Map of Middle-earth

• 10 September 2010
• home,
• Tolkien,
• Art

In 2010, I created an online map of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth as was depicted in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The map includes layers in both English and Elvish and provides notes for various points of interest.

The material is open source and I would be delighted to take an understudy to someone interested in improving upon this aging website.

The labels are, where possible, in the Elvish language of Sindarin and the Tengwar alphabet, particularly in the General Use mode, as in the third version of The King’s Letter.†

Usage #

Pan — You can pan through the map by clicking and dragging.

Zoom — You can zoom in and out using your mouse’s scroll wheel or by holding down your shift key while clicking and dragging.

Center — You can center the map on a position by double clicking.

Link — As you pan and zoom the map, the URL in the address or location bar updates to reflect a shareable, permanent link to the location you’re viewing.

Label Languages — You can switch languages with the drop-down selector in the bottom-left of the page, or by pressing, lower-case-L*. You can turn off labels by pressing, upper-case-L*.

Search — You can search for a location by its recorded names in the search field on the top right. Press enter or click on one of the auto-completed items to navigate to that location and to display additional information. You can navigate to the search box by typing slash and can leave by typing escape.

Participation #

This map of Middle-earth may never rightly be considered complete, and your participation is very welcome. Please mention errors, omissions, and enhancement requests on the mailing list. This is an open-source, creative-commons project, so all of the code and graphics, including the high-resolution originals, are available for your use under the licensing terms mentioned below.

Credits #

The map was illustrated with a nib calligraphy pen, digitally edited with the GNU Image Manipulation Program, digitally assembled with Inkscape, and programmed by me, Kris Kowal with extensive assistance in translation and transliteration by Måns Björkman and J. “Mach” Wust. The parchment background is derrived from work featured by user FantasyStock on deviantart.com and used here by the published terms of use.

Background #

Here follow resources regarding the construction of the map.

• a photo WHEREIN the hand drawn geographic components are posted on a wall alongside a plotter printout of the first draft geography and first scale labels and the original reference pages.

• the typonyms spreadsheet WHEREIN the names of all typonyms in Middle-earth are cataloged, WHEREUPON I track my progress and status for every label and icon, and WHEREUPON you are welcome to make contributions and corrections.

• the etymology spreadsheet WHEREIN the etymologies of all typonyms in Middle-earth are cataloged and WHEREUPON you are welcome to make contributions and corrections.

• the references spreadsheet WHEREIN links to supplemental resources for each location on the map may be cataloged and WHEREUPON you are welcome to make contributions and corrections.

• a distributed version control repository WHEREIN the source code for this site and the means to generate its content can be found.

© Copyright 2010 Kris Kowal. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

†Sauron Defeated: The End of the Third Age: (The History of The Lord of the Rings, Part Four); The Notion Club Papers and The Drowning of Anadûnê. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. xi, 482 pp., [2] plates. London: HarperCollinsPublishers, [6 January] 1992. xi, 482 pp. (The History of Middle-earth; 9) ISBN 0-261-10240-0

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