The First Lord of the Rings Map - new discoveries in the East

[Huinesoron]

Last night I pulled out my phone microscope and took some closeups of the map, to see if I could draw out any more details. I was all set to post them, but: I've found an absolutely huge scan of the whole thing online.

Via 'New Criterion'

Starting from the top, then:

A: something to do with distances. It's two sentences, the first of which looks like it reads:

Shire - should be 40 miles further west

The second is trickier, but definitely includes '50 miles'.

B: I'm less convinced that this says 'Neldoreth' now. It looks more like 'Nelo[n/u/v]eh'.

C: That's definitely a mountain range.

D: Is sadly not a name for said mountain range. The first line is 'This should be', and the second looks like it starts 'Mist'. One possibility is that C is an early sketch for the shape of the Misty Mountains, but the shape looks very wrong.

E: I think the line is clearly intended to separate C from the body of the map.

F: Very clear, except for Tolkien's handwriting. This might say:

*Isengard should be ____
up to Vale. 30 miles
__ __ __ to D.C. ____?

G: If the 'Isengard' reading for F is correct, then I think G is a sketch of the Vale of Isengard, ie Nan Curunir. It seems to match the shape of the valley on the main map, and shows a river running down from the north.

H: The only word I can make out on this is the last word of the third line from the end, which must be 'Nindalf'.

I: The last word of the first line is 'Anduin', and the lone word on the third line is 'Hills'. I think the second line might end with 'and omit [Proper Noun]', in which case this refers to a deleted feature. One possibility is the named hills on the Brown Lands, which seem to have been removed when the Rohan overlay was placed; their name ends with '-en', which could match this note.

I.2: 'Sand' or 'some' or 'sane'. Could be flippin' anything.

J: Appears to contain the words 'should be farther East'. I think the name 'Orodruin' may also show up? I'm not sure though.

It does look like these are very much working notes, not particularly new information. But it's still interesting, and missing from HoME! And unless someone can find a match for that mysterious mountain range, it could still exist...

hS

[Erendis of Numenor]

Hello,

Thanks a lot for this very hight quality map and analysis

Here's my two cents :

B : it IS Neldoreth ; cf HOME 7.15 :
"The forest bordering the Sea of Rhunaer (L 19) extends on the First Map round the north-eastern point of the Sea and down its eastern shore (L-M 20), and against it my father pencilled Neldoreth"

C : I think it's a resumption of the Hithaeglir's shape around Moria because :
- the drawing is at the same "latitude",
- all this part of the map seems to be an annotated corner for the North-Western map ("A" talk about Shire, "D" just close may be about Misty Mt, the slight line of "E" may separate this space from the North-Western map, "F" is about Isengard, "H" may talk about Nindalf, "I" is about Anduin)
- the shape fits

G : It seems to me that's rather the sketch of the vale south of the gap of Isen (the sketch is also at the same latitude), opposite Isengard


Erendis from Brittany (sorry if my english is not well)

[Mithadan]

Interesting. On the large map linked by Huinesoron on October 1, 2019, there is a fairly clear label north of Rivendell that seems to read "Entish Lands."

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Erendis of Numenor

Hello,

Thanks a lot for this very hight quality map and analysis

Here's my two cents :

B : it IS Neldoreth ; cf HOME 7.15 :
"The forest bordering the Sea of Rhunaer (L 19) extends on the First Map round the north-eastern point of the Sea and down its eastern shore (L-M 20), and against it my father pencilled Neldoreth"

Oh, well spotted! So although Tolkien was probably just following his usual practice of stealing older names for the new map, this does mean we can assume there are beech-trees around the Sea of Rhun ('Neldoreth' meaning 'beech-wood').

And it rather strengthens the idea that Dorwinion, on the coast of the same sea, was an Elvish kingdom - another of the 'Sindar come in and take over' kingdoms. Looking at the map, Lorien, Amon Lanc (original heart of the Woodland Realm) and Dorwinion on Rhun all lie roughly on a line, so we can imagine Silvan petty-kingdoms stretched out through this whole region. In fact... I wonder if this might be the line of the original Great March, with the various kingdoms being founded wherever people happened to drop out. The shores of Rhunaer seem like a reasonable place to stop, after all.

Originally Posted by Erendis of Numenor

C : I think it's a resumption of the Hithaeglir's shape around Moria because :
- the drawing is at the same "latitude",
- all this part of the map seems to be an annotated corner for the North-Western map ("A" talk about Shire, "D" just close may be about Misty Mt, the slight line of "E" may separate this space from the North-Western map, "F" is about Isengard, "H" may talk about Nindalf, "I" is about Anduin)
- the shape fits

Agreed. This also explains the four heavier marks on the sketch - three of them mark the Mountains of Moria, while I think the fourth might be Moria itself.[/quote]

Originally Posted by Erendis of Numenor

G : It seems to me that's rather the sketch of the vale south of the gap of Isen (the sketch is also at the same latitude), opposite Isengard

Once again you are exactly right: there's a note to the right of the sketch that (when you know what it says) clearly reads "Helm's Deep". Well spotted! And congratulations on your excellent first post.

Originally Posted by Mithadan

Interesting. On the large map linked by Huinesoron on October 1, 2019, there is a fairly clear label north of Rivendell that seems to read "Entish Lands."

Ooh. It does, and it's struck out, with an arrow pointing up into the north. The label at the end of the arrow says:

"Ettinmoor
Alter Entishlands to .. [?]
[crossed through] Trollfells
[Crossed through] [????]land"

The rejected [something]land looks like it says "Bupiland", but that's obviously wrong. It could maybe be some variant on bogle, but I really can't see a G in there.

Ah, it looks like Christopher had this one. According to HoME 7:

Originally Posted by The Treason of Isengard

Entish Land Q 11) is original, but is absent from the 1943 map; a later note against this on the First Map says: 'Alter Entish Lands to [Trollfells > Bergrisland >] Ettenmoor'. This would seem to be the place where Ettenmoor(s) was first devised, but see p. 65 note 32. Bergrisland is from Old Norse berg-risi 'hill-giant'

hS

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Is it just me, or does it look like somebody (Tolkien himself?) has gone through and reinforced some but not all of the original blurred pencil with bolder, black pencil?

[mhagain]

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

I wonder if this might be the line of the original Great March, with the various kingdoms being founded wherever people happened to drop out. The shores of Rhunaer seem like a reasonable place to stop, after all.

Yes, there's text in, I think, HoME XII that confirms this, the Sea of Rhûn was one of the stopping-off points on the Great March. The Cirdan material in XII is the place to look, IIRC.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by mhagain

Yes, there's text in, I think, HoME XII that confirms this, the Sea of Rhûn was one of the stopping-off points on the Great March. The Cirdan material in XII is the place to look, IIRC.

HME XII 391. However, these "Late Writings" also mention, in slightly greater detail, the sojourn of the Peoples of Beor and Marach (Hador) on the shores of the Sea of Rhun during their much later migration: and there is not a trace of an Eldarin population at that time.

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

HME XII 391. However, these "Late Writings" also mention, in slightly greater detail, the sojourn of the Peoples of Beor and Marach (Hador) on the shores of the Sea of Rhun during their much later migration: and there is not a trace of an Eldarin population at that time.

Thank you both! I've looked up both these references, and what strikes me is that the Beor/Marach text very specifically places one group in the forests to the north-east ("Neldoreth"), and the other in the hills to the south-west.

Dorwinion, meanwhile, per Tolkien's notes on the Baynes map, is in the north-west regions of the Sea, where the Celduin flows into it. Given that (per the Beor/Marach text) it took Men ages to realise that there were other mortals around the Sea, they could certainly have missed an Eldarin presence.

What I'm wondering is whether "Neldoreth" is a survivor of a great eastern forest, and whether the Celduin vale was the first non-forested area the Great March encountered. If some of the Teleri had a strong preference for open skies, the combination of "wide open spaces" and "big sea to boat about on" could have induced them to stay.

This would also explain the settling patterns further west: the Amon Lanc group were spooked by the open spaces, so stopped when they reached a hill that let them confirm there were woods all around them again, while the Lorien group stopped once they hit the mountains and went "nah, we're staying in the woods".

None of these were 'kingdoms' (or even named); they were just scattered populations strung out along the line of the March. We know this for sure, because when the Sindar showed up, they simply put themselves in charge. I actually wonder whether for most of the Second Age, Amdir and Oropher were 'kings' only of their Sindarin followers, with the Nandor pretty much ignoring them.

The name, like the kingdom, would have come later. I would imagine Neldoreth was named first, in memory of Doriath; when the Sindar realised they could grow wine along Celduin, they revived the name of Dorwinion for their new realm.

Oh, and for bonus points:

Blador: Noldorin (early Sindarin), 'World'. Relative of 'Palurien', name of Yavanna.

Thind: Sindarin, 'Grey', as in Thingol.

Bladorthin: 'King of the Clouded Land/Misty Vale/Grey World'.

^_^

hS