Map of Rohan, Gondor, and Mordor

"...there is much else that may be told." — Glóin This article or section is a stub. Please help Tolkien Gateway by expanding it.

The original map by Christopher Tolkien

The Map of Rohan, Gondor, and Mordor is an unnamed map reproduced in The Return of the King and in one-volume editions of The Lord of the Rings.

Creation

Tolkien said to Rayner Unwin that a map of Gondor would be needed for the second and third volumes which would clarify the courses of the characters (Aragorn, the Rohirrim and Frodo) not possible with the general map. He had however by April 1955 a lot of trouble displaying the distances correctly, and considered quitting the attempt. As he reminisced, it took him

"many days, the last three virtually without food or bed, to drawing re-scaling and adjusting a large map, at which [Christopher] then worked for 24 hours (6 a.m. to 6 a.m. without bed) in re-drawing just in time."

― J.R.R. Tolkien

More recently the map was redrawn in 1965 by Barbara Remington, 1988 by Shelly Shapiro, and then by Stephen Raw for the new editions of the Lord of the Rings since 1994.

Description

The map is 5 times enlarged from the general Map of Middle-earth, although C. Tolkien failed to insert the scale for the final drawing. It depicts most of the regions where the events of both The Two Towers and The Return of the King took place, and traversed by the characters.

Unlike the other general or regional maps that were semi-pictorial, this one was drawn like a topographic map, with the mountains depicted by detailed contour lines, representing elevation.

Its main feature is the White Mountains, surrounded by most of Gondor (as it was in the late Third Age), south-eastern Rohan, and north-western Mordor.