Arda scaled one in sixty million

Last crawled date: 4 years, 3 months ago

This is a scaled model of the Arda, the planet where it takes place the universe of J. R. R. Tolkien, that is, the place of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. I've made the topography by myselft, since I couldn't find a complete topographic map of the planet. I didn't use any information from the books, I've based this work on a few maps and a couple of descriptions. Some clues of the topography were the differences between global maps, from different eras. They seems to be different sea levels, which helps to guess some of the terrain. The First Age map looks like if it was during an ice age, with lower sea level; while the Second Age look more warm, the Helcar sea is almost dried. I took the artistic license to invent and guess a lot of details, so don't take this as cannon, nor even as an exact representation. In the Tolkien's universe timeline it is implied that the world was at first flat, a sort of Flat Earth, but was later "spherized" at some time. I preffer to see it as a normal planet in order to compare with other science fiction planets. Tolkien itself said that his Middle-Earth could be taken as an "alternative past" of our reality. The Lord of the Rings is been said to be a metaphore of the World War 2, and the continents of Arda allude to those of the Earth. Middle-Earth is analogous to Europe, Hither Lands to Africa, Aman to America, Ekkaia to the Pacific ocean and the Dark Land is something between Australia and Antarctica.