Mt. Doom and Mt. Elburz in the Caucasus

[Extollager]

It seems to me that I read somewhere a comment by, or attributed to, Tolkien in which he linked Mt. Doom in Mordor to Mt. Elbruz in the Caucasus. Can anyone supply the reference? I have begun reading Negley Farson's Caucasian Journey and the reference to the real mountain recalled the Tolkienian memory. This could be something that was reported in a fanzine, etc.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Ooh - I can see why:

 

[Extollager]

Part of my problem of verifying this memory is that the mountain's name may be spelled Elbrus, Elbruz, etc. It seems that it shouldn't be hard to track down the reference, with all the Tolkien material on the Internet, but I haven't succeeded. I"m not imagining this....

 

[thaddeus6th]

Sometimes multiple spellings are valid. Czar has four, and there are about a dozen for Gadaffi.

That photo does look rather splendid. Is that Elbruz, or Yorkshire and the Pennines?

 

[Mirannan]

Looking at the maps and the scales given, apparently the approximate position of Mordor is somewhere in the region of Turkey. IMHO a reasonable place to put Mordor is the Black Sea, most of which was dry (albeit below sea level) until just before historical times. The cracking open of the Bosporus (sp?) and the resulting flood, filling the Black Sea, is thought to be a possible source of the many flood legends of civilisations in that area.

 

[Extollager]

I would like to keep this thread open specifically for the quest for Mt. Elbruz as a correlate of Mt. Doom. However, I'm going to start a separate thread relating to the topic of real-world correlates of Middle-earth in general. There are some nuggets from, or reported to be from, Tolkien himself.

 

[Corbier]

I have found a very weak link and I doubt this is what you meant. It makes for an amusing read nonetheless. As I can't post links yet, I will send you a PM, Extollager.

 

[Corbier]

I also can't post PMs yet, it seems.

This is what I meant, a semi-academic paper that claims Tolkien borrowed from the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen: nansen-tolkien.co.uk/tolkien.html

 

[Extollager]

Thank you, Corbier!

By the way, it's possible that what I was remembering when I started this thread was not a remark by Tolkien but someone else's inference that the comments to the Plimmers (Letters of JRRT p. 376) suggest a possible correlation of Mt. Doom and Mt. Elbrus.

 

[Extollager]

By the way, it's possible that what I was remembering when I started this thread was not a remark by Tolkien but someone else's inference that the comments to the Plimmers (Letters of JRRT p. 376) suggest a possible correlation of Mt. Doom and Mt. Elbrus.

Something like this feels pretty likely to me. It would be a remark printed in a fanzine. I'm starting a separate thread on the surprisingly good availability of vintage Tolkien fanzines.