Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical | Appendix D: Shire Calendar

While Appendix D is named for the Shire Calendar, this section actually covers calendars from multiple Middle-earth cultures spanning thousands of years. The construction of these calendars presented an unresolved mystery: why were they so similar to modern Western calendars? A real-world explanation was that Tolkien was most familiar with the Gregorian calendar, but a Middle-earth explanation was more complex.

The world of Arda had a solar year of “365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 46 seconds” (The Return of the King, 427), similar to the solar year on Earth as calculated by Johannes Kepler in 1627. His work was based on calculations by other mathematicians stretching back to the 2^nd century BC, when Greek astronomer Hipparchus thought 365 days, 5 hours, 55 minutes, and 12 seconds was the best measurement. Other scientists calculating the length of the day throughout the ages included Claudius Ptolomy of Alexandria in the 2^nd century AD, Ulugh Beg of the Timurid Empire in the 15^th century AD, and Erasmus Reinhold of Germany in the 16^th century AD. Since Kepler, scientists have continued to improve the equations to create increasingly accurate measurements, which are incredibly important in our age of satellite-based communications.

Tolkien mentioned “the memory of the Earth” (Return, 427) when calculating solar years for Arda, suggesting this fantasy planet was in fact the ancient past of our own planet, and the books about Middle-earth were a translation of recorded history predating what had been the earliest academically accepted record. Somehow, an apocalyptic event had wiped out almost all evidence of advanced human or humanoid cultures, and a few books from the Thain’s library at Tuckborough were the only remaining contemporary records.

However, given that historians and scientists have an increasingly clear idea of what happened before recorded history, this could not be the case if the events took place within the current timeline in the same dimension. A workaround for this issue was if identical planets “Earth” and “Arda” existed within a multiverse and people with magical abilities could walk between them. In fact, this concept canonically existed within earlier versions of Tolkien’s massive Legendarium. A Man eventually called Ælfwine, meaning “Elf-friend”, appeared in The Book of Lost Tales and could sail to the Elven paradise of Aman. Unlike all other mortals and most Elves, he could also sail back home.

This concept of multiple worlds within a universe was not unique to Tolkien both in fiction and in science. C.S. Lewis described a multiverse in The Magician’s Nephew in 1955, the same year Tolkien published The Return of the King. A pair of children were given magical rings by a nasty uncle, which eventually transported them to a “Wood between the Worlds”, where each pool of water would bring them to a different reality. In 1961, DC Comics revamped their brand by creating the premise of Earth-Two, another reality where an old version of their popular characters could live as they created more modern versions for Earth-One, what they deemed to be the world of the readers. Marvel Comics followed suit in 1971, calling their reader’s world Earth-616.

Meanwhile over in the realm of quantum mechanics, physicist Hugh Everett III hypothesized many-worlds interpretation (MWI) in 1957. He used a lot of tricky math and long words to explain that since “quantum events”, or the movement of tiny little bits, cannot be measured with certainty unlike the bigger bits that we are accustomed to dealing with, then we should assume that all possible movements of the tiny little bits have happened, giving us multiple solutions to this tricky math problem. Since the tiny little bits make up the bigger bits that we are accustomed to dealing with, this creates many different realities that we would recognize as real worlds, some very much like our own world, but we can never reach these other worlds. During the 1970s, Bryce Seligman DeWitt worked with Everett and popularized the phrase “many-worlds” while expanding upon the theory. Their work was a family effort, as Everett’s wife Nancy Gore Everett typed his doctoral dissertation, and DeWitt’s wife Cécile Andrée Paule DeWitt-Morette founded École de physique des Houches [Houches School of Physics] in France. They must have really liked tiny little bits.

With those explanations from fiction and science out of the way, the rest of this essay will be summarizing the calendars of Middle-earth, presenting a brief history of calendars in the real-world, comparing Middle-earth and real-world holidays, and describing how calendars will be incorporated into the hypothetical animated musical. As an added bonus, I created a few colorful charts to aid in understanding days of the week, months of the year, and seasons for the multiple languages of Middle-earth along with how they compared to durations of time in the real-world.

A Quick Summary of Middle-earth Calendars

As difficult as the following section may seem, it is in fact a simplified version of what appeared in the original text. I will focus mostly on a high-level overview of the calendars and include some of the fictional language words for units of time, along with comparing time-tracking practices in Middle-earth to those in the real-world. If you really enjoy learning Quenya, Sindarin, and Englishized Westron, I have included charts with these words at the end of this essay.

All calendars in Middle-earth were derivatives of the calendar for coranar, the Quenya word for solar year used by Eldar or Elves. The word sounds similar to “corona”, now connected to the COVID-19 virus, but originally from a Latin word meaning “crown”. Since 1809, astronomers have used the term to describe the glow around the Sun, seen best during a total eclipse. Since Elves were immortal, they also used a calendar counting yén, or 144 coronar. This twelve by twelve or “one gross” measurement, as Bilbo Baggins would say (The Fellowship of the Ring, 31), occurred because “the Eldar preferred to reckon in sixes and twelves as far as possible” (Return, 428). Cultures in the real world used a base-six, heximal, or senary system, although these are more rare than base-ten or decimal systems, since humans have ten fingers and not six or twelve. According to a 2009 linguistics paper “Senary Summary So Far”, a few researchers hypothesized polydactyly or greater than five fingers per hand as a reason behind the six-base system, but most believe there was no correlation. The Proto-Uralic language, from which Finnish and Sámi descended, may have used base-six and was most likely Tolkien’s inspiration.

Elvish days, known as ré in Quenya, were “reckoned from sunset to sunset” (Return, 428) which is common to this day in Middle Eastern cultures and religions, including Judaism and Islam. Ancient Greeks used the sunset method, while Babylonians used the sunrise method. With the introduction of the Julian calendar, to be discussed at length in the next section, Romans divided their day into twenty-four hours and began their day at midnight, just as we do today.

The Númenóreans ruled by Elros, twin brother of Elrond, used the same calendar as Elves but made some changes. Elrond’s calendar was called the Reckoning of Rivendell. Weeks lasted for six days, and its yestarë or New Year’s Day began at the start of tuilë or spring. He added three bonus days or enderi after the season of yávië or autumn harvest, and also after the season of quellë or leaf-fall. Every twelfth coronar received a bonus enderi, and every third yén, an enderi was dropped.

If this sounds convoluted to you, rest assured that the Númenóreans felt the same, so Elros’ descendants created a new system called the King’s Reckoning. The days of Men started at sunrise instead of sunset. They changed six-day weeks to seven-day weeks and moved new year to mid-winter, mimicking their new friends the Men of the North-west, whom they met during the First Age (I). Finally, this calendar required a two-day enderi in every fourth year except for the last in a century. While still somewhat convoluted, the system was much better than before, except that the calendar began to drift away from the original seasons.

By the Third Age (III), with the line of kings seemingly ended, the stewards of Gondor attempted to fix this disaster in a system called the Stewards’ Reckoning, which all Westron speakers except the Hobbits subsequently used. Mardil the Steward added two days to the calendar in III 2059, while Hador the Steward added another day in III 2360. The calendar was about as good as it could get, but it would not last long. With Aragorn returning as king, he declared the Fourth Age (IV) and brought back a version of the King’s Reckoning called New Reckoning so it would better align with Rivendell Reckoning, likely because this was what he and Arwen were accustomed to using.

Meanwhile, throughout the ages, the Hobbits did things their own way. Hobbits were originally nomadic before being colonized by the Dúnedain, the descendants of the Númenóreans, and did not use calendars in those days. They adopted a more straight version of the King’s Reckoning. Bree-reckoning in Bree-land considered B.R. 1 to be the same as III 1300, likely because this was when the town of Bree was founded, or the Hobbits received a charter from the king to colonize the area. Meanwhile, Shire-reckoning in the Shire and Buckland considered S.R. 1 to be the same as III 1601, harkening back to the Fallohide brothers Macho and Blanco receiving their charter to colonize the area (Fellowship, 5). The Shire Hobbits came up with a novel idea that the Bree-landers adopted: “shifting of the weekday names in relation to dates” was seen as “untidy and inconvenient” (Return, 430), so they added in bonus days with no weekday names. In that way, dates would always fall on the same day of the week; for example, Bilbo’s and Frodo’s September 22 birthday was always on a Thursday or Mersday in Englishized Westron. Additionally, Hobbits preferred their weeks to end on Fridays or Highdays, so Mersday was considered their sixth day of the week.

A Quick History of Real-world Calendars

Just like in Middle-earth, real-world calendars rely heavily on lunar cycles and solar events. In Western history, among the best known set of ancient calendars were those used in Athens, a polis or city-state in Greece. The Athenians used up to five time measurement systems: a four-year Olympiad to determine when to hold athletic competitions, a parapegma or seasonal calendar similar to an almanac describing what stars were visible throughout the year, a twelve or thirteen month civil calendar for public holidays, a ten-month conciliar calendar to determine who would be prytaneis or president, and the enneakaidekaetris or nineteen year lunar-solar cycle. Some of these calendars can be compared to calendars used by nearby civilizations. The civil calendar does not compare very well to the Roman Julian calendar, but the enneakaidekaetris was probably based on a Babylonian calendar.

The Roman calendar systems were similarly complex. Little archeological evidence remains of the system that existed before the Julian calendar. The oldest calendar had ten months, but what is now called January and February were added to the front, shifting the beginning of the year from March 1 to January 1, and causing the names of other months not to make sense anymore. This is why October literally means “Eighth Month” but is now the tenth month. Archaeologists rediscovered fragments of the oldest surviving Roman calendar, Fasti Antiates Maiores, in Antium, now the modern town of Anzio, Italy. This calendar had either twelve or thirteen months depending on if it was a leap year. In 45 BC, Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a calendar should be fixed for the entire Roman world. He named the new system after his foster father, Julius Caesar, along with changing the month Quintilis or Fifth Month to Iulius, and Sextilis or Sixth Month to Augustus.

This calendar was not good enough for modern users, so in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII made a brand new calendar conveniently named the Gregorian calendar. Like every change to be made by a religious body, this was controversial. Catholic countries quickly adopted the system, but Protestant countries protested that this calendar was not a significant enough change over the Julian system, often referred to as “Old Style”, and it did nothing to solve the problem of Easter landing on any Sunday between March 22 and April 25. The British Empire refused to adopt the calendar until 1752, which is why those studying the American Revolutionary War will discover founding fathers with two radically different and yet both correct birth dates. Several countries, such as the Netherlands and France, went back and forth between the Julian and Gregorian calendar over several decades as provinces changed their calendars at different times depending on religious and political views.

The quest to align the civil calendar with the Christian liturgical calendar put forth in Medieval Europe was eventually dropped, and the two calendars continued in unsynchronized parallel. The liturgical calendar was based on older biblical calendars with roots going as far back as an Ancient Egyptian system known as the “Predynastic lunar calendar”. This seemingly practical system of following the phases of the moon has caused debate among Egyptologists, as such a calendar would quickly become misaligned with a solar year. By the time of Dynastic or Pharaonic Egypt, when the country was unified under a single king, the calendar seemed to be a combination of lunar and solar. Ancient Hebrews adopted a similar calendar as indicated throughout the book of Exodus, including when to celebrate Passover (Exodus 12:1-2, 13:4). This system was altered during the Babylonian exile, as Akkadian names replaced Semitic names to create the calendar used by Jews today.

Plenty of calendars exist outside of Western history. The Islamic Calendar allows Muslims to track their holidays with the first year starting not with the birth of Muhammed — unlike the Gregorian calendar, which started with the approximate birth year of Jesus — but with his travel from Mecca to Medina, also known as the Hijrah. Verses within the Quran indicated that the calendar should be lunisolar, with years equivalent to a solar year divided into twelve months with each month equivalent to a lunar cycle.

The Ethiopian or Ge'ez Calendar used by the Orthodox Tewahido Church merged the calculations for the Julian calendar with the liturgy of the Coptic calendar used by Orthodox Christian churches. It has twelve months of thirty days plus a bonus month of five or six days, with leap year occurring every four years. This calendar is seven or eight years behind the Gregorian calendar due to a different calculation for the birth of Jesus, and Christmas is celebrated on January 7 instead of December 25.

To the east, the most popular calendar system before the introduction of the Gregorian calendar during the late 19^th and early 20^th century was the East Asian Sexagenary Cycle. According to writing on oracle bones discovered by archaeologists, this calendar was created in China around 1250 BC during the Shang dynasty and combined a ten-day cycle or xun with a twelve-day cycle to create a sixty-day cycle. Additionally, the ten-year cycle of Heavenly Stems or tiangan and twelve-year cycle of Earthly Branches or dizhi created a sixty-year cycle or ganzhi. According to a legend from the 4th century BC, the ten stems and twelve branches represent the children of the Emperor Jun, as his wife XiHe gave birth to ten Suns, and his wife ChangXi gave birth to twelve Moons. The Heavenly Stems are represented by the five elements—fire, earth, metal, water, wood—along with yin and yang. The Earthly Branches have become synonymous with the Chinese zodiac, where an animal represents each year of a twelve-year cycle. Despite the complexity of this system, it soon spread to Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.

Across the water in the Americas, the Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar was first created around the 5th century BC, possibly by Maya scholars, and became the basis for other calendars, including those used by the Aztec or Mexica, Mixtec, Olmec, and Zapotec empires. For Maya, the beginning of the world was equivalent to 3114 BC, which they calculated based on an even older calendar created by their neighbors from the Mixe-Zoque language group. The Calendar Round or shorter cycle in the system consisted of two parts: the tzolkin or sacred calendar of 260 days and the haab or civil calendar of 365 days. This calendar would reset every fifty-two years, possibly because this was the life expectancy of people. For Aztecs, the sacred calendar was called tonalphualli, and the civil calendar was called xiuhpohualli.

What the general public rediscovered during a mass media flurry back in 2012 was the Maya Long Count calendar, which was due to reset on December 21 of that year, coinciding with the winter solstice. This system used a completely different set of measurements, where a tun or Long Count year lasted for 360 kin or days, and 8,000 tun was 1 piktun, one type of calendar reset point. This system contains reset points in increasingly long increments, the longest being an alautun, which resets about every 63 million years.

Middle-earth Dates and Real-world Holidays

Several important dates during the War of the Ring corresponded to Christian holidays, especially those celebrated by Catholics, and their related pagan holidays. On March 25, III 3019 / S.R. 1419, the Ring went into the Crack of Doom, and Sauron’s stronghold Barad-Dûr was destroyed. Two years later, on March 25, III 3019 / IV 1 / S.R. 1421, Aragorn declared a new age in his reunited kingdom, and the date became a holiday equivalent to New Year’s Day (Return, 433). This holiday was never celebrated in the Shire (Return, 434).

In the real world, this date occurs a few days past Spring Equinox, a common time for celebrations of rebirth and renewal. Catholics celebrate the Feast of Annunciation, also called Lady Day, when the angel Gabriel visited the Virgin Mary to let her know she would conceive Jesus through the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:26 – 38). Easter is also celebrated around this time, as is the Jewish Passover or Pesach, and the neopagan holiday Ostara. The Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre and Germanic equivalent Ostern were fertility goddesses who lent their names to the modern English word Easter. Their powers of rejuvenating the land after winter were similar to the powers of Luthien Tinúviel and Arwen Undómiel in The Lord of the Rings.

September 22 was listed as the birthdays of both Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, the same date as the Autumnal Equinox in the real-world. This holiday was never celebrated in the Shire (Return, 434), but Aragorn declared it a holiday in the reunited kingdom and added the leap day next to it, calling this bonus celebration Cormarë or “Ring Day” (Return, 433).

Harvest festivals appear around autumnal equinox in the real-world. The folk festival Oktoberfest begins around this date, spreading Germanic culture and beer around the world. Neopagans celebrate Mabon, a mid-harvest festival named for a Welsh god also known as Maponos, meaning “divine son”. He may have been the son of the mortal hero Gwri or Gwron and the river goddess Modron or Matrona, not unlike Dior being the son of the mortal hero Beren and the half-Elf, half-Maia Luthien in The Silmarillion. A cult to Maponos was active in northern Britain possibly between the 1^st and 8^th centuries AD.

November 2 was the date in III 3019 / S.R. 1419 that Merry Brandybuck first blew the Horn of the Mark to rouse the Hobbits into scouring the Shire. Its anniversary was celebrated at Buckland with the horn blown at sunset followed by “bonfires and feastings” (Return, 434). In the Catholic Church, this date is the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, as parishioners pray for those in Purgatory. This is the last of three holidays, with All Hallows’ Eve or Halloween on October 31 and All Saints’ Day on November 1. Protestants commemorate October 31 as Reformation Day, since Martin Luther legendarily nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany in 1517.

Meanwhile, neopagans celebrate the Celtic festival Samhain on October 31 through November 2. Historically, people believed the gods became visible on this day, and sacrifices must be made to appease them. The most common way to do this was to light new bonfires and toss in sacrificed animals; in fact, the word bonfire appeared in English during the late 14^th century with the meaning of “bone-fire”. Perhaps the Bucklanders’ celebration of Merry’s accomplishments was meant to sanitize an older version of a pagan festival, which the Hobbits had no doubt forgotten.

December 25 was the day the Fellowship left Rivendell on the quest to destroy the Ring. This date is obviously Christmas in the Christian tradition, along with a few days past winter solstice, which we call Yule. Hobbits celebrated Yule differently, as Yule 1 was equivalent to New Year’s Eve, while Yule 2 was New Year’s Day. At any rate, Yule is an ancient Germanic and Scandinavian festival still celebrated by neopagans. In Old Norse, the festival was called jol, possibly because a nickname of Odin was Jolnir, and he was the god of the dead. Like at Samhain, bonfires were lit using Yule logs and cattle were slaughtered both as meat and as sacrifices to appease the gods, the elves, and the dead. Nearby in Britain, the word arrived in Christianized Old English as geol to mean Christmas, while the term “Yule log” was not referenced until the 17^th century, although the practice certainly existed before then.

One important date in Middle-earth seemingly had no obvious importance in the real-world. April 6 was said to be the birthday of Sam Gardner (formerly Gamgee), the day when the Golden Tree first flowered from the mallorn nut planted by Sam, and New Year’s Day for the Elves, also known as yestarë. This was the only holiday celebrated both in the reunited kingdom and in the Shire.

Calendars and the Musical

In the hypothetical animated musical, I would use two methods for showing dates. In “framing scenes”, where Elanor Gardner Fairbairn will attempt to edit the manuscripts that will become part of the Red Book of Westmarch, she will have access to physical calendars annotated by members of the Fellowship. While I have not yet found textual evidence that these memory devices were used to assist the writers in recollecting their shared story, the amount of attention given to dates, timelines, and reckoning styles both in this appendix and throughout the text demonstrated the importance of calendars in Middle-earth cultures. The use of these calendars may lead into a documentary style segment as intercultural experts like Sam or Merry might explain to Elanor, and the audience, how the systems were constructed or aligned.

During the main storyline and in flashbacks, dates would appear on the upper right corner of the screen along with location, not unlike information for a sports game or video game. While Shire-reckoning would act as the default style, multiple date styles would be displayed in some locations: using Bree-reckoning while in Bree, Rivendell-reckoning in Rivendell, Númenórean Sindarin names in Gondor, and both Eldar Sindarin names and Quenya names in Lothlorien. No calendar system for Dwarves appeared in Tolkien’s work, the in-universe explanation likely being that this information was kept a secret to protect them from attack during holidays. However, the tabletop game Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, whose Dwarfs are heavily based on Tolkien’s creation, does have a Dwarf calendar that could be used as a basis for dates while in Khazad-dûm or in Gimli’s perspective, with the first year being the awakening of Durin the Deathless, first king of the Dwarves.

As for determining parallel dates in Middle-earth, programmer Paul Sarando has already coded a fun and easy to use calendar for this with a thorough explanation on how the calculations were done. Since I am not a fan of math or redoing work, I will rely on his sophisticated and free to the public program to generate dates.

Charts for Your Enjoyment

Days of the Week

Quenya	Eldar Sindarin	Númenórean Sindarin	Englishized Archaic Westron	Englishized Westron	English
Elenya	Orgilion	Orgilion	Sterrendei	Sterday	Saturday
Anarya	Oranor	Oranor	Sunnendei	Sunday	Sunday
Isilya	Orithil	Orithil	Monendei	Monday	Monday
Aldúya	Orgaladhad	Aldëa / Orgaladh	Trewesdei	Trewsday	Tuesday
Menelya	Ormenel	Ormenel	Hevenesdei	Hevensday / Hensday	Wednesday
Valanya / Tárion	Orbelain / Rodyn	Orbelain / Rodyn	Meresdei	Mersday	Thursday
		Eärenya / Oraearon	Highdei	Highday	Friday

Months of the Year

Quenya	Dúnedain Sindarin	Englishized Shire Westron	Englishized Bree Westron	English
Narvinyë	Narwain	Afteryule	Frery*	January
Néimë	Nínui	Solmath / Somath	Solmath	February
Súlimë	Gwaeron	Rethe	Rethe	March
Viressë	Gwirith	Astron	Chithing*	April
Lotessë	Lothron	Thrimidge / Thrimich	Thrimidge	May
Narië	Nórui	Forelithe	Lith	June
Cermië	Ceveth	Afterlithe	Summerdays	July
Urimë	Urui	Wedmath	Wedmath	August
Yavannië	Ivanneth	Halimath	Harvestmath	September
Narquelië	Narbeleth	Winterfilth	Wintring	October
Hísimë	Hithui	Blotmath / Blodmath	Blooting	November
Ringarë	Girithron	Foreyule	Yulemath*	December

Seasons

Quenya	Dúnedain Sindarin	Englishized Shire Westron	Englishized Bree Westron	English
Narvinyë	Narwain	Afteryule	Frery*	January
Néimë	Nínui	Solmath / Somath	Solmath	February
Súlimë	Gwaeron	Rethe	Rethe	March
Viressë	Gwirith	Astron	Chithing*	April
Lotessë	Lothron	Thrimidge / Thrimich	Thrimidge	May
Narië	Nórui	Forelithe	Lith	June
Cermië	Ceveth	Afterlithe	Summerdays	July
Urimë	Urui	Wedmath	Wedmath	August
Yavannië	Ivanneth	Halimath	Harvestmath	September
Narquelië	Narbeleth	Winterfilth	Wintring	October
Hísimë	Hithui	Blotmath / Blodmath	Blooting	November
Ringarë	Girithron	Foreyule	Yulemath*	December

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