What lies beyond the familiar map of Middle-earth?

The lands shown in The Lord of the Rings are only a small part of Tolkien's much larger world. Beyond Mordor lie the vast regions of the East. Beyond Gondor stretch Harad and the largely unknown South. Across the Great Sea once stood Númenor, and farther West lay Aman the Blessed Realm of the Valar and Elves.

But Tolkien's oldest writings take us even farther.

In this documentary, we journey beyond the borders of the familiar Middle-earth map and explore the wider geography and cosmology of Arda: Rhûn and the distant East, Harad and the South, Cuiviénen, the mysterious journeys of the Blue Wizards, the ancient Dwarven peoples of the East, Aman and Valinor, Númenor, the Straight Road, the Dark Land, the Empty Lands, Ekkaia, the Walls of the World, and the Door of Night through which Morgoth was cast into the Void.

We also explore an important complication: Tolkien's world was never completely fixed.

His earliest cosmological writings, including the Ambarkanta, describe a mythic structure of Arda very different from some of the ideas he considered later in life. Tolkien revised the shape of the world, the nature of the Sun and Moon, and even whether Arda had always been round.

Because of this, many complete maps of Arda found online combine ideas from different periods of Tolkien's writing. Some distant lands have names but almost no recorded history. Others belong primarily to early versions of the mythology.

So this is not an attempt to invent what Tolkien never wrote.

Instead, we are traveling as far as the surviving legendarium allows  from the Shire to the edges of Middle-earth, across the seas of Arda, and finally toward the oldest boundaries of Tolkien's universe.

What lies beyond Middle-earth?

More land.
More sea.
More history.

And eventually... mystery.

Topics include:
Middle-earth and Arda
Rhûn and the Easterlings
Harad and the Haradrim
Cuiviénen
The Blue Wizards
The Orocarni / Red Mountains
The distant Dwarven houses
The Dark Land
The Empty Lands
The Ambarkanta
Aman and Valinor
The Pelóri and Taniquetil
Tol Eressëa
Númenor and its Downfall
The Straight Road
Ekkaia, the Encircling Sea
The Walls of the World
The Door of Night
Morgoth and the Void
Eärendil and Vingilot
Tolkien's changing cosmology

If you enjoy deep dives into Tolkien's legendarium, Middle-earth history, The Silmarillion, and the mysteries Tolkien deliberately left unexplained, subscribe for more Tolkien lore documentaries.

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