Topographic maps

These hand-drawn maps I made for my late father show Beleriand and the isle of Númenor. Elevations follow the descriptions in "Silmarillion" and "Unfinished Tales".

Both maps are enlarged to the same scale to show that Númenor is in fact as big as Beleriand, a fact that is somewhat obscured by the size of the map of Númenor provided in "Unfinished Tales". The colour pattern is that used on modern maps: dark green is lowest, followed by light green through yellow, brown and, ultimately, white. Elevation and vegetation are interpolated from the texts while the submarine shelfs are based on conjecture only. There are a few more roads than on the official maps because, I assumed, they are needed to connect the places of settlement. I also added the port of Almaida to Númenor that is mentioned only in the preface of UT.

Some parts in the north of Beleriand are conjecture. What distinguished Lothlann, a big white blotch on the map, from Ard-Galen, another big white blotch? I assumed that elevation made the difference, and placed Lothlann lower. It is in fact the bottom of an emptied glacier lake that, some time in the Age of the Trees, broke through the natural dam at Maglor's Gap and issued south in a catastrophic flood, carving the valley of the Gelion. Note the distinctly drop-like shape of Amon Ereb that I fancy to be a spur of harder rock which survived the deluge, though battered.

A set of LotR maps drawn at the same scale would require six such sheets, by the way, or eight, if we included the northern extension beyond Forochel. That's why I never produced any (though there is at least a crude colour map of the Shire).


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Topographic map of Beleriand

Topographic map of Númenor

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