Geography

[Bill Ferny]

Tolkien stated that his mythology didn’t take place in a world apart from ours, but in the same world, only in an imaginary time before human compass. Middle Earth is equivalent to the Europe that Tolkien knew, so the climate of Middle Earth would be roughly the same as Europe and the northern Mediterranean Sea basin. If the Shire is equivalent in latitude and longitude with Oxford, England, then Minas Tirith is equivalent with Venice (I believe, at least somewhere between Florence and Venice).