Here Be Dragons (11 page)

Employing different types of script for different map elements (color, style, size, and so on) helps indicate various dissimilarities in the referents. On the Shire map, differences in case (using either uppercase only or lowercase with an uppercase initial) are used to signal a relevant difference, although the difference itself is not immediately clear. In terms of the watercourses, the larger ones (rivers) have names written in all capitals whereas the brooks' names are written with only an initial capital. This suggests that the stylistic variations in the script are what Robinson and Petchenik term “mimetic” rather than “arbitrary”: in this case, a more prominent style corresponds to a more prominent (or larger) referent.
¹¹⁵
If this correlation is true, uppercase-only villages should be more prominent than the rest. To some extent, the text supports this assumption. Of the five settlements that are all uppercase, three are mentioned in the prologue: the older villages Hobbiton and Tuckborough, and the Shire's chief township, Michel Delving (FR, prologue, 6). The text's juxtaposition of the older villages and the chief township implies
that these entities have similar social status, a social status reflected as well as reinforced by the uppercase script. Regarding the status of By-water and Stock, nothing is said; the former is close to Hobbiton and is often referred to in the story, and Stock is mentioned but never visited by Frodo's company. Since social status rather than story relevance appears to be the guiding principle behind the stylistic variation here, it may be assumed that the two villages share the social status of the other three.

The use of upper-and lowercase letters for names, hence, suggests that differences and similarities in script are “mimetically” assigned. A difference in script prominence reflects, in the case of watercourses, a difference in size; in the case of village names, a difference in social status. Consequently, the differences in style, size, and color used to write the forest names should also reflect some difference between the forests. The Old Forest and Woody End have names written in red uppercase but different sizes, with the names placed inside the forest, whereas Bindbole Wood to the north has its name set outside the forest and written in small, black script with uppercase only for the initials. From the map in general, we find that red script is used for areas and regions (the only exception being the Yale, which, on the map, could also refer to the black dot just beneath it
¹¹⁶
), so Woody End and Old Forest may be considered names for areas or regions rather than for the forests as such. Even so, the difference in script prominence suggests an inexplicable difference in prominence. As both the Old Forest and Bindbole Wood disappear off the map, it cannot be determined whether the question is one of size. Their relative script prominence, from smallest (Bindbole Wood: small, black, lowercase) to largest (Old Forest: large, red, uppercase), corresponds to their respective relevance to the story: Bindbole Wood, while appearing on the map, does not play any part; Woody End is the central setting of most of one chapter; and the Old Forest provides the first encounter with the world outside the Shire and the setting of an entire chapter (named after the forest).

By examining the choices of the mapmaker, it is possible to learn how the map relates to the story it presumably supports, but such an examination also sheds light on some of the social norms and constructions behind the map. In the case of the Shire map, the norms and constructions of the fictional cartographer are braided together with those of the implied cartographer. When it comes to the map of the western Middle-earth, which is more clearly a paratext in that it does not refer to any apparent
map in the fictional world, the messages communicated by the map are more clearly those of the implied cartographer (or author). Whereas this map has some traits in common with the Shire map, it offers a worldview different from the controlled safety of the hobbit lands: according to the larger map, Middle-earth is a wilder, older place, and the map is much more explicitly made to serve the story.

Reading “The West of Middle-earth”

The general map of the western parts of Middle-earth was first included on a foldout sheet, printed in black and red, in the first edition of
The Fellowship of the Ring
and
The Two Towers
. In paperback editions, this map was printed in black only and divided into four sections.
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Although the Shire map and the general map have in common an abundance of names that strengthen the readers' secondary belief (as well as allowing them to identify almost any location mentioned in the novel), the story comes across as much more central to the construction of the general map.

Unlike the Shire map, the general map has a compass rose (with north at the top) and a scale bar. For my edition of the map, one inch equals one hundred miles, which corresponds to 1:6,336,000 and yields a map area of about 6.5 million square kilometers, or about twice the size of India. A quarter of the map is covered by water, which gives a land area approximately half that of Europe or the United States. According to the label, the map is of “The West of Middle-earth at the End of the Third Age,” and even though some features are included, much of the eastern and some of the northern side of the map are, in fact, quite empty compared to the western lands. This is a map whose subject is not a nonspecific “west” but a number of regions defined as “The West,” a cultural, political, and historical as well as geographical location, something that is confirmed by how its military leaders are repeatedly referred to as “the Captains of the West” (RK, V, x, 867 et passim). These regions (Eriador, Rohan, Gondor, and Rhovanion) are set against the land of Mordor, which is the only land on the eastern third of the maps to be reasonably detailed. The label is signed CJRT, for Christopher Tolkien, but since it is impossible (and in this discussion irrelevant) to decide which features of the map come from which Tolkien, this map is also considered to have an implied cartographer. However, as the general map is more clearly paratextual than the Shire map and exists only on the threshold to the text, I assume it to have no fictional cartographer; this aspect is therefore left out of the subsequent discussion.

Of all the topography portrayed on the map of the western Middle-earth, the mountain ranges attract the most attention. In the middle of the map, extending from the hills beyond Carn Dûm in the northwest to Minas Tirith in the southeast, runs the sinuous mountain range of the Misty Mountains and Ered Nimrais (I use the English rather than Elvish names if they are given on the map). The inverted S-shape of this range neatly indicates where the story's action will take place: in the southeast, it points at the mountains around Mordor; and, together with the Blue Mountains, its northern curve embraces Eriador. The shapes of Mordor's mountain ranges and of the Misty Mountain/Ered Nimrais range give an artificial impression, suggesting that supernatural forces rather than tectonics are behind the very landforms of Middle-earth. This impression is confirmed in
The Silmarillion
, which describes (in
Ainulindalë
) how the semidivine Valar worked to create the landscapes of the world and (in
Quenta Silmarillion
) how the evil Melkor built the Misty Mountains.
¹¹⁸
Given their prominence in terms of location, shape, and quantity, it is hardly surprising that negotiating various mountains is central to the plot, such as the Fellowship's passage through Moria, Aragorn's passage through the Paths of the Dead, and Sam and Frodo's passage through Cirith Ungol. The very goal of the quest is a mountain, Mount Doom, inside which the Ring is destroyed.

Another prominent topographical feature is the enormous forest of Mirkwood. Although the great woodlands are never visited by the protagonists of
The Lord of the Rings
, Mirkwood draws attention to the other forests of the map. Forested areas are far scarcer than would be expected from such a wide stretch of land; apart from Mirkwood, only a few forests are marked on the map, some of them appearing to be quite small. At this scale, however, size becomes tricky to judge. The smallest forest on the map is Chetwood outside Bree, which takes the hobbits and Aragorn more than a full day's walk to get through (FR, I, xi, 178). There ought to be more forests like Chetwood on the map, for instance Woody End and perhaps even Bindbole Wood in the Shire, or the western parts of Middle-earth would be a bare place indeed. This bareness does not agree with the lack of settlements; if there are no people, what keeps the formerly forested areas
¹¹⁹
from turning back into forest? Yet the forests included on the map are not simply those visited in the story, although all forests the hobbits travel through or see outside the Shire are marked, regardless of size. The woodlands along the feet of the Blue Mountains and around the northeast corner of the Sea of Rhûn, which are neither
visited nor seen, only add to the impression that most of western Middle-earth is bare, bringing into focus what few forests there are.

Other topographical features reinforce the bareness of the map and consequently bring focus to the few elements that are included. Thus, mostly relevant rivers are found on the map, allowing for easy identification of each river crossed or traveled along. Ultimately, the topography serves the story; that, rather than size, determines what is included and what is left out, with only occasional exceptions, such as the Sea of Rhûn or the Blue Mountain woodlands.

Where the nonverbal map elements serve the story, the verbal ones—the names—serve secondary belief in the world the map portrays.
¹²⁰
In many cases, features are only marked by the linguistic signs; apart from topographical signs, roads and population centers/strongholds are the only features that have nonverbal signs. In other words, the map is mainly about names. Indeed, when Shippey observes how the characters tend to “talk like maps,” he exemplifies this point with characters who tend to list the names and spatial relations of various features.
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Through the red script, the text is highly visible, and it is emphasized how this is a world where every place is known and named, often even with two names. Names are provided in languages from the secondary world (mostly Elvish) as well as in English, sometimes in both (generally with the English translation within parentheses). With the help of all these names, the reader can navigate the world of the story and follow the characters' journeys; but the names also define the secondary world spatially, by creating a great number of places and spatial relations. Through their multitude and the many translations, these names even allow the reader to puzzle out some of the basic morphemes of the fictional languages, observing, for instance, how mountain ranges are called
Ered
(Ered Luin/Blue Mountains; Ered Lithui/Ash Mountains; Ered Mithrin/Grey Mountains); how
mith
-can mean “gray” (Ered Mithrin/Grey Mountains; Mithlond/Grey Havens); and how Emyn Uial/Hills of Evendim, Nenuial/Lake Evendim, and the [Sea of] Núrnen in Nurn give us
uial
= “evendim,”
emyn
= “hills,” and
nen
= “lake/water.” This is not only a map of a world but a key to its languages.

The fact that places and features on the map often have more than one name also suggests a relation between the languages other than the purely linguistic. Generally, an Elvish name is followed by the English version within parentheses. Typical examples are Ered Luin (Blue Mountains), Gwathló (Greyflood), and Baranduin (Brandywine), with
Weathertop (Amon Sûl) providing an exception. The English names are often a (nearly always literal) translation—
ered
= “mountains,”
luin
= “blue”—but sometimes the English name is only notionally similar, so that
gwath
-in Gwathló becomes “gray” rather than “shadow” and Amon Sûl (“windhill”) is Weathertop in English. There might be a phonetic similarity only—Brandywine for Baranduin (“brown river”)—or no apparent connection to modern English, as when Angren (“of iron”) is translated as Isen (Old English for “of iron”). Numerous names are also left untranslated, appearing either in English or (more commonly) in Elvish. Some of the English names are straightforward (e.g., North Downs, Dead Marshes, the Brown Lands); others use more obscure or old-fashioned language or roots (e.g., Trollshaws, Entwash, Rivendell).
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The Elvish language is made obviously superior to English, partly through its status as the preferred language, partly because although there are a great number of English names, the major names—labeling larger regions and therefore written in larger script—are in Elvish. Middle-earth, we see, contains both the familiar and the alien, although the latter is more prominent.

The variations in script separate the marks on the map into different classes. Small uppercase script indicates names of mountain ranges; regions are written with larger uppercase script, the size of the script increasing with the size of the region (compare, for instance, Eriador and Minhiriath or Mordor and Nurn), although the names of smaller regions (for example, Forlindon, Lebennin, and Lossarnach) are written in uppercase for the initial letter only—as are all other names as well. The script is curved to roughly indicate what region, mountain range, or river it refers to, but the text is straighter when referring to a population center, stronghold, or tower. Outlined capitals are used for the former realm of Arnor and the three kingdoms into which it was divided. The many variations in size, case, and curvature reinforce the impression that this world is fully explored and fully believable. It is not only littered with names; these names appear to be divided into an abundance of categories. Regions are divided and subdivided, rivers have tributaries and marshes, mountain ranges and hills are everywhere: all over the world, the map tells us, there are places whose names are worth knowing.