• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Tolkien As Truth

rynner said:
Tolkien bog to get major makeover

Birmingham's historic Moseley Bog, said to have inspired JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, is to get a major revamp.
The area's Wildlife Trust will use up to £500,000 of lottery grants to transform the wetlands, adding new car parking, footpaths and public art.

The news has been welcomed by fans of Tolkien. The author used the bog as a childhood playground.
Click to expand...
This all sounds a bit Pseuds' Corner to me.... :(
Click to expand...
Also, Tolkien was inspired by other parts of South Birmingham - at least one of the "Two Towers" is supposedly a chimney in Edgbaston, and the landscape around Sarehole Mill is said to have inspired Hobbiton.

I went to the same school as old JRRT, as it happens (no, not at the same time, thank you), so I trust you will all accept my word that my signature line is meant in jocular fashion - it's from a Half Man Half Biscuit song, as I'm sure you all know.
 
I don´t know how it is in english mythology, but in northern europe there was also a belief in elves, not that dissimilar to the ones in LOTR. And of course trolls.
 
I suspect that Tolkien and Robert E. Howard and other contemporary fiction writers plying Atlantean waters had at least an inkling that there was more interesting stuff going on in Ice Age Europe than the drier anthropology texts of their day admitted.
 
FWIK...Though Tolkien didn't complete it...The Elven(1) language is somewhat based on Welsh. While the (complete) Dwarven(2) tongue is based on Old Norse/Anglo-saxon.

The runes he used on the map of the Dwarves, are adapted from the proper runes used by the Norse/Saxons (but still usable when reading runes)... but still, it amuses me when people use Tolkien's runes for Tarot Cards/Rune Stones though :D

Tolkien was a linguist first and foremost

(1) Elvish.
(2) Dwarfish/Dwarfen/Dwarfs.
 
Tolkien Jr completes Lord of Rings
The last, unfinished book by the 'Lord of the Rings' author has been completed by his son. Can a film version be far behind?
By Jonathan Thompson
Published: 25 March 2007

The first new Tolkien novel for 30 years is to be published next month. In a move eagerly anticipated by millions of fans across the world, The Children of Húrin will be released worldwide on 17 April, 89 years after the author started the work and four years after the final cinematic instalment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, one of biggest box office successes in history.

The book, whose contents are being jealously guarded by publisher HarperCollins - is described as "an epic story of adventure, tragedy, fellowship and heroism."

It is likely to be a publishing sensation, particularly as it is illustrated by veteran Middle Earth artist Alan Lee, who won an Oscar for art direction on Peter Jackson's third film The Return of The King. Lee provided 25 pencil sketches and eight paintings for the first edition of the book, one of which is reproduced here for the first time in a national newspaper.

Tolkien experts are already tipping The Children of Húrin - which features significant battle scenes and at least one major twist - for big budget Hollywood treatment. Takings from the Lord of the Rings trilogy box office takings to date total some £1.5bn.

Chris Crawshaw, chairman of the Tolkien Society, said: "It would probably make a very good movie, if anyone can secure the film rights.

"Tolkien saw his work as one long history of Middle Earth: from the beginning of creation to the end of the Third Age. The Children of Húrin is an early chapter in that bigger story."

The author's son Christopher, using his late father's voluminous notes, has painstakingly completed the book, left unfinished by the author when he died in 1971. The work has taken the best part of three decades, and will signify the first "new" Tolkien book since The Silmarillion was published posthumously in 1977.

"It will be interesting to see how it stands up today alongside all the Tolkien-alike literature that we've become familiar with," said David Bradley, editor of SFX magazine.

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/book ... 390834.ece
Click to expand...
 
A new book of the Narn i Chîn Húrin, eh? And perhaps a film? I don't suppose that would be as popular as the LOTR, or even the Hobbit; but an interesting story, nevertheless.
 
25ft Ent in Moseley....no really

Apologies if this has been posted before.

http://moseleystatue.org/

Them crazy bohemian Moseley types.

On another topic my family and I visited a fascinating place in the Forest of Dean this weekend called Puzzle Wood. It's a Roman Iron mine with connections to Tolkien it's thoroughly magical... very Fangorn indeed.

Some BBC infohere
 
Re: 25ft Ent in Moseley....no really

monster_magnet said:
Apologies if this has been posted before.

http://moseleystatue.org/

Them crazy bohemian Moseley types.
Click to expand...
I expect JRRT would turn in his grave at the standard of English on that page!
 
It's really quite disappointing how little Birmingham has done to show its Tolkein links. I think the Tourist Info people issued a map showing Tolkein places on it, and the connection with Oxford is always "bigged-up" because of Brum's reputation for being a bit... naff? Industrialised?

(PS: Elvissa has nothing to do with elves, but everything to do with a character in Copeland's "Generation X"! Unless Elvis was an elf?)
 
elvissa said:
... because of Brum's reputation for being a bit... naff? Industrialised?
Click to expand...

Have you been here (Birmingham) recently? It's like concrete never happened. :D

To be fair there really isn't a lot to look at as far as Tolkiens Brum is concerned. Apart from the places of interest being dispersed quite randomly around the city I would imagine lots of "oh... is that it?" type' comments from most voyeurs.

I'd have thought a decent website tour would be adequate for most.
 
Yup... I work at Birmingham University! ;)

So I know full well that Brum's quite a pretty place really, but that it has a reputation for concrete.

Is there a website tour?

I feel sad when I'm on Hagley Road and see the blue plaque where Tolkein lived as a child, and it's on the wall of a crappy telesales building.
 
Tolken also spent some time at Hurst Green just outside Preston. He is said to have based Hobbiton on this area,just think the hobbets where just 4 lads from LancaSHIRE who saved Middle Earth :lol: You can find some stuff on the website of the inn he used to stay at http://shireburnarmshotel.com The Tolken Trail is a recommended walk
 
If you guys like the kind of world that Tolkein created you should take a look at Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. They are so in-depth it is untrue – I know that Tolkein put a lot of detail in his stuff but I really think that Jordan surpasses him. Also there are lots of details in the books that you can relate to religion/mythology. The world that he has created has been done very cleverly, and staying on topic with the original post, you can actually imagine that the story that is being told actually happened on Earth thousands of years ago.
 
Robert Jordans wheel of time setting surpassing Tolkien for detail?

...No. I'm not even going to do my usual, I disagree but I value your opinion. It's a no. And I own and liked all of Jordans books. Nothing he has written has surpassed the detail and world of Tolkien's Middle Earth. It's good, dont get me wrong but the Silmarillion (especially...it is the entire history of a world almost), Hobbit, Lord of the Rings etc together just has more, oh so much more than all of the detail in the Wheel of Time.

But I enjoyed The Wheel of Time books more (in the most part) than the Lord of the Rings for plot and story. Tolkien's pacing was far from the best..."oh great, more sodding Frodo and Sam climbing a bit more mountain". But for his world...it feels so real when you read it, living and breathing almost.
 
With regards WW1 when I was at uni the great Richard Adams blessed us with a visit to talk about Watership Down and explained how the characters and plot were based on his experiences of WW2 and the people he flew with in the RAF. However, later on I am sure I read that he disclaimed this. I personally feel great writers are allowed to be a bit cranky. :) The sensible explanation proffered up-thread about how Tolkein's experiences could have shaped his fiction without being a direct allegory sound like the truth to me. :)

In terms of English myths that don't rip off the Celts there are quite a lot of stories about, especially if you read those lovely little small press books about local folklore, often found in gift shops whilst on holiday. Because I come from North Lincolnshire the story of Havelock the Dane is dear to me.

We never had a Lady Gregory to collect our myths and make a publishing sensation of them in the late 19th Century I guess....
 
On English mythology...

JRRT's early Silmarillion work is much more obviously linked to Norse and Anglo-Saxon beliefs than in the published versions. For example Manwe is the Elvish name for Woden and Tulkas is Thunor. Tol Eressea becomes the modern island of Britain. The Notion Club Papers, his rewrite of The Lost Road with medievalists, even ties in the legends of Scyld Scefing from Beowulf and St Brendan the Navigator. They trail off just when the plot kicks off. Sad that he never finished them.
 
Last edited:
Anonymous said:
The Shire is definitely an idealised Oxfordshire just look at the local place names:

Buckland, Bagshot and the Brandywine river are all real, honest!
Click to expand...

I heard that the Shire was based on Hampshire. Some place names are close correlations to real extant towns. E.g. Michel Delving is clearly based on Micheldever near Basingstoke. Other nearby extant Hampshire places like Daneshill and Lychpit have close parallels too in LOTR.
 
Fascinating to read that there are geographic parallels in our real world, for some of Tolkein's paperplaces...I had some half-forgotten awareness of this, the reminder is most-welcome.

Hild und hjalmi said:
Sad that he never finished them
Click to expand...
....yes, but, JRR having passed-on didn't prevent the eventual publication of The Children of Húrin. Or The Silmarillion (both of which I think could be made into excellent films).

The occasionally-purported lack of an English mythology is due at least in part to the irrepressable vitality of multiple ethnic strands.

As a cosmopolitan crossroads, Olde Ængland seems to have been something of an anthropographic adopter/recounter rather than an originator of myth.

(I snipe as a synthetic semi-Celt, claiming a shaky objectivity and moralistic distance from England...and certainly Ingerland)
 
Ermintrude said:
Fascinating to read that there are geographic parallels in our real world, for some of Tolkein's paperplaces...I had some half-forgotten awareness of this, the reminder is most-welcome.

....yes, but, JRR having passed-on didn't prevent the eventual publication of The Children of Húrin. Or The Silmarillion (both of which I think could be made into excellent films).

The occasionally-purported lack of an English mythology is due at least in part to the irrepressable vitality of multiple ethnic strands.

As a cosmopolitan crossroads, Olde Ængland seems to have been something of an anthropographic adopter/recounter rather than an originator of myth.

(I snipe as a synthetic semi-Celt, claiming a shaky objectivity and moralistic distance from England...and certainly Ingerland)
Click to expand...

I think a movie of The Children of Húrin or The Tale of Beren and Lúthien would be great.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
I heard that the Shire was based on Hampshire. Some place names are close correlations to real extant towns. E.g. Michel Delving is clearly based on Micheldever near Basingstoke. Other nearby extant Hampshire places like Daneshill and Lychpit have close parallels too in LOTR.
Click to expand...

No doubt I'm biased, coming from the Midlands, but I always understood much of the inspiration for the Shire (probably not all) came from parts of Birmingham that Tolkien knew, such as Sarehole Mill and Moseley Old Bog. This is fairly well documented, I believe, and probably gets a mention in this very thread.

Slightly coincidentally, I was driving down the Bristol Road out of Birmingham only a couple of days ago, and got stuck in a little traffic near to the University, and was presented with a nice view of the clock tower:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Chamberlain_Memorial_Clock_Tower
... which is almost certainly the inspiration for one of the "Two Towers", though which one, who knows? I always thought it looked like Orthanc, but Wikipedia has it as the Eye of Sauron.
 
Don't know if this contributes to the thread in any meaningful way, but I've heard this was the inspiration for the doors of durin...

IMG_1800.JPG


The location is given as St. Edward's church, Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire. Which I haven't the foggiest idea about where that is in relation to the places mentioned above!

It just came to mind because I have a picture of these doors on my bedroom wall. They look so beautiful.
 
Fantastic. Is that 14th century?
 
Mythopoeika said:
Fantastic. Is that 14th century?
Click to expand...
Nah - they didn't have such good digital cameras back then.

For what it's worth, Ulalume (and I keep forgetting that we're not all just sat around chatting!), Stow is about 45 miles south of the places I mentioned.

Basingstoke, in Hampshire, also mentioned on this page, would be about 60-something miles further south from Stow-on-the-Wold. Not huge distances, globally, but it's cold out, and I won't be going that far today!
 
I’ve always had the impression that Tolkien’s inspiration for places in his writings, came – as with the majority of authors – from a considerable assortment of different sources. (I’m influenced perhaps, by ideas from various critics / biographers whose works I’ve read – no guarantee, of course, that these folk know for sure the rights of things, as opposed to spouting opinions with joyous abandon.)

I remember reading in such (long ago – can’t cite “whose book”, I’m afraid) suggestions that some of JRRT’s inspiration for sections of the Shire and other parts, came from the North of England. With the family’s Catholicism – at least one of Tolkien’s sons attended the Catholic public school of Stonyhurst, on the northern fringe of Lancashire; visits to offspring there, and observing of nearby wet-and-marshy tracts, putatively inspired the author re some wet-and-marshy parts of the Shire, and / or other places.

I’ve always been charmed by a Shire name – Bamfurlong, where Farmer Maggot (Frodo’s mushroom-related nemesis from his youth) has his farm. There’s a real Bamfurlong, in Lancashire – even in Tolkien’s nearly-a-century-ago times, an ugly industrial location a little way south of Wigan. What is vouchsafed in the books, gives one IMO to feel that the naming is fairly “eclectic”. The Shire would seem faintly to mirror England, in that its North Farthing (only mentioned glancingly, in LOTR: Frodo, Bilbo & Co. live more or less plumb in the middle of the Shire, near the junction of its East, South, and West Farthings) is alluded to as something of a northerly realm, containing extensive wild moors, and regularly getting snow – a rare thing in the rest of the Shire. Maggot’s Bamfurlong, however, is well in the Shire’s south.

Recall from one of the biographies – mention of the ballad of Tinúviel, recited by Aragorn in Book I, on the journey from Bree to Rivendell:

“The leaves were long, the grass was green, The hemlock-umbels tall and fair”

with suggested reference by biographer, to – found in correspondence, I think (all this read long ago) – time spent by Tolkien and his bride Edith in a World War I spell of sick-leave of JRRT’s from the Army, in a rural spot close to the Humber estuary, where hemlock grew in plenty.

All really, only reckoning that authors tend to garner inspiration randomly, from “all over the place”...
 
Readers too associate their local places with JRRT's names. I first read LoTR in Devon, and I associated the Dark Tower with Haldon Belvedere http://www.haldonbelvedere.co.uk/

Not that the Belvedere is dark, but I mostly saw it on the SW skyline, silhouetted in the afternoon light.
 
We may never get to see the uproarious hijinks of 1991’s comedy classic, King Ralph, but, thankfully, reality is often stranger than fiction. Take, for example, a Colorado man who believes that the works of J.R.R. Tolkien are “more than fiction” and has formally laid his claim to the title of King of England.

As spotted by David Mapstone, a journalist at Britain’s Sky News, Allan V. Evans of Wheat Ridge, Colorado, took out a lengthy ad in The Times of London on Wednesday claiming that due to his unbroken lineage—trailing back to the fictional Kingdom of Gondor, he says—makes him the rightful King of England. In the ad, Evans traces his ancestry through real historical kings such as Cunedda Wledig, founder of Wales, before finally arriving at where he appears to think history intersects with the stories of Tolkien, Wales being just a new name for what was once called Gondor.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/king-england-newspaper-ad-times
 
Back in the early days of the internet I remember reading this. After all this time I had wondered if I was imagining it.
Though this fellow claimed that the only detail wrong was the ring hadn't been destroyed, and the cover up was to keep people from searching for it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top