THE HALL OF FIRE :

THE LANDS OF MIDDLE-EARTH

These Wikipedia entries have been selected to help answer the most common questions about the lands found Tolkien's Middle-earth.

ARDA
In J.R.R. Tolkien's legendarium, Arda is the name given to the Earth in a period of prehistory, wherein the places mentioned in The Lord of the Rings and related material once existed. It included several seas and oceans, and the continents of Middle-earth, the Dark Lands, and Aman, as well as the island of Númenor and other lands, left largely unnamed by Tolkien.

MIDDLE-EARTH
Middle-earth is the fictional setting of the majority of author J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy writings. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place entirely in Middle-earth, as does much of The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and The Children of Húrin.

BELERIAND
In J.R.R. Tolkien's fictional legendarium, Beleriand was a region in northwestern Middle-earth during the First Age. Events in Beleriand are described chiefly in his work The Silmarillion, which tells the story of the early ages of Middle-earth in a style similar to the epic hero tales of Nordic literature. Beleriand also appears in the works The Book of Lost Tales, The Children of Húrin, and in the epic poems of The Lays of Beleriand.

NÚMENOR
Númenor (also called Elenna-nórë or Westernesse) is a fictional place in J.R.R. Tolkien's writings. It was a huge island located in the Sundering Seas to the west of Middle-earth, the main setting of Tolkien's writings, and was known to be the greatest realm of Men. However, the inhabitants' cessation of the service to Eru Ilúvatar and rebellion against the Valar led to the downfall of the island and death of the majority of its population.