I totally get that. I’m more wondering about the mechanism that causes that. Why the defeat of Sauron and the destruction of the ring is what heralds in the new age and causes magic to leave Middle Earth.
The Rings were symbols of the golden age of elvendom. The destruction of the One Ring affected them all and were a sign that the coming age belonged to men. While the text is unclear, it appears that the Elves expect the 3 to fail in the absence of the One and that coupled with the increasing sea-longing was seen by the elves as the Valar saying, “Come home, everyone, forever.”
It doesn’t. Magic has been slowly fading pretty much since the Creation. In Middle Earth, older things are almost always more powerful/greater/better than newer ones. However the power of the Three Rings of the Elves (Well, mostly Vilya and Nenya) has been able to keep this at bay to some extent. When they go as a result of the destruction of the One, then all that they have wrought goes also, and things proceed all the quicker as a result of having been held back.
Or at least, that’s my theorizing.
It’s my impression – formed by the Professor’s flowery language, and not stated in black and white – that the elf realms are “maintained” by the power of the elven rings. So everything that makes them special, “magical” (eg, the non-passage of time) is due to Narya & Vilya & Enya (or something like that). And that power got shut off like a popped circuit breaker when The One was unmade. And there go the elf realms.
My feeling is that the physical structures of Rivendell, after a long period of slow decay*, was lost to history because of one of the ice ages between the end of the Third Age and now. The same applies to Minas Tirith, except that the decay started much later.**
- Slow by human standards, not Elvish. From Elrond’s point of view it didn’t take long at all.
** Damn. I had a good footnote here but forgot what it was. Stupid work.
I totally buy that theory. Thanks!
:smack:
:smack:
That’s ok. Enya has that whole music career going now.
Tolkien himself only pinned 2 or 3 Middle-earth locations to the real-world map:
Minas Tirith=Istanbul.
Cuiviénen (in the far east where the first Elves awoke to the starlight)=Lake Baikal.
The Shire is England, of course, culturally if not geographically. Tolkien’s original idea when young had been to mythologize England as Tol Eressëa, with Kortirion=Warwick (The Book of Lost Tales). But early on, he dropped the identification with England, although he kept Eressëa, moving it over next to Valinor.
The Silberhorn mountain in Switzerland was the inspiration for Celebdil/Silvertine. The Switzerland location may very vaguely form an analogue of the southern Misty Mountains. But there is really very little resemblance, let alone correspondence, between the topography of Middle-earth and that of real Europe.
Correction—Tolkien did not geographically identify Minas Tirith with Constantinople, only that he saw Minas Tirith facing the menace of Mordor as somehow analogous to medieval Constantinople facing the Turks. He kind of had a thing about that.
But as for geography, Tolkien said that Minas Tirith is on the same latitude as Florence. Hobbiton is on the latitude of Oxford (of course). He also said Mount Doom is Stromboli, the volcano just to the north of Sicily. So central Mordor is Sicily (my ancestral land), gee, thanks, Mr. T. :rolleyes: T. went on to say that the Mouths of Anduin and the ancient city of Pelargir correspond to Troy. This map attempts to overlay Europe onto Middle-earth. Whoever made it must have jiggered the relative scales of the maps around to find a best fit. It appears to have started by placing the Shire on Midlands England. At these relative scales, that places Minas Tirith to the north of Florence, more like Ferrara or Bologna. Mordor is nowhere near Sicily; rather, it’s Yugoslavia. The Mouths of Anduin are just north of Rome; at the latitude of Troy they’d be way south, like Calabria or Taranto. Rivendell appears to overlie Hamburg, Germany (so there’s the answer to the OP: Rivendell eventually got turned into Hamburg). Edoras is apparently Zurich, Switzerland. The Dale-Erebor region is in Poland. Mount Doom is Zagreb, Croatia.
This is all very vague. What T. said on one occasion identifying Orodrúin with Stromboli is contradicted by his statement on another occasion lining up Minas Tirith with Florence. These attempts to correlate incompatible geographies open a door to an endless dark, dank cave of fanwankery. I prefer not to go there and just enjoy the story as just a story. Fandom does have its limits. Or ought to.
So hobbits are Englishmen. My other analogies are:
Rohirrim - Norman French knights
Easterlings - Russians
Men of the lake - Scots (the drawing of Laketown looks a bit like Aberdeen of old.)
Bree Men - Londoners
[Ivanhoe]Certain Norman knights![/Ivanhoe]
Slams dagger into table.
What’s baseball got to do with it?
My theory on the diminishment in the 4th age is from the Silmarillion: in the beginning, there was much singing and back-and-forthing in song between the forces of light and darkness. Once the song was over, Eru hit Instant Replay and the rest of the Silmarillion is all of that song & singing redone in live-action 3D with better special effects. The events in LOTR are a tiny little coda tacked on to the very end of one of the last bits of song: “oh yes, and here’s where Sauron gets smacked down… again”. Everything that happens after that is just the dying echoes of the song fading away into darkness, and the multiple endings of LOTR are likened to one of Mozart symphonies which won’t end. won’t end. It just keeps going. and going. and ending. and ending. aaaaaand more. and ending. and ending. Ending? Ending! END! END! Done.
That’s why I like Wagner. 
The biggest change was after the second age, when Arda finally become round and a ship voyage to Araman become impossible.
nm
That was one of Beethoven’s favorite symphonic tricks. The Fifth Symphony ends by everybody hammering on purely C major chords for like the last two minutes solid.
While your statement is literally true, it’s misleading, as it seems to imply that Arda became spherical very shortly after the Second Age. The change of the world happened more than halfway into the Third Age. Also I rather doubt it was a perceptible change in Middle-Earth anyway.
A catapult!