Tumblr crosspost (13 January 2021)

[anghraine]

Locations Tolkien associated Minas Tirith with:

• Rome
• Florence
• Byzantium

Locations Tolkien associated the rest of Gondor with:

• various spots in Italy
• Troy
• ancient Egypt

Locations Tolkien did not associate Gondor with:

• France
• England
• literally anywhere in northern Europe

Tagged: #he was actively annoyed at the assumption that gondor is in some way northern #and yet it's inescapable #free me from my suffering!!!

[ETA 4/6/2024: I am pretty sure this was most directly inspired by people trying to connect the "forgotten men" in Gondor, mentioned as the ancestors of a short and "swarthy" population in the densely populated Gondorian province of Lebennin, with Britain. But also just by Tolkien fandom's obsession with the idea of his work as a mythology for England, an idea he explicitly said he rejected as ridiculous, while ignoring his numerous unambiguous statements that he was inspired by other regions and languages as well, and that he very clearly said that Gondor's inspirations in particular were all Mediterranean rather than northern, and moreover that the original seat of evil in Middle-earth was in the north.]