy, really.


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## Isenho

yeah, or download a program on yer comp of a virtual LotR map, its awsome


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## Precious

*Re: Re: how big is middle earth?*



> _Originally posted by Gil-Galad _
> *\
> Long enough.....   *


 ..but, I'm sure it could be flown by an unlaiden swallow


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## Lantarion

Lol, yeah, "Fourteen miles as the unladen European swallow flies". 
But Middle-Earth doesn't end with Mordor, though. And it doesn't start with the Shire either!


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## elvish-queen

I've always thought that ME was like when the earth had one big landmass.
OK, a few problems there, like... where do the dinosaurs fit in with all of this??? Maybe they're just really big orcs, or some kind of dragon or sumthing.
O well, I didn't really mean to answer any questions in the first place!


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## Aulë

As the crow flies, it is 1760 km (1100 miles) from Hobbiton to Mt. Doom


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## *Lady Aragorn*

yeah, i've wondered that same thing. and is middle-earth a country? if so, are there any other countries mentioned?


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## Wolfshead

Middle-Earth is not a country, it's a region. Kinda like Europe, I suppose, a continent.

There are lands in the west, across the sea, Valinor, where all the elves go. And there are more lands to the east, but they people there aren't very civilised, as far as we know, and the same with the south.


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## Lantarion

Actually, Valinor is just a country in the continent of Aman.  But you're corect otherwise.
Middle-Eatrh is split up roughly into these areas: Eriador, Rhovanion, Enedwaith, Rohan, GondorMordor, Khand, Rhûn, and Harad (Near Harad + Far Harad).
South of Far Harad is a continent which is curiously shaped like Africa, which is called the Hither Lands. Nothing is known of these lands, I'm afraid.
Rhûn ends with the Orocarni, the Mountains of the East.


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## Wolfshead

> _Originally posted by Lantarion _
> *Actually, Valinor is just a country in the continent of Aman. *


 I didn't say Valinor was a continent. I just said in was a land in the West


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## gate7ole

One more info about the size of Middle Earth:
Tolkien had in mind Europe when creating his maps. In a letter of his, he corresponds Shire/Hobbiton with a city of central England (don't remember which) and Minas Tirith with Florence (Italy). Pelargir was supposed to be like Troy (ancient city on the lands of Turkey). I hope it gives some understanding of the distances.


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## Isenho

well i can anyone tell which modern country might be the size equivalent to Middle-Earth?


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## Aulë

Maybe Australia?


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## Lantarion

LOL
Australia is hardly the size of Eriador! 
I don't think any one country is the size of Middle-Earth. M-e is, or would seem to be, Europe, the Middle-East and Asia. In this case Aman would have been equivalent to the US.


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## Aulë

Hmmm, well then how large is ME (?km x ?km)
My calculations of how big ME was were based on the maps in the back of LOTR. I guess there was more land to the north, east and south-east, but how much?


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## JOHOVISHTA

Is there a good scale map of all of Tolkeins world
- I havent got anything more than whats in the books

Ok and on this topic is the world a "globe" and could the Numenoreans in fact have sailed 'East' and hence come to the undying lands from behind and hence not broken the ban of the valar.....sounds lkike a dirty lawyer kind of trick 

- Johovishta


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## Aulë

I don't think the undying lands were apart of the "globe", they were somewhere else...(if you catch my drift)


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## Great Khan

In my tolkien illustatrated encyclopedia it shows arda throughout the ages and it also shows how middle earth eventually spans out into the world we know today. Far Harad makes up africa, a strange land to the east of ME called Sun lands makes up North and South America, another strange land to the south of ME called the Dark lands makes up Australia and Antarctica. Lindon ends up as scandanavia and Rhun ends up as sort of Asia. Eriador and the parts we know of middle earth like rhovanion and gondor ends up as europe. Aman is cast into another dimension.


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## Lantarion

> _Originally posted by Great Khan_
> In my tolkien illustatrated encyclopedia..


I beg of you, do not trust this book! It is riddled with inaccuracies, untruths and guesses!!
I do not think that Tolkien ever ciontemplated on how the shapes of the continents of Arda would be moulded to become our modern world, so whatever D. Day says is pretty much speculation.


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## jallan

The large-scale map in to _The Lord of the Rings_ covers, according to its title, only the West of Middle-earth.

Actually, it probably would have been better titled the Northwest of Middle-earth.

As Tolkien explains often in his letters, Middle-earth is just an English term, now mostly obsolete in that sense, for the lands in which humans lived, understood as being between heaven and hell, surrounded by lands peopled by other stranger and more magical peoples.

It corresponds to the Afro-Eurasian supercontinent.

In this early maps, published in the _The Shaping of Middle-earth_ (HoME 4), Tolkien indicates a flat world with Valinor to the west, Middle-earth in the center, and a region called Lands of the Sun in the far east beyond the eastern ocean balancing Valinor in the West.

The same concept seems to underly a passage in the "Akallabêth", after the taking away of Aman and Eressëa:


> For Ilúvatar cast back the Great Seas west of Middle-earth, and the Empty Lands east of it, and new lands and new seas were made; and the world was diminished, for Valinor and Eressëa were taken from it into the realm of hidden things.


The "Empty Lands" are probably what Tolkien earlier called "Lands of the Sun". He might have thought they became the Americas in the new order, but I don't believe anything along that line has been published.

The site A Merdional Grid on the Middle-Earth Map provides an overlay of the standard Tolkien map onto Europe.

A large number of Tolkien maps are also available at TME Maps


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## Lantarion

Your "TME Maps"-link is a direct scan from Karen Wynn-Fonstad's The Atlas of Tolkien's Middle-earth! thanks!


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## Morgmeil

If you use the maps in the books, which shows the area known as "middle earth" that spans in width from the gulf of Lune to just past the sea of Rhun and in length from the south eastern edge of the Bay of Belfalas just south of South Gondor, and all the way up to the northern waste than you get an area that is roughly half of the united states in width (1300 miles) and a little bigger than the united states in length (1700 miles). I'm not suggesting middle earth is part of North America but the part of Arda but just giving a good real life comparison in terms of how big it was. This obviously does not account for the size of the parts of middle earth we are not shown in the books, or for the parts that were swallowed by the sea or removed by the Valar.


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