Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical | Traveling Safety in the Medieval Period
For the next two weeks, I will talk about safety measures taken by travelers in the past and how Frodo often did not take them. This week will focus on the medieval period, while next week will focus on the Victorian and Edwardian periods. Besides avoiding robbers and general lawlessness while on the road, most medieval people traveled in groups, wore disguises, traveled with bodyguards or escorts, and learned how to navigate using multiple tools. Hints of these best practices appear in Chapter 3, “Three Is Company”.
Robbers and General Lawlessness
Before modern law, police forces, and surveillance, crime was a greater threat to travelers than it is today. According to Barbara Hanawalt, who studied late medieval crime in her book Crime and Conflict in English Communities, 1300-1348, robbery was unique among crimes of its day. The three most common personal crimes of the time were burglary or housebreaking, larceny or theft of personal property without use of force, and homicide or causing the death of another person regardless of intent. Hanawalt noted that “more often than not the victim knows the felon and may even have some role in precipitating the felony”. These were feuds between neighbors and dealt with locally. Robbery or theft with use of force was a completely different flavor of crime. Out of all the medieval crimes studied by Hanawalt, only 10.5% were robbery. However, 49.1% of robbers came from a different county than the scene of the crime. This was a crime between strangers.
This is consistent with the crimes committed in The Lord of the Rings surrounding the Ring. Isildur had long known of Sauron before killing him (homicide) and taking the Ring as weregild, a repayment for the death of his father and brother, therefore not considered a crime. Sméagol strangled Déagol (homicide) and took the Ring as his birthday present (robbery). Bilbo claimed to have won the Ring in a contest but more or less cheated to win and had already pocketed the Ring before speaking to Gollum; although he considered killing Gollum, he wisely decided against it (larceny). The Ringwraiths intend to sniff down Frodo and take the Ring by force (robbery).
Safety in Numbers and in Disguise
To prevent robbery from befalling them, travelers generally traveled in groups. This is the conceit of The Canterbury Tales written by Geoffrey Chaucer in Middle English between 1387 and 1400, only two or three generations after the crime studied by Hanawalt. In his famous work, a group of people from all walks of life end up walking together for safety as they travel to Canterbury in England. German historian and author Norbert Ohler wrote in The Medieval Traveller that people “travelled for the most part on foot, only a few having access to a mount; covered vehicles… were again used in Europe, but initially only for women, children, the old and sick—and criminals” (Ohler, x).
It would be unsurprising to a medieval reader, should a copy of The Lord of the Rings be sent back in time, that Frodo and his two young friends are walking to his new home, while the frightening Ringwraiths travel on horseback. Traveling alone was considered a terrible idea, since “the lone traveller had little protection from all the natural or man-made dangers to which he was exposed” (Ohler, xi). This concept held for innocent pilgrims and robbers alike, perhaps in part why the Ringwraiths often traveled together.
Regardless of social status, groups were careful to remain as inconspicuous as possible, sometimes taking disguises to appear poor (Ohler, 70). Noblemen had difficulty doing this, as they were either as recognizable as modern celebrities or could not help but wear at least one beautiful piece of clothing that no common person could own (Web, 107). Of course, robbers often used these same tricks, disguising themselves to appear harmless to other travelers (Verdon, 63).
In this respect, Frodo made good choices. He began his journey with his young cousin Pippin and faithful servant Sam, temporarily joined a group of High Elves who scared away Ringwraith, and used the surname Underhill as part of his disguise. Of course, Frodo was a celebrity in Middle-earth, so the Elves instantly recognized him and named him “a jewel among hobbits”.
Bodyguards & Escorts
Pilgrimage was the main if not only purpose for “ordinary” people to travel widely during the medieval period. Even among the ordinary, there was a wide range of availability to travel. In Medieval European Pilgrimage by Diana Webb, a senior lecturer in History at King’s College London, she writes about the necessity of bodyguards and escorts for some travelers. While men were legally permitted to travel alone, even if this was a bad idea, women were legally required to have a male escort (Webb, 91). Since nuns had taken a vow to avoid contact with men, they were generally forbidden from completing a pilgrimage (Webb, 92). Despite this, many stories arose of saintly nuns being assisted by young men who turned out to be saints like the biblical James and John. For most women, having a male escort was not a problem, as they tended to travel as a family with husbands, brothers, and sons (Webb, 93). Wealthier women could license multiple men to travel with them along with female servants (Webb, 94 & 100).
Escorts may not accompany the traveler through the entire trip. Some may only assist during a specific stage of the journey, such as dangerous terrain with risk of “robbers, bogs, forests, mountains, snowstorms” and other hazards (Ohler, 148). According to French medieval historian Jean Verdon in Travel in the Middle Ages, local kings often considered it their duty “to ensure the safety of anyone who traveled through his kingdom” and would provide a range of escort services for individuals or groups passing through (Verdon, 51). A commercial enterprise such as a fleet of wine merchants might be given armed escorts on boats (Verdon, 67), while a king going to meet a pope would be escorted by cardinals (Verdon, 174). People so wealthy that they need not worry about disguising themselves often road with exceptionally large escorts ranging from a nearly reasonable few dozen soldiers (Verdon, 186) to “several hundred people” (Verdon, 222).
Because Frodo felt safe inside the Shire, since he still did not truly understand the extent of the danger, he did not employ a bodyguard or escort. While the Elves briefly fulfilled this role, Frodo would not receive this level of protection again until the formation of the Fellowship, when multiple trained and armed fighters swore no oath to protect him and yet risked their lives to do so.
Navigation
Knowing how to reach one’s destination in the centuries before GPS and even reliable maps was crucial to one’s safety. I have already discussed maps at length in “Introduction to Maps” so I will speak briefly about other types of travel. It was common for travelers to find their way using “the stars at night, and the sun by day”, with travel during the summer preferred because of the long days (Ohler, 145). The sun and the pole star, also known as the polar star or Polaris, were the most crucial bodies in the sky, but these were easily hidden during inclement weather or on dark nights. Skilled travelers would learn to track multiple elements and wildlife, from the growth of moss on the trees to the type of fish in the water, to determine approximate location (Ohler, xii).
Fortunately, many tools existed to assist travelers in wayfinding. The compass, seemingly know as a boussole until the early 14th century, was in use by 1210 and described by French author Guiot de Provins as a way to align a vessel to the location of Polaris (Verdon, 137), which they understood to be North. An astrolobe was used to “judge the altitude of the sun”, meaning they could do math based on the measurement to figure out their distance from the equator (Ohler, 45). Marco Polo famously tracked what stars he could see, paying extra attention to the lack of Polaris in Sumatra, a large island in the Indian Ocean (Ohler, 200).
At this stage in his journey, Frodo does not have to resort to drastic navigation measures. While he does take note of the constellations in Middle-earth, to be discussed in a future essay, he is familiar with the roads in his home country that he has widely traversed throughout his life. While Pippin is still young, and Sam has not ventured more than twenty miles outside his hometown, Frodo had the traveling experience to make him an excellent guide within the Shire under normal circumstances.