Tolkien stated that the geography of Middle-earth was intended to align with that of the real Earth in several particulars. In this conception, a 'world' was more equivalent to a racial homeland than a physically separate world.Ī speculative map of Arda before the end of the First Age, courtesy of the Encyclopedia of Arda. An outer sea encircled the seven other worlds ( Vanaheim, Asgard, Alfheim, Svartalfheim, Muspellheim, Niflheim, and Jotunheim). A rainbow bridge, Bifrost Bridge, extended from Middle-earth to Asgard across the sea. The land of the Dead lay beneath the Middle-earth. The lands of Elves, gods, and Giants lay across an encircling sea. The world of Men, the Middle-earth, lay in the centre of this universe. In ancient Germanic and mythology, the universe was believed to consist of multiple interconnected physical worlds (in Nordic mythology 9, in West Germanic and English mythology, 8). Many people apply the name to the entirety of Tolkien's world or exclusively to the lands described in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. 'Middle-earth' is specifically intended to describe the lands east of the Great Sea ( Belegaer), thus excluding Aman, but including Harad and other mortal lands not visited in Tolkien's stories. Tolkien first used the term 'Middle-earth' in the early 1930s in place of the earlier terms 'Great Lands', 'Outer Lands', and 'Hither Lands' to describe the same region in his stories. Map of the Western part of Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age

'Middle-earth' was consciously used by Tolkien to place The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and related writings. The name earendel (which may mean the 'morning-star' but in some contexts was a name for Christ) was the inspiration for Tolkien's mariner Eärendil.

Hail Earendel, brightest of angels / above the middle-earth sent unto men. Tolkien was also inspired by this fragment: See Midgard and Norse mythology for the older use. Tolkien for discussion of his inspirations and sources). Middangeard occurs six times in Beowulf, which Tolkien translated and on which he was arguably the world's foremost authority. The word Mediterranean comes from two Latin stems, medi-, amidst, and terra, (earth/land), meaning 'the sea placed at the middle of the Earth / amidst the lands'. It is Germanic for what the Greeks called the οικουμένη ( oikoumenē) or 'the abiding place of men', the physical world as opposed to the unseen worlds ( The Letters of J. Rather, it comes from Middle English middel-erde, itself a folk-etymology for the Old English word middangeard ( geard not meaning 'Earth', but rather 'enclosure' or 'place', thus 'yard', with the Old Norse word miðgarðr being a cognate). The term 'Middle-earth' was not invented by J.R.R.

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