Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical | Places: The White Towers & The Grey Havens
Ambiguity has been widely discussed when exploring the Grey Havens through an academic lens. The name itself feels ambiguous, its color halfway between the symbolic white of goodness and black of evil appearing throughout the text. The White Towers or Emyn Beriad feel less ambiguous with their location closer to the Shire and their defining color. During the Fourth Age, Hobbits restored and repopulated the Undertowers in Westmarch even as Elves gradually abandoned the Grey Havens to migrate across the water.
In this essay, I will discuss what makes ruins so intriguing. I will explore liminality, a concept similar to ambiguity that has gained traction as an anthropological concept and social media phenomenon in recent years. I will also show how ruins inspired romantic nostalgia in early modern people, which was reflected in art, and how Tolkien used his talents as a philologist to choose the best “translations” for these fantasy sites. Finally, I will identify works by other Tolkien-inspired illustrators that influenced my own portrayal.
Liminality
Even experienced anthropologists struggle to define liminality. In his 2009 paper, “The Uses and Meaning of Liminality”, Bjørn Thomassen laments that “Liminality is indeed not any concept. Liminality does not and cannot ‘explain’. In liminality there is no certainty concerning the outcome”. The concept was first used to describe social transitions. This includes rites of passage, like testing to get a driver’s license or participating in a graduation ceremony, or marking a time of year, like celebrating Christmas or a birthday. Time seems to work differently during these events. Spaces that usually seem ordinary may be temporarily transformed.
Ruins and harbors fall into a different category of liminality: place instead of time. These liminal spaces feel like an altered reality where the laws of society no longer hold up. A ruin was once a building, but has become an empty pile of stone. A harbor may be visited only when embarking on a voyage or returning after a long trip. In the modern era, harbors have been replaced by airports, where people may wear a suit or pajamas on the plane, travel to a place they have never been and will never return, and eat pizza at 2:00 a.m. Few people make their living in liminal spaces, with archaeologists and harbormasters sharing this trait in common. When experiencing liminal time and space, people may feel they have transcended these important aspects of human experience.
Carl Jung discusses this kind of transcendence in his 1964 book Man and His Symbols. He references the poem “The Waste-Land” by T.S. Eliot as describing liminal symbolism, objects or events encountered when a person becomes an adult, and the emptiness some young adults feel when becoming detached from their “original family and social group”. In Jung’s line of thought, symbolism found in literature includes journeys into the wilderness, flying birds, and volcanoes. All of these appear in The Lord of the Rings, from Hal Gamgee traveling to the North Moors and possibly seeing a Tree-Man, to the main journey taken by members of the Fellowship, to the “wailing gulls” that haunt Legolas and foretell his destiny to cross the sundering sea, to the destruction of the Ring in volcanic Mount Doom.
While liminal spaces, times, and symbols can feel depressing, these are just as likely to be romantic by an older definition of the word. The modern concept of romance describes a relationship between two people and is heavily commercialized with advertisements for upcoming Valentine’s Day beginning even before Christmas, not to mention Hallmark movies playing year-round. While sociologist Eva Illouz includes this definition within Consuming the Romantic Utopia, she also defines romance by its 18th century understanding, “characterized by poetic or inspiring scenery”. At the cusp of the Industrial Revolution, philosophers romanticized nature as a healing balm or place of escape. Like their post-Renaissance counterparts, Illouz notes that modern tourists “detach themselves from their daily urban lives and gain access [to] another order of reality”, a liminal space where the “relations of production seem to be miraculously erased”.
Sam Gamgee emphatically described liminal places while talking with his friends at their favorite hang-out, the Green Dragon. This scene demonstrated his sense of romance around travel, learning, and the unknown, foreshadowing his story arc. At the time, he was under-educated and nearly home-bound but possessed great curiosity and earnest belief to the point of being gullible. At the end of his arc, he would read widely and travel far, even to the places he described as legends.
Ruins
Harkening back to the 18th century Romantics, ruined towers were considered part of the delight of touring Europe. The educated elite idolized the architecture of Persia, Greece, and Rome. Due to widespread Roman conquest hundreds of years prior, the remainder of these once proud towers stood in many backyards. Towers were an ideal “blend of pleasure and romantic gloom… the basic element in ruin-sensibility”. Ruined towers evoked nostalgia for the bygone empires that Imperial Britain attempted to emulate. Architects were inspired by the aesthetics of these buildings and added neoclassical elements to their own creations. Georgian style architecture, constructed in Great Britain and its colonies from the reigns of George I through George IV, or 1714 through 1830, shows great uniformity regardless of building size, while the grand columns and arches of Greco-Roman temples appeared in its largest forms.
Besides acting as sources of nostalgia and inspiration, the falling down buildings displayed the power of nature, as man-made forms crumbled while wildlife prevailed. These decaying structures and beautiful landscapes were captured by French artist Nicolas Poussin and Dutch artist Jacob van Ruisdael who worked during the 17th century. Their pastoral landscapes fall under the category I call “Nice Painting I Could Gift My Relatives”, which include stock characters like big trees, pleasant peasants, and buildings in the distance.
Contrasting this subtle style were 18th century artists like Hubert Roberts of France and Sebastian Pether of Great Britain, who depicted oversize closeups of the buildings in a state of decay. Art historians note that the Christian faith of these men likely affects their portrayal of the buildings, as they recalled the end of Genesis 3:19, “...for dust you are / and to dust you will return”. The concept was echoed into the 19th century in the form of poetry, as Percy Bysshe Shelley spoke of a “colossal Wreck, boundless and bare” in his poem “Ozymandias” when describing a statue dedicated to a long-dead emperor.
Havens
The Grey Havens were a “translation” of an unknown Westron name, which in turn was a translation of the Sindarin name Mithlond. I have already described how the concept of “grey” alluded to the ambiguity found throughout his writing, and how the havens functioned as a liminal space. What made Tolkien choose the term “haven”, rather than synonyms like “harbor” or “port”? The answer may lie in the age and origin of the word: “haven” came from Proto-Germanic, a direct ancestor of modern English with no outside influence. While traditionally meaning a place to hold ships, it figuratively became a place of refuge around the early 13th century. While the space is liminal, creating uncertainty, it also provides a sense of safety.
The word “harbor” emerged during the early 12th century as a compound word, likely from the roots here meaning “army” and beorg meaning “protection”, which came from Proto-Germanic. A harbor could be a safe place for ships or an army, just like modern Portsmouth Harbor in New Hampshire is home to the US Naval Shipyard. Perhaps Tolkien wanted to avoid military implications by choosing “haven” instead of “harbor”. Finally, a “port” is a body of water where ships dock. While nearly synonymous with the modern sense of “haven” and “harbor”, the word comes from the Latin portus, a poor choice for a city based on ancient Germanic cultures.
Artistic Portrayals
I studied the portrayals of these two sites as depicted by other artists and was most inspired by six pieces. For the White Towers, I enjoyed “Emyn Beraid (Tower Hills)” by peet on Deviant Art, “Emyn Beraid: Les collines des tours, V2” by greset david on Art Station, and “The White Towers” by Ted Nasmith painted for the Middle Earth Role Playing (MERP) game produced by Iron Crown Enterprises in between 1984 and 1999.
For the Grey Havens, one of my favorite portrayals was “The Grey Havens” by Matthew Stewart painted for The Lord of the Rings: The Collectible Card Game produced by Middle Earth Enterprises / Fantasy Flight Games, and the artwork now appears on The Dream Chaser Campaign Expansion pack. These games have beautiful artwork and appear high quality, although in my own mind, this is Pokémon with Elves. Other works featuring the Grey Havens include “Departure at the Grey Havens” painted by Ted Nasmith for the 1996 Tolkien Calendar and “The Grey Havens” by Ralph Damiani.
My own portrayals of these sites use a muted color palette with plain buildings surrounded by a sparse landscape to create a sense of emptiness contrasting the full, colorful land of the Hobbits. This emptiness is consistent with other liminal spaces. I also wanted to convey the age of the structures built millennia before the main story, a reference to the liminality of time. Characters like Sam who loved fairy tales would look upon the ruins with romantic nostalgia, and perhaps viewers would long to visit the remains of this fallen fantasy empire.