Places in Middle-earth
Empty Lands
Type: Kingdoms, Realms, Lands
Region: Other Arda
Other Names Empty Land, Barren Land, Burnt Land of the Sun, Land of the Sun, Eastern Land
Location: At the Easternmost edge of Arda, up against the Outer Sea
Description: "For Ilúvatar cast back the Great Seas west of Middle-earth, and the Empty Lands east of it, and new lands and new seas were made; and the world was diminished, for Valinor and Eressëa were taken from it into the realm of hidden things."
The Silmarillion, Akallabêth
"For their further protection the Valar thrust away Middle-earth at the centre and crowded it eastward, so that it was bended, and the great sea of the West is very wide in the middle, the widest of all waters of the Earth. The shape of the Earth in the East was much like that in the West, save for the narrowing of the Eastern Sea, and the thrusting of the land thither. And beyond the Eastern Sea lies the Eastern Land, of which we know little, and call it the Land of the Sun; and it has mountains, less great than those of Valinor, yet very great, which are the Walls of the Sun. By reason of the falling of the land these mountains cannot be descried, save by highflying birds, across the seas which divide them from the shores of Midd1e-earth."
The Shaping of Middle-earth, HoME Vol 4, Chapter 5, The Ambarkanta
"… In this form my father then copied it onto the typescript, with change of Empty Land to Empty Lands. (If this region, called in the first version the Barren Land, is to be related to the Ambarkanta map V (IV. 251) it must be what is there called the Burnt Land of the Sun; perhaps also the Dark Land, which is there shown as a new continent, formed from the southern part of Pelmar or Middle-earth (map IV) after the vast extension of the former inland sea of Ringil at the time of the breaking of Utumno). … "
The Lost Road and Other Writings, HoME Vol 5, Part 1, Ch 2, The Fall of Númenor section 4, The further development of the Fall of Númenor
The Burnt Land of the Sun [Empty Lands] appears on map V in The Shaping of Middle-earth A reproduction of this map is here.
Contributors: Lyllyn 30Dec04
