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The Invention of Middle-earth

Middle-earth was not the creation of famed author and scholar J.R. R. Tolkien. In fact the term in literature and in language long preceded it’s use by Tolkien. Tolkien himself didn’t use the term in his earliest writings to describe his created world, but rather referred to them as the ‘Great Lands’, ‘Outer Lands’ and ‘Hither Lands’ until changing these to middle-earth in the 1930’s. In fact he simply borrowed the term from earlier writers like William Morris and others.

The history of the term Middle-earth derives from much earlier times. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary middle-earth is defined as, “the world inhabited by men, in Germanic. cosmology (opposed to Asgard, the abode of the gods), in 1882, from Old.Norse, miðgarðr, from mið “mid” an “enclosure, or tract”. The Old English cognate was middangeard, which was later folk-etymologized as middle earth.”

In 1914 Tolkien discovered the term while studying a fragment in Old English which read, “ Eala earendel, engla beorhtast / ofer middangeard monnum sended.” Which translates to “Hail Earendel, brightest of angels / above the middle-earth sent unto men.”

William Morris used the term in his great fantasy works which were published in the late 1800’s, and the term ‘Mirkwood’ first appears there as a ‘great forest beside the river’. Tolkien was greatly influenced by Morris, and it should be noted that he perhaps borrowed heavily from his works, as well as many other historical references, such as the great Norse and Icelandic Sagas (which Morris had earlier transltated) to create the world we all love and enjoy. Some scholars go as far as to say that Morrises ‘House of the ‘Wolfings’ and ‘Roots of the Mountain’, were the main inspirations behind Tolkien’s ‘Dunedain’.

Tolkien stated, “Middle-earth is … not my own invention. It is a modernization or alteration … of an old word for the inhabited world of Men, the oikoumene: middle because thought of vaguely as set amidst the encircling Seas and (in the northern- imagination) between ice of the North and the fire of the South. O. English middan- geard, mediaeval E. midden-erd, middle-erd. Many reviewers seem to assume that Middle-earth is another planet!” —J.R.R. Tolkien, Letters, no. 21

Tolkien may not have invented middle-earth, but it was through his efforts of literary genius that it was colonized and populated.

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