Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical | Races: Men, Part 1

As someone who typically will not read a book or watch a movie with too many men — one reason I dislike Chariots of Fire while acknowledging that it deserves to be considered a technically and culturally significant film — The Lord of the Rings is a notable exception. The main cast of Nine Walkers have all been assigned male pronouns in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “translation” into English from Westron, and more on the technicalities of gendered language will appear in upcoming posts for the Appendixes on languages in Middle-earth. Yet female characters regularly have greater magical power or preternatural ability than their male counterparts: Galadriel was the greatest of the Ñoldor Elves, Arwen influenced Aragorn to reunite an empire, Eowyn killed the Witch-King, and even Rosie Cotton implied she could predict the future, telling Sam upon his return to the Shire, “I’ve been expecting you since the Spring” (The Return of the King, 312).

In contrast, this book has too many Men, referring to the confusing myriad of nationalities within the Race. I have decided to illustrate ten variations of Men, two more than Elves. Additionally, each variant requires two designs, unlike the single design for each group of androgenous Elves. Men exhibited sexual dimorphism and had a strict gender binary, meaning men and women looked significantly different both physically and in their choice of clothing, hairstyle, and cosmetics. Additionally, the cultures of Men seemed to vary more greatly than the cultures of Elves, so their clothing styles would likewise vary.

Because of this, I divided my post on the Race of Men into two parts. I will use the names for broad classifications of men that were created by the Númenóreans during the early stages of their colonization of Middle-earth. These names have a decidedly colonial tone. The Númenóreans called themselves High Men, and their descendants were Dúnedain or “Men of the West”. They considered their allies on Middle-earth, Middle Men, to be “lesser” men. At the end of the Third Age (T.A.), the Middle Men included Bree-landers, Men of Dale, and Rohirrim or Eorlingas. This first section focused on those two groups. The second section next week will include the many other Men who lived in Middle-earth, the seemingly ancient Drúedain, also called Púkel-men or Wos, along with the so-called Men of Shadow: Haradrim, Easterlings or Men of Rhûn, Dunlendings, and Men of Lossoth or Snowmen.

Much of information on the clothing of Ancient and Medieval people is known by modern historians by studying artwork created around the time period such as illuminated manuscripts and woven tapestries. Resources produced by our friends the Victorians cannot be trusted, as they tended to blend time periods and get creative with color palettes. While I am illustrating a fictional world, I want my garments to be firmly rooted in historical research. The most accurate resources, along with the most morbid, are clothing recovered from bog bodies. Preserved for hundreds if not thousands of years, scientists test the composition of clothing to determine age and the species used to make the garment. Heights and weights of people are likewise inferred by art, skeletal remains, and the occasional contemporary study.

Middle Men

Bree-landers

Bree-land was the country to the east of the Shire. The chief village was aptly named Bree; it could not be called a capital, as the land apparently had no centralized government. The Bree-landers had botanical names from Early Modern English, and their culture seemed based on people from England in the late 15^th century through the early 18^th century. A common misperception is that people from this time were significantly shorter than today. However, studies of male skeletal remains dating from 1400 to 1650, corresponding to the late Medieval and Post-Medieval period, and excavated in England found that men between the ages of twenty-one and forty-nine were about 173-174 cm (68" or 5'8"), only 5 cm (2") shorter than today. Famine and plague caused decline in height, but the population recovered after one or two generations. Height fell during the Industrial Revolution but rose again beginning in the 1950s. The study did not bother to measure any female skeletal remains.

For costuming, I had to make a choice: did I want the people of Bree to be Medieval peasants in 13^th century England even if this was slightly before the target period, or Post-Medieval working class people in 17^th century England at the end of the target period? I had already designed Stoor Hobbits with 1620s English attire, but the music I wrote for an introduction song to appear during “Chapter 9: At the Sign of the Prancing Pony” in Part One: The Fellowship of the Ring, which will debut several months from now, was based on a 13th century drinking song. Ultimately, I realized I need not be torn in two between the periods. In my visualization of Bree, men wore 13^th century attire, while women and Hobbits wore 17^th century attire, and Dwarves wear their regular clothing to be revealed in a few weeks.

For both time periods, all clothes were woven by hand and typically made of wool, although goat hair might have been used for outer garments in winter. Unlike the beige typically seen in Hollywood dramas, “the taste for colors was the brighter the better”. My Bree-lander man sports a crimson, yellow, and purple striped outfit, while green and blue were other color options. His long-sleeved outer tunic has a cut at the front not unlike the three-quarter zip pullovers popular among modern corporate wear, allowing him to pull the tunic over his head. Underneath the outer tunic, he wore an inner tunic, much like modern men wearing a t-shirt below a button-up dress shirt. His belt is tied below his waist, creating a skirt-like bottom over unseen hose and visible breeches. To stay warm, he wears a purple felt hat matching his tunic and a deep green cloak. I have not designed any sleepwear for prototype characters appearing in my Races of Middle-earth illustrations. For the warmer parts of the year, the Bree-lander man may not have worn anything, although he must have kept on his inner tunic and hose during the cold winter months.

The women of Bree have a different fashion sense than their male counterparts and tend to dress similarly to what Americans might view as “Pilgrim clothes”. The barmaid in my illustration wears a shift and petticoat for her underclothes. On top is an outer petticoat, similar to the 1950s combination of a shift and a skirt. Her collarless, button-down shirt is called a waistcoat. On her feet and hidden beneath her petticoats are shoes fastened not with buckles but latchets, an Old French word meaning “ties” that arrived in English during the late 14^th century and were precursors to shoe laces. The flat wired lace collar, also known as a “whisk”, attached to the neck of this women’s waistcoat was fancier than anything an English Separatist would wear, never mind her plunging neckline and loose hair. This outfit was influenced by a painting of Elizabeth Craven, Lady Powis from the early 17^th century and currently a part of the National Trust in the collection at Powis Castle in Wales.

Men of Dale

With their Norse and Anglo-Saxon inspired names, the Men of Dale seem similar to northwestern Europeans during the Viking Age, which took place in the Middle Ages from AD 800 to 1050. Their clothing therefore predates the clothing of both men and women from Bree-land. Based on a recent study on “Statue Estimation for Medieval Scandinavians”, their heights were similar, as men averaged about 172 cm (68" or 5'8"). This study even included women, who averaged 159 cm (63" or 5'3"). While both sexes stood about two inches shorter than average height for their modern counterparts, this seemed due to lack of modern disease prevention rather than nutrition. Another study on Scandinavian teeth and bones showed that boys and girls received plenty of food. Their culture loved cows and included dairy in their diet to support the growth of children.

Hollywood depictions of dirty Vikings are historically inaccurate. In fact, their Christianized counterparts decried them for being exceptionally clean. In a passage translated from 13^th century English writer John of Wallingford, he complained “They combed their hair every day, bathed every Sunday, and even changed their garments often.” English women tended to run off and join the Vikings.

A person’s clothing was strongly associated with class more than today. These Dale Men are the equivalent to Viking karls, members of the lower class. The other two classes in society were the aristocratic jarls and the enslaved thralls; a middle class did not exist. In some ways, the outfit of the man is not much different than his counterpart in Bree-land. Both wear belted tunics, although the tunic of the Dale man does not have a slit in the front. The Dale man wears loose-fitting trousers tucked into his sturdy leather boots in contrast to the form-fitting tights and leather shoes worn by the Bree-lander man. Both wore cloaks to stay warm. The Dale man has longer and cleaner hair than the Bree-lander man and keeps it neatly tied up in a bun while traveling.

The Dale woman wears an outfit radically different than her Bree-lander counterpart. Her tunic matches that of the Dale man, as do her leather boots. She wears a blue apron pinned at the shoulders with a pair of broches and belted along with the tunic at her waist. My departure from classic Viking clothing comes with her divided skirt, also called a culotte. The Dale woman can tuck the ends of the culotte into her boots for freer movement and added warmth while working or wear the ends loose to create the appearance of a regular skirt. This style of clothing did not appear in Europe until the mid-19^th century. I am using this subtle anachronism in costume design to indicate that the viewpoints in Middle-earth are not truly Ancient or Medieval as a surface level reading might imply but have been deliberately filtered through the cultural lens of the Victorian era, also known as 19^th century Romanticism.

Rohirrim

The design of Rohirrim is similar to Men of Dale, as the two countries seemed to share a common ancestor based on their language and their designation as “Middle Men” according to Númenóreans and their descendants. While the names for Men of Dale were “translated” as Nordic, the names for Rohirrim tended to be Anglo-Saxon in origin, as previously described in “Appendix A II The House of Eorl” and “Appendix A II The Kings of the Mark”. Interestingly, the “Note on the Shire Record” described Merry Brandybuck as having written a book comparing the Rohirrim language to fossil words used in the Shire dialects of Westron. Perhaps Hobbits share a common ancestor with these Men.

The main difference between Rohirrim and Men of Dale in my portrayal is variation in physical appearance. Bard the Bowman, slayer of Smaug the dragon, had black hair (The Hobbit, 252), and his neighbors likely looked the same. In contrast, the Rohirrim had distinct blond hair and blue eyes. The other differentiation between the two groups comes in the preferred color of their clothing and a subtle embellishment; the Rohirrim display the “White Horse on Green” on their clothing, much like modern people wearing variations on their national flag.

High Men

Dúnedain

Ethnic Dúnedain included both Arnorians discussed in “(iii) Eriador, Arnor, and the Heirs of Isildur” and Gondorians discussed in “(iv) Gondor and the Heirs of Anárion” While their costumes doubtlessly varied based on time and location, my design is for residents of Minas Tirith at the end of the Third Age. I drew inspiration from Imperial Rome, whose culture, language, and politics highly influenced the rest of Western life. Like my illustrations for Men of Dale and Rohirrim, these images reflect a culture that has gone through the Victorian Romanticism filter, but only after passing through the Medieval Christianization filter. While people of the Middle Ages loved learning tales from Ancient Greece and Rome, along with remembering the pagan Celtic, Gothic, and Norse stories of their ancestors, they altered the historical material to become more suitable for a Medieval audience. The Dúnedain and their allies would have done the same with their cultural heroes.

The High Men were taller than the Middle Men, although they had shrunk from the great height of their Númenórean ancestors. I have decided to average their height at 178 cm (70" or 5'10") for men and 165 cm (65" or 5'5") for women, which is just above the average for men and women in England during a 2021 study and in the United States in a 2018 study. Environmental factors like poorer food and childhood diseases would lead to the decrease.

Additionally, Gondorians married people from other nationalities, so their children would have varied in height and appearance, no different than the real-world people of the Roman Empire. Marriage between Gondorians and Rohirrim appeared to be the most common, as mentioned throughout Appendix A sections I and II. People from the southern part of the country were described in Pippin’s perspective as “swarthier” in appearance (Return, 31), a somewhat antiquated but neutral term indicating a darker skin tone and proving that marriage between Gondorians and Haradrim were also common. To illustrate Gondorian diversity, my Dúnedain man from Minas Tirith has mostly Númenórean ancestry, while my Dúnedain woman is from the southern region and has both Númenórean and Haradrim ancestry.

The Romans of the real-world wore wool clothing unless they could afford linen. Garments worn by men generally were not dyed. However, Medieval people loved colorful clothing, so an off-white outfit would have been too boring for their hero. The Dúnedain man wears green and blue, while the Dúnedain woman wears red, three favorite colors in the Middle Ages. Other than the changes in color, the form of the clothing is historically accurate. The Dúnedain man wears a short tunica like a worker or soldier along with sturdy sandals and a military-style paludamentum or cape attached to one shoulder by a fibula or pin. This signals that our Dúnedain man is vigilant and prepared to go to war even when not wearing his armor.

The Dúnedain woman wears a stola, a long dress made from a single piece of fabric. Her sandals are not visible; the Romans did not approve of adult women showing their feet. Some women might have worn a palla, a woolen cape. Because this woman is from the middle class, known as plebeians in Roman society, she was legally not permitted to wear the same amount of jewelry as women in the upper class, called patricians. As the Roman Empire grew, a class called the equites or horse class formed between the plebeians and patricians. Men from this class originally worked in the calvary but later expanded their skillsets to become merchants and bankers. While the Rohirrim maintained an independent government even with their close allyship with the Gondorians, their social position was similar to the equites. Finally, Ancient Rome had two additional classes, traditionally known as freemen and slaves. Gondor appears to be an anti-slavery society, leaning heavily into Victorian Romanticization, but a massive lower class similar to freemen would have been needed to provide cheap labor.

Númenóreans

Last come the Númenóreans, the original self-proclaimed High Men of Middle-earth whose colonial power shaped the language and culture of the continent. The Dúnedain idolized their powerful ancestors and continued their traditions, from speaking a variant of Sindarin along with Westron to caring for the White Tree. This relationship between Dúnedain and Númenóreans was similar to that between Imperial Romans and Classical Greeks. Accordingly, the design of the Númenóreans must go through three filters: the Idolization of the Romans, the Christianization of the Medieval period, and the Romanticization of the Victorians.

The Númenóreans were fantastically tall compared to their descendants and the Middle Men, and therefore do not rely on Ancient or Medieval datasets. I portray the Númenórean man as 6' (72" or 1.83m) and the Númenórean woman as 5'7" (67" or 1.69m). While such heights were never reached in the past, they have become a reality for one country due to genetics, healthcare, and high consumption of dairy products. According to a BBC article from 2020, the Dutch have the tallest average height of any nationality, which matches my hypothetical height for the Númenóreans and proves that a mythical ancient culture of tall people was scientifically possible.

People of all ages and genders in Ancient Greece wore chitons, so my Númenórean man does also. Historical costume expert Liza Cleland remarked in her book Greek and Roman Dress from A to Z, “women and girls seem to have been far more particular about how the garment looked”, showing that the world has not greatly changed. The style of chiton varied depending on the wearer’s social status and city-state of origin. This man wears the simpler Doric chiton style, which is pinned at the shoulders with peronai and belted with a leather or cloth zone. In Greek mythology and likely in the real-world, women defended themselves using their peronai to stab the eyes of bad men. Atop his chiton, the Númenórean man wears a chlamys, a short cloak or cape. The Númenórean man wears a petasos or wide-brimmed hat and sturdy sandals.

The Númenórean woman wears a fancy peplos or dress instead of a chiton. For her outfit, I took inspiration from a marble funerary statue of a maiden carved around 320 BC and currently held at the MET along with the bronze Charioteer of Delphi that remains at the Archaeological Site of Delphi. Besides her sandals, the woman wears a peaked hat called a pileus or pilos. This hat shape may look oddly familiar to readers in light of the ongoing Olympics, as it evolved into the Phrygian caps worn by revolutionaries during the French Revolution, who remembered the Ancient Greeks as pillars of democracy due to their Romanticism, and is currently memorialized as the bright red Phryges Olympic mascots. The verdict is still out over whether I find these things endearing or an abomination before God and Man.

Read past installments of Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical

• New Project Announcement
• Introduction by Peter S. Beagle
• Foreword by J.R.R. Tolkien
• Introduction to the History of Animation
• Prologue, 1 Concerning Hobbits
• Introduction to Maps
• Races: Hobbits
• Perspectives on the Sea
• Prologue, 2 Concerning Pipe-weed
• Prologue, 3 On the Ordering of the Shire
• Prologue, 4 Of the Finding of the Ring
• Prologue, Note on the Shire Record
• Introduction to the History of Musical Theater
• Introduction to the History of Documentaries
• Introduction to the History of Conlangs
• Introduction to the Appendixes
• Overview of Appendix A “Annals of the Kings and Rulers”
• Appendix A, I The Númenórean Kings, (i) Númenor
• Appendix A, I The Númenórean Kings, (ii) The Realms in Exile
• Appendix A, I The Númenórean Kings, (iii) Eriador, Arnor, and the Heirs of Isildur
• Appendix A, I The Númenórean Kings, (iv) Gondor and the Heirs of Anárion
• Appendix A, I The Númenórean Kings, (v) The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen
• Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical | Races: Elves
• Appendix A, II The House of Eorl
• Appendix A, II The Kings of the Mark