Posted: December 28, 1999 at 08:28:02: by Smaug the Magnificent
: Obviously, between the events in the Silmarillion and in The Hobbit and LotR, the geography of ME changes dramatically. Tolkien does, I remember, somewhere make some cursory remarks about this, but never treats the transfiguration in any detail. Has anyone ever attempted to establish correlations between the two maps presented in LotR and Silmarillion? What happened to ME that it was so changed?: O This is an area that has interested me for a while, mostly in terms of: just how much of Beleriand remained above the waves after the cataclysms of the first and second ages. I posted a reply to a question with regard to the fate of Nogrod and Belegost some time ago (Archive 24), of which I provide an excerpt below. I hope it will prove of some use, any feedback would of course be welcome. "I refer you to two maps of Middle Earth: The first, shown in Vol.7 of HoME "The Treason of Isengard", shows clearly the city of Belegost (of which: "Very notable is the appearance of Belegost, which is marked on the 1943 map also (nb. quite late in developement), but on no subsequent one, ... Belegost being situated on the eastern side of the mountains somewhat north of Mount Dolmed..."). Also of note on this map are two islands off the coast of Lindon, Himling and Tol Fuin, of which more later; the second map to which I refer is the Silmarillion map where we can see that Nogrod is rougly 50 miles south of Belegost (distances are difficult to judge as there is no scale but, estimating from: "Ered Lindon was now near the sea (at widest 200 miles away)" and "the statement that Ered Lindon was now at no point further than 200 miles away agrees well with that map (the 1943)" we see that Lindon was about 500 miles long from North to South - Vol.7, ch.6, p.124". In addition, the two islands I mentioned earlier may be used to estimate the extent to which
Beleriand was reduced by the cataclysm and so the comparative size of Lindon. If we draw a line on the Vol.7 map (ch.15, p.302) from the top Lindon, through Himling to Tol Fuin ("which must be the highest part of Taur na Fuin" - Vol.7, ch.6, footnote 18) and then extend that line southwards on the Silmarillion map following the coastline of Lindon, we may see that a substantial portion of East Beleriand stayed above the waves, from the March of Maedhros in the North, south west(ish) as far as the northern slopes of Ramdal and Amon Ereb, and then south east(ish) to Tol Galen. This would imply that the river we see on the LoTR map that cuts through Forlindon may well be the remnants of Gelion, that the Gulf of Lune penetrated up Rathloriel, that the course of the Baranduin possibly changed to flow down via Adurant, that Thargelion and Ossirand survived pretty much intact and that
(romanticaly) Tol Galen stayed above water."
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