{"id":120823,"date":"2025-08-12T19:39:41","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T00:39:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/?p=120823"},"modified":"2025-08-12T19:39:44","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T00:39:44","slug":"wynn-fonstad-middle-earth-map-exhibit-at-uw-madison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2025\/08\/12\/120823-wynn-fonstad-middle-earth-map-exhibit-at-uw-madison\/","title":{"rendered":"Wynn Fonstad Middle-earth Map Exhibit At UW-Madison"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Recently, the Robinson Map Library<\/a> at UW-Madison exhibited many of the manuscripts that cartographer Karen Wynn Fonstad developed in making the groundbreaking The Atlas of Middle-earth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

TORn Discord member Alida Mau shares this report of the exhibit’s showcase of original, hand-drawn maps together with examples of her finalized published works, explanations of her techniques, and stories of her experience turning written, fictional geographic information into visual representations.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Middle Earth Map Exhibit Makes Appearance at UW-Madison<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

By Alida Mau<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

UW-Madison\u2019s Robinson Map Library recently held an exhibition that might be unfamiliar to many of Earth\u2019s cartographers, but will certainly resonate with fans of JRR Tolkien\u2019s The Lord of the Rings. There the works of the late Karen Fonstad lay on display. The sprawling collection contained drafts and finalized hand drawn maps from her original publication and revised edition of The Atlas of Middle-earth, published in 1981 and 1991 respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The public exhibit ran from July 21 to 31, and was curated by her son, Mark Fonstad, who has been digitizing her full works. The collection included world and regional maps spanning all three ages, along with migration and battle maps, linguistic distribution, and city plans. The exhibition spanned the entirety of the library\u2019s tables yet is estimated to only include 5% of her work, which humbly began sketched out on her kitchen floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Developed as a visual tour to supplement reader\u2019s journeys through Tolkien\u2019s literary works.\u00a0 Mapping Arda was a lofty task, for a world that was developed as an alternative history to England, it is not an exact match and landmarks were often amplified from those present in the modern Earth. So she relied upon distances as listed in the books, often in leagues, to set the proper scale for the atlas and expanded upon those descriptions using her geography background and how those landscapes might manifest in a more realistic sense. To give readers a sense of how the world fit together, Karen erred on providing more detail to help fill in some of the blank spaces on the map. Take for example the expansion of Trollshaw forest in the draft of her travel map depicting Frodo\u2019s journey to Rivendell.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Map cataloguing Frodo\u2019s journey from Bag End to Rivendell. UW-Madison Karen Wynn Fonstad Exhibition.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

What started the endeavor to make an atlas of Middle-earth was a fateful encounter with a student who wanted to build a map of Middle-earth while Karen was a TA in grad school. Upon realizing an atlas would be better suited to Tolkien\u2019s writings than a world map after the publication of the Silmarillion, Karen pitched the idea to Houghton Mifflin almost a decade later and it was quickly greenlit with the blessing of the Tolkien estate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She would go on to release a revised edition in 1991, informed by previously unreleased details as the History of Middle-earth was published, such as the circles of the world and geography of Numenor. In an ironic twist, Christopher Tolkien in part credited the initial Atlas of Middle-earth for helping the History of Middle-earth get published upon realizing that the public interest and readership was great enough to warrant undertaking that project.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"A
Early version of the 2nd<\/sup> Age voyages of Numenoreans. UW-Madison Karen Wynn Fonstad Exhibition.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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\"A
\u00a0Final draft of the 2nd<\/sup> Age voyages of Numenoreans. UW-Madison Karen Wynn Fonstad Exhibition.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

She went off of drafts available in Marquette library which could sometimes be complicated as Tolkien\u2019s canon would change between revisions and sometimes be contradictory. Some of the details of Gondolin\u2019s city layout, for example, were not fully published in a final form.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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Unbeknownst to Karen until 2004, Alan Lee mentioned that he and the crew often heavily utilized her Atlas around with them while locations scouting in New Zealand while developing the films. And her reconstruction of Minas Tirith (seen below) based on Tolkien\u2019s own sketches in the Marquette archives helped inform the design decisions of the Jackson films.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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From here the collection will be transferred to the American Geographical Society Library in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where it will stay in perpetuity. Karen\u2019s revised edition of Atlas of Middle Earth is still in print and available for purchase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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