Palacký University in Olomouc Philosophical

Middle Earth

The Middle Earth itself can be divided into smaller regions. Western from the Misty Mountains there are the lands of Eriador, containing The Shire – home of hobbits – and the Rivendell. Eriador is bordered by the Misty Mountains from the east and the Blue Mountains from the west. Behind the Blue Mountains lie the Gray Havens, the place through which the Elves left the Middle Earth for good. North from Eriador lies the Northern Waste and South from it much smaller land named Enedwaith.

Easter from the Misty Mountains we can find the lands of Rhovanion and the biggest river in the Middle Earth – Anduin. Between the mountains and the river there lies the Elvish kingdom Lothlórien – home of the oldest elf of Middle Earth, Galadriel – and the forest Fangorn, home of the Ents. A big part of Rhovanion is occupied by the large forest named Mirkwood, which used to be known as Greenwood in times before the Necromancer. Other important place of Rhovanion is Erebor, the Lonely Mountain – the place Bilbo and the dwarves were fighting for in The Hobbit.
South from Rhovanion and the Misty Mountains lie the kingdoms of Rohan and Gondor, inhabited by the Men and finally to the East from Gondor there is Mordor, the land of Sauron armed by high mountains from the North, West and South as well.
Most of the lands of Middle Earth are quite pleasant places for living with their meadows, fields and smaller hills, with the exception of places ruined by



⁵¹ John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1986), 520.
⁵² John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1986), 172.
Sauron, such as Mirkwood and the lands surrounding the borders of Mordor. The Shire, for example, is based on rural England as Tolkien has confirmed many times,⁵³ build upon his childhood memories of Sarehole, representing everything good about the world. Interestingly, it lies diagonally as far as possible from Mordor, the equivalent of evil.

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