# Middle Earth is Not a Real Country!



## Sarah (Feb 20, 2004)

Middle Earth is NOT A Real Country!
Yeah i'll take two first-class tickets to Hobbiton, Bag End

Source: Sci Fi Wire


Tourists Seek Middle-earth

Tourists have been trying to book passage to destinations in Middle-earth, apparently not realizing it's the fictional setting of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. Staff members at the Yahoo! Travel Web site told the newspaper that places featured in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films and Tolkien's books, such as Mordor and Rivendell, have become popular search terms on the site.

"Personally I'd never want to go to Mordor. The film's real location, New Zealand, on the other hand, is a truly magical place," Yahoo.co.uk travel producer Morgan Williams told the Herald.

Scenes of Mordor in Jackson's movies were filmed in New Zealand's Tongariro National Park, Kaitoke Regional Park stood in for Rivendell and the Southern Alps on the New Zealand's South Island doubled for the Misty Mountains.

source


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## Khôr’nagan (Feb 21, 2004)

That would be funny if it weren't so sad.

How could someone possibly mistake The Lord of the Rings for reality? Now if someone had a mental illness or something then that's understandable, but otherwise, I just can't see it happening. My god, that's just pathetic.

I guess I can laugh at it, but it's more sad than funny. But oh well.


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## Sarde (Feb 21, 2004)

Wishful thinking...


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## Tarlanc (Feb 21, 2004)

Sarah said:


> Middle Earth is NOT A Real Country!
> Staff members at the Yahoo! Travel Web site told the newspaper that places featured in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films and Tolkien's books, such as Mordor and Rivendell, have become popular search terms on the site.


That's not at all this dramatic. Have you never entered nonsensical words into search engines just to check what will be returned? And entering Places of Middle Earth into geographical engines or Melmac, Eternia and Endor in an astronomical one is just for fun. Maybe there are real places that are named like the ones in Tolkiens books. And a geographical engine would be the perfect way to find that out.
Moria you would have found that way if you were lucky. For it is a real place in Israel. And there my be other places.

If anyone who entered such words in this engine really thought that Tolkiens world existet, he would be a tragical figure. A poor human being having spent that much time in front of the TV screen that he can't thell fiction from reality anymore. But I really hope there is no such person. It would be sad.


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## Eledhwen (Feb 21, 2004)

These must be the same people who write to Sherlock Holmes in Baker Street once someone's told them the awful truth about saint Nick.

There are places you could go in the Shire, which T gave very English-sounding names to: Buckland is a common place name, and there's one just outside Oxford. Barrow Downs - more a topographical feature than a place name. I live very close to downs with Barrows on them. There are plenty of places with 'Withy' in them (withywoods, withybrook etc) because it means Willow. Going outside ME, there are about half a dozen Hams, and plenty of Woottons (I live in one); though 'Major', if it was ever used, has in most cases been replaced by the name of the Lord of the Manor (in Wootton Bassett's case, Alan Bassett - a Norman, about 800 years ago).

They won't find much if they get real and visit Oxford instead. The internet is the best place to find out Tolkien's haunts in that city; though Birmingham has done a bit more, providing a trail guide to help people to find Sarehole where the Tolkien boys grew up and other haunts. An expensive ride-through museum on the history of Oxford "The Oxford Story" in the city centre doesn't even mention Tolkien. Best bet is to go for a pub lunch to the Eagle and Child (in St Giles, a few hundred yards from the centre) which is so atmospheric you almost feel that Tolkien and Lewis could walk in at any moment.


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## Sarah (Feb 21, 2004)

There's a river Brandywine in NY.


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## 33Peregrin (Feb 21, 2004)

Ha ha... probably just seeing what would happen if they entered ME places in there. Even I've done something similar. But to think that it really was... real.. I mean to be disappointed when that place doesn't come up, then that would be sad! 
I have never been anywhere where LOTR place names are in the real world. But I do live in Colorado.


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## Ireth Telrúnya (Feb 21, 2004)

Oh I think Middle-Earth exists. New Zealand IS Middle-Earth! Even Mordor is found there in the vulcan areas.


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## Khôr’nagan (Feb 22, 2004)

Perhaps they were just fooling around, but if not... My god are they sad, pathetic people. And New Zealand is, in a way, Middle-Earth, I suppose, because they filmed the movies there, but the actual Middle-Earth was actually modelled after Europe in the North-West, Africa in the South-West, Asia in the North-East, and a large Island which could be Australia in the South-East, and then America being Valinor. So more is it that Earth is Eä (whoa... they start with the same two letters) rather than Middle-Earth being New Zealand.


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## Eledhwen (Feb 22, 2004)

Sarah said:


> There's a river Brandywine in NY.



In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
You never change your socks
And the little streams of alkyhol
Come a trickling down the rocks
There's a lake of stew and whiskey too
And you can travel all around them in your big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains!

I learned that at infant school.


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## Sarah (Feb 22, 2004)

I remember that. But it wasn't about alcohol... were your teachers certified???


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## Eledhwen (Feb 22, 2004)

Sarah said:


> I remember that. But it wasn't about alcohol... were your teachers certified???


Probably, but I left infant school 40 years ago, before everything got censored and changed to be politically correct, so that kids didn't learn nasssty words like whisky and call different coloured people by a colour-label instead of their name.

If people want to see real 'tarns' and 'meres', they should go to the English Lake District, where those old words survive in the names of the waters.

The hamlet of Bagendon is between where I live and Gloucester. Michel Dever is near Basingstoke. Clearly place names have changed slightly over the years!


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## Ireth Telrúnya (Feb 22, 2004)

By the way, I was thinking whether Tolkien liked brandy since named the river as "Brandywine"...


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## Eledhwen (Feb 22, 2004)

I expect he was more of a pint man, the parts about drinking ale are so well written, and I've seen the pubs he drank in. I'm sure he wouldn't say no to a good brandy though


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