Americans Might Be Living in Valinor! So Thought Tolkien.

[Extollager]

Go to John Rateliff's blog here:

Weird Tolkien (II). Valinor is North America

So, THE SHIBBOLETH isn't that hard to get, appearing in THE PEOPLES OF MIDDLE-EARTH (HME.XII) as it does, but how about J. R. R. TOLKIEN, L...

sacnoths.blogspot.com

Tolkien wrote:

Is Aman 'removed' or destroyed at Catastrophe [the downfall of Númenor]?



It was physical. Therefore it could not be removed,

without remaining visible as part or Arda or as a

new satellite! It must either remain as a landmass

bereft of its former inhabitants or be destroyed.



I think now . . . best that it should remain a physical

landmass (America!). But as Manwe had already

said to the Numenoreans: 'It is not the land that is

hallowed . . . but . . . the dwellers there' -- the Valar.



It would just become an ordinary land, an addition

to Middle-earth (the European-African-Asiatic

contiguous land-mass) . . .


----------Now, I'm wondering: did Tolkien mean North America, as John Rateliff supposes, or North, Central, and South America?

 

[Aldarion]

I don't know, to me it was always fairly obvious, seeing how Legendarium is set in prehistory of our own world.

I think Valinor was the whole of America. Question is, it used to have mountains on the eastern shore, as defense against Morgoth. Yet America's mountains are on the western shore. What is up with that?

 

[Ursa major]

To quote Wikipedia, the Appalachians

once reached elevations similar to those of the Alps and the Rocky Mountains before experiencing natural erosion.