Here Be Dragons (12 page)

This profusion of names and categories obscures the fact that there are also places, and kinds of places, apparently not worth knowing about, however. Just as there are actually very few forests on the general map, there are not many places where people live, at least in terms
of towns, villages, cities, castles, fortresses, harbors, towers, and so on. These signs of civilization (human or otherwise) are few and far between on the map, giving it an impression not only of bareness but of desolation. Closer examination reveals that the guiding principle for inclusion is, again, the story, not size or social or political relevance. Nor are the respective marks mimetic in relation to a place's relevance to the story. Tharbad (mentioned a few times in passing) is more prominently marked than the Ford at Rivendell (where Frodo faces—and escapes—the Black Riders); Lond Daer (which does not feature in the story) is as prominently marked as the Grey Havens (where the last Elven ship leaves, marking the end of the Third Age). The addition of places other than those of the story affects the reader's perception of the story world, regardless of whether the map is seen as a paratextual element or as a doceme. As the former, the map extends the world of the text; as the latter, the world of the total document is the sum of the world as portrayed on the map and in the text. Both perspectives offer insights into how the many places reinforce secondary belief in the world, implying that Middle-earth is more than the setting of a story.

The west of Middle-earth is not a place that crawls with people, at least if we go by the lack of settlements. This impression is corroborated by the small number of roads, the tiny dotted trails that wind across the land. Compared to the Shire map, where roads are given pride of place, the world outside is clearly not a place to go traveling. It is wilderness, untamed and unsafe (but not unknown). This is stressed even further by the fact that no administrative (political or other) borders are to be found anywhere on the general map. Whatever borders there are coincide with natural borders: the Mountains of Shadow suggest the border to Mordor; the end of the respective forests are the borders of Fangorn and Lothlórien. The Ered Nimrais provides a border between Rohan and Gondor (and the different languages reflected in the names suggest another border between them along the Mering Stream, between Eastfold and Anórien).

Where the Shire map subjects the landscape to its culturally constructed borders, the general map does the opposite. It portrays an internal tension between its natural landscape and cultural control of that landscape. While the profusion of names emphasizes how well known, how defined, the secondary world is, the scarcity of cultural constructions, be they roads, villages, or borders, stresses the world's wilderness and depopulation. This tension runs through Tolkien's text, clearly
visible, for instance, in the ambivalent stance between tame and wild nature, where parklike Lothlórien is set against primeval Fangorn, the entwives' horticulture against the ents' forests, even Shire countryside against Old Forest wilderness.
¹²³

The map does not, however, encode this tension in the schematic structure that Pierre Jourde proposes when he divides western Middle-earth into one region of civilization and goodness (Gondor and Eriador) and one of wilderness and evil (Mordor and Rhovanion).
¹²⁴
While the conflict between Gondor and Mordor is plain, not least in the text, neither Eriador nor Rhovanion is a region that can easily be interpreted as
either
wild
or
civilized, and even less as good or evil. The former region may contain the Shire, Bree, and Rivendell, but it is also a place of lost realms, both good and evil, where Rangers do battle against evil beings in the wilderness. Rhovanion, on the other hand, contains the evil strongholds of Sauron and Saruman but is also dotted with civilized societies such as Erebor, Dale, Lothlórien, and Rohan. Like the conflict between good and evil, the tension between wild and tame is present all over the map—visible, but never simple. Jeremy Black somewhat misses this point when he claims that the map of western Middle-earth “gives no real sense of the spatial range and potency of wisdom and evil, good and ill, that are important themes in [Tolkien's] narrative.”
¹²⁵
The age-old conflict between the “evil” side of Morgoth and Sauron and the “good” people who oppose them can be traced all over the map: from the notes about Arnor, Angmar, and major battlefields to the very absence of Beleriand west of the Blue Mountains; from Mordor and the empty lands beyond to Dol Goldur and Mirkwood, even to the icebay of Forochel, a remnant of Morgoth's icy reign—the “spatial range” of evil is stamped on the map, a part of Middle-earth's history and development.

Middle-earth's history and the tension between past and present is a theme as clearly visible in the general map as is the secondary world's topography. The very label of the map ensures that the reader comes to this map with a historical awareness: “The West of a Middle-earth at the End of the Third Age.” Apart from instilling a sense of finality, it accentuates the fact that Middle-earth has a past (three ages of it, at the very least) as well as a future, a Fourth Age from which it is possible to establish the end of the previous age. Already the map label can thus explain why Ricardo Padrón feels that the suspension of Tolkien's world between
a deep past and an impending apocalypse is encoded in the map.
¹²⁶
Parts of this past are then explicitly marked on the map. In a particular kind of script (outlined capitals), the approximate location of “The Lost Realm of Arnor” is given and, with smaller letters, the regions Arthedain, Cardolan, and Rhudaur are marked. Even if nothing is known about the world, the location of a “Lost Realm” gives the map temporal thickness. Along with the note stating that “Here was of old the Witch-realm of Angmar” in northern Eriador, the references to the old kingdom actually cover the history from the founding of Arnor in the year 3320 of the Second Age, through its division into three realms in the year 861 of the Third Age, the establishing of Angmar (circa 1300), the respective falls of Rhudar, Cardolan, and Arthedain (in 1409, 1636, and 1974), and Gondor's final defeat of Angmar in 1975 (RK, Appx A, 1014–17; Appx B, 1060–61). References to Arnor's history do more than add three millennia to the map's duration, however. Numerous map features are relevant only in connection to the lost realm's long history, such as the old cities of Annúminas and Fornost and the arrow that points off the map to the icebay of Forochel. The map creates temporal depth through the inclusion of references to Cardolan and Rhudaur in much the same way that the text brings temporal resonance to the story events by including the history of Weathertop and the fall of Rhudaur (cf. FR, I, xi, 181; xii, 196). Similarly, the comment that South Gondor is “now a debatable and desert land” adds to the theme of Middle-earth history with its reference to the Gondor civil war (RK, Appx A, 1022–23; Appx B, 1061), and the “now” emphasizes the diachronic nature of the map.

A handful of other marks similarly draw attention to the map's diachronicity, but with less focus on a specific time and more focus on how time passes. These marks invoke the past through the word
old
: Old Forest, Old Ford, and Old Forest Road. In a world where the past is more present than the present, where ancient conflicts and mistakes return to haunt the living, where some of the living actually recall events several millennia in the past, there is, in fact, still a need to refer to a forest, a ford, a road, as
old
. That which is old has the power to withstand the ravages of time, it seems; the Old Forest Road runs straight through the great Mirkwood forest, obviously remarkable enough not to succumb to the forest. The Old Forest is kept back from the Shire by a hedge and a gate. The forest, in particular, appears to be
oldest
rather than
old
. It is associated with Tom Bombadil, who “remembers the first raindrop and
the first acorn” (FR, I, vii, 129), but also with Treebeard, “the oldest living thing that still walks beneath the Sun” (TT, III, v, 488); it is a remnant of the primeval woodlands that once covered much of Eriador.
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Despite the declaration of the label, the map does not refer merely to its own present but also to its past; its tense is only overtly present. A closer investigation uncovers traces of history, explicit as well as implicit. To Padrón, the many place-names bear witness to the richness of the world's past;
¹²⁸
but there is more to the map's encoded history than names. Features are included to enable the reader to chart Bilbo's adventures in
The Hobbit
; battlefields and mass graves of old can be found outside Mordor (Dagorlad and the Dead Marshes); and even the rule of, and war against, Morgoth is hinted at. (The icebay of Forochel is the result of the great cold of Morgoth, and the broken Blue Mountains and absent Beleriand are the outcome of the War of Wrath that finally defeated him.) The map's duration thus not only includes the end of the Third Age; it is actually thick enough to go back to the First Age and the battle with Morgoth. This temporal thickness is not immediately apparent to a reader who comes to the map for the first time, but if the map is used as a reference tool during the reading, the encoded history becomes apparent. The land is one that has evolved over the ages, and this evolution is clearly present in the map. Although the story has been a guiding principle for the cartographer, the history of Middle-earth has been just as important. Indeed, the meeting of historical and linguistic setting with story that characterizes the novel is evident already from the general map.

The significance of story as well as history is noticeable from spatial positions. The area where explicit historical features are densest is also where we find the beginning of the story. Unlike the Shire map, where the beginning is located near the center of the map, the story begins near the top left corner of the general map. In Western society, top left is a privileged position: it is where we start our reading on a page, and the Fellowship travels across the map rather the way our gaze scans a newspaper (or web) page, more or less diagonally from top left to bottom right. The landscape, and the characters' journey through it, seems to be set out to make reading the map and finding the characters' route as easy as possible, emphasizing once more how the story is a guiding principle of the map.

A guiding principle it is, but not an unbreakable law: the location
where the story ends is unclear. Certainly, Sam's final return home and announcement that he is back is the obvious ending of the book, in terms of being the last few words of the final chapter; but there are other ways of considering where the story ends. There are at least three main contenders for what constitutes the end of
The Lord of the Rings
, each bringing a particular aspect of the story to a close.
¹²⁹
The diagonal journey across the map ends with the disposal of the Ring in Orodruin, a moment that marks the end of the hobbits' quest and the victory over Sauron's evil. Spatially, this ending marks the farthest point away from the Shire on the general map, in the same way as the dead and deadly land of Mordor is the total opposite of the fertile and pleasant Shire. The subsequent defeat of Saruman marks another conclusion, with the defeat of an evil that is less cosmic and more human in scale. This ending, as well as Sam's return home in the book's final lines, is set in the Shire. The journey has taken the protagonists full circle; the hero has returned, having traveled, as in
The Hobbit
, there and back again.
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A third possible ending is the departure of Frodo, Gandalf, and the elves from the Grey Havens, an event that symbolizes the departure of magic from the world, not just the defeat of evil. This ending points to the west, off the map and into the unknown. Each ending thus relates differently to the map and the journey that trails across it, allowing the story as a whole to have a threefold ending of arrival, return, and departure into the unknown.

The Shire and the Grey Havens are located at, or very close to, the place where the story begins. The more far-reaching consequences of the story resolution—the disappearance of magic and the arrival of the Age of Men—are worldwide and have no specific location, but they are alluded to at the center of the map, another privileged position. There, the forests of Fangorn and Lothlórien are found next to each other. These forests offer a much subtler connection to the depths of Middle-earth's history than the verbal signs that refer to Arnor's location of old,
¹³¹
but whereas the lost realm of Arnor is restored through the destruction of the Ring and the return of the king, the ancient forest realms come to an end. The end of the Third Age is the end of magic in Middle-earth, and the world changes. The juxtaposition of Lothlórien and Fangorn thus foreshadows Treebeard's meeting with Galadriel and Celeborn near the end of
The Return of the King
. “[T]he world is changing,” the old ent says to the elven rulers, “I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air” (RK, VI, vi, 959). The change he feels is the price for defeating Sauron. “Much fantasy does not have what we could call a
‘happy ending,'” Attebery observes in
Strategies of Fantasy
. “Indeed, the fantasist often seems to start with the idea of such a resolution and then to qualify it, finding every hidden cost in the victory.”
¹³²
Middle-earth is losing its magic: that is what Treebeard feels, and it is on that loss, on the doom of elves and ents and all things magical, that the map is centered. The “End of the Third Age” proclaimed by the map label is, in fact, the end of magic in Middle-earth.
¹³³

The middle of the map presents what is at stake, but the periphery warns about the enemy. Ranged around the northern, eastern, and southern borders of the map are names that signal the threats to the people of the West. The Witch-king of Angmar returns as leader of the Ringwraiths, and the peoples of Rhûn, Khand, and Harad—the Southrons and Easterlings—ally themselves to Sauron. Being marginalized also means being primitive. The Forodwaith, or Northmen, became Gondor's allies but were still considered “lesser Men” (lesser, that is, than the Númenorean descendants in Gondor and Arnor), along with the Southrons and Easterlings. The privileged direction in Middle-earth is west: western Middle-earth is superior to other parts; the humans from Númenor (an island once situated in the sea to the west of Middle-earth) are superior to other humans; and to the west of Númenor is the Blessed Realm, where the semidivine Valar reside. Regardless of whether the periphery is teeming with the enemy or offers the only way to sail to an Elysium off the map, it is the unknown margin outside the relevant middle, beyond the reach of the story.