***Warning: Children of Húrin SPOILERS in this post!***
(Fairly minor actually, but don't say I didn't warn you...)

Don't look at this picture.

















Here's a serviceable map of Western Beleriand (below) for those of you reading The Children of Húrin at the moment. Click to make larger. I know an almost identical map is included in the book, but it seems to me the "top" is cut off. The Anfauglith, as explained, is the charred battlefield where the Battle of Unnumbered Tears occurred. Thus to the North of that region would be the Iron Mountains and fortress of Thangorodrim where Húrin was imprisoned, as well as the fortress/underworld of Angband beneath/behind it where Morgoth kept his counsels, his ill-begotten treasures, and the better part of his hoard of thralls. The great worm Glaurung and Morgoth's Maiar lieutenants Sauron and the balrog Gothmog also dwelt there and devised much malice. I thought it was odd that Chris chose to leave this off the map since it has such a vital bearing on the story, not that *Túrin* ever really goes that direction, but still, Morgoth does harass him and his family throughout the story. Kinda important to know where the big guy lives and where all those Orcs are spilling forth from.

















To be able to visualize this important piece of Beleriand I suggest you glance over the map in your copy of The Silmarillion, or one of many good online maps such as this one.

If nothing else, now you can see why Melian had to put up her protective girdle around Doriath and why the Elves living there were so antsy all the time. And you'd think Gondolin would have been spotted by Morgoth's roving eyes a lot sooner than it was. Turgon and Morgoth probably went to the same Starbucks every morning, they were so close.

As to the lands East of the Blue Mountains such as Belegost and the mansions of the Dwarf lords all the way to mysterious Cuiviénen, where the Elves first awoke, they really don't play into this story at all, so I won't provide any maps here. But if you're burning with curiosity I'd recommend Chris' History of Middle Earth series (natch), as well as some editions of The Silmarillion and Karen Wynn Fonstad's The Atlas of Middle Earth.

Since JRR Tolkien seems to have kept the geography of Beleriand, Eriador, Númenor, Valinor, and the rest of Arda locked away in his noggin and rarely committed more than some scribbly drawings to paper, it is hard if not impossible after his death to devise an "official" map of these lands. Christopher has done an admirable job just getting what you see here down in adequate form, as a complement to his familiar and oft-used map of Middle Earth (Eriador) in Lord of the Rings. Maybe to have too detailed and precise a map would spoil some of the mystery of that shrouded past, much the way Biblical scholars have worked with archaeologists to try to determine the historical locations of places like Nazareth, Sodom and Gomorrah, Jericho, and so on, a pursuit which has spawned countless interesting documentaries if nothing else. And after all, Tolkien was a linguist first, a storyteller second, and a geographer ass-last. Sometimes I'm not sure even he knew where places in his stories existed in relation to one another, but after all it was his land so he could always get out of a jam by having Eru or the Valar cause a catastrophe and move things around if need be (which actually does happen twice).

Well... I hope that answers some of your questions about where that pesky Morgoth lived, and possibly will lead you into a deeper study of the surrounding lands. To answer that other frequently asked question, "Middle Earth," or Eriador, the land in which the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place, all lies just east of this map, beyond the Blue Mountains. In fact, the Blue Mountains form the Western extent of Middle Earth, with the Grey Havens lying right in the midst of them, in an eroded pass where an arm of the sea reaches inward. Belegost and Lindon can actually be seen on both maps. So what happened to the rest of Beleriand? It was in fact destroyed and sunk beneath the sea at the close of the First Age, when Morgoth was expelled through the door of night into the Void, beyond the Circles of the World, and the land substantially changed.

It's a trip to think that as Gandalf, Elrond, Frodo and the gang sailed from the Grey Havens and into the West, they were (in a sense) sailing over the ruins of all that happened in the First Age... The great Elven kingdoms of Norgothrond, Doriath, and Gondolin, the lava-field where the Nirnaeth Arnoediad took place, the ruins of Morgoth's ancient haunts, Túrin's home of Dor-Lindon, etc., not to mention that Second Age Tolkien-version of Atlantis, the star-shaped island of Númenor, whence Aragorn was descended. Pretty crazy stuff.

This painting blows my mind up.

















Any other questions? Ask away!