...there is much else that may be told.
The Straits of the World was a strait of mountainous land south-east of Beleriand that narrowly separated the Great Gulf of Belegaer from the Inland Sea of Helcar in the First Age.[1] The Straits of the World appear only in early writings[1] before Tolkien envisioned the wide lands of Eriador, Gondor, and Mordor that lay east and south of Beleriand.
Portrayal in adaptations
Karen Wynn Fonstad speculated in her work The Atlas of Middle-earth that the Sea of Helcar drained into the Great Gulf at the end of the First Age and that the Straits of the World became the river Poros. Fonstand's interpretation was predicated on the idea that Mordor was created in the Second Age where the Sea of Helcar once lay.[2] However, in The Peoples of Middle-earth (which was published after Fontstad's Atlas), Melkor was said to have created Mount Doom in Mordor during the "long First Age".[3] Additionally, it is told in Unfinished Tales that the migration of the Drúedain from Hildórien brought them westward through lands south of Mordor before they turned northward, entering Ithilien and becoming the first Men to cross the Anduin.[4]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Shaping of Middle-earth, "V. The Ambarkanta" p. 259
- ↑ Karen Wynn Fonstad (1991), The Atlas of Middle-earth
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Peoples of Middle-earth, "XIII. Last Writings" p. 390 (note 14)
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), Unfinished Tales, "The Drúedain", pp. 339-340