![]() First and foremost, the two maps share the same orientation: East is on the top, North is on the left and the West is on the bottom (you can clearly see this by looking at Britain in the bottom left corner!) – a standard feature of medieval maps (before the introduction of the compass, the East (where the sun rises) was the easiest direction to locate). This Anglo-Saxon map of the world, made in Canterbury around 1025-1050, shows a number of similarities to Tolkien’s map of Thror. © The British Library, Cotton Tiberius B v ( source) Though not so strange, perhaps, for someone who is familiar with the Middle Ages.Ī medieval map: The Cotton World Map Cotton World Map. More obviously, perhaps, is the strange alphabet (discovered and identified by Elrond as ‘moon letters’) and the little hand on the left, pointing at more moon-ish letters. Moreover, the map contains little drawings, such as a mountain, a dragon and a spider in a web, accompanied by such little texts as “there are spiders”. For one, its orientation seems off: the East is on top, North is on the left, West is on the bottom. A closer look soon reveals that this is no ordinary map. In this blog, I will regularly shed some light on the medieval in Middle-Earth, starting with the map of Thror.įound in the front matter of The Hobbit, Thror’s map is for many readers the first glimpse at Tolkien’s fictional universe. As a result, his fictional world is infused with cultural material of the Middle Ages, particularly Old English language and literature. Tolkien could not help but be inspired by the language and literature he studied and taught. As a professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford, J.
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