Straits of the World

From Tolkien Gateway
Revision as of 08:13, 4 July 2020 by Protospace (talk | contribs) (Clarification; remove overlink)
"...there is much else that may be told." — Glóin
This article or section is a stub. Please help Tolkien Gateway by expanding it.

The Straits of the World was a strait of mountainous land linking the Great Gulf with the Inland Sea of Helcar in the First Age of the world.[1] The Straits of the World appears only in early writings[1] before Tolkien envisioned the wide lands of Eriador, Gondor, and Mordor that lay east of the Great Gulf.

Portrayal in adaptations

Karen Wynn Fonstad speculated in 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 and became the first Men to cross Poros, entering Ithilien.[4]

References