# Lost Isle



## Elthir (Feb 5, 2018)

> * Daniel Thomas* wondered (in another thread) "... also where is the lost aisle why can it not be found on middle earths map"



Hullo!

If you mean the isle called _Tol Eressea_, early on it was quite a way West over sea with respect to Middle-earth, and by the time Frodo, Bilbo, Gandalf, Galadriel (and so on) sailed West it wasn't really reachable for "regular" mortals with ships. Tolkien described it nicely in a late letter: The "immortals" who were permitted to leave Middle-earth and seek Aman (...)

"... set sail in ships specially made and hallowed for this voyage, and steered due West towards the ancient site of these lands [Valinor and Eressea]. They only set out after sundown; but if any keen-eyed observer from that shore had watched one of these ships he might have seen that it never became hull-down but dwindled only by distance until it vanished in the twilight: it followed the straight road to the true West and not the bent road of the earth's surface. As it vanished it left the physical world."

It's mystical!

But if you meant a different isle then... well... hmmm, I guess never mind


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## Azrubêl (Feb 7, 2018)

To interject on this, weren't there several different types of "lost" isles at various stages in the mythology? I recall Christopher trying to untangle them, talking about how sometimes there were different numbers, types, etc. 

Of course they have roots back in the 1910s with Tolkien trying to "locate" Avalon in the UK, etc, and so I guess these "lost isles" are a pretty big motif.


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