Tolkien's great mythological tales of Middle-earth are meant to be taken, fictitiously, as an ancient history of the Earth, particularly of Europe, from several thousand years before the lands took their present shape. In fact, three of the works claim to be the life work of Bilbo Baggins. Like Shakespeare's King Lear, they occupy a historical period that could not have actually existed.
The term "Middle-earth" was not invented by Tolkien; it occurs many times in Middle English (Middel-erde) and Old English writings (Middangeard). It occurs half a dozen times in Beowulf, and is cognate to Midgard in Old Norse. It is consistently misspelled as 'Middle Earth' by journalists.
Although 'Middle-earth' strictly refers to a specific continent on Tolkien's fictional ancient earth, representing what we know as Eurasia and Africa, the term is sometimes erroneously used to refer to this entire 'earth' (properly called Arda).
A note on "truth" and canon
It is remarkably difficult to speak of what is true in the context of Middle-earth, perhaps more so than for any other fictional world, such as Greek mythology. The reasons for this are three:
What follows is a brief listing of characters from Tolkien's work which lived in Middle-earth. Note that characters are sorted according to several groups, and may appear multiple times.
House of Finw?/em>
Sons of F?nor
House of Fingolfin
House of Finarfin
Kings of N?enor: see Kings of N?enor
Ringwraiths or Nazg?
Thorin and Company
Kings of Arnor: see Kings of Arnor
Kings of Arthedain: see Kings of Arthedain
Chiefs of the Rangers of Arnor: see Chiefs of the D?edain
Stewards of Gondor: see Steward of Gondor
Kings of Rohan: see Kings of Rohan
Wizards or Istari:
The works of Tolkien have been a major influence on role-playing games along with others such as Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, H.P. Lovecraft and Michael Moorcock. Although the most famous game to be inspired partially by the setting was Dungeons & Dragons, there have been two specifically Middle-earth based and licensed games. These are the Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Game from Decipher Inc and the Middle Earth Role Play game (MERP) from Iron Crown Enterprises.
The computer game Angband is a free roguelike D&D-style game that features many characters from Tolkien's works.
First Age
House of Elw?and Olw?/em>
House of B?r
House of Marach
Descendants of L?hien and Beren
Descendants of Idril and Tuor
Haladin of Brethil
Others
For a list of the Valar, see that article.Second Age
Third Age
The Fellowship of the Ring
Kings of Gondor: see Kings of Gondor
Other characters
Races
Places
Countries and other large places are shown in italics; cities and other small places are shown in standard font.
See also Aman, Númenor for places outside Middle-earth.Major languages
Items
Weapons
Unions
Role-playing Games
Computer Games
External Links
References