Hidden gem: The Atlas of Middle-earth

In this episode of The Tolkien Podcast we discuss a hidden gem THE ATLAS OF MIDDLE-EARTH and how it helps readers of THE HOBBIT, THE LORD OF THE RINGS and THE SILMARILLION enhance their reading experience. We also take a look at how its late creator, Karen Wynn Fonstad, produced the work as a fan turned creator, with host Larry D. Curtis.

Transcript

EMAIL host Larry D. Curtis at The Tolkien Podcast: TheTolkienPodcast@gmail.com

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TRANSCRIPT

In a conversation with one of the great contemporary Tolkien artists. — and there is some debate, you could debate about who the greatest contemporary Tolkien artists are. There's a handful of names you could decide yes or no, but there's also a few names that you … there's no question about it. There's no discussion to be had.

They've been on the calendars. They've been in the books. They've painted the essential things.

And for many of us, actually, the way that we picture  Middle-earth at all is influenced by these paintings. And of course, these same two of these two of these greats, not the only two, but two of these greats worked on the big budget film adaptations of “"The Lord of the Rings,"” and “"The Hobbit,".”

Further, their impressions and their paintings and their drawings made even more inroads into the collective, pictures of what  Middle-earth is. Anyway, going with one of these great Tolkien artists who was working on an illustrated book of one of Tolkien's works that would include a lot of paintings. It might have been the illustrated Silmarillion, but it might not have been. I can't recall.

What I do recall is his explanation of the process of submitting this artwork. Obviously, the artwork needs to be approved by the publisher, and at least then by the Tolkien Estate. Maybe not. Now I don't know the process. Now, after Christopher Tolkien's death, the estate, it is believed, relaxed somewhat about some of the standards or some of what would be published.

Some people would point to Amazon's “Lord of the Rings” series as an example.

At any rate, this Tolkien artist said that he submitted one of the paintings expecting that it would be approved and it came back is not approved. The Tolkien Eestate said that there is a feature painted in the ravine and the feature was correct, but it was on the wrong side of the ravine, say the east or the west side, or the north or south side, and it should be on the other side, and that that particular thing would need to be fixed, would need to be fixed before there was approval.

So with that anecdote in mind, with that overarching demand of fidelity, that expectation of fidelity from the Tolkien Estate, we're going to talk today about the Atlas of  Middle-earth, published by Charon Wind Farmstead. You're listening to the Tolkien podcast.

I've been thinking about Fonstad's work since I mentioned her, and the Atlas of  Middle-earth extensively. Actually, in the podcast about how to read and get the most out of "The Silmarillion", how to read it and enjoy it and get the most out of it. And one of the key ways. Not the only one, but one of the key ways was to have a copy of that Atlas of Middle-Earth.

And just to be clear, I am, not connected in any way with any publisher of anything related to Tolkien. Save this podcast only, which is just me. So with that anecdote in mind, consider that Tolkien died in 1974. His son Christopher, who who helped, by the way, who actually drew maps for the or a map for the publication of Lord of the Rings, was the executor of the estate.

And so from his death in 74 to 1977, "The Silmarillion" was published. A small gap, obviously, something Christopher had been working on before. Karen Wynn Fonstad living in Wisconsin was a reader, just like you or me. She was not a reader of fantasy, but she was a reader of books, and she had a background in cartography.

And someone handed her "The Lord of the Rings," first, "The Fellowship of the Ring," and she couldn't put it down, like many of us. And, on their first reading and read it overnight voraciously devoured it with her cartographer background. She wanted to map it. You know, that's what her instincts were. And the vividness that Tolkien uses to describe  Middle-earth and also maps in the book all contributed to her wanting to do that.

Well, unlike lots of other people, perhaps without backgrounds in cartography, she grabbed at the telephone and called Houghton Mifflin the day she happened to call an editor who had handled a lot of Tolkien's books was in the office use, semi-retired.

But she was there that day, and she and fonts that had a phone conversation. And she loved the idea of an atlas of  Middle-earth fonts that had been taking notes and preparing and was, you know, prepared to have this conversation when she called.

And within days, miraculously enough, the Tolkien Estate approved the book. Now, the book is not canon, by the way, but it is definitely published. Tolkien's publishers the people who have the rights to do that. And it was approved by the Tolkien Estate. But not endorsed, those can be different. Right? But it was approved by the Tolkien Estate has was published in 1981.

During the same era, Christopher Tolkien was working on what's called the History of  Middle-earth books or H.O.M.E. as they're often abbreviated to.

Christopher was taking all of his father's many notes, stacks, I guess, and, trying to make sense of them all and trying to order them and and sometimes there'd be different versions, as any writer would have different versions of different ideas of characters or events or histories or, in Tolkien's case, as worlds.

So all of that, had to be sort of correlated since ’81, after the publication, the first publication of the that book  (Atlas of Middle-earth) much of the history of  Middle-earth, at least eight of those were published. So she revised that with new information, new details, new things that Christopher published. And in 1991, there was a new version of the “Atlas of Middle-earth.”

There's also been, it's been revised since; there have been some errors fixed.

You know, I don't know, without without looking in that book, it's easy to imagine there's a few maps in there which show you things, but it's much more in depth than that. We'll talk about that in a minute, but there's lots of room for error.

So "The Hobbit," when it was published, had two maps included. Maps were always part of Tolkien's works. And he wasn't the first fantasy author to have maps, but but he popularized it or made it more or less mandatory that if you write a fantasy book, you're very likely to have a map in it for a while. I would say required, but it's sort of what readers expect.

I don't think that's probably a hard set rule these days. I'm sure you could find fantasy books without, but as you invent worlds as you populate realms, it's pretty natural to want to have maps.

It's worth mentioning “Gulliver's Travels,” but also “Treasure Island” and “The Sundering Flood” is really the first fantasy book that really had a map, so those all preceded, say, "The Hobbit."

But Tolkien, the impact of his Hobbit and Lord of the Rings as THE author of the 20th century made it kind of mandatory. So "The Hobbit," maps, there were two. They were not drawn to scale. They were there was no real attempt to, you know, make them cartographer like maps. They were just there to help the reader.

And one of those was the was the map drawn not by a cartographer from inside the story that was handed down to Thorin to help him know where to find the secret keyhole, to gain access to what previously had been his home. And now is this the lair of Smaug? So those two maps were not, you know, they were for the what was then a children's book, and they were not done with the same care.

"The Lord of the Rings," also had maps. Christopher helped draw one of those, and Tolkien and Christopher had been poring over those maps. Tolkien had made many location names, something like 600 location names, compared to 50 from "The Hobbit," map. And of course, there were three maps in "The Lord of the Rings,". One was the sort of the contour map that Christopher drew.

One was, detailed map of part of the Shire and then the general map that was like the northeast part of  Middle-earth, which I think is the one most people are most familiar with. It's we just look at it to get an idea of the setting, at least when we're first reading. So as I mentioned, I had been really thinking about fonts.

That and her work, The Atlas of  Middle-earth. I started going to DragonCon, I think, for the first time in 2005. The first time I went to Atlanta, to a to a track of programing created by fans. There used to be all of a whole bunch of fan tracks, very specific ones. And in 2004 fonts that attended that convention, I Mr..

By a year, and then by the time I went, she had passed. She also, drew not only that drew and post that that Atlas and  Middle-earth, but it was successful and highly thought of by other authors. So she ended up working on other maps for other fandoms. Unlike Tolkien, who had died, she worked on and McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern books.

I hope that's how you call them all. I'm not a print expert, but, that author and McCaffrey also used to attend Dragon Con, but but fun stat had the opportunity to sit down with her and talk about maps and create them and make them. And, McCaffrey even had said, you know, very much on the record that she used that book of maps, for a reference for her own writing.

She also worked on I didn't know this until researching this podcast, actually, but it seemed so natural to me, so obvious that somebody would have made an atlas for the land. And Steven R Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, and she, in fact did that, and I believe worked with the author on that as well. If you are not familiar with the Atlas of  Middle-earth or any of those, I'm not familiar really with the books of the other two, but, it's not it.

It can seem, if you don't really understand what an Atlas is or what this atlas is, there's definitely a text to read to go along with the maps. You're not. They're not in a vacuum. There's notes. She'll mention specific, things. Things that were confusing or hard to to figure out, or why Greenland is so big on a flat map when it's really a globe that we, you know, need to look at.

And these are flat as well. The earth is curved for most of  Middle-earth, not always for most of Arda, but it also has, for example, the key paths of characters that you would expect to be in books for "The Hobbit," and for "The Lord of the Rings". Readers of those books, readers who have no intention of ever reading "The Silmarillion" still report overwhelmingly, the Atlas of Middle-Earth adds significantly to their enjoyment of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings I mentioned paths.

We have lots of paths. Tolkien wrote travel books in a way he definitely wrote. Buddy movies about groups traveling together. Those paths are documented in the Atlas of  Middle-earth. So the hobbits super easy because it's a simpler book, but we get maps of forests that that the, groups visited that the dwarves and Bilbo visited. We get King Randall's kingdom mapped out.

We get Baron's house. We see, the caves where Gollum discovered the ring, where Gollum has the ring, where Bilbo discovered the ring and took it. Gollum water goblins lake, the Goblin King's chamber, all those kinds of things are all some map. But if you're familiar with an atlas, which. Listen, I'm no bookworm app expert, but there's lots of other kinds of maps, and things can be mapped in lots of different ways.

It's used often in American politics, probably any politics I'm familiar with the ones mapping American politics, but you can use maps in all kinds of different ways. So in that book, that is how it's used. There's climate maps, there are vegetation maps, there are population maps, there are language maps. There's diagrams of battles like the siege of Minas Tirith, the the siege of the Black Gates that Aragorn led to, you know, the front door of Mordor.

There's also key buildings that really help. And and all of those apply to "The Silmarillion" as well. You can see ancient elven kingdoms, some hidden in mountains, some in caves, lots of things of that nature that are in the book. So it's not just a map of  Middle-earth. It's not just a map of you. Gondor. Helm's deep is another really great map that's fun to look at.

So legions of people have appreciated that book. Not necessarily. Silmarillion readers, but Lord of the Rings and Hobbit readers as well. So for purposes of this podcast, I'm just saying that it's a really a gem that the Atlas of  Middle-earth is a gem, and you can very often buy it used. You can very often, you can buy it online, you can buy it on eBay.

You can definitely buy it on Amazon. Used. There are a number of hardback editions from all kinds of different prices. I would just recommend getting the cheapest paperback that you can find. The interiors. The maps in the hardbound editions aren't different, the text isn't different. The the packaging is. And, I, you know, I suppose if I had a library instead of some bookshelves and in that library I had a table like this one, and I had a place to open up a book, that Atlas of  Middle-earth might be a really great candidate for that, but I don't.

And most of you don't either. What I do want on my shelf, though, is a copy of that book, The Atlas of  Middle-earth. Besides all of those things I said, let me just so it sounds like I'm trying to sell you a book, but I here's what it is. I really admire that. That fonts. Dad, made this on her own of her own initiative, that she researched it so meticulously that she was passionate about Tolkien's works, plied her own disciplines, her own knowledge of how the world works and how maps work.

And, you know, generations of of technology, of mapmaking that led to her doing this. And she made such an enduring, thing, a physical thing that, that we can use to help understand Tolkien better. I really like that. I really admire that. So that's why I recommend it so much. It's it's a little hidden gem. There's an index of selected place names for the history of  Middle-earth.

Crazy. Lots of references and lots of books. It's a, index of place names, not for the history of  Middle-earth climate, vegetation, population. References. Books. Interviews. Miscellaneous sources. She's documented it all so that you can know she's not making it up. She shows where this came from. It's very useful, very helpful, very scholarly, if I may say, mysterious.

Curious on goal battles in the North. Battle of the horn. Burg. Mount doom, Rivendell, Delorean. Back into Rivendell. Done. Harrow. All. All the things that you want to be there. Are there? I regret very much not being able to ever have talked to fonts that I she's, you know, one of the the the group, the big group of people who have contributed to Tolkien scholarship and have given us the gift.

And, I think it's very cool that she was able to also do the same. Fran McCaffrey, the other contributions she made, you know, I think anyone who's played Dungeons and Dragons to some degree or some level maps are a big part of that. Right? And I think the maps and Tolkien's books, if not outright influence, at least inspired a little bit map making and Dungeons and Dragons.

And that of course, extends now to online gaming, whether it be on an Xbox and PlayStation or a home computer, those maps are important to. In fact, computers are an amazing way to do that. I think probably somebody should digitize this. That would be the next step. The next evolutionary step is to have, a website with interactive maps.

I think that's the way to go, like Google Earth, Google  Middle-earth, perhaps. Or it doesn't need to be Google, but digital  Middle-earth would be really cool. In fact, somebody do that? Call me if you want to. Let's get on it. But she did a lot of work then for TSR, who published the Dungeons and Dragons content modules and different things her mapmaking, her cartography, her knowledge about how mountains work and how rivers work and all those things really came into play for her there.

That is not what she did full time. That was a diversion of hers. But she did a lot of stuff. So I'm 99% sure she worked on the Dragonlance Chronicles as well to help map some of those things. She's, you know, cool lady and did some cool stuff. So her son, who was a cartographer as well, I hope I could talk to him.

I hope to hear from him. That would be another part of this podcast. That's the point here of the whole podcast is to kind of see all the ways that Tolkien influence a lot of things, and mapmaking is surely one of those. Dungeons and Dragons is surely one of those. Fantasy literature is surely one of those. I said in an unrelated, conversation this week that, you know, people talk about stealing ideas and borrowing, and certainly Tolkien borrowed from sources as well.

But if we took away all the fantasy literature that doesn't lean heavily on Tolkien, I'm not sure we even have a section of fantasy literature, you know, at the bookstore, if we if we still have bookstores, that is one thing Amazon people, younger readers may not understand or soon won't. There's still bookstores around, but the pleasure of walking into a bookstore and walking to the fantasy section and seeing Tolkien and seeing Steven Art Donaldson.

I think he's out of favor now. I think you're supposed to like him and McCaffrey, George Martin discovering new things, discovering the D&D section, being able to run through those things. It's really a cool, fun thing that I did in my youth. Peers. Anthony, I don't think we're supposed to like those either. Now, have we canceled a bunch of fantasy authors?

I don't really know.

If we took away Tolkien from that we would probably take away maps from all that. That is a part of that, too. Not just Tolkien making maps, but Fonstad that make the maps. Now there's a different artist that makes the maps for the books. His name escapes me at the moment, but he's also important.

We should talk to him. And I believe he's still alive, so we we shouldn't wait. I always think at least we shouldn't wait till people are deceased before we honor them. So perhaps we'll have to look into that soon. But we also need to, I don't know, talk to LED Zeppelin and Rush and a hundred bands that that leaned on Tolkien as well.

Artists. The some of the ones I alluded to here. There's lots and lots and lots of depth to mine here. And unlike the dwarves, I don't think we can delve too deeply. We could encounter a Balrog or two. Actually, there are some corporations that are using Tolkien names for things currently. Right now. We'll have to do a podcast very soon about contemporary, Tolkien names and use, and how that's legal, maybe a lawyer.

So we need to talk to Karen Lynn Fonstad that the atlas of  Middle-earth. Maps of  Middle-earth, maps of fantasy. Maps of Dungeons and Dragons. Maps of and McCaffrey's works Stephen Donaldson work. Donaldson's works, many works. All worthy of your notice, all worthy of your time, but especially for you. Talk. And it's, It's a really great way to enhance your Tolkien reading.

Speaking of enhancing, we do have a sponsor for this week's episode, which I always appreciate. It's Kellyanne Wkyc.com, a woman who makes custom made jewelry out of coins from around the world. That includes the UK, where she has made a custom necklace, a J R Tolkien necklace that uses a genuine, pound. I can't remember how many pounds I want to say it's 2 pounds.

Meaning not not not the weight, but the value of the coin. Circulated coin that was made in the 50th, kind of commemoration of his death and, from last year. And she has one left. But I, I have spoken to her and she's trying to get more of these. We sold one for her. And then the really cool.

It's, it's the way to carry a token coin around on a on a chain. Masculine or feminine? I think it looks good for both. So that link will be at the top of our, linear notes or notes here for the podcast. The other thing you can really do to help me out is to just tell one other person that you enjoyed the podcast, and maybe if you're a frequent listener, you've told somebody frequently.

But, if you can continue to spread the word, that would be fantastic. Thank you for all your support. Were heard around the world nearly on every continent, and that includes 25 countries and 135 cities. And honestly, not much promotion besides word of mouth. So thank you for the the work of helping spread the word so I can continue to talk about token, attract more guests, and, continue this conversation about the author of the 20th century.

So again, thanks very much. You've been listening to The Tolkien Podcast.

LINK to read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/13/obituaries/karen-wynn-fonstad-overlooked.html