The Lord of the Rings is a story of a journey or quest and is necessarily linear in nature, but even a small map of Middle-earth such as this one covers an area of more than a million square miles, that’s a lot of individual stories even if they are of a smaller, less heroic scale than that of Frodo and Sam.
Tolkien says in The Lord of the Rings that some places such as Eriador used to be, but are no longer, inhabited, but there must be, amongst other habitations, many fishing villages along a coast the length of that from Denmark to Spain (or from Maine to Florida), Tolkien doesn’t mention them except as they come into the story. There must be other, innumerable, small, scattered, hidden communities in the Wilderland and elsewhere with people who are not Orcs or Goblins, but human remnants of the Second Age. Tolkien says that Dorwinion is wine-making country (they supply the Woodland Realm of course) but says nothing about these people. Perhaps in some migratory animal-herding tribe in lands bordering the Withered Heath there is a small boy who in between his many chores is excitedly training his first sheep-dog.
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