This Lord of the Rings Middle-earth map can help you navigate The Rings of Power

polygon.com:

J.R.R. Tolkien didn’t just love maps — he ascribed the entire world-building success of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to his cartographical exercises. And it’s no surprise that the new Amazon series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power honors Tolkien’s achievement in rendering Middle-earth in map form.

In a 1954 letter to his friend and fellow author Naomi Mitchison, Tolkien wrote, “I wisely started [The Lord of the Rings] with a map, and made the story fit (generally with meticulous care for distances).” In his mind, reverse-engineering a fantasy world “lands one in confusions and impossibilities,” and that charting every square inch of Middle-earth was essential to wrapping his mind around the intricacies of the story. In the same breath, he also apologized to Mitchison for sending the books along without the drawings.

“I am sorry about the Geography,” he wrote. “It must have been dreadfully difficult without a map or maps.”

Tolkien’s work was map-worthy, and the tradition of kicking off or capping a fantasy book with a map remains standard operating procedure for genre publishers. But the illustrated works rarely carry over to adaptations. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is an exception to a point; as the first two episodes jump around Middle-earth to introduce us to new elves, dwarves, humans, harfoots, and others, the action occasionally cuts away to the same designs Tolkien drew from as he pieced together Frodo’s story. It’s such a thrill to see the dang map on screen that I was left wanting to see the full thing. So here it is.

A few key locations emerge in the opening two episodes of Rings of Power, including Forodwaith, where Galadriel is hunting down clues of an lingering evil; Rhovanion,