Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical | Folklore: Woods & Refugee Narratives

This is my last blog post of 2025! I will discuss two aspects of folklore that appear during “Chapter 2, The Shadow of the Past” related to the seventeen years Frodo spent living alone at Bag End. During this time, he took many trips through the woods of the Shire and was rumored to speak with people from other lands, refugees fleeing danger in the South. Folk cultures around the world have long been fascinated by or afraid of forests. The hobbits’ fears of who might lurk in the woods aligned with fears of Ancient and Medieval people in the Real World. Meanwhile, human migration and displacement due to natural or man-made disasters have existed for thousands of years but have been studied only for the past few decades. During this essay, I will describe both of these concepts and point out similarities between them: our natural unease over the unfamiliar.

Spirits in the Woods

While many people in the modern West enjoy a quiet hike through the woods, these places have historically been met with fear. Thompson’s Motif-Index records four different motifs for what could be lurking among the trees. The European “Devil in the Woods” (G303.8.13) might be up to all sorts of mischief, including meeting youths, falling from heaven, or gathering nuts on Christmas Eve. He may be a cousin to “Demon lives in tree” (F402.6.1), the variation found in India. Less malevolent is the Scandinavian “Wood-nymph” (F441.2.1) who may warm herself by the fire, have long breasts that she keeps over her shoulders, or dump her mortal boyfriend when she gets tired of him. “Wood-spirits” (F441) are the most diverse of the bunch. They appear as a giant with one eye in Russia and Finland; without hands, feet, or mouth in Sub-Saharan Africa; and either as gigantic or tiny in India.

Outside of the Motif-Index, much research across the world has been done on forest spirits. In Japan, old trees are venerated as housing kodema or tree spirits who “give the tree a personality”. Favorite trees are lovingly marked with shimenawa or sacred ropes to prevent woodcutters from chopping down the trees and angering the tree spirit. In India, feminine forest spirits or Yapom are believed to live in Joli, a woodsy region near the mountains. Ango people who live in the nearby town are “believed to be favored by the spirits”, which act as babysitters for the children while parents fish and forage. However, the spirits occasionally kidnap people, forcing the priests or Nyibo to make sacrifices as a ransom.

Western readers are likely more familiar with nymphs of Greco-Roman mythology. Dr. Jennifer Lynn Larson, a professor of Classics at Kent State University, has written extensively about these figures who appeared in artwork on ancient pottery, as statues, and in caves. These woodland spirits were immortal, similar to goddesses, and always female, as the name “nymph” came from the Greek word numphê meaning “bride”. Despite their often beautiful and youthful appearance, nymphs were by no means innocent. The shepherd Daphnis was blinded by his nymph girlfriend after he cheated on her with a local princess, since this punishment had been part of their prenup. Nymphs could be associated with water instead of trees, not so unlike Tolkien’s distinction between the Wood-elves or Silvan Elves and the Sea-elves.

Moving closer to folklore that may have influenced Tolkien, Irish mythology includes forest fairies or aos sí. The worship of these beings, sometimes called Fairy-Faith, continued even as the country became Catholic. Like Yapom in India, aos sí could be kind or terrifying, sometimes leaving gifts or replacing children with “changelings”, thoroughly discussed in Case Study #2. Even with this fear of aos sí, Irish people still ventured often into the woods. Historically, wooded areas were considered “fastnesses” or strongholds where people could escape attackers, including other Celts, Vikings, and the English.

The aos sí did not appear in the epic poem The Faerie Queene despite being loosely based on Celtic and Anglo-Saxon mythologies. English poet and Irish resident Edmond Spenser published the full work by 1596 during the reign of Elizabeth I in order to win her favor. The strangest part of this poem is not the appearance of King Arthur and random Knights of the Round Table, nor the fact that every character represents a virtue or a vice, but how the Faerie Queene never actually appears in the poem despite its title. Spenser himself loved the woods, even naming one of his children Sylvanus.

Another potential influence was skogsrå or female forest spirits who lived in Sweden and Finland. Much like nymphs, these beautiful woodland women guarded the trees and may have kept a few mortal men as their boyfriends, but they were equally likely to drive mortals insane or kidnap them. Kidnapping victims tended to be women and children rather than men and were said to have fallen victim to metsänpeitto or “forest cover”, meaning the spirits had hidden them from potential rescuers. Forests even had their own life force or väki, specifically called metsän väki. The force existed within the space and was represented by the plants and animals; disrespect for living creatures would cause metsän väki to infect the rule-breaker. This seems not so different from the force in the Old Forest just outside of Buckland.

Refugee Narratives

While Elves hoped to escape Middle-earth by crossing the Sundering Sea, Dwarves had no escape from pending war. Multiple generations of Dwarves had lived in exile, whether fleeing Erebor in the Lonely Mountain after the attack of Smaug, or by evacuating the Mines of Moria at Khazad-dûm. Little scholarly research seems to exist on refugee narratives in Tolkien’s work. One essay was written by undergraduate Elaine Ries for her Bachelor of Arts Honours Thesis at the Trinity Western University, a Christian liberal arts college in British Columbia, Canada. The thesis was a response to the paper “Welcoming the Stranger…” by fellow Tolkien scholar Matthew Dickerson, neither of which seem to have much material about Dwarves, and with Ries’ iteration overly focused on finding Christian meaning.

The Motif-Index likewise yielded little help, its only reference to refugees being “Refugee entertained in a holy place” (P322.3) apparently found in Irish mythology. I looked instead to modern literature. I am familiar with the refugee narrative, having taken “The Novel in Multi-Ethnic America” during my days as an undergrad at Wheaton College of Massachusetts. The book list included modern classics such as The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz, fictional stories that reflected the childhood experiences of the authors. For nonfiction, I had most recently reviewed One Goal by Amy Bass, following a boy’s high school soccer team comprised of refugees from East Africa and a French-Canadian goalkeeper. With a solid foundation, a brush-up on the genre was in order.

The most comprehensive source to date is The Routledge Handbook of Refugee Narratives, a collection of thirty-eight essays across ten themes, including storytelling, border-crossing, disability, ecology, and the future. The book emphasizes that these narratives are more than “stories of flight” (4) but an opportunity to humanize people who have been forced to the margins of society. Treatment of refugees is by no means equal, as those fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine were quickly integrated into Western European society while long-time residents who began their American experience as refugees from the Middle East, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and East Africa are routinely detained and deported in the United States (3). For arriving refugees, border-crossings are a pivotal experience, as these determine whether they can enter a new country in relative safety or will be turned back towards the place they have fled. Americans are most familiar with the on-going rise of refugees from Central America who go to the southern border, which has led to an increase in border control measures. In Middle-earth, the influx of refugees from the South caused the Bounders of the Shire to tighten border control and turn back all foreigners.

While Tolkien was not the victim of a genocide or raised in a refugee camp, he was a foster child. I imagine he saw similarities between his experience as an orphan born in South Africa and brought to England as a toddler, and the desperation of people fleeing mainland Europe during the World Wars. He was also knowledgeable of the Jewish Diaspora, perhaps the most widely acknowledged refugee narrative in the modern era despite ongoing antisemitism, and past scholars have already noted how Dwarf culture was largely inspired by Jewish culture, among other Middle Eastern cultures.

We cannot know how Tolkien would have reacted to the modern asylum and refugee resettlement system in the United Kingdom, which has reached a crisis due to wasteful government policies and its inability to track who is entering the country. Tolkien’s writing told how things appeared: Elves migrating from East to West, Dwarves fleeing southern caves, and Hobbits closing off their country for protection. The straightforward narrative did not give solutions to human rights issues but simply presented examples to readers. We do know Tolkien was guided by his Catholic faith and certainly believed the verse in Hebrews 13:2, “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.” We cannot know whether he believed this verse applied to the strangers crossing the English border.

Conclusion

Spirits of the woods and refugees crossing borders share a similar place in the human mind. While most are benevolent and focused on protecting themselves and what they hold dear, some will act with seemingly unprovoked violence. Because all may look the same to those who do not know them, those who live outside the woods or are citizens of the country naturally react to protect themselves, causing a cycle of increasingly drastic reactive measures. Only by a concerted, organized effort to better understand the unknown, whether it is trusting a forest spirit to babysit and not kidnap a child or by finding places for refugees within a community, can such a cycle be broken. The Hobbits gradually solve their border crisis through strong leadership, but only through tragedy. After a brief, brutal reign by Saruman, young Fellowship members Sam, Merry, and Pippin lead reconstruction efforts, eventually becoming the three rulers of the country. This may be among the most fantastical elements of the text: a trio of young adults surviving harrowing experiences, remembering the lessons, becoming respected for their wisdom, and consistently passing on what they learned for the rest of their long lives.