“It Always Had Been a Vast Globe…”

[Amalcarin]

Abstract

The article purports to present an exhaustive list of references to the Round World cosmology in the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien from the 1940s to the 1970s and demonstrate that he firmly adhered to the new cosmology during the last decade and a half of his life and solved the conflict between it and the legends of the Silmarillion by accepting the idea of a multi-perspective legendarium.

“It Always Had Been a Vast Globe…”

It is well-known that in the late 1950s Tolkien made an attempt to revise the cosmology of his imaginary world (or rather his mythical cosmology of our world in an imaginary historical period – see further Appendix A to this article) in order to make it more realistic and credible for the reader than, as he put it, “the Flat Earth and the astronomically absurd business of the making of the Sun and Moon”, which descended from the earliest forms of his mythology. This resulted in a new conception of his world, often referred to as the Round World cosmology, which was widely reflected in his writings of that period, notably texts of Myths Transformed published in Morgoth’s Ring. One of those texts contains an abandoned narrative, on which Christopher Tolkien commented:

It may be, though I have no evidence on the question one way or the other, that he came to perceive from such experimental writing as this text that the old structure was too comprehensive, too interlocked in all its parts, indeed its roots too deep, to withstand such a devastating surgery (Morgoth’s Ring, p. 383).

This passage is sometimes cited as an argument that Tolkien allegedly abandoned the Round World cosmology due to the difficulty of reconciling his legends with it; but what evidence there is shows that instead, after some attempts to rewrite the legends, he settled on the idea of Mannish transmission of the Silmarillion, which suggests that the legends of the Silmarillion were traditions handed on by Men in Númenor and later in Middle-earth (Arnor and Gondor), but already in Beleriand blended and confused with their own myths and cosmic ideas and thus not necessarily reflecting the cosmological truths that would have been known to the loremasters of the High Elves (see further Appendix B to this article). Thus it seems that the problem was largely solved by recognizing that the legends do not have to be fully adjusted to the new cosmology. It seems likely that if the Silmarillion had been published during Tolkien’s lifetime, it would not have been very different in this regard from the version edited by Christopher Tolkien, but some comments on cosmology or pieces of Elven-lore would have been given in notes or appendices, as indicated by the following remark:

The cosmogonic myths are Númenórean, blending Elven-lore with human myth and imagination. A note should say that the Wise of Númenor recorded that the making of stars was not so, nor of Sun and Moon. For Sun and stars were all older than Arda (Morgoth’s Ring, p. 374).

Another argument for the alleged abandonment of the Round World cosmology by Tolkien is a reference to “the Change of the World” found in Last Writings (The Peoples of Middle-earth, p. 381). However, similar references occur twice in the texts of Myths Transformed (Morgoth’s Ring, pp. 397, 427). One can conclude that these words do not necessarily imply the previously flat Earth becoming round and may merely refer to the removal of Aman from the physical world, by whatever means, which surely remains a thing in the Round World cosmology. This problem is considered in the text named The Númenórean Catastrophe & End of “Physical” Aman (c. 1959), published in The Nature of Middle-earth (pp. 343–5), which suggests that after the Downfall of Númenor Aman was removed from the physical world into another mode of existence, being preserved in the memory of the Valar and Elves, its former landmass becoming America. This notion, which probably first appeared here, was reaffirmed a few years later, as will be shown below.

It can be seen that the history of the Round World cosmology in fact goes much further back than the late 1950s. Tolkien considered making the world always a globe and altering the story of the Sun in late pencilled notes on Diagram I of the Ambarkanta (The Shaping of Middle-earth, pp. 242–3). The appearance of such names as Arda and Eä in those notes suggests that they were written in the late 1940s and thus closely contemporary with such experimental writings as “The Fashion of the World” published in the essay “Editing the Tolkienian Manuscript” by Carl F. Hostetter (The Great Tales Never End, pp. 138–9), the Round World version of the Ainulindalë (see Morgoth’s Ring, pp. 3–7, 39–44) and The Drowning of Anadûnê, in which the Messengers of the Valar taught the Númenóreans about the true shape of the Earth:

And behold! the fashion of the Earth is such that a girdle may be set about it. Or as an apple it hangeth on the branches of Heaven, and it is round and fair, and the seas and lands are but the rind of the fruit, which shall abide upon the tree until the ripening that Eru hath appointed (Sauron Defeated, p. 364).

But this teaching was later gainsaid by Sauron, who “bade men think that the world was not a circle closed, but there lay many seas and lands for their winning” (Sauron Defeated, p. 367), and in the end the false cosmology prevailed:

For in the youth of the world it was a hard saying to men that the Earth was not plain as it seemed to be, and few even of the Faithful of Anadûnê had believed in their hearts this teaching; and when in after days, what by star-craft, what by the voyages of ships that sought out all the ways and waters of the Earth, the Kings of Men knew that the world was indeed round, then the belief arose among them that it had so been made only in the time of the great Downfall, and was not thus before. Therefore they thought that, while the new world fell away, the old road and the path of the memory of the Earth went on towards heaven, as it were a mighty bridge invisible. And many were the rumours and tales among them concerning mariners and men forlorn upon the sea, who by some grace or fate had entered in upon the ancient way and seen the face of the world sink below them, and so had come to the Lonely Isle, or verily to the Land of Amân that was, and had looked upon the White Mountain, dreadful and beautiful, ere they died (Sauron Defeated, pp. 392–3).

These ideas did not displace Tolkien’s original Flat World cosmology at once, presumably set aside due to feedback from Katherine Farrer (see Morgoth’s Ring, pp. 5–6); but it may be noted that even in his writings from the early-to-mid 1950s some details can be found that seem to fit the new cosmological conception much better than the old one. There appears in the Narn i Chîn Húrin the name of one Ithilbor (presumably “Moon-fist”), whose son Saeros was among the Nandor who “took refuge in Doriath after the fall of their lord Denethor upon Amon Ereb, in the first battle of Beleriand” (Unfinished Tales, p. 77), while in the Flat World chronological tradition expressed in the Annals of Aman and the Grey Annals this battle predated the raising of the Sun and Moon. (Although one could perhaps argue that Ithilbor might have been an after-name of this character rather than his original name.) Similarly anachronistic from the point of view of this tradition is the mention of the Moon at the time of the Awaking of the Dwarves in Gimli’s song of Durin, which appears in The Lord of the Rings as published in 1954–5:

The world was young, the mountains green,
No stain yet on the Moon was seen,
No words were laid on stream or stone
When Durin woke and walked alone.
(The Lord of the Rings, p. 315)

Another similar reference to the existence of the Moon in prehistoric times appears in a short poem about the Ents recited by Gandalf to King Théoden later in the book:

‘It is not wizardry, but a power far older,’ said Gandalf: ‘a power that walked the earth, ere elf sang or hammer rang.

Ere iron was found or tree was hewn,
When young was mountain under moon;
Ere ring was made, or wrought was woe,
It walked the forests long ago.’
(The Lord of the Rings, p. 544)

In the chapter Treebeard of The Lord of the Rings (pp. 475–6), the eponymous character recalls how the Entwives gave their minds “to the meads in the sunshine” before they crossed the Anduin “when the Darkness came in the North”. Given the further description of the events, he clearly means the darkness that came from Morgoth in the First Age, which is indeed the interpretation given by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull in The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion (p. 387). What exactly is meant is up to interpretation, but if the reference is to the return of Morgoth in Angband, then the Entwives must have known the sunshine even earlier. (Many thanks to Elthir from The Tolkien Forum for sharing this evidence with me.)

Appendix E to The Lord of the Rings (p. 1123) provides a list of the names of the Fëanorian letters, among which there is “áre sunlight (or esse name)”. It is further noted that “áre was originally áze, but when this z became merged with 21, the sign was in Quenya used for the very frequent ss of that language, and the name esse was given to it”. (The number stands for a weak untrilled r, sometimes represented by Tolkien as ř.) The word “originally” can hardly mean anything but “at the time when the alphabet was invented”, and in any case earlier than z became merged with ř in the Ñoldorin dialect of Quenya, which happened, according to the Outline of Phonology, “not long before the Exile” (Parma Eldalamberon 19, p. 73). This must mean that the concept of sunlight already existed during the Days of Bliss of Valinor when the Tengwar of Fëanor were devised. (But Parma Eldalamberon 17, p. 148 defines āze, āre as “warmth, especially of the sun, sunlight” and derives it from the stem √AS glossed as “warmth”, which makes it possible to assume that the more specific application to sunlight was not original.) The Lord of the Rings as published can thus be seen to allude to the new cosmology no less than to the old one (see further Appendix C to this article).

In the late 1950s, Tolkien returned to the Round World cosmology and wrote a bundle of texts depending on it that covered various topics, among which were the demiurgic labours of the Valar in the beginning of days and their first war against Melkor, the star-making of Varda and the origin of the Sun and Moon, the establishment of Valinor and the Marring of Arda, the significance of the Two Trees and the events that unfolded in Valinor after their death, the Awaking of the Children of Ilúvatar and the origin of the Orcs. These texts were published in the section Myths Transformed in Morgoth’s Ring (pp. 367–431) and constitute the fundament of the new cosmology.

Much evidence of the Round World cosmology can be found in other texts dating from 1958–60 and thus contemporary with those of Myths Transformed. Tolkien’s final rewriting of the Quenta Silmarillion mentions the stars in the Dome of Varda, i.e. the lesser firmament over Valinor, the idea of which was introduced in the texts of Myths Transformed (see Morgoth’s Ring, pp. 385–7). A note and Glossary to the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth equate Arda with the Solar System and state that there is nothing in the traditions of the Eldar that seriously conflicts with present human notions of the Solar System and its size and position relative to the Universe (Morgoth’s Ring, pp. 337–8, 349). The Tale of Adanel associated with the Athrabeth mentions the existence of the Sun and Moon during the lifetime of the first generation of Men (Morgoth’s Ring, pp. 346–7), whose Awaking at that point had been moved far into the past in comparison with the earlier legend (see Morgoth’s Ring, p. 327 n. 16). Quendi and Eldar mentions “the glooms and the clouds dimming the sun and the stars during the War of the Valar and Melkor” and the Dome of Varda and cites the Valarin names of the Sun and Moon (said to mean “appointed heat” and “bright mirror” respectively), which must have been recorded before the Exile (The War of the Jewels, pp. 373, 399, 401). The Cuivienyarna (The War of the Jewels, pp. 420–4) has several mentions of the times of day and a direct mention of the Sun at the time of the Awaking of the Quendi. Finally, the large collection of texts published in Part One: Time and Ageing of The Nature of Middle-earth, most of which date from those years, expressly acknowledges the existence of the Sun and Moon as a primeval part of Arda and relies on Sun-years in various chronologies of the early First Age and generational schemes of the Quendi (in connection with which see Appendix D to this article), as well as mentions such a characteristic detail of the new cosmology as the Dome of Varda.

In 1960–1, Tolkien drew a series of heraldic devices for important characters of his legendarium, most of which were reproduced in Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien (no. 47). Among them can be found the devices of Finwë and Elwë, which depict the Sun and Moon against the background of the day and night sky. (This interpretation is unambiguously confirmed by the inscriptions “Winged Sun” and “Winged Moon” assigned to them in the original manuscript.) Of particular interest is the presence of the Sun on the device of Finwë, which would be impossible within the framework of the old cosmology, as noted by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull:

When he assigned this device to Finwë Tolkien would have had in mind his late reworking of his ‘Silmarillion’ cosmology, in which the Sun and Moon existed from the beginning of the world, and so during Finwë’s lifetime. In most early versions of his tales Finwë was slain before the Sun and Moon were created from the Two Trees (J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist & Illustrator, p. 194).

In 1962, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil was published. It included the poem “The Hoard”, which begins with the demiurgic making of silver and gold by the Valar (as explained by Tolkien himself in Concerning… “The Hoard”) and mentions the Sun and Moon as already existing at the time of their labours:

When the moon was new and the sun young
of silver and gold the gods sung:
in the green grass they silver spilled,
and the white waters they with gold filled.

But these words can be seen as a mere cliché, and the plot of the poem as a whole, supposed to have been inspired by the story of the hoard of Nargothrond, is not historically accurate.

In Anaxartaron Onyalië, presumably written in 1963 and used in the published Silmarillion to form the second part of Chapter 2 Of Aulë and Yavanna, Yavanna speaks of her great trees that “sang to Eru amid the wind and the rain and the glitter of the Sun”. Christopher Tolkien comments on this that “the last words were omitted in S on account of the implication that the Sun existed from the beginning of Arda” (The War of the Jewels, p. 341).

In 1964, Tolkien was interviewed by Denys Gueroult about The Lord of the Rings. During the interview, he said that Aman was part of the physical world until the Downfall of Númenor, and then proceeded to discuss the effects of the Catastrophe on the Earth and the Blessed Realm. (The full recording of the interview can be found here. The passage quoted below goes from 35:17 to 36:08. Note that there is no official transcription, and the one presented here may contain misreadings insignificant for the purpose of this article.)

Then became an intellectual... People lived there only in memory, it lived in time, but not present time... And of course Númenor was drowned and the earthly paradise removed, so then... you could then get to sail to America. [In the] Third Age the world became round, you see, it always had been a vast globe, but they... but people could now sail around, discovered it’s round. And that’s my solution of the... I also wanted to give the fall of Atlantis some universal application. Because the point is really, I’ve written this as a story [about] language, as they get to that, you suddenly see the real curvature of the world going down like a bridge... You’re on a line which leads to what was. Of course I don’t [know] what your theory of time is, but what was, what is... or it never had an existence must... still has that same existence, but that’s just so... we won’t go too... you can’t go too deeply in[to] those [things], but they really are sailing back to a... to world of memory.

It is notable that in this interview both the idea of Aman existing in memory after the Catastrophe (which can probably be understood through the lens of J.W. Dunne’s theory of time) and the fact that the world of his legendarium “always had been a vast globe” were confirmed by Tolkien publicly and not in his private writings.

By 1965, Tolkien had “nearly completed” The Mariner’s Wife. The tale describes Aldarion’s departure from Númenor as follows: “[Aldarion] sailed from the land; and ere day was over he saw it sink shimmering into the sea, and last of all the peak of the Meneltarma as a dark finger against the sunset” (Unfinished Tales, p. 175). The fact that the land disappears from the bottom up must imply the existence of the Earth’s curvature before the Downfall of Númenor. Curiously, there are passages of similar effect in the Akallabêth, which notes that even the far-sighted Númenóreans could only see the haven of Avallónë in the west “from the Meneltarma, maybe, or from some tall ship that lay off their western coast as far as it was lawful for them to go”, and tells that at the coming of Ar-Pharazôn to Middle-earth “men saw his sails coming up out of the sunset”. Whether these details were retained here purposefully or not, they can be seen to derive from The Drowning of Anadûnê. On the other hand, there is some evidence that the Flat World of the Ambarkanta was not really flat but curved (see further Appendix E to this article).

A year later, in 1966, the third edition of The Hobbit was published. Among the changes Tolkien made to the text of the book was the following, in the chapter Flies and Spiders, noted and commented on by Douglas A. Anderson in the revised and expanded edition of The Annotated Hobbit (pp. 218–9):

1937: “In the Wide World the Wood-elves lingered in the twilight before the raising of the Sun and Moon; and afterwards they wandered in the forests that grew beneath the sunrise.” >

1966: “In the Wide World the Wood-elves lingered in the twilight of our Sun and Moon, but loved best the stars; and they wandered in the great forests that grew tall in lands that are now lost.”

In the broader context of this paragraph, the Wood-elves who lingered in Middle-earth “in the twilight of our Sun and Moon” (perhaps a reference to the darkening of the world by Melkor – see esp. Morgoth’s Ring, pp. 377–8) are contrasted with the Light-elves, Deep-elves and Sea-elves who went to Valinor and lived there for ages, and the revised reading thus implies that the Sun and Moon already existed during the Great Journey. Indeed, Douglas A. Anderson comments on this as follows:

The 1937 version of this passage is in full accord with both the early history of the Elves and the story of the making of the Sun and Moon from the last fruits of the Two Trees in Valinor, as is told in Chapter 11 of the published version of The Silmarillion. The revised reading seems to reflect Tolkien’s decision late in life to abandon this idea and accept that Middle-earth was illuminated by the Sun and Moon from its very beginning (The Annotated Hobbit, p. 219).

Sometime in the late 1960s, Tolkien composed a group of texts describing the primitive Elvish mytho-astronomical picture of the world, which was published in the chapter Dark and Light in part three of The Nature of Middle-earth (pp. 279–85). These texts clearly imply that the Sun, the Moon and even Venus (mythologically Eärendil) are celestial bodies existing from the beginning of the world, reiterate the equation of Arda with the Solar System, and note that the Earth was apparently conceived by the primitive Elves as spheroid.

Another note from the late 1960s (The Nature of Middle-earth, pp. 353–4) describes the ñaltalma, an Eldarin device for signalling from afar using the light of the Sun and Moon. It is said that the ñaltalma was, as most such things, in later days attributed to Fëanor, but was probably far older. Similar devices were independently used by the Sindar, which indicates that they probably originated in the Common Eldarin period. This scenario would be naturally impossible if the Sun and Moon were created from the Two Trees after their death.

A linguistic text from c. 1967, published in the chapter The Visible Forms of the Valar and Maiar in part three of The Nature of Middle-earth (pp. 241–5), mentions the Common Eldarin stem √phan-, noting “its very ancient application to clouds <...> as (partial) veils over the blue sky, or over the sun, moon, or stars”.

Text 2 of the chapter The Making of Lembas in part three of The Nature of Middle-earth (p. 296), dating from c. 1968, attributes the diminished virtue of the Western Corn during the Great Journey to the “dim sunlight” (another reference, it seems, to the darkening of the world by Melkor).

The Problem of Ros (c. 1968) describes the Menelrond, the great throne hall of Thingol and Melian, the high arched roof of which was adorned with silver and gems set in the order and figures of the stars in the great Dome of Valmar in Aman (The Peoples of Middle-earth, p. 371). It is not quite clear what is meant here by “the Dome of Valmar”, but Christopher Tolkien equates it with the Dome of Varda mentioned in Myths Transformed. If that is true, then the name Valmar in this case must stand for the land of the Valar as a whole, usually called Valinor, as it does in the concluding lines of Galadriel’s lament according to Tolkien’s explicit statement in The Road Goes Ever On (p. 70). In any case, another more transparent reference to the Dome of Varda occurs in a discussion of the Eldarin article dating from 1969 or later, where Tolkien explains that the words tintilar i eleni in Galadriel’s lament refer to “those stars that adorned or shone through the transparent roofs of the Domes of Varda, which were not all visible stars, nor in fact the actual stars of the firmament of the outer world” (Parma Eldalamberon 23, p. 133). Curiously, the words “the Domes of Varda” in this passage seem to refer to the roofs of the domed halls of Manwë and Varda upon Taniquetil (which is not necessarily a contradiction – see the note on the word telluma in The War of the Jewels, p. 399), but the idea of the lesser firmament over Valinor is still present.

In the interview that Tolkien gave for the “Tolkien in Oxford” 1968 BBC documentary, he stated that after the creation of the Universe by Eru Ilúvatar the Valar “were permitted by him to take up their residence in our part of the Solar System” (Tolkien Studies 15, p. 147), which must mean that the Solar System already existed.

Even more hints of the new cosmology can be found in Tolkien’s latest narratives, which contain some references to the change of the time of day, which imply the existence of the Sun at the time when it could not yet exist within the framework of the old cosmology. The Shibboleth of Fëanor (c. 1968) tells the story of the burning of the ships at Losgar:

In the night Fëanor, filled with malice, aroused Curufin, <...>
In the morning the host was mustered... (The Peoples of Middle-earth, p. 354).

Last Writings. Círdan (1972–3) describes the moment when Círdan sees the Lonely Isle departing from the shores of Beleriand:

Then, it is said, he stood forlorn looking out to sea, and it was night, <...>
From that night onwards... (The Peoples of Middle-earth, p. 386).

In a text from 1970, discussing Eöl’s journeys on horseback, Tolkien notes that his calculations assume “a latitude of about 50° N, and an astronomical situation not greatly different from ours” (The Nature of Middle-earth, p. 311 fn. 1), and the concept of latitude only makes sense if the world is round. (Many thanks to doublesharp for sharing this evidence with me.)

Finally, in a letter to Roger Lancelyn Green from 1971, having described the concept of the Straight Road, Tolkien emphasizes its mythical nature, thus reiterating the central idea of The Drowning of Anadûnê from more than two decades ago:

This general idea lies behind the events of The Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion, but it is not put forward as geologically or astronomically ‘true’; except that some special physical catastrophe is supposed to lie behind the legends and marked the first stage in the succession of Men to dominion of the world. But the legends are mainly of ‘Mannish’ origin blended with those of the Sindar (Gray-elves) and others who had never left Middle-earth (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, no. 325).

As a conclusion, it seems evident that the Round World cosmology, first considered by Tolkien in the 1940s and finally accepted by him in the late 1950s, was adhered to by him throughout the 1960s and up to his death in 1973 and never abandoned as an underlying truth of his imaginary world. The conflict between the new cosmological views and the old legends was largely solved when Tolkien accepted the idea of Mannish transmission of the Silmarillion, which transformed it into an “inner mythology” inside his world, while new texts pertaining to the authentic High-elven tradition recognized the new cosmological truth, the whole thus constituting a “multi-perspective legendarium” (to use a term suggested by Elthir from The Tolkien Forum) within which ideas and stories depending on both the old and new cosmological views can be found. Some elements of Tolkien’s earlier creation, such as the role of Ælfwine in the transmission of the Silmarillion, had to be abandoned, but the whole continued to live and evolve and only became richer.

Appendix A. Not an Imaginary World

In notes on W.H. Auden’s review of The Return of the King in 1956, Tolkien wrote the following:

I am historically minded. Middle-earth is not an imaginary world. The name is the modern form (appearing in the 13th century and still in use) of midden-erd > middel-erd, an ancient name for the oikoumenē, the abiding place of Men, the objectively real world, in use specifically opposed to imaginary worlds (as Fairyland) or unseen worlds (as Heaven or Hell). The theatre of my tale is this earth, the one in which we now live, but the historical period is imaginary. The essentials of that abiding place are all there (at any rate for inhabitants of N.W. Europe), so naturally it feels familiar, even if a little glorified by the enchantment of distance in time (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, no. 183).

This is only one of several similar comments written by Tolkien in the 1950s (see The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, no. 165, 169, 211 for others), and evidence of the validity of this idea can be found in texts from the last years of Tolkien’s life (see e.g. The Nature of Middle-earth, p. 358), as well as in the earliest forms of his mythology in The Book of Lost Tales, which were presented as stories told by the Elves in Tol Eressëa to Ælfwine of England (this model of transmission of the legends endured as late as the late 1950s). It was in these stories that the cosmogonic myths of the Silmarillion originated, and much later Tolkien commented on them as follows:

This descends from the oldest forms of the mythology – when it was still intended to be no more than another primitive mythology, though more coherent and less ‘savage’. It was consequently a ‘Flat Earth’ cosmogony (much easier to manage anyway): the Matter of Númenor had not been devised (Morgoth’s Ring, p. 370).

As this passage indicates, the legendarium was in the beginning intended to be no more than a mythology of our own Earth, illuminated by our own Sun and Moon, and it should not surprise anyone that Tolkien came to doubt the validity of its certain elements when he had begun to regard it as something “more than another primitive mythology”, not to mention that the world in which the Elves in Middle-earth can survive and provide themselves with food during millennia without the Sun is acceptable as a world of mythology, but militates against credibility when considered from the point of view of consistent and logical worldbuilding. It can therefore be understood why in the last year of his life Tolkien referred to the legends of the Silmarillion as “largely mythological” (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 347b).

Appendix B. From Westernesse to Rivendell

The Númenórean model of transmission of the legends of the Silmarillion is attested in numerous sources, among which are texts I and VII of Myths Transformed (Morgoth’s Ring, pp. 370–5, 401–2), the preamble to a possibly late typescript of the Annals of Aman (Morgoth’s Ring, pp. 64–5), a late change to the typescript of the Quenta Silmarillion (The War of the Jewels, p. 243), a discussion of Elvish ageing from c. 1959 (The Nature of Middle-earth, p. 22), the contemporary Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth (Morgoth’s Ring, p. 337 n. 2, p. 342 n. 7), the Preface to The Adventures of Tom Bombadil as published in 1962, The Shibboleth of Fëanor from c. 1968 (The Peoples of Middle-earth, p. 357 n. 17), the Notes on Óre from the same time (The Nature of Middle-earth, p. 223), a letter to Roger Lancelyn Green from 1971 (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, no. 325) and a discussion of Elvish reincarnation from 1972–3 (The Nature of Middle-earth, p. 263 fn. 5). It may be mentioned here that in The Line of Elros presumably dating from the early 1960s (Unfinished Tales, p. 224) the authorship of the Akallabêth is likewise attributed to Elendil of Númenor, and the records about Vardamir Nólimon and Tar-Elendil in the same text (pp. 218–9) may account for the origin of the books in which the Silmarillion was preserved.

This model of transmission does not contradict the Note on the Shire Records, which entered the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings with the second edition (1966) and fixed the idea of Bilbo’s Translations from the Elvish (included in the Red Book) as the chief collection of the lore of the Elder Days acquired by Bilbo in Rivendell. The Preface to The Adventures of Tom Bombadil makes it explicit that Rivendell was a repository not only of Elvish lore, but also Númenórean, including the legends of the Silmarillion; and Translations from the Elvish, of course, does not necessarily mean translations of Elvish works, because the Elvish languages were known to the Dúnedain and used in ancient books (see e.g. The Peoples of Middle-earth, p. 315; The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, no. 347).

It may be worth noting that, despite the concerns sometimes voiced, there is no reason to assume that Bilbo’s familiarity with the true lore concerning the fashion of the Earth or the origin of the Sun and Moon (perhaps evident in his own book) would have had any serious impact on his translations of the Númenórean legends, because a translator is never supposed to rewrite ancient legends in order to adjust them to his own knowledge of the Universe (as should in any case be clear from numerous modern translations of ancient legends existing in our primary world).

Appendix C. The Lord of Retcons

It has already been demonstrated that The Lord of the Rings contains several references to the later cosmology; but it also contains some references to the earlier one, and this should not be dismissed without consideration. It is perhaps significant that none of them was removed in the heavily revised second edition of the book (despite the removal of a more explicit reference in the third edition of The Hobbit in the same year, as well as Tolkien’s general commitment to the new cosmology demonstrated by other evidence), which may suggest that they were not thought by the author to be problematic.

One of them is a reference to the star-making of Varda in “the Sunless Year” in the Elvish song heard by the Hobbits in the chapter Three is Company (p. 79). Although the original idea is that the stars were made earlier than the Sun (as in the cosmogonic myth of the Silmarillion), a different explanation may be suggested by the account of the Awaking of the Elves in text II of Myths Transformed (Morgoth’s Ring, pp. 377–8), which allows to reinterpret the Sunless Year as the period of the darkening of the world by Melkor, since in this story the Elves awoke in the dark just before the veil of Melkor was rent by the winds of Manwë and Varda and the stars suddenly shone through, giving the Elves the impression of a thing newly created. Later the loremasters of the Eldar learned far more the scientific truth of such things as the origin of stars, but, as is told elsewhere, this even among the Eldar, including the High Elves, remained a matter of study for those specially interested in it and did not fully displace the mythological vision of the world enduring in their minds since their earliest times (see esp. Morgoth’s Ring, p. 337; The Nature of Middle-earth, p. 281).

In the chapter In the House of Tom Bombadil (p. 131), the Master of the house says that he was there “before the seas were bent”. While it is most natural to interpret this as a reference to the myth of the World Made Round, it does not have to be taken as an authorial declaration of objective fact. In his 1954 letter to Peter Hastings, commenting on a false statement made by Treebeard, Tolkien makes a remark which can just as well be applied to Tom Bombadil:

Treebeard is a character in my story, not me; and though he has a great memory and some earthy wisdom, he is not one of the Wise, and there is quite a lot he does not know or understand (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, no. 153).

Later in the same letter Tolkien in fact makes a similar remark about the words of Tom Bombadil and Goldberry not being his own and even notes that Tom “merely knows and understands about such things as concern him in his natural little realm”.

In the chapter The Uruk-hai (p. 459), Merry and Pippin peeping out of the shadows of Fangorn are rather poetically described as “little furtive figures that in the dim light looked like elf-children in the deeps of time peering out of the Wild Wood in wonder at their first Dawn”. This is of course a mythological reference to the first rising of the Sun, but, again, it can be quite naturally explained as a device used by the narrator rather than a declaration of astronomical truth.

Another mention of the “bent seas” can be found in Appendix A (p. 1042), but it appears in a footnote presented as an extract from an in-universe source of Númenórean origin and thus can be taken to reflect the Númenórean myth. Indeed, when Tolkien notes the mythological nature of the Straight Road in a letter to Roger Lancelyn Green from 1971 (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, no. 325), he explicitly states that this idea lies behind the events of both the Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings.

Finally, two references to “the twilight of the Elder Days” (or “the Twilight”) appear in Appendix F (p. 1132), but they can hardly be used as an argument either way, because within the framework of the new cosmology they can easily be taken to refer to the “volcanic era” when the Sun was dimmed due to obscurations devised by Melkor (cf. “the twilight before the raising of the Sun and Moon” > “the twilight of our Sun and Moon” in the third edition of The Hobbit).

Appendix D. The Valian and Elvish Year

It has been generally assumed that Tolkien’s decision to change the length of the Valian year to make it equal to 144 solar years (instead of 10 or 9.582 solar years as in earlier writings) in the late 1950s was a consequence of the shift that occurred in the cosmology of his world at the same time. This view was in fact expressed by Christopher Tolkien himself in his comments on text XI of Myths Transformed (Morgoth’s Ring, p. 430 n. 2) and became one of the main reasons underlying the common dislike of the new cosmology due to incompatibility of the new conception of the Valian year with the chronological tradition established in Tolkien’s earlier writings (such as the Annals of Aman and the Tale of Years).

One might wonder how the length on the Valian year was related to the shape of the Earth or the nature of the Sun and Moon and why changes regarding the latter would have triggered a change in the former. If any such relation exists, it is not obvious, and evidence against such a relation can be found in text I of the chapter The Valian Year in part one of The Nature of Middle-earth, which shows that when he wrote it, Tolkien had decided that the world must be round and coëval with the Sun and Moon, but the Valian year in that text was still equal in length to 10 solar years. Another point of interest in that text is the following passage:

The yên, which is merely a mode of reckoning, has nothing to do with the life of the Elves. In Aman this depended on the years of the Trees, or really on the days of the Trees; in Middle-earth on the cycles of growth, Spring to Spring, or löar. In Middle-earth, one löa aged an Elf as much as a year of the Trees, but these were in fact 10 times as long (The Nature of Middle-earth, p. 7).

The statement here that the yên “has nothing to do with the life of the Elves” is in striking contradiction with the idea of the Elvish life-year of the same length, which is well-established in Tolkien’s later writings (particularly those published in part one of The Nature of Middle-earth). All the more curious is the fact that text II of the same chapter, while dealing with the same matters as text I, differs from the latter in that it introduces the equation of both the Valian year and the year of Elvish life at the same time to 144 solar years. This correspondence between the Valian year and the Elvish life-year reoccurs in many later texts which concern Elvish ageing (and is sometimes explicitly noted – see e.g. The Nature of Middle-earth, p. 36), which begs the question of whether there is any profound connection between them.

Some clue can be found in text XI of Myths Transformed published in Morgoth’s Ring (see esp. pp. 425–6), which tells that the Valian year was the minimal unit of time in which the “Ageing of Arda” could be perceived by the Valar, and all corporeal living things (such as plants and animals) that the Valar brought into being in Aman for their delight and use aged no quicker than Arda itself, so that the year of their life was the Valian year (see also The Nature of Middle-earth, p. 89). It is told here that the rate of ageing natural to the Elves accorded with the unit of Valian time, and this was the reason that made it possible for the Valar to bring the Elves to dwell in Aman, and a source of their bliss:

For the Eldar this was a source of joy. For in Aman the world appeared to them as it does to Men on Earth, but without the shadow of death soon to come. Whereas on Earth to them all things in comparison with themselves were fleeting, swift to change and die or pass away, in Aman they endured and did not so soon cheat love with their mortality (Morgoth’s Ring, p. 426).

Another piece of evidence bearing on this question can be found in text B of the chapter The Awaking of the Quendi in part one of The Nature of Middle-earth, where Tolkien, considering some problems of the chronology of the Tale of Years, among other things notes the following:

No scale of Quendian “growth” or “ageing” is devised, but in Valinor events seem to show that they lived at about the rate of 1 VY = 1 year of Elvish life. This fits events in Valinor, for which it was arranged, but makes all the Eldar far too old in later narrative, unless we suppose that they remained unchanged, after maturity, for an indefinite time (The Nature of Middle-earth, p. 34).

It seems very likely that here in these words lies the reason why Tolkien introduced the idea that the Elves aged in units of time equal in length to 144 solar years, the purpose of which was to prevent the Elven characters of The Lord of the Rings from being too old in the course of the Second and Third Ages, and when the concept of the Elvish life-year had emerged, the Valian year was equated to it in length because it was meant to correspond with the rate of Elvish ageing. If that is true, then it must have been Tolkien’s post-LotR conception of Elvish ageing and not his reshaping of the cosmology of his world that resulted in the new conception of the Valian year and the abandonment of the chronology of the Annals of Aman. Given that it was never adequately replaced, it seems to me perfectly possible to retain it beside the Round World cosmology, as long as an alternative concept of Elvish ageing, not depending on the life-year of 144 solar years, is assumed. (In which case, see The Peoples of Middle-earth, p. 33 §12 and the chapter Elvish Life-cycles in part one of The Nature of Middle-earth, pp. 154–6 for alternative solutions of the problem of excessive ageing.)

Appendix E. The Flattish World

The following passage from the Ambarkanta is of interest as seeming to imply the existence of the Earth’s curvature in the Flat World cosmology:

And beyond the Eastern Sea lies the Eastern Land, of which we know little, and call it the Land of the Sun; and it has mountains, less great than those of Valinor, yet very great, which are the Walls of the Sun. By reason of the falling of the land these mountains cannot be descried, save by highflying birds, across the seas which divide them from the shores of Middle-earth (The Shaping of Middle-earth, p. 239).

This idea can be better understood by comparing it with a later description of the primitive Elvish mytho-astronomical picture of the world, published in the chapter Dark and Light in part three of The Nature of Middle-earth:

[The Earth] was conceived as an elliptical surface longer (3) than broad (2), its longer axis lying W–E. It was not flat, but rose up to its central point gradually. It seems to have been imagined as having an under-portion of the same shape (nether Arda) which could not be inhabited since, not knowing of gravitation, the lower surface was supposed to be bare, solid and [?trackless,] and all unattached things (save only mist) would fall off. Later it was represented as an elliptical spheroid of [?some nature] (The Nature of Middle-earth, p. 282).

Thus originally the Earth was conceived as an elliptical surface, which was not flat, but rose up to its central point gradually, and later it was represented as an elliptical spheroid. The same appears to be true in the Flat World cosmology as it stood in the Ambarkanta, if only the words “conceived as” and “represented as” are omitted.

Interestingly, this is not the only case where the Ambarkanta attempts to provide such a fictional explanation for a phenomenon which is in reality explained by the roundness of the Earth; another one deals with the change of seasons (and even takes into account the concept of reversed seasons in the northern and southern hemispheres):

Thus days are measured by the courses of the Sun, which sails from East to West through the lower Ilmen, blotting out the stars; and she passes over the midst of Middle-earth and halts not, and she bends her course northward or southward, not waywardly but in due procession and season (The Shaping of Middle-earth, p. 237).

Such details only emphasize the fact that what is presented in the Ambarkanta was from the beginning intended to be a mythical cosmology of our Earth as we know it rather than a true cosmological account of some other world existing according to different laws. Indeed, in his famous 1951 letter to Milton Waldman (as published in the revised and expanded edition of The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, no. 131) Tolkien describes the Ambarkanta as a “short piece of mythical pre-geography”, and this mythical image of the world underlying the legends of the Silmarillion continues to exist in the 1960s, as can be seen from Concerning… “The Hoard”:

The Dark Lord was at the last himself taken and thrust “beyond the Doors of Night” [according to legendary geography; meaning thrust out of the created world as a “person”, though the evil he had sown continued to grow and reappear].

Finally, it is worth noting that this feature of the cosmology of the Ambarkanta, while depriving the evidence of the Earth’s curvature of its value for proving the pervasive character of the Round World cosmology, helps the latter in a different way, plausibly explaining why the majority of the Númenóreans, who would probably have been aware of the Earth’s curvature, was still hesitant to accept the idea that the Earth was a globe until it was finally proved by circumnavigation.

Notes on Various Topics

The Straight Road. In the framework of the Round World cosmology, the notion of the Straight Road must be seen as a myth which arose among the Númenóreans after the Downfall, as described in The Drowning of Anadûnê. The true nature of existence in Aman after its removal is hinted at in the 1964 BBC Interview, where Tolkien seems to allude to J.W. Dunne’s theory of time (for further information concerning Tolkien’s familiarity with that theory and its essential role for Tolkien’s two time-travel stories, The Lost Road and “The Notion Club Papers”, read this article by Verlyn Flieger). It may be assumed that the Eldar sailed back along the line of time (as a dimension) into the past of the world when Aman still existed upon the Earth. It is of course unclear how that would work technically, and perhaps “must be dubious and unexplained” (The Nature of Middle-earth, p. 262), but I once heard someone describing it as travelling through a wormhole.

Eärendil. In the concept of the Dark and Light notes, Venus clearly existed before the historical Eärendil and was known to the Elves from their earliest times, and although the later mythological connection between the two is mentioned, it is left unexplained. The identity of Venus with the Silmaril of Eärendil is an essential part of the Númenórean Silmarillion, but in the Elvish mind a different reason for their association must have existed. My best guess is that Venus was intended by the Valar (or specifically Varda) to be a prophetic sign of Eärendil and foreshowing of his embassy, just as Menelmacar was of Túrin and the Last Battle, or Valacirca of the defeat of Melkor, especially considering the fact that the Valar knew of the future coming of Eärendil and evidently shared some form of this prophecy with the High Elves (read this post for further information).

The Land of the Sun. In the framework of the Round World cosmology, the Land of the Sun from the Ambarkanta can perhaps be seen as nothing else than the western side of the continent of Aman, protected from the west by an insurmountable mountain range as it was from the east. If so, then after the Númenórean Catastrophe, when (according to Tolkien’s suggestion) the landmass of Aman became America, the remnants of the Walls of the Sun must have survived as the American Cordillera.