I Can’t Sleep - Middle-Earth | Can’t Sleep? Learn About Tolkien’s Legendary World

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

Middle-earth is the legendary setting of J.R.R. Tolkien’s most beloved stories, filled with ancient kingdoms, distant lands, and a history spanning thousands of years. This episode explores the geography of Middle-earth, its peoples, the different ages of its history, and the enduring mythology that shaped one of the most influential fantasy worlds ever created. Along the way, you’ll hear about hobbits, elves, dwarves, men, wizards, and the places that have captivated generations of readers. It’s steady and consistent, with no whispering and no sudden changes, just enough to give your mind something to follow as you wind down. Happy sleeping! Read with permission from Middle-earth, Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-earth), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. — Ad-free episodes: ⁠icantsleep.supportingcast.fm⁠Have a topic in mind? ⁠Request a topic⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit ⁠megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast. Why I help you drift off one fact at a time. I'm your host, Benjamin Boster. And today's episode is about Middle Earth. Middle Earth is the setting of much of the English writer J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy. The term is equivalent to Miss Garthor of Norse mythology, and Mittengard in Old English works, including Beowulf. Middle Earth is the Acumini, i.e. the human inhabited world,

or the central continent of Earth, in Tolkien's imagined mythological past. His most widely read works, the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, are said entirely in Middle Earth. Middle Earth has also become a shorthand-term for Tolkien, 's Legendarium, his large body of fantasy writings, and for the entirety of his fictional world. Middle Earth is the main continent of Earth, Arda, in an imaginary period of the past, ending was Tolkien's third age, about 6,000 years ago. Tolkien's tales of Middle Earth mostly focus on the northwest of the continent.

This region is suggestive of Europe, the northwest of the Old World, with the environs of the Shire reminiscent of England, but more specifically the West Midlands, was a town at its center, Hobbiton, at the same latitude as Oxford. Tolkien's Middle Earth is peopleed not only by men, but by elves, dwarves, ants, and hobbits, and by monsters including dragons, trolls, and orcs.

Through the imagined history, the peoples other than men, dwindle, leave, or fade, until after the period described in the books, only men are left on the planet. Tolkien's stories chronicle the struggle to control the world called Arda and the continent of Middle Earth between. On one side the angelic valar, the elves and their allies among men, and on the other the demonic Melkor, or Morgoth,

Avala fallen into evil, his followers and their subjects, mostly orcs, dragons, and enslaved men. In later ages after Morgoth's defeat and expulsion from Arta, his place is taken by his lieutenant Sauron, a Maya, The Valar withdrew from direct involvement in the affairs of Middle Earth after the defeat of Morgoth. But in later years they sent the Wizards or Astari to help in the struggle against Sauron. The most important wizards were Gandalf the Grey and Sauramon the White. Gandalf remained true to his mission and proved crucial in the fight against Sauron.

Sauraman, however, became corrupted and sought to establish himself as a rival to Sauron for absolute power and middle earth. Other races involved in the struggle against evil were dwarves, ants, and most famously hobbits. The early stages of the conflict are chronicled in the Silmarillion, while the final stages of the struggle to defeat Sauron are told in the Hobbit and in the Lord of the Rings. conflict over the possession and control of precious or magical objects is a recurring theme in the stories. The first age is dominated by the doomed quest of the El Phaonor

and most of his Noldoran clan to recover three precious jewels called the Silmarils that Morgoth stole from them, hence the title the Silmarillion. The second and third age are dominated by the forging of the rings of power, and the fate of the one ring forged by Sauron, which gives its wearer the power to control or influence those wearing the other rings of power. In ancient Germanic mythology, the world of men is known by several names. The old English middengarde descends from an earlier Germanic word,

and so has cognates such as the old Norse Miskara, from Norse mythology, transliterated to modern English as Midgard. The original meaning of the second element from Proto-Germanic Gardas was enclosure, cognate with English Yard. Middengarde was assimilated by folk etymology to Middle Earth. Middle Earth was at the center of nine worlds in Norse mythology, and of three worlds was heaven above, hell below, and some later Christian versions. Tolkien's first encounter was the term Mittengard, as he stated in a letter,

was in an old English fragment he studied in 1913 to 1914. This is from the Christ First Poem by Kinnawulf. The name Aierrandel was the inspiration for Tolkien's mariner Ayerandil, who set sail from the lands of Middle Earths to ask for aid from the angelic powers, the Valar. Tolkien's earliest poem about Aerondel from 1914, the same year he read the Christ poem, refers to the Midworld's Rim. Tolkien considered Middengarde to be the abhorred. fighting place of men, the physical world in which man lives out his life and destiny, as opposed to the

unseen worlds above and below it, namely heaven and hell. He states that it is my mother earth for place, but in an imaginary pastime, not some other planet. He began to use the term middle Earth in the late 1930s in place of the earlier terms Greatlands, Outerlands, and Hitherlands. The first published appearance of the word Middle Earth in Tolkien's works is in the prologue to the Lord of the Rings. Hobbits had, in fact, lived quietly in Middle Earth for many long years before other folk even became aware of them. The term Middle Earth has come to be applied as a shorthand for the entirety of Kilken's Legendarium, instead of the technically more appropriate but lesser-known terms, Arda, for the physical world, and Aya, for the physical reality of

creation as a whole. In careful geographical terms, Middle Earth is a continent on Arda, excluding regions such as Amman and the Isle of Numenor. The alternative wider use is reflected in book titles such as The Complete Guide to Middle Earth, The Road to Middle Earth, The Atlas of Middle Earth, and Christopher Tolkien's 12-volume series, The History of Middle Earth. Tolkien's biographer Humphrey Carpenter states that Tolkien's Middle Earth is the known world, recalling the Norse Midgard and the equivalent words in early English, noting that Tolkien made it clear that this was our world in a purely imaginary period of antiquity. Tolkien explained in a letter to his publisher that it is just a use of Middle English, Middle Erda, or Earth,

altered from Old English Mittengarde, the name for the inhabited lands of men between the seas. There are allusions to a similarly or identically named world in the work of other writers, both before and after him. William Morris's 1870 translation of the Volsung saga calls the world Midgard. Margaret Whitmer's 1918 poem, The Grey Magician, contains the lines. I was living very merrily on Middle Earth, as merry as a maid may be, till the gray magician came down along the road and flung his cobweb cloak on me. C.S. Lewis's 1938 to 1945 space trilogy calls the home planet Middle Earth, and specifically references Tolkien's unpublished legendarium.

Both men were members of the Inklings Literary Discussion Group. Within the overall context of his Legendarium, Tolkien's Middle Earth was part of his created world of Arda, which includes the underlying lands of Ammon and Arrasa, removed from the rest of the physical world, which itself was part of the wider creation he called Aya. Ammon and Middle Earth are separated from each other by the Great Sea Billiger. Though they may contact in the far north at the grinding ice or Helkeraxa,

the western continent, Amman, was the home of the Valar, and the elves called the Eldar. On the eastern side of Middle Earth was the eastern sea. Most of the events in Tolkien stories take place. in the northwest of Middle Earth. In the first age, further to the northwest, was the subcontinent Balarian. It was engulfed by the ocean at the end of the first age.

Tolkien prepared several maps of Middle Earth. Some were published in his lifetime. The main maps are those published in the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings, the Silmarillion, and unfinished tales, and appear as foldouts or illustrations. Tolkien insists that maps be included in the book for the benefit of readers, despite the expense involved.

The definitive and iconic map of Middle Earth was published in the Lord of the Rings. It was refined with Tolkien's approval by the illustrator Pauline Baines, using Tolkien's detailed annotations, with vignette images and, larger paintings at top and bottom into a standalone poster, a map of Middle Earth. In Tolkien's conception, Arda was created specifically as the habitation, Embar and Ambar, where the children of Aluvatar, elves and men. It is envisaged in a flat earth's cosmology,

with the stars and later also the sun and moon revolving around it. Tolkien's sketches show a disc-like face for the world, which looked up to the stars. However, Tolkien's legendarium addresses the spherical Earth paradigm by depicting a catastrophic transition from a flat to a spherical world, known as the Auclabeth, in which Amon became inaccessible. to mortal men. Tolkien described the region in which the hobbits lived as the northwest of the old world, east of the sea, and the northwest of the old world is essentially Europe, especially Britain. However, as he noted in private letters, the geographies do not match, and he did not consciously

make them match when he was writing. He did confirm, however, that the shire, the land of his Hobbit Heroes, was based on England, in particular the West Midlands of his childhood. In the prologue of the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien writes, Those days, the third age of Middle Earth, are now long past, and the shape of all lands has been changed. The appendices make several references in both history and etymology of topics now, in modern English languages, and then ancient languages. Both the appendices and the Silmarillion mentioned constellations, stars, and planets that correspond to those seen in the northern hemisphere of Earth,

including the sun, the moon, Orion, and his belt, Ursa Major, and Mars. A map annotated by Tolkien places Hobbiton on the same latitude as Oxford and Ministeris at the latitude of Ravenna, Italy. He used Belgrade, Cyprus, and Jerusalem as further reference points. The history of Middle Earth, as described in the Silmarillion, began when the Ainur entered Arda, following the creation events in the Ainulandale, and long ages of labors throughout Aya, the fictional universe. Time from that point was measured using valian years, though the subsequent history of art

was divided into three time periods using different years, known as the years of the lamps, the years of the trees, and the years of the sun. A separate overlapping chronology divides the history into ages of the children of Aluvitar. The first such age began with the awakening of the elves during the years of the trees, by which time the anor had already long inhabited Arda,

and continued for the first six centuries of the years of the sun. All the subsequent ages took place during the years of the sun. Arda is, as critics have noted, our own green and solid earth had some quite remote, epic in the past. As such, it has not only an immediate story, but a history, and the whole thing is an imagined prehistory of the earth as it is now. The ANOR were angelic beings created by the one god of Eya, Eru Iulvitar. The cosmological myth called the Eynulandale, or music of the Ainur, describes how the Aynur sang for Aluvatar,

who then created Aya to give material form to their music. Many of the Aynur entered Aya, and the greatest of these were called the Valar. Melkor, the chief agent of evil in Aya, and later called Morgoth, was initially one of the Valar. With the Valar came lesser spirit, spirits of the Ainur called the Ma'ar. Melian, the wife of the Elven King Singal, in the first age,

was a Maya. There were also evil Ma'ar, including the Balrogs, and the second Dark Lord Sauron. Sauron devised the black speech, Burzum, for his slaves, such as orcs to speak. In the third age, five of the Ma'ar were embodied and sent to Middle Earth to help the free peoples to overthrow Sauron. These are the Astari or wizards, including Gandalf, Sauramon, and Rattagast. The elves are known as the firstborn of Aluvitar, intelligent beings created by Aluvatar alone, with many different clans. Originally, elves all spoke the same common eldron ancestral tongue. But over thousands of years, it diverged into different languages.

The two main elven languages were Quenya, spoken by the light elves, and cindarin, spoken by the dark elves. Physically, the elves resemble humans. Indeed, they can marry and have children with them, as shown. by the few half-elven in the legendarium. The elves are agile and quick-footed, being able to walk a tight rope unaided. Their eyesight is keen.

Elves are immortal unless killed in battle. They are re-embodied in Valenor, if killed. Men were the second-born of the children of Aluvitar. They awoke in Middle Earth much later than the elves. Men and hobbits were the last humanoid race to appear in Middle Earth. Dwarves, ants, and orcs also preceded them. The capitalized term man, plural men, is used as a gender-neutral racial description to distinguish humans from other human-like races of Middle Earth.

In appearance, they are much like elves, but on average less beautiful. Unlike elves, men are mortal, aging and dying quickly, usually living 40 to 80 years. However, the Numenorians could live several centuries, and their descendants, the Dunedine, also tended to live longer than regular humans. This tendency was weakened both by time and by intermingling with lesser peoples. The dwarves are a race of humanoid, who are shorter than men, but larger than hobbits. The dwarves were created by the Vala Aole,

before the firstborn awoke, due to his impatience for the arrival of the children of Aluvitar to teach and to cherish. When confronted and shamed for his presumption by Aluvatar, Eru took pity on Aalah and gave his creation the gift of life, but under the condition that they be taken and put to sleep in widely separated locations in Middle Earth and not to awaken until after the firstborn were upon the earth. They are mortal like men but live much longer, usually several hundred years.

A peculiarity of dwarves is that both males and females are bearded and thus appear identical to outsiders. The language spoken by dwarves is called, called Kuzdul, and was kept largely as a secret language for their own use. Like hobbits, dwarves live exclusively in Middle Earth. They generally reside under mountains where they are specialists in mining and metalwork. Tolkien identified hobbits as an offshoot of the race of men. Another name for hobbits is halfling, as they were generally only half the size of men.

in their lifestyle and habits they closely resemble men and in particular englishmen except for their preference for living in holes underground by the time of the hobbit most of them lived in the shire a region of the northwest of middle earth having migrated there from further east the ants were tree-like shepherds of trees their name coming from an old english word for giant. Orcs and trolls made of stone were evil creatures bred by Morgoth. They were not original creations, but rather mockeries of the children of Aluvitar, elves and ends, respectively, since only Aluvatar has the ability to give conscious life to things. The precise origins of orcs and trolls are unclear, as Tolkien considered. various possibilities, and sometimes changed his mind, leaving several inconsistent accounts. Late in the third age, the Uruks, or Urukai, appeared, a race of orks of great size and strength

that tolerate sunlight better than ordinary orcs. Tolkien also mentions men-orgs and orkmen, or half-orks, or goblin men. They share some characteristics with orgs like slanty eyes, but look more like men. Tolkien, a Catholic, realized he had created a dilemma for himself. If these beings were sentient and had a sense of right and wrong, then they must have souls and could not have been created wholly evil. Dragons or worms appear in several varieties, distinguished by whether they have wings and whether they breathe fire.

Cold drakes versus fire drakes. The first of the fire dregs, Suriloki, in Quenia, was Glaurung, the golden, bred by Morgoth and Engbad, and called the great worm, the worm of Morgoth, and the father of dragons. Middle earth contains sapient animals, including the eagles, Huan, the great hound from Valinor, and the wolf-like wargs.

In general, the origins and nature of these animals are unclear. The horse line of the miaras of Rohan, especially Gandalf's mount, Shadowfax, also appears to be intelligent and understand human speech. The bare man, Bjorn, had a number of animal friends about his house. The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, both set in Middle Earth, have been the subject of a variety of film adaptations. There were many early failed attempts to bring the fictional universe to life on screen,

some even rejected by the author himself, who is skeptical of the prospects of an adaptation. While animated and live-action shorts were made of Tolkien's books in 1967 and 1960s, The first commercial depiction of The Hobbit on screen was the Rankin' Bass animated TV special in 1977. In 1978, the first big-screen adaptation of the fictional setting was introduced in Ralph Bakshi's animated The Lord of the Rings. New Line Cinema released the first part of director Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film series in 2001, as part of the of a trilogy. It was followed by a prequel trilogy in the Hobbit film series with several of the same actors playing their old roles. In 2003, the Lord of the Rings, the Return of

the King received 11 Academy Award nominations and won all of them, matching the totals awarded to Ben Hur and Titanic. Two fan films set in Middle Earth, The Hunt for Gullum, and Born of Hope, were uploaded to YouTube on May 8, 2009, and December 11, 2009, respectively. Numerous computer and video games have been inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien's works, said in Middle Earth. Titles have been produced by studios such as Electronic Arts, Pivendi Games, Melbourne House, and Warner Brothers' interactive entertainment. Aside from officially licensed games, many Tolkien-inspired mods, custom maps, and total conversions have been made for many games, such as Warcraft 3, Minecraft, Rome, Total War, medieval 2, Total War, the Elder Scrolls 4, Oblivion, and the Elder Scrolls 5, Skyrim.

In addition, there are many text-based MM-O-R-P-Gs, known as M-Us, based on Middle Earth. The oldest of these dates back to 1991 and was known as Middle Earth M-U-D, run by using L-P-M-U-D. After the Middle Earth M-U-D ended in 1992, it was followed by Elendor and M-U-M-E.