The Middangeard is presented in terms of destitution and follows what Chris Fitter calls the "ecological" pattern of presentation that "scans nature as the field of potential satisfaction of requirements for subsistence and security" (2005:11).
The human transgression in Genesis involves the recognition of the new landscape, Middangeard. (6) Truly, Middangeard is depicted in Genesis A in the way that Anglo-Saxon elegies lament the transience of life.
As in the Scriptural Genesis, the city of the Middangeard in Genesis A does not occur as the positive centre of human civilisation.
This is the description from A 21, but its counterpart in A 22 varies little 'Baedhleem hatte seo buruh the Crist on acaenned waes, / seo is gemaersod geond ealne
middangeard' ('The city in which Christ was born is called Bethlehem, / it is glorified throughout all the earth') (Grendon (ed.), 184-7).
middangeard = middan + geard, 'middle + dwelling, house, enclosed place'...
Here I must hasten to add that besides middangeard Old English uses another compound middaneard.