Abby Epplett, Historian

Humans become bewildered when given too much ambiguous information in an illogical order. Unfortunately, this is how the text of The Lord of the Rings operates. Between its myriad of perspectives, thousands of years of in-universe history, multiple languages and cultures, and an entire planet of locations, the material seems muddled even to experienced readers. The overwhelming effect of Tolkien’s Legendarium is part of the experience; the reader does not have to know the entire story to feel immersed in the fantasy world but studying both the constructs of Middle-earth and the real-world history upon which it was based enables the reader to understand the complex motivations of the characters. While I am all for embarking on in-depth research, most readers do not have the time or energy for such study. Additionally, trying to remember all this material takes up a lot of headspace. In user experience research, the amount of stress while using available headspace is known as “c...

Location plays an essential role in The Lord of the Rings . Already in the first section of the Prologue, “1 Concerning Hobbits”, several place names have been revealed, although not discussed in detail. These place names appear in clusters. Westmarch and the Shire are home to modern Hobbits. Greenwood the Great, which became Mirkwood, the Misty Mountains, and Eriador were the lands of their oldest ancestors. Different groups travelled by foot through Weathertop and the Wilderland, by boat on the Great River Anduin to Loudwater, Tharbad, and Dunland; or using a combination of means from Rivendell down the River Hoarwell. The lengthy paragraphs of invented places continue while describing the complexities of Hobbit colonization, which becomes increasingly difficult to decipher when places bear multiple names in distinct invented languages.

“A History of Worcester in 10 Maps” was created in part of the Worcester Tercentennial, a celebration of the city’s 300 th anniversary . As noted in the Storymap , a popular interactive map viewer powered by ArcGIS , Worcester was founded in 1722 by English colonists and grew to become the second largest city in New England, after Boston. The visual history begins with an early woodcut map of New England from 1677, before the founding of the town, and ends with the current Geographic Information System (GIS) map created by the City of Worcester . Each segment contains a link back to the original source of the map. The sources are a fantastic collection of digital resources for Massachusetts artifacts and include: Massachusetts Historical Society Archives of the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts CURIOSity Digital Collections at the Harvard Library Digital Commonwealth ...

After a hiatus from the blog due to lots of traveling and photo editing, I’m back with an overview of quick history stops in southern Maine, where I visited back in August.