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Old 02-18-2019, 06:03 AM   #145
Huinesoron
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Join Date: Nov 2017
Location: The north-west of the Old World, east of the Sea
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Huinesoron is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.Huinesoron is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zigūr View Post
UPDATE: Maybe it originates from the "official" (ie film-official) maps made for the Hobbit films, e.g. this. I wonder why on earth anyone felt the need to add a non-canonical element to the maps for that. Maybe at some point in the film script "Eastern Dwarves" were going to be mentioned or something, along with the kitchen sink presumably. However, the Reddit person claims (in a rather vehement discourse in another thread) that they pre-date even the Lord of the Rings films, although they don't give any evidence for that.
Someone else on the Reddit thread links to the map from the Fellowship movie, which also features them. Neither movie map shows the weirdly quartered forest, though; that seems original to Amazon (and to my mind confirms that they're intending to go there).

Those rivers coming east off the Sea of Rhun aren't on the Tolkien maps either; they seem to originate from the old Middle-earth Role-Playing game (MERP). This map (1997) shows them, for instance, though I can't find any maps around that date that extend further east. (This version from 1982 doesn't show the rivers or the mountains.)

Interestingly, overlaying either Ambarkanta map IV or V onto my map matching Beleriand to Himling-Fuin-Morwen (you can line up the Blue Mountains and the shore of Beleriand easily, and the endpoint of the March lines up with the Bay of Balar nicely) puts the Orocarni anywhere between the eastern edge of Mirkwood, and the Misty Mountains themselves. It's pretty clear that Tolkien originally thought of his world as a lot smaller, and that the Misty Mountains and the lands around them were a much later addition.

Someone on the Reddit thread has pointed out that the compass is labelled really weirdly: instead of N-E-S-W, it reads D-Th-Nd/Ng-Z/Nj (depending on which version of the Cirth you look at; it can't be Hobbit-style runes or Norse runes, because it uses characters those don't have). That doesn't match any of the known Middle-earth languages (and no, it's not a copy of the Thorin's Map compass either), and the Hobbit/FotR maps from the films were labelled in English.

My best guess is that they used a font set up in a strange order - the Shadow of War game did that with their Tengwar, and people are generally pretty bad about checking. But you never know, there might be something to it.

hS
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