If you overlay Tolkien's Middle Earth onto Europe it's pretty blunt
Shire is England.
Elves are Europe
Dwarves are...scots, maybe?
Mordor is the Middle-East.
Grey Havens are America, weirdly.
And the less said about Rhun and Harad the better.
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Extinct Jesus Dossier "...I think it counteracts Hitler's magic...", Wed 26 Jan 2022, 9:54,
Reply)
I've got a detailed atlas that does that - you've misplaced some of those places a little
The Shire covers pretty much the whole UK, but Hobbiton is absolutely Oxford (he specified that in one of his letters, apparently).
Mordor is around Romania, Gondor is Italy / Southern France.
The Grey Havens are around West Ireland or so.
The dwarves are absolutely Jews. They've lost their homeland, they're wandering the lands, they have their own secret language and customs... He explicitly states that in one of his letters.
By the 70s, he was writing that he regretted some of the racial overtones of his work.
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Invisible Wizard - 13th Level Scrote, Wed 26 Jan 2022, 10:07,
Reply)
I thought Gondor was the Normans
Rohan is certainly the Saxons
Harad is the middle east. I'm in the middle of reading it to my 9 year old at the moment and it's clear
(, Wed 26 Jan 2022, 10:53, Reply)
I really waving my nerd credentials about the place now, but
Rohan may well be portrayed as Saxons in all the adaptations, but the Prof never intended that. In the Appendix "On Translation" in LotR, he says that he used Anglo-Saxon styles and language for the Rohirrim to create a sense of connection to the modern English-speaking hobbits, and he specifically said that he didn't mean for this to imply that they were connected to the real Saxons.
Here's a link to a comparison map:
qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-4ee0934a7483c2c18deee673dd1c3153-c
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Invisible Wizard - 13th Level Scrote, Wed 26 Jan 2022, 11:04,
Reply)
So this means that Rohan is *checks map*... Switzerland
I've gone right off them for some reason
(, Wed 26 Jan 2022, 12:13, Reply)
Lederhosen horse lords
It's almost like the real geography isn't featured in Middle Earth. Stupid Tolkien!
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Invisible Wizard - 13th Level Scrote, Wed 26 Jan 2022, 12:54,
Reply)
That practically demands an audio dub of the films with Mel Brooks as Gimlii
give him a free hand with the dialogue
(, Wed 26 Jan 2022, 10:57, Reply)
I don't recall the orcs fighting for King George but it would certainly be colourful
(, Wed 26 Jan 2022, 15:51, Reply)
Ah, thank you for correcting me.
Fascinating stuff.
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Extinct Jesus Dossier "...I think it counteracts Hitler's magic...", Wed 26 Jan 2022, 11:27,
Reply)
Sorry, didn't mean to be rude.
I just loves me a bit of Tolkien pedantry.
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Invisible Wizard - 13th Level Scrote, Wed 26 Jan 2022, 11:43,
Reply)