Arda

Arda is part of Ea , the universe. It was created, like the rest of Ea, through the Ainur Music for the Children of Ilúvatar - elves and humans .

Since in Tolkien’s cosmology the Sun, the Moon, stars and other celestial objects were in the orbit of this planet, they were also considered part of the Arda, so sometimes Arda is defined as the “solar system”, while the Earth itself or the part of Arda that does not include celestial bodies , was called Ambar ( quarter Ambar ) or Imbar ( quarter Imbar ).

Initially, Arda was a flat world, the continents of which were surrounded by the vast ocean of Ekkaia ( Quarter Ekkaia ), or Vaya ( Quarter Váya ), the Outer Sea ( Eng. Encircling Sea ), and separated by Belegaer ( Synd. Belegaer ), Great Sea ( Eng. Great Sea ), and the Sharing Seas ( English Sundering Seas ). In the First Age in the northwest of Middle-earth, Beleriand was located, which was destroyed as a result of the War of Wrath .

To the south and east of Middle-earth there was a continent known as the Dark Lands . To the east was the relatively small mainland, the Land of the Sun , so named because the Gates of the Sun illuminated the flat world somewhere nearby.

There is very little information about these continents, just as little about the south and east of Middle-earth. It is possible that Tolkien did not mean the continents, but the distant regions of Middle-earth. In the south of Middle-earth there were the so-called Near Earths ( English Hither Lands ), which included Harad . The word " Harad " meant the south in a general sense and was used to designate not only the lands directly south of Gondor and Mordor , but also the south of Middle-earth in general. There were many deserts scorched by the sun in Middle Harad that farther to the south were probably replaced by an impenetrable jungle, the birthplace of mumakil . The inhabitants of Far Harad also had dark skin, as if burnt by the sun.

The vast eastern lands had the common name Runes , although this word may also have been used only to indicate the area immediately adjacent to the Runes Sea ( English of Sea of ​​Rhûn ) and the River Running ( English River Running ). The Vastaki , like the Haradrim , were a conglomerate of a large number of different peoples.

Even less is known about the far eastern borders of Middle-earth, presumably overlooking the sea. It is known that in ancient times there was a huge mountain range Orokarni (“ Red Mountains ”) from north to south similar to the Ered Lwin ridge (“ Blue Mountains ”) in the west of the continent (at the dawn of its existence, the world was symmetrical). Elves first appeared there, in the extreme east. Their homeland, Kuivienen , no longer existed in the Third Age. It is not known whether Orokarni survived in the Third Age and in what form (Ered Luin greatly decreased in size, but survived). Far to the east of the Runes, the Blue Mages wandered, who went there to raise an uprising against Sauron in the lands he conquered, but information about their activities did not reach the western lands. The Blue Mages probably did not fulfill their task: either, like Saruman, they themselves began to rule people, or, like Radagast , became the patrons of a particular locality or people and stopped worrying about the fate of all of Middle-earth. It is only known for certain that not one of them has returned.

In the Second Age for edain in the Great Sea, Numenor was raised. This island existed for most of the Second Age, but was destroyed due to the pride of the Numenoreans, who violated the ban of the Valar and went on a military campaign against Aman.

After the death of Numenor, Arda became round, and the world became smaller. Haman was forever removed from the world accessible to people, and only elves for whom the Direct Path was left could now reach it. The commandment of Iluvatar to replace the disappeared lands formed new lands east and west of Middle-earth.

The word " Arda " itself was clearly borrowed by Tolkien from Germanic languages (Dutch " aarde ", German " Erde ") and akin to the English " Earth ", "Earth". Of course, in Tolkien’s mythology this word had nothing to do with real languages ​​and belonged to the Quenya language.

The original world created by the Valar was called Arda Unmarred ( Arda Unmarred ), or Arda Alahasta ( quarter Arda Alahasta ). This world was changed as a result of the wars between the Valar and Melkor , only one part of it remained - Valinor . Arda Unsharped was a flat, symmetrical world, illuminated by eternal light.

The new world was given the name Arda the Distorted ( Eng. Arda Marred ), since the fairy Melkor was scattered in the world. It was from this world that the children of Iluvatar were created. This is a world in which evil and violence, illness, intolerable cold and heat, and other things that were not in the undistorted Arda are possible.

Arda the Distorted also distorted the idea of ​​the immortality of the elves: in the Arda of the Distorted, the elves slowly fade away until their bodies are so thin that they become ghosts. Only in Valinor could this process be stopped, and this is one of the reasons why all elves are finally forced to go to Valinor. One of the abilities of the Rings of Power was power over time, thanks to which Elrond and Galadriel in their kingdoms could also suspend the process of extinction of elves. After the destruction of the Ring of Omnipotence, the power of the elven rings was lost, and at the beginning of the Fourth Age, many elves finally left Middle-earth.

• Cosmology of Middle-earth
• Arda MUD

• Arda na Kulichki
• Encyclopedia of Arda (in English)