[HN Gopher] The Wisconsin cartographer who mapped Tolkien's fant...
___________________________________________________________________
The Wisconsin cartographer who mapped Tolkien's fantasy world
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 96 points
Date : 2025-04-11 17:26 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wpr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wpr.org)
| davidjhall wrote:
| A wonderful atlas -- my favorite are her trail maps where she
| depicts a character's daily journey in the book.
|
| The article (almost) footnotes her other work which was equally
| impressive:
|
| * She also created atlases for the worlds of fantasy authors Anne
| McCaffrey, creator of the "Dragonriders of Pern" series, and
| Stephen R. Donaldson, who wrote "The Chronicles of Thomas
| Covenant" series.
| jfengel wrote:
| Atlas of Middle-earth is a truly monumental feat.
|
| I think the article writer misses how much of it is really about
| The Silmarillion, rather than about Lord of the Rings. Tolkien
| put a lot of work into First Age geography, an entire
| (interminable, excruciating) chapter of The Silmarillion. Very
| little of it would be familiar to viewers of the films, and a lot
| of it opaque even to readers just of LotR.
| rimunroe wrote:
| > an entire (interminable, excruciating) chapter of The
| Silmarillion
|
| I've read _The Silmarillion_ easily more than 20 times and I
| swear _Of Beleriand and its Realms_ gets longer every time I
| read it.
| jfengel wrote:
| I just wish it had been relegated to an appendix. A lot of
| people drop Silmarillion there, but you can just skip it and
| get on to much better material.
|
| It could be replaced on first read with a decent map. Or even
| a mediocre map. Or nothing; you just don't need it.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I just wish it had been relegated to an appendix.
|
| It was; it wasn't even published.
| bombcar wrote:
| Most of the Silmarillion can be read out of order, if you
| want. That should have been made more clear to the "casual"
| reader (as if casual readers pick it up!).
| thordenmark wrote:
| I have The Silmarillion on Audible and use the chapter Of
| Beleriand and its Realms when I'm having trouble going to
| sleep.
| gainda wrote:
| One of my biggest takeaways from the first time I saw her work
| was that Beleriand was actually situated to the west of Middle
| Earth prior to sinking. I had seen far too many erroneous maps
| placing it north of Middle Earth
| (https://static0.gamerantimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uplo...)
| mryijum wrote:
| The infamous lung map! David Day must've introduced so many
| people to the various interesting aspects of Tolkien's world
| but there's so much fanfiction mixed into his works. Though in
| the case of the map it's not really fanfiction, it's just
| wrong.
| foldr wrote:
| _The Journeys of Frodo_ is also worth a look if you like this
| kind of thing. The author isn't a professional cartographer and
| it's more focused on LOTR locations than general world building.
| Anyway, I was completely captivated by it as a child when I
| stumbled across it in my high school's library.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journeys_of_Frodo
| bombcar wrote:
| In a similar vein, if interested in that type of thing, is
| _Flora of Middle-Earth: Plants of J.R.R. Tolkien 's
| Legendarium_.
| duxup wrote:
| What a wonderful thing to do.
|
| Map making is such an amazing skill.
| krupan wrote:
| Do I love maps because of the fantasy books I read as a kid? Did
| I love (and still love) the fantasy books because I love maps? I
| may never know.
|
| I've heard of the Atlas of Middle Earth but never knew this
| amazing story behind it. Thanks for posting it, bookofjoe!
|
| Also, really cool to know she did D&D maps too. Maps are just rad
| bombcar wrote:
| I love that she could build so much of the world from the
| geographic descriptions, of things like mountains and rivers.
| nelblu wrote:
| Every time I read a chapter from LOTR and then hike with my dog,
| I imagine myself being Frodo and my dog being Samwise, and I find
| myself talking to the dog, sometimes yelling at him - hey don't
| go there, there might be Orcs there or maybe Dark Riders were
| here etc. Of course my dog doesn't care, but I love this silly
| monologue with him.
|
| Just ordered this book and can't wait to start reading LOTR
| again!
| aegirth wrote:
| Karen also did the Atlas of Krynn, the world of the Dragonlance
| Saga. I still have my copy. Wonderful illustrations and maps.
| zem wrote:
| I love fantasy in general, and have read a ton of it. other than
| tolkien, I have never read a novel with that strong a sense of
| geography in a constructed world - specifically, that there is an
| entire rich land out there, and not just a graph of interesting
| places with the focus shifting from one point to another. when
| the hobbits have to go from the shire to rivendell, or aragorn
| has to take the paths of the dead to reach his destination in
| time, tolkien really manages to convey the experience of a
| difficult journey that takes a significant amount of time even
| when nothing plot-significant is happening along the way.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-04-14 23:00 UTC)