I haven't really tought of that before. I knew that Tolkien wanted to create a mythology for England but I never tought of it that way. I think it's a good teori that when the elves leave, Middle Earth looses it's magic and eventually turning into the world as we know it. But it dosen't feel right to me. I think it's a bit sad if it is that way. I like to think as Arda as an whole other world far from here. It's a hard to believe that Middle Earth should turn into this strange world

Aftenstjerne

yeah me too. for a while i did wonder if this world is meant to be middle earth but then...eventhough the elves went to the havens what about the hobbits and the dwarves. i rather middle earth be the way Tolkien left it than be a continuation and be corrupted by this world's filth.

He did intend for it to be a mythology for England (with us sorely lacking one) But if you read the start of the Fellowship of the Ring (possibly in the prologue) you might notice he says that Hobbits are rarely seen these days, as they hide well, and we are too noisy. So whilst it is very different to our world ME has been linked by the great man himself But bear in mind, The War of the Ring was in the Third Age of Arda, and he suggested we are in the sixth or seventh age, so lots would have changed.

But I agree, I prefer to think of it as somewhere completely different

Lol, so far I agree with all of you. Even if he himself linked Middle-earth to our awful (well, mostly-awful) Earth, it's still nicer to think of them as being two separate places. Of course, you have to wonder what he thought of the USA, if he links the two worlds, and all the Elves sail west to Valinor....and guess what is in roughly the same spot on our map!! Yep, you guessed it. The USA. Lol. That's a pretty awful thought, honestly. Something would have had to have happened to all the Valar, Elves, and Maiar.

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i completely forgot about that

Well, if the US was Middle-Earth, and Frodo and Sam had to go south and east...that would put Mordor right around Florida-lol!

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i would just like to point out that valinor is outside of the realm of the earth so it is definitely not america.

i love the idea that middle-earth is europe thousands of years ago and that everything tolkien writes about really happened. one of my favourite things about tolkien is the way he writes fantasy that feels like history. i connect to his writings because they connect to my world. i'd love to believe that that was my heritage and thinking of middle-earth as some other place would completely ruin it for me.

anyhow, i disagree that this earth is awful. what man has done to it may not be so nice, but there's still a lot of beauty here and i hate to hear people dismiss it as "filth". i for one see the beauty of middle-earth in the here and now, so i don't think it is so unbelievable that tolkien's middle-earth could have turned into this.

My friend and I both think that it existed once upon a time, like during the Middle Ages or something, but it was in an undiscovered part of the world so it wasn't really recorded but passed down until it got to Tolkien and he wrote it all down. Even though I'm not like 'Yeah, Middle Earth is real as sure as I'm Lalaithnindil on this forum' I hate it when people compare LotR to a myth.

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I set up a thread like this in Random LOTR stuff.

I believe that because remains of Hobbits have actually been discovered, that Tolkien may have been part of Middle-Earth, should it have been our world. It's such an interesting thought but it's very beliveable.

I mean The world was run by the diminion of men, no elves, hobbits nor dwarves are left...only humans. I like to believe that Middle-Earth still exists as Middle-Earth somewhere though because I do actually believe that Middle-Earth exists be it somewhere else right now

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middle-earth still exists, but now we call it europe. there is actually at least one anglo-saxon text - the one that inspired tolkien to write the voyage of earandil - that refers to middle-earth, and seeing as the anglo-saxon peoples were germanic, it's a pretty fair guess that they were talking about europe. so there is a tradition of calling europe middle-earth.

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Wow! I didn't know that! That's cool that is!

Well anyway I still like to say that Middle-Earth exists or existed but mostly exists somewhere and yes...i like the theory of coming up with names. Maybe i was once Frodos-Guide lmao!

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These thoughts all sound very good to me, but at one point I would like to say something.. If Middle-Earth truly is the Ancient Europe (or in another way was a part of this world) than how did it come that far that we are now ruining that world? In Lord of the Rings you can read about how bad the industry of Saruman was, so why make people the same mistakes again...
How do you think of that?

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that's the way things go - people bang on about how we can learn from history, but we never do. we repeat exactly the same mistakes over and over again because we're not willing to change - that's why people are still killing each other in stupid wars over disputed territory that have been going on for thousands of years. i mean, everyone said after world war one that there'd never be another war like it, and yet 20 years later europe was at it again; then after world war two everyone said that nothing like the holocaust would ever happen again, and yet 50 years later there was ethinc cleansing and genocide in bosnia. we're like sysiphus pushing his rock up the hill - everytime we think we've got somewhere, it all goes to pot again in this endless cycle.

sorry for that rant, it just really upsets me that people can be stupid and so heartless as to keep on making the same mistakes. i know the examples i gave were all about war, but the same goes for other things, like the example lhunardien gave of the way we are still damaging our earth (despite knowing that if we don't look after it better we'll lose it soon).

despite all that, i still hold by my earlier post in which i said that there's a lot of beauty left in this world (and it's worth fighting for, as sam would tell you). don't write it off just yet.

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erm... has everyone forgot Arthur and the knights of the round table? I'm pretty sure they're all myths and though we are lacking compared to Greece and Scandinavia I still think we have a pretty good story don't we? I don't know, but we have Merlin, Morgana, Sir Lancelot, Gawain... etc. And if Europe is probably the one continent with the most myths and history we have Greek, Nordic, Icelandic... I mean I'm pretty sure that Europe already has a lot of mythology. Still I am so glad Tolkien decided to add to it!

I like Tolkien's idea though. There's quite a lot of a back story in LotR which comes from Nordic Mythology. Maybe Tolkien was hoping to be like Pliny, in a thousand years people might pick up LotR and thing it actually happened XD

Also Middle-Earth in Norse mythology was the name for the land of men, also known as Midgard. There were nine worlds all together, two for two different types of god (the Aesir and the Vanir) a world for the light elves and another for the dark elves (dwarves) Nifelheim (hell) the home of Hella and another couple which I'm a little rusty on. The thing with the rings also comes from Norse Mythology.

There are about a thousand parallels between LotR and myths:

Castor and Pollux are Elros and Elrond; Eru is Eros; Odin is Sauron; Surt is the Balrog; in the Volsung Saga the hero Sigurd discovers the sleeping maiden Brynhild on a bier = Eowyn and her supposed death. Then there's the tree symbolism which is like Yggdrasil (the world tree). There's Zeus/Manwe, Rome/Gondor Roland/Boromir.

You just have to look hard for it and you'll find the differences. I discovered a lot doing Classic Civilization at school.

yeah, europe does have heaps of mythology, but it's all specific to one country/small group of countries. what tolkien did was create something that encompasses the entire continent - he didn't just add to european mythology, he brought it all together.

you don't even have to look hard for the parellels. they're all right there, and i think that was the whole point - tolkien wanted to present middle earth as history, and being backed up by other sources in a way gives it more validity; and the prescence of ideas we're already familiar with makes middle earth feel more familiar, as though we already know it.

i strongly disagree with some of your parallels. eru is God, not eros - the only similarity between eru and eros is phonological; and the odin/sauron parallel is not exact as elements of odin are also found in saruman and gandalf (helps set saruman and gandalf up as negative doppelgangers where each represents what the other could have become)

and no, i hadn't forgotten the arthurian tales, but i'd describe them as legends rather myths.

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