About the Tolkien Atlas

Scope

The atlas is a reference compendium of the peoples, creatures, notable individuals and places of J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendarium. It is arranged as a family tree of races and kindreds, an index of figures ranked by their importance to the story, a gazetteer of places, four schematic maps, and a timeline of every age from the Music of the Ainur to the Dominion of Men.

What counts as canon

Entries draw only on the published works listed on the sources page: The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and its Appendices, The Children of Húrin and Unfinished Tales. Where those texts disagree, The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings are preferred and the variant is mentioned. Inventions of film and television adaptations are not treated as canon, and the drafts collected in The History of Middle-earth are not used.

Original prose

All descriptions, biographies and histories here are written in the atlas’s own words. Tolkien’s sentences, poems and songs are not quoted. Proper names and short epithets that function as names are used as they appear in the books.

Schematic maps

The maps are diagrams, not surveys. Each place is plotted so that its position relative to its neighbours matches the texts, but distances, coastlines and terrain are simplified, and nothing is to scale. Marker shape indicates the kind of place (a triangle for a mountain, a square for a fortress, a soft shape for a forest or lake) and marker size follows the place’s importance.

Importance ratings

Figures and places carry a rating from one to five dots. Five marks something central to the legendarium; one marks a passing mention. The rating governs how prominently an entry appears in lists and on the maps, not how interesting it is.

Affiliation

The atlas is an independent fan reference. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Tolkien Estate or any publisher.