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When was the War of the Ring?
If The Lord of the Rings is set in an imaginary past era, how long ago is it supposed to have happened? Tolkien answered this question, too, in Letter 211:
"I imagine the gap [between 1956 and the war] to be about 6000 years: that is we are now at the end of the Fifth Age, if the Ages were of about the same length as S.A. and T.A. But they have, I think, quickened; and I imagine we are actually at the end of the Sixth Age, or in the Seventh."
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Well, the philological Middle-earth is only one answer to the interesting question, "What is Middle-earth?". Clearly, it is not the answer most people seek. Readers simply want to know (at first) if Middle-earth is supposed to be our world or some alternate Earth in another dimension, or perhaps an imaginary planet in outer space.
J.R.R. Tolkien himself attempted to answer the question on more than one occasion. He seems never to have found quite a fully satisfactory answer, but he did get the point across that Middle-earth is indeed intended to be our world in some distant, imaginary past (forgotten) prehistoric period.
From Letter #151:
Middle-earth is just archaic English for [irreproducible letters deleted], the inhabited world of men. It lay then as it does. In fact just as it does, round and inescapable. That is partly the point. The new situation, established at the beginning of the Third Age, leads on eventually ane inevitably to ordinary History, and we here see the process culminating.
From Letter #154:
Actually in the imagination of this story we are now living on a physically round Earth. But the whole 'legendariium' contains a transition from a flat world (or at least an [unprintable characters deleted] with borders all about it) to a globe: an inevitable transition, I suppose, to a modern 'mythmaker' with a mind subjected to the same 'appearances' as ancient men, and partly fed on their myths, but taught that the Earth was round from the earliest years. So deep was the impression made by 'astronomy' on me that I do not think I could deal with or imaginatively conceive a flat world, though a world of static Earth with a Sun going round it seems easier (to fancy if not to reason).
The particular 'myth' which lies behind this tale, and the mood both of Men and Elves at this time, is the Downfall of Numenor: a special variety of the Atlantis tradition. That seems to me so fundamental to 'mythical history' -- whether it has any kind of basis in real history, PACE Saurat and others, is not relevant -- that some version of it would have to come in.
I have written an account of the Downfall, which you might be interested to see. But the immediate point is that before the Downfall there lay beyond the sea and the west-shores of Middle- earth an Earthly Elvish paradise Eressea, and Valinor the land of the Valar (the Powers, the Lords of the West), places that could be reached physically by ordinary sailing-ships, though the Seas were perilous. But after the rebellion of the Numenoreans, the Kings of Men, who dwelt in a land most westerly of all mortal lands, and eventually in the height of their pride attempted to occupy Eressea and Valinor by force, Numenor was destroyed, and Eressea and Valinor removed from the physically attainable Earth: the way west was open, but led nowhere but back again -- for mortals.
From Letter #165:
'Middle-earth', by the way, is not a name of a never-never land without relation to the world we live in (like the Mercury of Eddison). It is just a use of Middle English Middel-erde (or Erthe), altered from Old English Middengeard: the name for the inhabited lands of Men 'between the seas'. And though I have not attempted to relate the shape of the mountains and land-masses to what geologists may say or surmise about the nearer past, imaginitively this 'history' is supposed to take place in a period of the actual Old World of this planet.
From Letter 169:
...As for the shape of the world of the Third Age, I am afraid that was devised 'dramatically' rather than geologically, or paleontologically. I do sometimes wish that I had made some sort of agreement between the imaginations or theories of the geologists and my map a little more possible.
From Letter #184:
I am historically minded. Middle-earth is not an imaginary world. The name is the modern form (appearing in the 13th century and still in use) of Middengeard > Middel-erd, an ancient name for the Oikumeme, the abiding place of Men, the objectively real world, in use specifically opposed to imaginary worlds (as Fairyland) or unseen worlds (as Heaven or Hell). The theatre of my tale is this earth, the one in which we now live, but the historical period is imaginary.
From Letter #211:
May I say all this is 'mythical', and not any kind of new religion or vision. As far as I know it is merely an imaginative invention, to express, in the only way I can, some of my (dim) apprehensions of the world. All I can say is that, if it were 'history', it would be difficult to fit the lands and events (or 'cultures') into such evidence as we possess, archaeological or geological, concerning the nearer or remoter part of what is now called Europe; though the Shire, for instance, is expressly stated to have been in this region (I p. 12). I could have fitted things in with greater versimilitude, if the story had not become too far developed, before the question ever occurred to me. I doubt if there would have been much gain; and I hope the, evidently long but undefined, gap in time between the Fall of Barad-dur and our Days is sufficient for 'literary credibility', even for readers acquainted with what is known or surmised of 'pre-history'.
I have, I suppose, constructed an imaginary time, but kept my feet on my own mother-earth for place. I prefer that to the contemporary mode of seeking remote globes in 'space'. However curious, they are alien, and not lovable with the love of blood- kin. Middle-earth is (by the way & if such a note is necessary) not my own invention. It is a modernization or alteration (N[ew] E[nglish] D[ictionary] 'a perversion') of an old word for the inhabited world of Men, the Oikumene: middle because thought of vaguely as set amidst the encircling Seas and (in the northern- imagination) between ice of the North and the fire of the South. O. English Midden-Geard, mediaeval E. Middengerd, Middle-erd. Many reviewers seem to assume that Middle-earth is another planet!
From Letter #325:
The 'immortals' who were permitted to leave Middle-earth and seek Aman -- the undying lands of Valinor and Eressëa, an island assigned to the Eldar -- set sail in ships specially made and hallowed for this voyage, and steered due West towards the ancient site of these lands. They only set out after sundown; but if any keen-eyed observer from that shore had watched one of these ships he might have seen that it never became hull-down but dwindled only by distance until it vanished in the twilight: it followed the straight road to the true West and not the bent road of the earth's surface. As it vanished it left the physical world. There was no return. The Elves who took this road and those 'mortals' who by special grace went with them, had abandoned the 'History of the world' and could play no further part in it.
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