Arda was never flat

[metropolis_part_one]

Reading the Silmarillion recently, it referred to 'the globe of the earth', but this was definately before the fall of Numenor. Can anyone explain this?

[Sharkû]

The different layers of the atmosphere enveloped the then flat Arda as in a globe amid the void. Take a look at one of the drawings in History of Middle-earth IV or in the Atlas of Middle-earth.

[davem]

I have wondered about this. It occurred to me that maybe it could have had to do with the way Elves percieved reality. Maybe they saw differently. Maybe they always experienced the world as flat - perhaps the reason they could still take the Straight Road even when men couldn't. Perhaps what we have is the Sil accounts of the flat world relating the Elvish peception & the post Numenor accounts being the Mannish perception, & the story of a change in the shape of the world being a mannish 'invention', an attempt to fit their perception with the Elven accounts.

Of course, one would then have to ask why Elrond didn't put Bilbo right! Possibly he felt that as men would be 'running' things from then on, then the Mannish account could be left to stand.

Elvish perceptions have interested me for a while - they don't seem to see the world/reality in the way men do. Legolas sees the 'crown' of flame on Aragorn's head for instance, or his ability to pick out the number of Rohirrim & Frodo's perception of Glorfindel, as a being of shining light is said by Gandalf to be a vision of him as he is on the other side. Which begs the question, do Elves see each other in that way?

I'm sure someone is going to offer lots of quotes to show this is all wrong - as happened when I wrote into Amon Hen (Tolkien Society bulletin), but I still wonder if there is something in it.

[burrahobbit]

What Sharku said, and also that Tolkien's ideas about the world changed as the years passed. The passage that references the globe of the earth could be from a later writing than the ones wherin the world was ever flat.

<font size=1 color=339966>[ 6:08 AM January 12, 2004: Message edited by: burrahobbit ]

[Ardamir the Blessed]

I finally found something in the Akallabêth that could be a sign of it being written in a Round Earth context:

...at times, when all the air was clear and the sun was in the east, they would look out and descry far off in the west a city white-shining on a distant shore, and a great harbour and a tower. For in those days the Númenóreans were far-sighted; yet even so it was only the keenest eyes among them that could see this vision, 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.

Why would one see more clearly from a place high up if the world was flat? And also:

And men saw his [Ar-Pharazôn's] sails coming up out of the sunset, dyed as with scarlet and gleaming with red gold, and fear fell upon the dwellers by the coasts, and they fled far away.

This reference is similar to those I have found in 'Aldarion and Erendis':

Thus it came to pass that on a morning of fair sun and white wind, in the bright spring of the seven hundred and twenty-fifth year of the Second Age, the son of the King's Heir of Númenor sailed from the land; and ere day was over he [Aldarion] saw it sink shimmering into the sea, and last of all the peak of the Meneltarma as a dark finger against the sunset.

At last the sea and wind relented, but even as Aldarion looked out in longing from the prow of the Palarran and saw far off the Meneltarma, his glance fell upon the green bough, and he saw that it was withered. Then Aldarion was dismayed, for such a thing had never befallen the bough of oiolairë, so long as it was washed with the spray. "It is frosted, Captain," said a mariner who stood beside him. "It has been too cold. Glad am I to see the Pillar."

Also from 'Aldarion and Erendis':

he [Meneldur] was enamoured of the stars and the heavens. All that he could gather of the lore of the Eldar and Edain concerning Eä and the deeps that lay about the Kingdom of Arda he studied, and his chief delight was in the watching of the stars. He built a tower in the Forostar (the northernmost region of the island) where the airs were clearest, from which by night he would survey the heavens and observe all the movements of the light of the firmament.

Would he not discover that Earth is round then?

[Tuor of Gondolin]

From "Letters"
#154
25 September 1954

"Actually in the imagination of this story we are now living on a physically round Earth. But the whole 'legendarium' contains a transition from a flat world (or at least an olkovuevn with borders all about it) to a globe: an inevitable transition, I suppose, to a modern 'mythmaker' with a mind subjected to the same 'appearances' as ancient men, and partly fed on their myths, but taught that the Earth is round from the earliest years."

[The Saucepan Man]

Why would one see more clearly from a place high up if the world was flat?

Perhaps it was curved.

[Ardamir the Blessed]

Yes, it was. But my point was that there are actual hints in the Akallabêth (and 'Aldarion and Erendis') that the world was round before the Downfall, even though most readers seem to think that according to the Akallabêth the world was made round at that point. But I now think it clear that it was written in a Round Earth context; even Elendil who wrote it seems to have known that the world was round before the Downfall:

Sauron with many arguments gainsaid all that the Valar had taught; and he bade men think that in the world, in the east and even in the west, there lay yet many seas and many lands for their winning, wherein was wealth uncounted. And still, if they should at the last come to the end of those lands and seas, beyond all lay the Ancient Darkness. 'And out of it the world was made. For Darkness alone is worshipful, and the Lord thereof may yet make other worlds to be gifts to those that serve him, so that the increase of their power shall find no end.'

It also seems that a condition that the Númenoreans would worship the dark (Melkor) is that they think that the world is flat, because then they think that there is an Ancient Darkness where the Lord of the Darkness dwells.

In the passages concerning the actual Downfall there is no explicit mention of the world becoming round either:

But Ilúvatar showed forth his power, and he changed the fashion of the world;

And then after the Downfall the Númenóreans discovered that the world is round:

And those that sailed furthest set but a girdle about the Earth and returned weary at last to the place of their beginning; and they said:
'All roads are now bent.'
Thus in after days, what by the voyages of ships, what by lore and star-craft, the kings of Men knew that the world was indeed made round

So I think that the Númenóreans, before the coming of Sauron to Númenor, knew that the world is round, and this is indeed stated in the Drowning of Anadûnê (for example Meneldur by starcraft could probably see that the world is round, just like the Númenóreans did after the Downfall, see my quote above), but Sauron lied to them saying that it is flat. Elendil was not (at least not much) affected by Sauron's teachings so he did not receive a wrong conception of the world. Then after the Downfall the Númenóreans (of which almost all should have been of the Faithful, but still they seem to have been subject to Sauron's lies) rediscovered that it is round, but they seem to have thought that it was made so in relation to the Downfall (except at least Elendil). But I do not know why the Gates of Morning, which signify a flat Earth, are mentioned in the Akallabêth:

they came even into the inner seas, and sailed about Middle-earth and glimpsed from their high prows the Gates of Morning in the East

Tolkien introduced that passage in the Akallabêth from the Fall of Númenor III, which I believe was written in a Flat Earth context. According to 'The Drowning of Anadûnê' in Sauron Defeated the Akallabêth is a mix of Elvish and Mannish tradition, and it seems that Elendil thought that there is a Gates of Morning in the east, even though he knew (it seems) that the world was round already before the Downfall.

[Essex]

If Arda was always round, and never flat, How could the Lamps of the Valar on either end (north and south) of Middle-earth light the whole 'continent'? If Arda was round, they would have only lit up the regions physically possible until the curve of the planet stopped the light from shining into the central regions, in particular Almaren.

And the same goes for the Trees of the Valar in the Undying Lands. They would have only lit up the northern region if Arda was round at that time.

[Ardamir the Blessed]

Tolkien rejected the Lamps later on.

[Lalwendë]

Reading the quote used above brought to mind something else:

And still, if they should at the last come to the end of those lands and seas, beyond all lay the Ancient Darkness.

[Smith] stood beside the Sea of Windless Storm where the blue waves like snow-clad hills roll silently out of Unlight to the long strand, bearing the white ships that return from battles on the Dark Marches of which men know nothing.

Ever since the second quote was used in a recent thread about Smith Of Wootton Major it has stuck in my mind. It seems to me that it conjours up an idea of a flat earth. The waves don't come from over the horizon, they come from Unlight, a place of darkness which seems to be outside the world.

Now perhaps both passages use the idea of darkness to refer to the unknown, the distant, the undiscovered; this could simply be metaphor. When the Numenoreans made the discovery that the world had been altered, could it be that what they actually were experiencing was the dawn of a new knowledge? Previously they had held the world to be flat and that if they sailed far enough they would come to the end of it. Eventually they discovered that no matter how far they sailed they would come back to their starting point; this could coincide with the discovery (perhaps an awful realisation) that the world was after all round, and hence finite.

As to where the Elves go when they set sail, applying science to the matter doesn't answer any questions. It is possible that Valinor is a place which is difficult to locate, an anomaly; possibly it is even a place which is physically difficult to get to due to ocean currents (I often think of great feats of exploration when I consider this, such as the struggle to find the North West Passage). Another possibility is that it simply does not exist at all, that the Elves are going nowhere, a dark thought which has crossed my mind a few times; I wonder whether anyone else, with their modern logic has ever pondered this sad thought?

So choosing not to use science to answer that one is likely the only way forward. Using what is known in Tolkien's work would give the most probable answer.

[davem]

My own thinking on this is along the lines that at the fall of Numenor the world kind of split into two - Tolkien states that the High Elves (at least) live in both worlds at once. Say the world was originally (ie pre- FoN) flat. At the fall the world splits into flat & round. Mortals are seperated off into the round world as a consequence of the Numenorean's actions, but the elves aren't so limited. They continue to exist in the dimension of the flat world but they also find themselves in the round world of Arda.

Further speculation - time runs differently in the flat world after the FoN - more slowly if at all due to the flat world now being subsumed into the spiritual realm. So the Elves would find themselves existing in both the 'timeless' flat/spiritual world and the temporal round/physical world. The effect of this must have been psychologically quite traumatic & possibly explains their (increasing) desire to halt time in the physical world - effectively to bring the two worlds into alignment. I suppose the Elven ideal would not just have been to halt time in the physical world but, if possible to 'flatten it out' again.

Of course, the rings were created before the FoN so it could be argued that the desire to halt time & change probably always existed in the Elven psyche, but we don't know that that was the original intent behind the creation of the rings - maybe they were created for other reasons & only after the fall was it realised that they could serve the purpose I've suggested.

I don't know if this works as a theory but it would account for the increasingly isolationist/unworldly attitude of the Elves in the later Third Age - they would be faced with an increasing split between the worlds, as the round world, subject to time & change moved futher & further away from the timeless state of the flat world. It would also increase their desire to leave Middle earth & go back to Valinor - ie to go & live in the world/dimension which most suited their nature.

It would be interesting if the actions of Men in Numenor were responsible for the psycho-spiritual problems of Elves in the Third Age & eventually forced them to leave. Also it opens up the question of Eru's motivation in changing the shape of the world - was it simply to protect Valinor & punish the Numenoreans for their hubristic assault on the Blessed Realm, or was it also motivated by a desire to bring the Elves home to Aman, thereby freeing up Men to assume their destined dominant role in Middle earth?

Now, I'm sure there are those more knowlageable in Tolkieniana than I am who can demolish that little edifice......