John Rateliff makes an interesting point about how <p>The Hobbit</p> is actually pretty closely linked to the material that would become <p>The Silmarillion</p> . In the original drafts of <p>The Hobbit</p> , Tolkien makes it seem that Beren and Lúthien had only recently destroyed Sauron’s base on Tol-in-Gaurhoth (which he built on top of the original Minas Tirith), and that the Fall of Gondolin was also quite recent. (I even remember that when I read the final version of <p>The Hobbit</p> when I was 9, I came away with the impression that Gondolin was only recently destroyed.)

This actually makes quite a bit of sense, since Tolkien started writing <p>The Hobbit</p> at the same time he was working on the drafts of his tales that would be compiled into <p>The Book of Lost Tales</p> . In those tales, the time frame of the War of Wrath is actually somewhat ambiguous (it seems to have been originally envisioned as the End of the World, when the Gods > the Valar would finally recapture Melko > Morgoth, and Túrin would deliver the killing blow) and even in the time of Eriol > Ælfwine, it hadn’t happened yet.

It was as if the entire Second Age never happened, and as if Númenor never existed. (Interestingly, while Elrond was already imagined to be the son of Eärendil, Elros did not yet exist.)

What struck me most is the parallelism between two important geographic features of Beleriand vis-à-vis features of Rhovanion.

The land of Dorthonion (north of the Ered Gorgoroth) becomes infiltrated by evil things and becomes Taur-nu-Fuin, which is at one point explicitly translated as Mirkwood and which is also infested with giant spiders. Interestingly, after Sauron is ousted from Tol-in-Gaurhoth, he flees to Taur-nu-Fuin, in complete parallel to his defeat at Barad-dûr and his eventual flight to Dol Guldur in Mirkwood.

The river Sirion is also called the Great River, just like the Anduin. In fact, at one point, the Anduin was first named the New Sirion.

Rateliff speculates even further, equating Anfauglith with the Withered Heath. And the fact that the Ered Mithrin is known to be a remnant of the Ered Engrin is already accepted as canon.

This leads me to speculate that Bilbo may have originally been situated somewhere in Hithlum. (Maybe Lake Mithrim was the Water?) And the misty mountains that they cross are the Ered Mithrin. It isn’t clear to me whether Himring (which must have been relatively high in elevation since it supposedly survived the drowning of Beleriand) or Mt Rerir would be more suitable as an analog for Erebor, but it does reawaken one of the wildly speculative theories about the Arkenstone actually being one of the Silmaril. (After all, Himring was Maidros > Maedhros’s base of operations, although it is written that he threw himself into a fiery pit.)