Abby Epplett, Historian

After several weeks of somewhat dry lists and dates, I arrive at a story with dialog! The full name of this section is “(v) Here Follows Part of the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen”. The text existed in-universe as a longer body of work, but only a portion was appended to The Red Book of Minas Tirith , then copied into the Thain’s Book , part of the Shire Records that I discussed several weeks ago . As the title suggests, the section gives a short biography of Aragorn with a special focus on his relationship with Arwen Undómiel. The storyline of this section paralleled aspects of real-world history and culture including marriage customs, elves and fairies in folklore, royal standards or flags, epic poetry, and religious allegory. Age of First Marriage and Fairy Foster Father The section opens with Arathorn son of the chieftain Arador seeking a wife and wanting none but Gilraen the Fair. The one problem was that Arathorn was fifty-six years old, and Gilraen “had not reached th...

This week, I am back with more from Appendix A, by far the longest and most dense of the appendixes. For those concerned with timing, my final post about Appendix A is currently scheduled to run on July 7, while my final post about the appendixes as a whole will appear many months from now on November 10, all dates subject to change. This week, I move along to “(iii) Eriador, Arnor, and the Heirs of Isildur”, which focuses mostly on the North Kingdom and the Dúnedain, the Men of the West. As for historical connections, the section is filled with references to topics from across European and world history, including ancient burial customs, colonization, Arctic technology, idioms, royal jewels, and how medieval internships worked. Plus, a few popular characters from the dialogue portion of the books make appearances. The section began with a brief refresher on what land was considered Eriador: everything from the Misty Mountains to the east and the Blue Mountains to the west,...

Continuing with my miniseries on the Appendixes at the end of The Lord of the Rings , I came to the first part of the first section of the Appendix A, which focused on First and Second Age history of the Valar, Elves, Númenóreans, and magical objects. J.R.R. Tolkien packed an excessive amount of information into these six pages, which explained references found in the Prologue and dialogue portions of the books. I imagine scholars have written postgraduate papers on the subject, likely pairing these descriptions with additional material found in the Silmarillion and other prequels. To make this material manageable for a blog post, I will focus on how these people, places, and things relate to similar examples found in real-world mythology and folklore. Three Jewels, Two Trees, One Greedy Valar The large number of powerful rings floating around Middle-earth were not the first form of magic objects gone bad to be made in Arda, the Earth-like planet where Middle-earth was...

For the second week of my miniseries on the Appendixes of The Lord of the Rings , I look at the brief introduction to “Appendix A: Annals of the Kings and Rulers”, which appears on page 341 of Part Three The Return of the King , directly opposite the final page of dialogue. Annals — written histories focusing on political leaders — are found across the real world in literate cultures, but few survived in legible forms or are deemed interesting enough to study. J.R.R. Tolkien successfully managed both when construction the fictional history of Middle-earth. This introduction described how the following parts of the section were written in-universe. Bilbo Baggins had an interest in the First Age, as Elrond’s family was influential during that time, although the text does not clarify if these sections were part of his translations from Elvish languages that he gifted to Frodo. “Appendix A III Durin’s Folk” was based on work by Gimli, noted in the text for maintaining a friends...