Ground of the Medium

The Ground of the Medium ( Middle-earth ) is the place where take seat the majority of the accounts of J.R.R. Tolkien. The term comes from the translation of the Middle English middel-erde , resulting from the Vieil English middangeard . Tolkien explicitly describes it as being our Ground, but in a fictitious past. It estimates that the end of the Third Age is approximately 6000 years before our time.

The history of the Earth of the Medium is divided into several Ages. The novels Bilbo the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings take seat at the end of the Third Age of the Sun, while Silmarillion recalls the creation of this world and draft in majority of the events of the First Age.

Historical design of the term

In the old Germanic myths and Scandinavian, the universe is composed of nine dependant physical “worlds” in a dubious way. According to a version, seven worlds were on an encircling sea: countries of the Elves (Alfheim), of the Dwarves (Nidavellir), of the Gods (Ásgard and Vanaheim) and of the Giants (Jötunheim and Muspellheim). Others place these seven worlds in the skies, among the branches of Yggdrasil, “the Tree of the World”. In both cases, the world of the Men (known under the names of Midgard, Middenheim or Middle-earth) is in the center of this universe. Bifröst, the bridge of the rainbow, connects Midgard to Asgard. Hel, the kingdom of deaths, is under Midgard.

Etymology

The expression “Ground of the Medium” was not invented by Tolkien, which was satisfied to translate for the word Middle English middel-erde (cf the German Mittelerde ), itself resulting from the Vieil English middanġeard (with a G soft , which decides like a there ). The word middangeard appears on several occasions in the poem Beowulf .

Middangeard is resulting from an older Germanic word, and it thus has equivalents in the languages relationships of old English, like the Vieux norrois Miðgarðr , resulting from the Scandinavian Mythologie, transliterated in modern English in the form Midgard .

At the time of the Middle English, middangeard is written various ways: middellærd , midden-erde or middel-erde . These light orthographical variations do not have an influence on the general direction of the word, which remains “closed medium” and not “ground of the medium”. Nevertheless, middangeard is commonly translated into “ground of the medium”, tendency followed by Tolkien.

Origins of the use of the term by Tolkien

Tolkien considers the concept of middangeard as a particular use of the Greek word οἰκουμένη - oikoumenē (which gave the oecumenical word ). Tolkien explains why employed thus, the oikoumenē is “the world inhabited by the men”, i.e. the physical world where the man saw and achieves his destiny, in opposition to the invisible worlds that are, for example, the Paradis or the Enfer.

“ the Earth of the Medium is not my own invention. It is a modernization, or a deterioration of an old term indicating the world inhabited by the Men, oikoumene : medium because it is vaguely illustrated as placed between the encircling Seas and (in the imagination of North) between the ice in north and fire in the south. V. English middan-geard , average A. midden-erd , middle-erd . Many critics seem to believe that the Earth of the Medium is another planet! ”

Tolkien met the term middangeard in an English old fragment which he studies in 1914:

éala éarendel engla beorhtast/ofer middangeard monnum sended.

Éarendel Hello, more brilliance of the angels/above the ground the medium to the men sent.

This quotation comes from the second of the fragments which remain of the Crist of Cynewulf. The name Éarendel is at the origin of the creation of Eärendil, character of major importance in the mythology of the Silmarillion , which appears in a poem written by Tolkien about September 1914. The first version of this poem refers to “the edge of the world of the medium” ( the mid-world' S rim ).

However, the expression “Ground of the Medium” is not employed by Tolkien in the first writings concerning its imaginary world, that it is in the lost Contes of the years 1920 or Bilbo the Hobbit , published in 1937. Tolkien starts to use it only at the end of the years 1930, in texts like the Ambarkanta or the Annales of Valinor , in the place of the expressions “Large Grounds” ( Great Lands ), “External Grounds” ( Outer Lands ) and “Citérieures Grounds” ( Hither Lands ) which described up to now this zone in its accounts.

In Quenya, the Earth of the Medium is called Endórë or Endor and in Sindarin, Ennor .

Use and translations

The expression “Ground of the Medium” is often employed to indicate the creation of Tolkien in its entirety, with the detriment of the terms more suitable than are Ambar (or Imbar ), the Earth itself Arda , term Quenya indicating the Earth or, in certain texts, the solar system, or Eä , the name quenya of the universe. This irrefutable fact, probably due to the fact that neither Arda nor Eä appears in the Lord of the Rings , is particularly visible in the books treating of the work of Tolkien, like The Complete Guide to Middle-earth , The Atlas off Middle-earth , The Road to Middle-earth or, in French, On the shores of the Earth of the Medium of Vincent Ferré.

Geography

The term “Ground of the Medium”, in a strict sense, indicates all the grounds of Arda in the east of Belegaer, the Large Sea of the west, of which the chart of the Seigneur of the Rings represents only the north-western part. The only charts of the hand of Tolkien representing the Earth of the Medium as a whole are sketches difficult to decipher dating from the years 1930, which were published by his/her Christopher son in the Formation of the Earth of the Medium, fourth volume of the Histoire of the Earth of the Medium. One of them presents clear resemblances to the terrestrial geography: one sees there, in the south of the Beleriand, a vast continent which points out the Africa, then, while going up towards the North-East, two peninsulas which evoke the Arabia and the India, mysterious “a Dark Ground” ( Dark Land ) recovering the the Antarctic and the Australia. This sketch was used by the geographer Karen Wynn Fonstad for his general charts of the Earth of the Medium to the Premier and Second Age S, but it enters in contradiction with several later texts of Tolkien, in particular with regard to the question of the Mer of Rhûn.

Evolution

The original geography of Arda is unknown, apart from the big lake which shelters the island of Almaren, remains Valar. This configuration disappears when Melkor destroyed the two lamps, Illuin and Ormal, which illuminated the world: Almaren is then destroyed and two seas appear: sea of Helkar in north and sea of Ringil in the south. Chart IV of Ambarkanta presents the world at this time, after Valar were withdrawn in Valinor and that Melkor founded its fortress, Utumno, in north. One sees the Earth of the Medium there lain between two oceans, in the west and the east, and traversed large chains of mountains of North-South axis: the Red Blue Mountains in the North-West, Mountains in the North-East, Gray Mountains in south-west and Yellow Mountains in south-east. Cuiviénen, the place where the Elfe S wake up, is indicated as located on Eastern bank of the sea of Helkar, a design which contradict of the later texts and which make of Cuiviénen an independent lake.

After the awakening of the Elves, Valar decide to enter in war against Melkor to release the Earth of the Medium of its influence. The war has as a theater the North-West of the Earth of the Medium, and this area, which will become the Beleriand thereafter, is strongly shaken by the titanic combat which are held there. Nevertheless, the passage of Valar has a beneficial effect on Beleriand: it makes it possible the area to leave the sleep of the Yavanna and the trees and the flowers push back there of more beautiful.

At the end of the First Age, one second intervention of Valar against Morgoth devastates at such a point Beleriand that this one is absorbed under water of Belegaer, except its Eastern part, which becomes the Lindon, and some scattered islands.

A last cataclysm takes place at the end of the Second Age, when the Númenóréens try to invade Valinor. Eru intervenes then and opens a gigantic pit at the sea-bed of the west, which absorbs Númenor and the fleet of Ar-Pharazôn. The world, up to now flat, becomes round. This catastrophe also has effects on the Earth of the Medium, whose coasts are slightly redrawn: for example, Pelargir, which was a coasting harbor, sees the sea moving away several miles, while the island of Tol Falas is almost destroyed.

Correspondences with the terrestrial geography

In the Prolog of the Seigneur of the Rings , Tolkien describes the area where live the Hobbit S like “the North-West of the Old world, in the east of the Sea”, which lets suggest a bond with the North-West of Europe, the Old world. However, like he says it in his letters, the geographies do not correspond, and he did not design the Earth of the Medium so that it corresponds to the real geography:

“With regard to the shape of the world at the Third Age, I am well afraid which it was conceived “for the history” and not according to geology, or paleontology. ”

“if it were about “History”, it would be difficult to make agree this geography and these events (or “cultures”) with information, archaeological and geological, that we have about the area nearest or most distant from what is called from now on Europe - although the County, for example, is explicitly presented like having belonged to this area. I could have made coincide the things with more probability, if this history had been found too much not developed before even as this question does not come me to mind. I am not sure that it would have gained”

much there

In another letter, it establishes correspondences of latitudes between Europe and the Earth of the Medium:

“the action of this history is held in the North-West of the " Ground of Milieu" , with a latitude equivalent to that of the coasts of Europe and shores of the north of the Mediterranean. If one places Hobbitebourg and Fondcombe (as I conceive it) about at the latitude of Oxford, then Minas Tirith, 1000 km more in the south, is about with that of Florence; mouths of Anduin and Pelargir, the old city, with that of the old Troy approximately. ”

Around this universe of fiction

Inspirations

Celtic Christianity
Mythology
Scandinavian Mythology, in particular Beowulf

important Personalities

J.R.R. Tolkien: author of the novels from which is resulting the imaginary world.
Christopher Tolkien : wire of J.R.R. Tolkien, it published many unfinished works of this last after its death.

Conventions and events , meetings, manifestations of the fans of the imaginary world.

Occasionally: Oxonmoot

similar Univers of fiction

Warhammer is inspired by the Earth of the Medium.
Keeps and dragons is inspired by the universe of the Earth of the Medium.

Notes and references of the article

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