“The Grey Havens stream out from the West coast of Ireland, and the blue mountains line up generally with the Scottish highlands.” - And the mountains of the English Lake District line up with the southern range below.
Great insight. Always look forward to reading what you write.
You have done some very good work here, and it ties together many ideas that have floated around for a long time. In reference to Lewis, I see the difference in the two men’s academic specialties. As someone who absorbed so much of the Dark Age mythos, Tolkien certainly focused on the particulars, the nitty-gritty world that you describe here. Lewis, the professor of Medieval and Renaissance literature, had more focus on the universals. Matthew Ward’s explanation of the Chronicles of Narnia - that each book has a theme based on a ruling planet (e.g., Prince Caspian is about war and conflict and is thus representative of Mars) - is a very good explanation of this. It is not a myth but rather a morality tale based on the true order of the world. Lewis certainly had a Platonic streak.
This blew my mind and proved tremendously helpful for my own research which is deeply connected with ths endevour.
I have spent these last years on a project of reconstructing the ancient norse skies, that is the knotting togheter f the myths and the stars, as all mythic accounts are stellar, and our heaven was stolen from us to be replaced with a profane sky of number.
As a part of this project, I have lined up the stars with theirs myths and the myths with activiites and festivals of the solar year. Due to precession, there has been qute a slip between these but they do all click into place when you set the date so that the first day of the winter solstice fall on the first day of Aries, ie Dec 21. Which gives an age of 8200 years for the entire star lore.
This falls exactly on the date you bring up here and the fall of Doggerland into the sea.
Mordor corresponding exactly to the Caliphate of Ottoman Turkey also makes sense - the great scourge of eastern Europe almost prevailing at the Gates of Vienna were it not for the John III Sobieski of Poland and his winged Hussars cavalry whose charge broke the Ottoman ranks.
Another possible explanation that is quite fanciful: That the immense power of Tolkien's writings had an influential effect on our pre-historical past, which morphed to fit his stories within it. Personally, I feel that your two explanations and this one all work well in tandem.
"The Maps. I am stumped. Indeed in a panic. They are essential; and urgent; but I just cannot get them done. [...] I have spent an enormous amount of time on them without profitable result. Lack of skill combined with being harried. Also the shape and proportions of ‘The Shire’ as described in the tale cannot (by me) be made to fit into shape of a page; nor at that size be contrived to be informative." (J.R.R. Tolkien, letters, 1953)
The geography of Middle Earth is, to the greatest possible degree imaginable, the work of Christopher Tolkien. He wasn't "helping" his father with the maps. He was his father's cartographer. Tolkien himself was crap at maps and did not contribute more than scribbles that didn't always work out.
This is great stuff. A few things occurred to me as I was reading.
1/ Where do you think the landscapes of the First Age fit in here? I'm thinking specifically of the breaking of Beleriand. I'd thought of that as a fictionalization of Doggerland and its sinking, but you have a different and good idea on that here. How would you square them? Do you think it's necessary?
2/ What would and could Tolkien have known about the Ice Age maps in his time? I'd always thought of Doggerland and other lost lands like Sundaland and Beringia as relatively recent discoveries, if we're counting detailed maps and not passed down through the lore. But it is odd as you say that he included obscure details in his own maps. I honestly have no idea about the quality of info he'd have had available. Any ideas on that?
How Tolkien Disguised Ice-Age Europe as Middle-Earth
Unreal
“The Grey Havens stream out from the West coast of Ireland, and the blue mountains line up generally with the Scottish highlands.” - And the mountains of the English Lake District line up with the southern range below.
Great insight. Always look forward to reading what you write.
This is amazing.
Outstanding work, Drew
You have done some very good work here, and it ties together many ideas that have floated around for a long time. In reference to Lewis, I see the difference in the two men’s academic specialties. As someone who absorbed so much of the Dark Age mythos, Tolkien certainly focused on the particulars, the nitty-gritty world that you describe here. Lewis, the professor of Medieval and Renaissance literature, had more focus on the universals. Matthew Ward’s explanation of the Chronicles of Narnia - that each book has a theme based on a ruling planet (e.g., Prince Caspian is about war and conflict and is thus representative of Mars) - is a very good explanation of this. It is not a myth but rather a morality tale based on the true order of the world. Lewis certainly had a Platonic streak.
This blew my mind and proved tremendously helpful for my own research which is deeply connected with ths endevour.
I have spent these last years on a project of reconstructing the ancient norse skies, that is the knotting togheter f the myths and the stars, as all mythic accounts are stellar, and our heaven was stolen from us to be replaced with a profane sky of number.
As a part of this project, I have lined up the stars with theirs myths and the myths with activiites and festivals of the solar year. Due to precession, there has been qute a slip between these but they do all click into place when you set the date so that the first day of the winter solstice fall on the first day of Aries, ie Dec 21. Which gives an age of 8200 years for the entire star lore.
This falls exactly on the date you bring up here and the fall of Doggerland into the sea.
Mordor corresponding exactly to the Caliphate of Ottoman Turkey also makes sense - the great scourge of eastern Europe almost prevailing at the Gates of Vienna were it not for the John III Sobieski of Poland and his winged Hussars cavalry whose charge broke the Ottoman ranks.
Read "The Oera Linda Book . . . ."
Thanks for the amazing work Saxon
This is nothing short of brilliant. Well done, Saxon Cross!
Fascinating. Thank you.
Another possible explanation that is quite fanciful: That the immense power of Tolkien's writings had an influential effect on our pre-historical past, which morphed to fit his stories within it. Personally, I feel that your two explanations and this one all work well in tandem.
Doggerland was discovered in 1931 and caused a lot of excitement so I’m sure Tolkien would have been aware of it when he was writing LOTR.
"The Maps. I am stumped. Indeed in a panic. They are essential; and urgent; but I just cannot get them done. [...] I have spent an enormous amount of time on them without profitable result. Lack of skill combined with being harried. Also the shape and proportions of ‘The Shire’ as described in the tale cannot (by me) be made to fit into shape of a page; nor at that size be contrived to be informative." (J.R.R. Tolkien, letters, 1953)
The geography of Middle Earth is, to the greatest possible degree imaginable, the work of Christopher Tolkien. He wasn't "helping" his father with the maps. He was his father's cartographer. Tolkien himself was crap at maps and did not contribute more than scribbles that didn't always work out.
This is great stuff. A few things occurred to me as I was reading.
1/ Where do you think the landscapes of the First Age fit in here? I'm thinking specifically of the breaking of Beleriand. I'd thought of that as a fictionalization of Doggerland and its sinking, but you have a different and good idea on that here. How would you square them? Do you think it's necessary?
2/ What would and could Tolkien have known about the Ice Age maps in his time? I'd always thought of Doggerland and other lost lands like Sundaland and Beringia as relatively recent discoveries, if we're counting detailed maps and not passed down through the lore. But it is odd as you say that he included obscure details in his own maps. I honestly have no idea about the quality of info he'd have had available. Any ideas on that?
I thought this timeline might prove interesting... not sure how accurate though:
https://3rings.webs.com/chronology