User blog:HiddenVale/"Maps of Arda" exposition by user Roac's Wife (relocated)

''The following text was initially written as an article here against wiki standards, and has been moved here. The Text and images are from user Roac's Wife''.

A little while ago I was commissioned to make a number of maps of Arda for an upcoming Atlas of Tolkien.

The maps were to cover all of Arda, from the beginning of time within Tolkien’s legendarium, to the start of the Fourth Age at the end of  The Return of the King. In the end the author and I were very pleased with these maps, and all was good to go – but at the very last moment all of the images but one were pulled from the book, for legal reasons. The author was no less disappointed than I was.

I kept them all secret for a long time, but I think now it’s best to put them up here as nothing more than fan artwork. And I hope they give pleasure to whoever comes across them.

List of maps:

The Spring of Arda 1 (Years of the Lamps)

The Spring of Arda 2 (Years of the Trees)

Middle-earth in the Age of Stars

Valinor in the Years of the Trees

Beleriand and the North in First Years of the Sun

Númenor

The Empire of Númenor under Ar-Pharazôn

Middle-earth in the Third Age

The Shire

The Quest of Erebor (as told in  The Hobbit )

The Fellowship of the Ring, showing the paths of the protagonists

The Two Towers, showing the paths of the protagonists

The Return of the King, showing the paths of the protagonists

Middle-earth at the start of the Fourth Age

My sources were the original texts, JRR and Christopher Tolkien’s original maps, JRR’s sketches in the  Ambarkanta, and Karen Wynn Fonstad ’s  Atlas of Middle Earth.

Higher resolution images available on request.