Hildorien
 

what is Hildorien

The only thing really said about Hildórien is that the first Men awoke there and that it is in the east somewhere.

[ February 24, 2002: Message edited by: Bruce MacCulloch ]

Hildorien is translated from Quenyan into "The land of the hildor", and hildor is what the eldar call men, so basically its the land of men.

I once ran across a map which I have regrettably lost [img]smilies/frown.gif[/img] that shows all the lands of Middle Earth ever imagined by Tolkien in relation to each other. In it Hildorien is a good ways east and a little to the north of the Sea of Rhun, and pretty much due east of the Iron Hills. It is large and mountainous. If my memory serves me correctly, if Hobbiton is roughly equivalent to England, Mordor is somewhere in the middle of the eastern Mediterranean, and Hildorien would therefore be not too far away from, and north of, the Himalayas. The Russian Steppes, I guess.

was this map something you found on the internet or did you find it else where? That would be nice to have

I don't think that it was made by JRRT himself, or by Christopher or anyone else with any real say in the matter. So, it would be impossible for the map to be canonical.

I expect it was based on maps found in the Ambarkanta, in The Shaping of Middle Earth (HoME IV). Hildorien is shown on these maps. These were the only complete maps of Middle Earth Tolkien ever drew, and they are very sketchy. Personally, I wouldn't like to think of them as 'Canon'. They were made before the Lord of the Rings was even begun, so Tolkien almost certainly would have changed his mind about a great many things.

The map was in an 8 1/2 x 11 paperback called "The Tolkien Scrapbook". It was a booklength fanzine from the 70s. I can't say for sure anymore whether it was the genuine article from JRRT's own stuff or whether it was <ahem> something much less. I remember believing at the time that it was indeed JRRT's, but I was young and naive back then (at least a little less so than now) and I can't say for sure.