Topographic maps of Beleriand and Númenor

I found them at last: The English texted versions of the topographic maps of Beleriand and Númenor that I produced for my late father a few years before his death! I upload them here to celebrate the free give-away campaign of the Kindle edition of "Middle-earth seen by the barbarians" at KDP Select, beginning on July 12 and lasting till July 15.

Both maps are enlarged to the same scale to show that Númenor is in fact as big as Beleriand, a fact that is somewhat obscured by the size of the map of Númenor provided in "Unfinished Tales". The colour pattern is that used on modern maps: dark green is lowest, followed by light green through yellow, brown and, ultimately, white.

A few assumptions and interpolations were required, especially to the north of Beleriand. What distinguishes a blank spot named Lothlann from another blank spot named Ard-Galen, so that it deserves a name of its own? Altitude, I assumed: Lothlann is here in fact the bed of an ancient glacier lake that has at some point in early history issued through Maglor's Gap, carving the valley of the Gelion and giving Amon Ereb a distinct tear-like shape, when the floods sculpted it. 

Altitudes and vegetation are otherwise interpolated from the texts while the submarine shelfs are based on conjecture only. There are a few more roads than on the official maps because, I assumed, they are needed to connect the places of settlement.

I have never produced LotR maps in that style, because in the same scale that would require eight sheets, with some of them looking rather empty.

A map of Middle-earth in the Second Age

This is a map of Middle-earth in the Second Age that complements the one of the First Age. Note that Beleriand is outlined as submerged west of the Ered Luin. The shape of the Bay of Belfalas is different from the familiar LotR map, based on the description of the inundations in HoMe XII.

Marching through Lothlann

Ouch - I noticed a slight glitch in "Middle-earth seen by the barbarians". Browsing my old Tolkien editions I noticed that I had not been aware of the entry in the Grey Annals (History of Middle-earth, Vol. 11) which states that the Swarthy Men entered Beleriand via Lothlann, far in the north. On the general map of Middle-earth in Fig. 3 I had accordingly placed the arrow that indicates their route too far to the south, between Belegost and Nogrod. This minor error I have amended now, a matching sentence added in the text and the edited print file uploaded to CreateSpace, both for the colour and the b/w edition of the collective volume. The old two-volume edition I shall leave unedited: There is no point in amending a map that, the readers and I agree, is anyway of inferior printing quality.