Knowledge, Rule, Order

06 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by Ollamh in Fairy Tales and Myths, Imaginary History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, Narrative Methods

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Adolf Hitler, Anduin, Benedict Cumberbatch, Benito Mussolini, British Government, Charlie Chaplin, dictatorships, England, Gandalf, George V, Germany, Gondor, gothic script, Government, History, India, Isengard, Kaiser Willhelm II, Lenin, Mehmed VI, Middle-earth, monarchs, Mordor, Nazis, newsreel, Numenor, Ottoman Empire, Oz, Peter Jackson, Queen Mary, Queen Victoria, Rohan, Saruman, Sauron, Scott, Smaug, Stalin, Stock Market Crash of 1929, Sultan, The Great Dictator, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Treaty of Versailles, Valar, Victoria Louise, Weimar Republic, William Morris, Writing

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always.

Have you ever wondered what Middle Earth would have been like if the Fourth Age had begun on a calendar written by Sauron?

That of the Third Age was hardly a democratic paradise: a king rules Rohan, a stand-in for king rules Gondor. Elrond and Celeborn/Galadriel behave and are treated like royalty and Thranduil, as we learn from The Hobbit, is the king of Mirkwood. The dwarves have hereditary rulers. Only the outliers—communities like Bree and the Shire and the earlier inhabitants like Tom Bombadil and Fangorn—appear to be completely independent. (The Shire even has elections and a mayor, although the actual government, except for the shire reeves, appears to bemostly token—you wonder who’s running their seemingly-efficient postal service.)

This is not surprising, not only for an author born during the later years of Victoria,

but also for someone powerfully influenced by the medievalist interests of everyone from Scott

Sir_William_Allan_-_Sir_Walter_Scott,_1771_-_1832._Novelist_and_poet_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

to William Morris.

(We might add that the world of fairy tales, full of princes and princesses, queens and kings, was also a powerful influence at the time—and not only on story-tellers born in monarchies—after all, even Oz is ruled by a queen—

Yet, after Smaug—who could better be a medieval fantasy villain (especially with the voice of the incomparable Benedict Cumberbatch attached)?

—something changed in Tolkien’s world. In fact, something changed in the whole outside world. With the end of World War One, monarchs toppled all over Europe and beyond, from:

Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany

to Mehmed VI, last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire.

In place of the former, there appeared the always-troubled Weimar Republic, full of good intentions, but badly crippled, not only by the war which had sapped its manpower and resources, but by all kinds of social unrest and then by the Crash of 1929, which notoriously destroyed the value of its currency.

weimar currency.jpg

As early as 1919, there had been clashes among the forces of different ideologies—

CombatesEnBerlín19190903.jpg

And, amidst all of the unrest, there was a failed coup attempt in 1923 by the man in the overcoat in this picture.

Bundesarchiv_Bild_102-00344A,_München,_nach_Hitler-Ludendorff_Prozess.jpg

He, of course, was only following the footsteps of this man, who had pushed his way into power the year before—

to be followed, in turn, by the man on the left, from the mid-1920s.

That first man, having failed at obvious violence, tried again through more complicated means (although still employing violence, if it suited his purposes) and succeeded in 1933.

He was, so we are told, a riveting public speaker, but, if the newsreels we’ve seen are evidence, we guess you would have had to have been there.

Some people thought the style exaggerated in the 1930s and caricatured it even then.

He had a definite social agenda, which he outlined at length and often, although concealing certain of the most horrible aspects. And he liked big words and big concepts, like:

It would have been impossible for someone as intelligent and generally well-informed as Tolkien not to have been very much aware of this man and all of the other like men, busy oppressing as much of the world as they could. And this would have been especially true in a time when radio and film were changing how people received news—and how those interested in influencing others might shape what people saw. As early as 1911, the British government was using newsreel film to show the might and reach of its empire (2/5 of the globe was in their hands) when the king, George V, and his wife, Queen Mary, visited India.

Delhi_Durbar,_1911.jpg

Not to be outdone, Kaiser Wilhelm II encouraged a grand—and filmed–event in 1913, for the wedding of his daughter, Victoria Louise—and some of the film was even in color.

The Marriage of Victoria Louise Color Film

It would be easy to imagine, then, that the weight of such public figures might have influenced Tolkien in his depiction of late-3^rd-Age villains. We can see it in Saruman’s unsuccessful attempt to persuade Gandalf to join him:

“ ‘He drew himself up then and began to declaim, as if he were making a speech long rehearsed. ‘The Elder Days are gone. The Middle Days are passing. The Younger Days are beginning. The time of the Elves is over, but our time is at hand: the world of Men, which we must rule. But we must have power, power to order all things as we will, for that good which only the Wise can see.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

Thus, unlike the script of Jackson’s version, there is no plan to wipe out men and replace them with orcs. Instead, men are to survive: to be ruled—perhaps under what definitely sounds like it should be a translation from something written in Fraktur—the fake Gothic script favored by the Nazis–

die-schöne-deutsche-Schrift-detail1.jpg

“ ‘We can bide our time,’” says Saruman, “ ‘we can keep our thoughts in our hearts, deploring maybe evils done by the way, but approving the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, Order; all the things that we have so far striven in vain to accomplish…’ ”

Such abstract, but somehow menacing, words sound like a translation of something from Hitler’s Germany: Kenntnisse, Herrschaft, Ordnung. They do not sound in the least like Gandalf’s goals, ever, and he, in fact, replies by implying that not only are they not really Saruman’s words, but that Saruman is foolish for believing them:

“ ‘Saruman,’ I said, ‘I have heard speeches of this kind before, but only in the mouths of emissaries sent from Mordor to deceive the ignorant.’ “

As really the words of Sauron, however, they give us an idea of what to expect in a world under his control. Knowledge would be for Sauron alone, we suppose, perhaps after regaining his lost ring? Certainly he wouldn’t share it with Saruman, whom, it will become clear, he never trusted. As for Rule and Order, the world would be a place full of rules and those watching that they be obeyed. And here we can remember Sharkey’s Shire, with its “by order of the Chief” signs—and its gangs of human enforcers. As well, we can think of its grey, industrial character, as we’ve discussed in a previous post, a universal Mordor, devoted to production. To this, we can add the Mouth of Sauron’s recitation of surrender conditions, delivered to the allies before the Morannon:

“ ‘These are the terms…The rabble of Gondor and its deluded allies shall withdraw at once beyond the Anduin, first taking oaths never again to assail Sauron the Great in arms, open or secret. All lands east of the Anduin shall be Sauron’s for ever, solely. West of the Anduin as far as the Gap of Rohan shall be tributary to Mordor, and men there shall bear no weapons, but shall have leave to govern their own affairs. But they shall help to rebuild Isengard which they have wantonly destroyed, and that shall be Sauron’s, and there his lieutenant shall dwell: not Saruman, but one more worthy of trust.’ “ (The Return of the King, Chapter 10, “The Black Gate Opens”)

In keeping with the influence of current events in this world, we might see this as being a parallel with the 1919 Versailles Treaty, in which Germany was to be forced to make huge territorial concessions, to disarm almost entirely, and to pay massive amounts in reparation to the victorious allies.

Treaty_of_Versailles,_English_version.jpg

The Treaty of Versailles– Wiki Article

Such terms as Sauron offers would also destroy Rohan as an ally and set up a permanent garrison between it and the north. We might also expect the restored Isengard to be a staging area for an assault upon Fangorn and the ents, to their ultimate destruction. As well, “west of the Anduin” is a very vague expression—does it include Gondor, as well as Rohan?

Religion in The Lord of the Rings has always been the subject of debate: how much or how little? Of what kind? Tolkien is quoted as saying that it was monotheistic, although, when attacked by the Mumak, Faramir’s men called on the (plural) Valar. There is no mention, in what is often extremely detailed landscape description, of any kind of temple or shrine, however. Nevertheless, we would like to conclude with an eerie thought about religion in this alternative Fourth Age. The Mouth of Sauron, aka, The Lieutenant of the Tower of Barad-dur, is described as:

“…a renegade, who came of the race of those that are named the Black Numenoreans; for they established their dwellings in Middle-earth during the years of Sauron’s domination, and they worshipped him, being enamoured of evil knowledge.”

Could we imagine that, in this other Fourth Age, a new and horrible religion might have appeared, one dedicated to the worship of Sauron—and to that Knowledge which Saruman finds so important? What do you think, dear readers?

As always, thanks for reading.

MTCIDC

Of Boats and Boromir

18 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by Ollamh in Fairy Tales and Myths, J.R.R. Tolkien, Narrative Methods, Poetry, Uncategorized

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Abbotsford, Anduin, Aragorn, boat, Boromir, burial, Camelot, Edoras, Eglinton Tournament, Falls of Rauros, Gimli, Gondor, Gyeongju, Henryk Siemiradski, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History, Horace Walpole, Ibn Fadlan, Ibn Fadlan and the Rusiyyah, Idylls of the King, Ivanhoe, Journal of Islamic and Arabic Studies, King Arthur, Korea, Legolas, medievalism, neo-medievalist, On Heroes, poetry, pre-Romantics, Prose Edda, Pugin, Rohan, Romanticism, Ship burial, Silla, Sir Frank Dicksee, Sir Lancelot, Sir Walter Scott, Snorri Sturluson, Snorro, St. George's chapel, Story, Strawberry Hill, Sutton Hoo, Tennyson, The Departure of Boromir, The Hero as Divinity. Odin. Paganism: Scandinavian Mythology, The Lady of Shalott, The Lord of the Rings, The Vikings (1958), Thomas Carlyle, Tolkien, vaults, Victorian, viking burial, vikings, Westminster, Windsor

Dear Reader,

Welcome, as always.

In this posting, we want to take something we mentioned in our last about Tolkien having read Tennyson. This is our guess—but in the late Victorian world into which JRRT was born, he must have been inescapable.

We _could_ say that medievalism was in the air then, brought in by Romanticism—and even before, by pre-Romantics, like Horace Walpole, with his mock-castle at Strawberry Hill (1749-76).

]

There were lots of early neo-medievalist things—some of Sir Walter Scott’s novels, like Ivanhoe (1820)—not to mention his mock-castle, at Abbotsford.

the absolutely wonderful and crazy Eglinton Tournament of 1839 (we may have to have a posting about this)

the medieval-revival architecture of Pugin

before Tennyson began publishing Idylls of the King in 1859, with its poems about King Arthur and his court.

Even before Idylls, Tennyson had been interested in writing about King Arthur’s world, producing the poem “The Lady of Shalott” in his Poems (1833, revised version 1842), in this poem, a lady under a curse sees, from her tower, Sir Lancelot riding by, and falls in love with him without ever meeting him. What happens next was what brought us to write this posting.

Because it reminded us of Boromir.

At the beginning of The Two Towers, Aragorn finds the dying Gondorian sitting, with his back against a tree, and, scattered around him, and “Many Orcs lay slain, piled all about him and at his feet.” (The Two Towers, Chapter 1, “The Departure of Boromir”) When Legolas and Gimli join Aragorn, they decide upon a hasty, but they hope, appropriate burial.

“ ‘Then let us lay him in a boat with his weapons, and the weapons of his vanquished foes,’ said Aragorn. ‘We will send him to the Falls of Rauros and give him to the Anduin. The River of Gondor will take care at least that no evil creature dishonours his bones.’” (The Two Towers, Chapter 1, “The Departure of Boromir”)

In other burial scenes of important people in The Lord of the Rings, we see that the Kings and Stewards of Gondor are laid to rest in special vaults, rather like medieval and later English kings buried either in St. George’s chapel at Windsor or in Westminster Abbey.

The Kings of Rohan lie beneath a series of mounds just before Edoras,

like those of the Silla kings of Korea at Gyeongju (57BC-935AD).

Or like the sort of ship burials of which Tolkien must have read in the newspapers of 1939, the famous Sutton Hoo grave.

From which came treasures like this helmet (with its reconstruction).

A number of ship burials of northern European upper class people survive, all more or less in the same pattern: the ship is dragged to a spot where it is filled with the deceased, occasionally accompanied by others and even animals, and grave goods of a high quality, then a mound is built over it. The deceased may have been cremated beforehand, but not necessarily. There is a well-known description of this process by an Arab traveler, Ibn Fadlan. (for a translation of this with copious annotations, see James E. Montgomery, “Ibn Fadlan and the Rusiyyah”, Journal of Islamic and Arabic Studies 3, 2000—available on-line by googling “Ibn Fadlan and the Rusiyyah”)

Here’s an 1883 reconstruction of one part of that process by the Polish painter Henryk Siemiradski.

In contrast, the image of the deceased being placed in such a ship, the ship being launched, and then torched, would appear to be a Hollywood popularization, perhaps originating with the 1958 movie, The Vikings, of something rare (or at least difficult to document).

At the conclusion of this film, a major character is given this treatment.

(That the Victorians were aware of this alternative can be seen in this 1893 painting by Sir Frank Dicksee.

Dicksee had based this painting not on a scholarly source, but upon a lecture by Thomas Carlyle, “The Hero as Divinity. Odin. Paganism: Scandinavian Mythology”, which he would have found in Carlyle’s On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History. Carlyle very loosely cites “Snorro” for his description of such an event, by which he means Snorri Sturluson, author of the Prose Edda)

But this brings up back to “The Departure of Boromir”—and to Tennyson.

In “The Departure of Boromir”, as we have seen, Boromir is placed into one of the Elven boats.

The three companions tow the boat as close to the Falls of Rauros as they can, then cast it loose to be carried over the Falls.

The companions, of course, are pressed for time: Frodo and Sam have gone one direction, Merry and Pippin have been carried off in another and there isn’t time, they feel, to bury Boromir or to build a cairn over him. As they have boats and there is the river below them, the method chosen seems a natural one, but we wondered if the author didn’t have Tennyson’s model in his mind, as well.

In “The Lady of Shalott”, after seeing Lancelot through her window (or in a reflection in the 1842 version of the poem), the Lady places herself in a small boat, with note in hand, and dies on her way down the river on the way to Camelot, apparently of a broken heart (as the backstory, appearing as early as the 13^th century, tells us).

Not only would the poem (which has a rather catchy rhythm) have been readily available, but there were a number of paintings and engravings illustrating the story, practically from the time of the 1842 version.

This is not so dramatic as going over the falls and her death is pale in comparison to multiple arrow wounds, but there is that rhythm, the image of the body in the boat going downstream, and the popularity of the poet—plus the numerous illustrations. We’ll include a link to the poem so you can judge for yourself: was this a possible influence on JRRT?

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

It Will Have To Be Paid For!

12 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by Ollamh in Economics in Middle-earth, J.R.R. Tolkien, Maps

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Asia Minor, Bilbo, Bronze, Chinese, Coinage, Currency, Deagol, Egyptians, Germanic, Gondor, Greeks, Isengard, Italy, Middle-earth, Moria, Pennies, Rohan, Roman Coins, Roman Roads, Romans, Saruman, Shire, Silver, Smeagol, Sumerians, Theodric, Tolkien, Trade, Treasure

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always!

We recently wrote about Saruman and his pipeweed trade along the North-South and Great East Roads, and concluded that those roads reminded us of Roman Roads. Looking at road networks from both Rome and Middle-earth, we see both as just that, networks, lines of communication which travel to and from central points.

The roads of Middle-earth don’t appear to be so elaborately constructed and paved, of course, but then, at least for many centuries before The Lord of the Rings, there had been no central authority to maintain the system.

Although the idea of a Roman road—especially one that is incomplete or ruinous–

gives us a similar image.

But there’s still something missing—Saruman has roads and connections, but how would he have paid for the pipeweed? He could have used a barter system, although that would mean understanding what it would be that he might use—raw material from the mountains? Some sort of manufactured goods made at Isengard? This could certainly be so, if we’re thinking of Middle-earth as a place set in pre-currency times, such as the Sumerians and the Egyptians, who managed their extensive trade just fine without a single coin.

And we could just leave it at that, but then there’s a clue in the first chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring which suggests that the actual commercial system is based upon currency.

“When the old man, helped by Bilbo and some dwarves, had finished unloading, Bilbo gave a few pennies away…” LOTR 25

Bilbo is rumored to have treasure hidden away in his hobbit-hole, with much speculation from all,

“’There’s a tidy bit of money tucked away up there, I hear tell,’ said a stranger… ‘All the top of your hill is full of tunnels packed with chests of gold and silver…’” LOTR 23

And the Shire isn’t the only place where pennies are used—when Sam wants to purchase Bill the pony in Bree,

“Bill Ferny’s price was twelve silver pennies; and that was indeed at least three times the pony’s value in those parts.” LOTR 175

This indicates a standard value based upon that currency, which one assumes was universal (with a tone in the text which implies that everyone might share that opinion), and old enough that it was the accepted modus for buying and selling. As Tolkien himself once wrote:

“I am not incapable or unaware of economic thought; and I think as far as the ‘mortals’ go, Men, Hobbits, and Dwarfs, that the situations are so devised that economic likelihood is there and can be worked out…” LT, L.154 P.196.

Thus, although he was clearly aware of such economic transactions, he didn’t need them for a plot and Merry and Pippin’s food and drink–and smoke–are simply there–with the implication that Saruman’s reach is longer than anyone has assumed.

In fact, there are very few scenes where money is needed at all—the Prancing Pony is the only inn they come across on the road, and the Fellowship otherwise camps out until they are taken in at Lorien, Edoras, and Gondor, and a guest/host relationship becomes a major part of the story. We’ve actually even seen this sort of thing near the very beginning of the story, when Frodo becomes Elf-friend to Gildor, and is awarded provisions (and a hearty breakfast) for their journey.

We have only a little knowledge of the commercial world of Middle Earth, as you can see, and no description of “pennies”, except that some are silver. What might they have looked like? In our earlier essays, we’ve used parallels from the history of our earth, just as JRRT might used road systems which could easily have been influenced by the Roman roads which once connected so much of Britain, to build the roads in Middle-earth. Some of those Roman roads, even in his time, were still visible–some even still used (although usually paved over).

Using our parallel method, we turn to Roman coinage.

We’re dealing with silver coinage in northwest Middle-earth, where Saruman’s imports come from, and if we’re thinking about Rome, we’d be looking at a time where coinage had already existed. We have no idea when coins were first issued in Middle Earth–considering how complexly organized the North and South Kingdoms had been for many centuries, we would imagine that a thousand years before the events of The Lord of the Rings probably wouldn’t be too soon. We have a small piece of evidence from some five hundred years before, when Deagol says to Smeagol:

“’I don’t care,’ said Déagol, ‘I have given you a present already, more than I could afford.’” LOTR, 52

In Rome, silver coinage was introduced in 269 BC, courtesy of the Greeks, after the Romans had been using bronze.

Coins originated in Asia Minor in the 6^th c. BC and quickly caught on, being a convenient and highly portable way of transporting wealth—it was much easier to carry and design to designate between currencies, and the Chinese even began to manufacture coins which could be strung together.

In Middle-earth, this would make it easier to trade beyond the borders of a local market, or even the Shire–and would certainly have been accepted at The Prancing Pony.

All of this leads, however, to Questions for Further Study, as textbooks often say. Currency needs backing—the Roman republic and then the empire backed Roman coins. What backed those pennies in the Shire and beyond?Imagine that, in Middle-earth, the major legitimate government was Gondor—would these pennies have been originally Gondor-issued? If so, perhaps just what happened to Roman currency in late imperial times might have happened in Middle-earth—as Rome began to fall apart, semi-independent governments began to issue coins on their own, such as Theodric, the Germanic ruler of Northeastern Italy:

Visually, they remind us–and they were certainly intended to–of imperial coins, with their images of Roman emperors. Theodoric, even with his unusual hairstyle, meant to be seen as a new ruler for an old Rome. Can we imagine dwarf coins, perhaps issued from the Moria mint? And, when we remember that Mordor has tried to acquire horses from Rohan, what would Mordorian currency have looked like? And, returning to Saruman for a final time—if he paid for pipeweed in coins, did they bear a white hand?

Thanks, as ever, for reading,

MTCIDC,

The Two Sieges

22 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by Ollamh in Heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History

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Agincourt, Aragorn, English Longbowmen, Faramir, French Knights, Gondor, Grond, Hoth, Jan Sobieski, Lithuania, Minas Tirith, Mumakil, Nazgul, Orcs, Ottoman, Peter Jackson, Poland, Rammas Echor, Rohan, Rohirrim, Siege Towers, Stone Throwers, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Vienna, Winged Hussars

Welcome, as always, dear readers!

In this posting, we’re going to make another suggestion about a model for something in Tolkien’s work.

If you read us regularly, you know that our favorite part of P. Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings is anything to do with the Rohirrim. When we rewatch favorite scenes, the charge against the Orcs outside Minas Tirith is always first on our list (and high on our general list of cavalry charges—more on those in a future posting).

First, we see that massive Orc army marching up to the walls. (In the book, this is more dramatic: the Orcs blow two holes in the Rammas Echor, outflank the defenders, and drive them into retreat, which is where Faramir is badly wounded by an arrow.)

Then they begin to attack with stone-throwers,

siege towers,

and, eventually a giant, flame-filled battering ram.

Things look increasingly desperate for Gondor as the Orcs press their attack, led by the Chief Nazgul.

And that’s when the Rohirrim appear.

And move to strike the Orcs from behind.

When the Orcs realize what’s happening, they try to stop the attack with bows.

This immediately reminded us of the 1415 battle in which English longbowmen and their clever use defeated an army of brave French knights, Agincourt.

Unlike Agincourt, however, arrows didn’t stop the Rohirrim, who sweep through the enemy—but are brought up short by the sight of a row of mumakil—giant war elephants—bearing down on them.

Seeing this scenario made us think of another attack by huge, lumbering things in a galaxy long ago and far away—

The film goes on from there, including an attack by a ghost army, instead of by the actual forces brought from southern Gondor by Aragorn, but we want to back up a bit to the actual siege and another one which bears a strong resemblance to it.

For centuries, the Ottoman Turks had been expanding their dominions.

They had first reached Vienna in 1529,

but had given up the siege. Now, however, in 1683, they were back.

Their attacks against a dwindling number of defenders in a crumbling town

had brought them to the edge of conquest when an army of reenforcements, including cavalry from the army of the combined state of Lithuania/Poland, had appeared. Some of the cavalry were the famous Polish winged hussars.

Just as the Rohirrim are led by their king, Theoden, so are the Poles led by their king Jan Sobieski—

The reenforcements, Poles in the lead, rush upon the Turks and drive them back through their camps and out of the siege entirely.

So similar, isn’t it? No giant war elephants, ghost armies, or Nazgul, but the basic elements of siege, relieving army with cavalry led by a king attacking an unprepared enemy, and chasing off the besiegers, is nearly identical.

Tolkien was an extremely well-read man, with a strong interest in history. Was the siege and relief of Vienna somewhere in the back of his mind when he began to plan the siege of Minas Tirith?

Thanks for reading!

MTCIDC

Powerplay

12 Friday Jun 2015

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, Villains

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Barad-Dur, Beer Hall Putsch, Black Country, Charlie Chaplin, Christopher Lee, Edwin Butler Bayliss, Ents, Fangorn, Franco, Frodo, Gandalf, Grima, Hitler, Isengard, Maiar, Merry, Middle-earth, Mordor, Mosley, Mussolini, O'Duffy, Orcs, Orthanc, Pippin, Rohan, Saruman, Sauron, Spode, The Great Dictator, The Lord of the Rings, The Shire, Theoden, Tolkien, Treebeard, Valar

Welcome, as always, dear readers!

We’ve discussed the nearly-invisible Sauron in an earlier posting, but now we’d like to think out loud about the all-too-visible Saruman. And, as we’ve just heard that we’ve lost our own Saruman, Christopher Lee, we would like to dedicate it to his memory.

Pippin and Merry have been filling Fangorn in about all of their adventures up to the moment when he found them in his forest.

Saruman, in particular, has caught his attention, being his neighbor and, it seems, an increasingly distant one—

“There was a time when he was always walking about my woods. He was polite in those days, always asking my leave (at least when he met me); and always eager to listen. I told him many things that he would never have found out by himself; but he never repaid me in like kind. I cannot remember that he ever told me anything. And he got more and more like that; his face, as I remember it—became like windows in a stone wall: windows with shutters inside.” 473

At that moment, everything comes together for the Ent.

“I think that I now understand what he is up to. He is plotting to become a Power.” 473

And not a friendly power, as Gandalf, during his last visit to Isengard, has learned to his dismay, having heard Saruman alternately wheedle and threaten him. Saruman’s initial words, however, were not about himself, but about someone else, to the east:

“A new Power is rising. Against it the old allies and policies will not avail us at all. There is no hope left in Elves or dying Numenor. This then is one choice before you, before us. We may join with that Power.” 259

So far, this must sound like the Sauron party line—and Saruman is actually described “as if he were making a speech long rehearsed”, (259), the tone of which Gandalf recognized immediately, replying:

“I have heard speeches of this kind before, but only in the mouths of emissaries sent from Morder to deceive the ignorant.” 259

If we pause for a moment and consider the era in which this was written, we might catch a glimpse of something from the history of our world in this, something from the period beginning in 1922 and extending at least through 1945, when Tolkien was beginning to write The Lord of the Rings.

JRRT always denied that his work was allegorical, although, sophisticated man that he was, he was well aware that the world around him would impinge upon his consciousness. Thus, when we see numerous sinister figures rising in power in our world, it would be difficult to imagine that they might not, even if only very distantly, exert some small influence on his work.

The lesser figures include Franco, in Spain,

Eoin O’Duffy in Ireland,

Sir Oswald Mosley in England, (mocked as “the amateur dictator “ by P.G.Wodehouse in the persona of Sir Roderick Spode—brilliantly played by John Turner in the 1990s Wodehouse “Jeeves and Wooster” television series)

and the most menacing of all, Mussolini and Hitler.

Mussolini had begun his rise to power just after World War One, achieving his position of Il Duce in 1922,

while Hitler, after a false start in 1923, in emulation of Mussolini,

finally reached the ultimate position of authority in 1933.

Although Hitler was a relative late-comer in comparison with Mussolini, it seems that Mussolini looked up to Hitler, even taking German lessons (although there is no mention of Hitler reciprocating) so that they could talk more easily (and, doubtless, securely).

Thus, it might be possible to see Saruman, in his position as lesser of two evils, looking up to and wanting to imitate Sauron, the greater of two evils, as Mussolini attempting to emulate Hitler. (And this odd partnership is sharply satirized in Charley Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, 1940.)

So, as Sauron has the Barad-dur,

so Saruman has Orthanc.

As Sauron has Orcs

so Saruman has Orcs.

Worst of all, just as Sauron has the vast wasteland of Mordor

Saruman takes the once-green and beautiful Isengard

and turns it into a mini-Mordor.

All of this is swept away by Fangorn and his fellow Ents, of course,

and it appears that Saruman will remain within the tower, but we know that he slips away, taking the former counselor of Theoden, Grima, with him.

Or, at least, that’s what Tolkien intended. Unfortunately, the makers of The Lord of the Rings films simply dropped this theme here, with the deaths both of Saruman and Grima on Orthanc. We say unfortunately because, although we have portrayed Saruman as a wanna-be Sauron (even to the point of thinking that he might gain control of the Ring), which is certainly one of his roles, his is a greater role as he was once a greater figure. He is the eldest of the Maiar in Middle Earth, those spirits whom Tolkien once described as “near equivalent in the mode of these tales of Angels, guardian Angels”, LTR 159. That he can be corrupted by Sauron (as Sauron himself had been corrupted by Morgoth), shows just how great Sauron’s power (and the lure of the Ring) really is. As well, in his fall, we see that that corruption, like Sauron’s, is complete. Offered the chance to return to the good, he spurns it and slips away—but not out of the story, and it’s here that we feel that the writers of the films missed a great opportunity.

In what might, at first, seem like an act of petty revenge, Saruman goes to the Shire, that green and so-far-safe land far west of all of evil of Middle Earth,.

and industrializes it. After all, Fangorn has said of Saruman that “He has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him for the moment.” 473

So, just as at Isengard, trees must go, if only to feed his industrial plans. When we think of Saruman’s ultimate vision for the Shire, we imagine that it would look like the work of Edwin Butler Bayliss (1874-1950) who painted the industrial landscapes of England’s West Midlands, the “Black Country”, an area Tolkien himself thought of as his home region.

The end comes quickly, however, when the Hobbits return and we see, in “The Scouring of the Shire”, on the one hand, the new maturity of Merry and Pippin, and, on the other, the deep humanity of Frodo.

And Saruman would have been allowed to go free again—but there is an irony here in what happens. He had sought to overturn Theoden and Rohan through having subverted Grima and, instead, he himself is killed by that very agent—

and we have wondered about that. If Saruman is of the same substance as the Valar, merely inhabiting a human body, can he, in fact, be killed, any more than Sauron? We assume that Sauron, who had poured so much of his spiritual power into the Ring, would be seriously weakened by its loss, enough so that his empire collapses on him. In Saruman’s case, the end is less dramatic, but at the same time, poignant:

“To the dismay of those that stood by, about the body of Saruman a grey mist gathered, and rising slowly to a great height like smoke from a fire, as a pale shrouded figure it loomed over the Hill. For a moment it wavered, looking to the West; but out of the West came a cold wind, and it bent away, and with a sigh dissolved into nothing.” 1020

Although the withered remains are then described, they seem unnecessary. That was only the borrowed flesh. The tragedy lies in that wavering look, the bending away, the sigh. In the final chapter, “The Grey Havens”, we see Gandalf departing towards that very West which was denied to Saruman and here we see, as well, what it was that the spirit of Saruman had lost: the reward of being allowed, at last, to return home, to go back towards Valinor. Instead, the Valar have rejected one of their own and, though his spirit may not have been destroyed, something seems to have left him forever.

By leaving the final chapters out of the film, then, the script writers lost the chance not only to show us Merry and Pippin, at the end of their long adventure, grown into figures to rival the Old Took, both in deeds and in stature. As well, they denied us the potential contrast with the end of such figures as Hitler—a suicide—and Mussolini—executed by his own people, and that of Saruman the White, murdered by his own follower and, at the end, nothing but sadness and grey smoke.

Thanks, as always, for reading. And thank you, Christopher Lee, for acting.

MTCIDC

Where From the Rohirrim?

10 Wednesday Jun 2015

Posted by Ollamh in Heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth, Narrative Methods, The Rohirrim

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Tags

Amazons, Anglo-Saxon, Bayeux Tapestry, Burial mounds, Cavalry, Charge of the Light Brigade, descendants, Edoras, Eotheod, Horse people, Indo-European, Kurgan, language, Middle-earth, Normans, Rohan, Rohirric, Rohirrim, Scythians, The Lord of the Rings, The Mark, Tolkien, Tom Shippey

Dear Readers, welcome!

In this post, we want to think out loud a bit about the Rohirrim.

Everyone knows where their language is from, as Tolkien says in a letter to “one Mr. Rang”:

“…’Anglo-Saxon’…is the sole field in which to look for the origins and meaning of words and names belonging to the speech of the Mark.” LT 381

And yet they are horse people (their own name for themselves, in fact, is Eotheod, “horse people”), which the Angles and Saxons who went to make up the Anglo-Saxons, were not. Tolkien was well aware of this difference, saying in Appendix F of The Lord of the Rings:

“…this linguistic procedure does not imply that the Rohirrim closely resembled the ancient English otherwise, in culture or art, in weapons or modes of warfare, except in a general way due to their circumstances…” L1136

Tom Shippey, in The Road to Middle Earth, suggests that

“The Rohirrim are nothing if not cavalry. By contrast the Anglo-Saxons’ reluctance to have anything militarily to do with horses is notorious…How then can Anglo-Saxons and Rohirrim ever, culturally, be equated? A part of the answer is that the Rohirrim are not to be equated with the Anglo-Saxons of history, but with those of poetry, or legend.” (112)

Or, could there have been other models?

Tolkien may have been suggesting one when, in a letter to Rhona Beare of 14 October, 1958:

“The Rohirrim were not ‘mediaeval’ in our sense. The styles of the Bayeux Taptestry (made in England) fit them well enough, if one remembers that the kind of tennis-nets [the] soldiers seem to have on are only a clumsy conventional sign for chain-mail of small rings.” Ltr 280-281.

The Bayeux Tapestry depicts both Normans and their allies, on the one hand, and the Anglo-Saxons, on the other, but Tolkien doesn’t appear to distinguish between them. The Normans themselves are mounted, the Anglo-Saxons on foot, as was their custom (they did use horses to move rapidly from place to place, as in the race north to Stamford Bridge and then back south to face the Normans).

Here, to the left, we see those mounted Normans and, to the right, the Anglo-Saxons behind their shield wall. The “tennis-nets” are clearly visible and would actually have looked like this:

In this further illustration, by the way, it’s easy to see the consequences of having the shield wall crumble: men on horseback can have a significant advantage when their opponents lose cohesion.

This, however, is only their look . What about those horses and an entire culture based around them?

For a clue, we look to another element in the culture of the Rohirrim, the use of burial mounds. Here they are at Edoras.

(We can’t resist, by the way, saying that our absolute favorite part of the Jackson movies is anything to do with the Rohirrim—to us, absolutely inspired and we see the depiction of the charge of the Rohirrim against the army besieging Minas Tirith as being right up there with the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava in 1854 and the charge of the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba in 1917–

One might say, in reply, that there are Anglo-Saxon mounds—like the famous Sutton Hoo ship burial.

But that leaves us where we started, in the land of foot soldiers.

So, let’s go farther afield, to the north of the Black Sea.

Here, we see the so-called “Kurgan Culture”, with its burial mounds

[This, by the way, is not to be confused with The Kurgan from the first Highlander movie

The Kurgan]

These were a people who:

are believed by many linguists (and some archeologists) to be the direct ancestors of the Indo-Europeans who gradually invaded Asia Minor and western Europe (including, eventually, the Anglo-Saxons) as well as moving east, to India and beyond
buried their dead (at least what appear to be the high status ones) in mounds
were a horse culture

And, in fact, were seemingly the forerunners of the Scythians, a later well-known Indo-European horse people

And the Scythians, in turn, may have been the model for those mythical horse folk, the Amazons.

In the 19^th century, when the idea of Indo-Europeans began to circulate, there was a preference for a northern European origin (a theory no longer held), but the idea of an eastern home was also circulating and we would suggest that Tolkien would have known about this, as well as, from his early classical training, Scythians and Amazons, their actual and mythical descendants.

Imagine, then, that what we see in the Rohirrim is, in fact, an interesting mixture of people sprung from an earlier people (as Tolkien tells us, the Rohirrim were descended from the Edain of the First Age—see LOTR, Appendix F 1129), both in our world and in Middle Earth, who based their culture upon horses, and bury their dead in mounds, combined with people who may also bury their dead in mounds, who speak a version of Anglo-Saxon and who dress like the Normans and Anglo-Saxons of the 11^thcentury AD.

What do you think, dear readers?

Thanks for reading, as always.

MTCIDC

Food for Thought

20 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History of Middle-earth, Narrative Methods, Villains

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Eating, Gollum, Isengard, Lembas, Longbottom Leaf, Lorien, Man-Meat, Mordor, Orc, Rivendell, Rohan, Saruman, Sauron, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien

Dear Readers,

Welcome!

In this posting, we’re continuing our discussion of villains, specifically in Tolkien, but, for a change, we mention the good guys, as well.

We begin with a wail by Gollum, when assured by Frodo that, if there’s no other way to go, he will enter Mordor by the Morannon, the Black Gate.

“No use that way! No use! Don’t take the Precious to Him! He’ll eat us all, if he gets it, eat all the world!” L637

It’s not surprising that Gollum would express his fear in such terms—after all, in his first appearance in The Hobbit, his first words were

“Bless us and splash us, my precioussss! I guess it’s a choice feast, at least a tasty morsel it’d make us, gollum!”

And this from a creature who appears ready to consume anything living, as the narrator says of him:

“He was looking out of his pale lamp-like eyes for blind fish, which he grabbed with his long fingers as quick as thinking. He liked meat too. Goblin he thought good, when he could get it…”

What were goblins in The Hobbit have become the Orcs in The Lord of the Rings and Gollum would still be interested in them, but now we’re told what they eat—and drink.

“Ugluk thrust a flask between his teeth and poured some burning liquid down his throat: he felt a hot fierce glow flow through him. The pain in his legs and ankles vanished. He could stand.”

“An Orc stooped over him, and flung him some bread and a strip of raw dried flesh. He ate the stale grey bread hungrily, but not the meat. He was famished, but not yet so famished as to eat flesh flung to him by an Orc, the flesh of he dared not guess what creature.”

“”We are the servants of Saruman the Wise, the White Hand: the Hand which gives us man’s –flesh to eat.”

To judge by what Merry and Pippin find when they come to Isengard, Saruman certainly didn’t stint himself, including casks of Longbottom Leaf from the Shire.

And here is a glaring contrast between the two sides in The Lord of the Rings, and it has to do with plenty and enjoyment. Saruman seems to have all the wealth in the world, but always wants more, and what he has does not appear to be shared out equally. Sauron, Gollum says, wants to eat the world, but would he ever be full?

Contrast the traveling supplies of the orcs as you see them above in our text with lembas

As the elves describe it, “…it is more strengthening than any food made by Men, and it is more pleasant than cram, by all accounts.” To which Gimli agrees enthusiastically, “Why, it is better than the honey-cakes of the Beornings, and that is great praise, for the Beornings are the best bakers that I know of…”

Only contrast the look of West and East to see the difference. Here is what the plains of Rohan must look like:

And here is an artist’s rendering of Mordor:

It’s a striking difference topographically, but the difference is even greater in terms of behavior. Isengard is a fortress and a factory, a little Mordor set against the greater Mordor to the east. It can also be a prison, as Gandalf finds out. In contrast, think of the welcome in Rivendell

and Lorien

The West doesn’t plan to eat the world, instead, it lives in a fruitful land, which it makes more fruitful, and it offers this in hospitality to those who come in peace.

This is what is really at stake in The Lord of the Rings, that sense of bounty, generosity, and pleasure, which it must defend from what would eat all the world.

And, as always, we ask what you think, dear readers?

Thanks for reading,

MTCIDC,

doubtfulsea

~ adventure fantasy

Tag Archives: Rohan

Knowledge, Rule, Order

Of Boats and Boromir

It Will Have To Be Paid For!

The Two Sieges

Powerplay

Where From the Rohirrim?

Food for Thought