tolkiens legendarium - Is Middle-Earth a time, or is it a place?

I was looking at the map of Middle-Earth and it made me wonder. Does Middle-Earth refer to the time frame in which the LOTR stories took place, or does it refer to the area in which the LOTR tales unfold? To help clarify what I'm asking: Is the rest of Tolkiens' unmapped world Middle-Earth too, or is Middle-Earth the era?

Answer

Middle-earth is the name for the parts of the world in Tolkien's universe where men lived. It was based on the Old English/Norse term "Middangeard" as used, for example, in Beowulf. The term "middle" here comes from the Norse idea of nine connected worlds, of which men lived on the one in the center. This distinguishes Middle-earth from, for example, Valinor where the immortal Valar lived.

Tolkien's Middle-earth includes other places that are not on his maps of Middle-earth that are still part of that region, but there are also unmapped areas that are outside of Middle-earth. Tolkien described Middle-earth as basically being surrounded on all sides by ocean, so anything that was "across the seas" would be somewhere else.

In practice, Tolkien fans often just use "Middle-earth" to mean the setting of the novels, without being too concerned with where it stops and starts

Comments

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Both the elves and the dwarves were famous for their metal work in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but what is the difference between what they made, and which one had the better skill of making amours and swords? Answer James Christopher's answer sums up the second part of your question well, but as to the difference in what they made, a little more detail is needed. Once the Elves learned to forge with steel, the shape of the sword changed, now being able to take on the form of a great broadsword or a light and agile curved sword. Additionally, they took great pride in decorating their swords. As we see in the Lord of the Rings , some swords like Sting had magical properties such as glowing blue when orcs are near. As far as the use of Mithril, lotr.wikia has two contradictory passages: Thus, Elven blades became renowned as great weapons, capable of performing deeds beyond the skill of their handlers and were even more glorious when the use of Mithril was allowed to the Elves. ...

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