People have fallen in love with beautiful Welsh Lord of the Rings map
A map of Wales in the style of Tolkien’s Middle Earth illustrations has proved to be a best seller online.
So popular have they become that Joshua Tabti – the artist who created the beautifully drawn Lord of the Rings inspired maps, has had to restock his online shop due to huge demand.
Sold through global online marketplace platform Etsy, the maps are flying out.
Lord of the Rings and Hobbit author J.R.R. Tolkien stated that he began with maps and developed his plots from them, but that he also wanted his maps to be picturesque.
Tolkien’s maps, depicting his fictional Middle Earth, helped him with plot development, guided the reader through his often complex stories, and contributed to the impression of depth in his writings.
Now illustrator Joshua has taken up the idea by illustrating Wales and various other locations in the style of those original Tolkien maps.
Tolkien had close ties to Wales and loved the Welsh language which inspired the Elvish language in his books. He said of Welsh: “Welsh is of this soil, this island, the senior language of the men of Britain; and Welsh is beautiful.’
The map of Wales is illustrated in Welsh and took the artist sometime to complete.
“It was just as fun to research the land cover and different historical towns as it was to draw,” he said. “I think it took about 30 hours although I lost track!”
Since publishing the maps Welsh speakers have been helping Joshua update his maps with place names.
One site user pointed out that there was a problem with one of the town names.
They wrote: ‘As someone from there, Crucywel is incorrect. Crickhowell in Welsh is Crughywel. Crucywel was used on a road signs recently and incorrect, locals hate it.’
‘That’s great help thank you,’ replied Joshua. ‘I had used Wikipedia pages for Welsh spelling of towns so that’s a good thing to know! I’ll edit it in’
The artist describes his maps as: ‘Hand drawn cartography inspired by Tolkien’s map of Middle Earth featured in the books The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.
‘Maps are illustrated and annotated with calligraphy using traditional dip pen and ink, following meticulous research into land cover, terrain and landmarks to create a geographically accurate survey.’
They’ve proved phenomenally popular with glowing feedback from customers.
One customer wrote: ‘I bought this for my husband for Christmas and he absolutely loved it! The print quality is excellent and the details are beautiful. Can’t wait to get it framed and put up!’
Another wrote: ‘This was bought as a gift for someone special and they absolutely loved it! Great quality and arrived very quickly.
While one customer added: ‘Incredible attention to detail. Beautiful print.’
Purchase the Tolkien Wales/Cymru maps HERE
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He plagiarised the Mabinogi in order to invent a mythology for the Anglo Saxons. I can provide an example as to how ridiculous academia is towards Wales and its history. There is a video on YouTube which states that all of Gildas’ work is unreliable, and in the next sentence explains how many of the exerts of Bede in his history of the English people is directly taken from the works of Gildas. They are basically saying that Gildas work is only true when it pertains to the Saxons, and any reference to the Britons is not true. How ridiculous… Read more »
Agreed. Bede never left the local village of his birth, thus relying on the accounts of others who had the balls to step over their people’s boundary lines. Bede was the original English racist and he layed the initial foundation for millenia of hatred and mistrust between the indidginous people and the newcomers. What a sausage Bede was.
Yeah, The crazy thing is that, another example – They claim King Arthur was not real, but Bede himself in the Brut of England (Brut, a term they directly get from the Welsh and their lineage back to Brutus) claimed he was king of Glamorgan and Gwent. So I wonder, was he telling the truth about this? I mean he told the truth about everything else, according to those within England so…. Surely he was telling the truth! But ofcourse the goal posts will move because it pertains to a Welsh (British) king. Gildas was in contrast to bede, a… Read more »
Why is this article regurgitated every few months? Is the artist a friend of the paper or something?
6 months later and yet again this article is pushed to the main page! What’s going on?!
A Geordie/Northumbrian here 👋, who feels a deep sense of love and connection for Newcastle and Northumberland. I brought my family and everything to Wales 15 years ago because I felt a deep sense of love and connection to Cymru. Bede was a mackem, ignore 😁.
The Sword & Sorcery and Romance mythology exists in its current form solely because of the Arthurian legends who medieval writer Geoffrey of Monmouth who wrote the celebrated , “Historia regum Britanniae” (The History of the Kings of Britain) in 1135 AD. Geoffrey of Monmouth was influenced not only by the four branches of the Mabinogion with the “Red Book of Hergest” , “Black Book of Caerfyrddin” , “White Book of Rhydderch”, but used source material from earlier Welsh writers such as monks Gildas work in 490 AD, “De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae”, and monk Nennius “Historia Brittonum” in 839AD,… Read more »