Abby Epplett, Historian

I last compared Bilbo’s eleventy-first birthday to famous parties in the summary of Book I, Chapter 1 “A Long-Expected Party” , where I referenced biblical celebrations, parties gone wrong in France, PR stunts in Ancient China, and exclusive musical scores in Great Britain. This installment focuses on what the hobbits might have eaten at that party. While discussing “Prologue, 3 On the Ordering of the Shire” , I determined that hobbits appeared to live in two timelines with their political system and architecture reflecting the early 17 th century or post-medieval period while their technology, interior design, and fashion reflected the early 19 th century or Industrial Revolution. Their foods likewise are split into different time periods, with some staples being invented during ancient times in the Real World, others appearing in Europe due to the trade of the late medieval period, and still others dating from the Victorian era or mid- to late 19 th century. As the self-pr...

My discussion of each chapter will begin with a summary essay highlighting three to five key features presented in the text, while subsequent essays will dive deeper into additional topics. In contrast to the authoritative and comprehensive work, The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull , which lends insight to the “literary and historical influences” on the text with special focus on European history, linguistics, and events in Tolkien’s own life, I will compare the cultures of Middle-earth to those in the Real World as I have done throughout this series. Of course, that impressive textbook and other Tolkien-focused works will be excellent resources in understanding Tolkien’s worldview and how it affected his “translation” of the text.

This week is my third and final installment about Valar, the archangels or major gods of Tolkien’s Legendarium, along with my last blog post before my winter break. In the first post of this mini-series, I covered five of the most powerful Valar, also known as Aratar: Manwë, Varda, Ulmo, Yavanna, and Aulë. In the second post, I reviewed the three final Aratar and their spouses: Mandos, Vairë, Nienna, Oromë, and Vána. This week has no Aratar, but that does not make these Valar any less fun. This quintet represents dreams, health, wrestling, dancing, and chaos. Just as during the last two installments, each of these characteristics appeared in pagan pantheons of the Western world along with religions across the globe and even modern pop culture.

This is my second week talking about Valar, the archangels or major gods of the Legendarium. In this post, I will cover the final three Aratar or most powerful Valar along with their spouses: Mandos, Vairë, Nienna, Oromë, and Vána. This quintet of Valar is less happy than the set from last week. While the previous five represented kings, queens, the sea, nature, and smithing, this new group personified death, fate, grief, hunting, and more nature. Each of these characteristics were found across Western pantheons in the years before the Christianization of Europe, and many occur in religions outside the West. The popularity of these somber deities showed how people from any walk of life must face its grim realities: everyone will eventually die. Mandos As the Vala who kept the Houses of the Dead, Mandos or Namo was Aratar #6. His “family” was larger than most Valar, since he had a younger sister Nienna and a younger brother Lorien. The brothers even had a special na...

I previously created illustrations for some Maiar, who act as a combination of angels and minor gods in the Legendarium. This week and for the next two weeks, I will talk about Valar, similar to archangels and major gods. This is a slight deviation from what I originally mentioned at the end of “Appendix F, II On Translation” but between the essays getting a bit too long of late, the end-of-year holiday season in full swing, and having an actual job plus side business, I thought a more relaxed pace would be a decent course of action. While only a few members of this race were mentioned in The Lord of the Rings , much information on Valar comes from “Valaquenta” in The Silmarillion . Some groups of Valar considered themselves siblings, perhaps because they were made by Ilúvatar at the same time or with a similar appearance. Spouses apparently did not consider themselves siblings, unlike Greco-Roman gods who had no issue with incest. The top eight Valar were called the Arata...

This week, I introduce the rest of the Maiar, each of whom represents part of the environment or a craft. This was no different than deities in real-world religions and mythologies, where ancient people believed that the sun, moon, and sea were sentient, while agriculture was controlled by a god, and smithing was taught to humans by a higher power. Many polytheist cultures have multiple gods with overlapping areas of rule. I have chosen to focus on those who appear to be the most popular and most powerful based on scholarly research. Many academic articles are written by researchers from outside the culture that they describe and accordingly may contain errors, which are passed along to me. Additionally, cultures with large populations and cultures from the West are overrepresented, meaning that I can easily find high quality research on these gods but not gods from smaller and non-Western religions. I have done my best to include a variety of religions in this essay but do con...

For the second part of Appendix E, Tolkien focused on the writing systems used for Middle-earth languages. Real-world languages use a wide range of systems that can be grouped into “families”, including those descended from Egyptian hieroglyphs, such as variations on the Latin alphabet; East Asian systems based on Chinese characters; Indian and Southeast Asia systems based on the ancient Brahmi script; pre-Columbian languages from Mexico and Central America; and writing systems created by Indigenous Americans to preserve their own languages after European colonization.

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.

Once more continuing my mini series within a series on the Appendixes at the back of The Lord of the Rings, Part Three: Return of the King , I move along to “Appendix A, I The Númenórean Kings, (iv) Gondor and the Heirs of Anárion”. While last week’s section focused on the northern kingdom on Anor after the empire of the Númenóreans divided, this week’s section focuses on the southern kingdom, Gondor. Much like last week, this section is mostly about the Númenórean descendants having a rough time, often because of their own bad choices. Peoples opposing Gondor included the Black Númenóreans, the Men of Harad and Khad, Corsairs, Sauron and his orcs, Wainriders, and themselves, with each group paralleling people in real-world history and mythology. Fortunately, after pages of violent fighting, the conclusion of this section was satisfying and directly connected to the dialogue portion of the books. Color Symbolism, Black Númenóreans, and Men of Harad Black Númenóreans was...