Abby Epplett, Historian

I recently read the book The Tower and the Ruin: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Creation written by Michael D.C. Drout and published by W.W. Norton & Company in November 2025. This ambitious book is partially a memoir of Drout’s own experience as a lifelong lover of Tolkien’s work, having read the book over 40 times (123), including with his father and his own children. It also covers seven themes describing how Tolkien constructed his fantasy world and how it affects other people: origins, frames, texts, patterns, emotions, threads, and tapestry.

This is my last blog post of 2025! I will discuss two aspects of folklore that appear during “Chapter 2, The Shadow of the Past” related to the seventeen years Frodo spent living alone at Bag End. During this time, he took many trips through the woods of the Shire and was rumored to speak with people from other lands, refugees fleeing danger in the South. Folk cultures around the world have long been fascinated by or afraid of forests. The hobbits’ fears of who might lurk in the woods aligned with fears of Ancient and Medieval people in the Real World. Meanwhile, human migration and displacement due to natural or man-made disasters have existed for thousands of years but have been studied only for the past few decades. During this essay, I will describe both of these concepts and point out similarities between them: our natural unease over the unfamiliar.

I had originally intended this post to cover the Tolkien Society Seminar 2025 held online on Saturday, October 18. However, since the event took place from 4:45 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Eastern Time, and I had already scheduled in-person history events for that day, I decided to watch the replays when these are posted to the Tolkien Society YouTube channel . Instead, I will talk about a mini documentary by the BBC-run YouTube channel HistoryExtra that I have been meaning to watch for seven months. The animatic is still scheduled to appear next week, and my discussion of the conference will appear after the recordings are posted to YouTube. Because of the YouTube algorithm demanding clickbait titles, the mini-documentary is called The REAL history behind Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and more . The host was James Osborne , a HistoryExtra employee who studied archaeology and has experience as an entertainment journalist. Like other mini documentaries produced by History...

“The Road Goes Ever On” and its variations appear throughout the dialogue portion of the text, from the first song sung by Bilbo during Book I, Chapter 1 “The Long-Expected Party” in The Fellowship of the Ring to the last song sung by Frodo during Book VI, Chapter 12 “The Grey Havens” in The Return of the King . This song expresses the spirit of adventure experienced by multiple characters along with the desire to return home in the end. The love of travel and love of home are nearly universal concepts but rarely expressed as creatively as in “The Road Theme”. Ancient and medieval people told the same stories in their oral histories and during pilgrimages, while modern musicians express their love of the road and homesickness through country and rock hits. I considered all these factors while composing this theme, which I will present at the end of this essay.

After the Long-Expected Party — and in the case of the hypothetical animated musical, not long after “The Want Song” — Gandalf joined Bilbo in his house and demanded that his hobbit friend give up the One Ring. Bilbo initially reacted badly, as the ring had gained some control over him, but he eventually left the ring to his ‘nephew’, Frodo, along with most of his worldly possessions. Rings have appeared in fiction throughout world literature, spawning dozens of folkloric motifs and inspiring adaptations of ancient stories for stage and film.

I have almost arrived at the dialogue portion of the books, but before I launch into the story, I will review the epigraph. The infamous poem, which begins with the line “Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky”, technically appears opposite the copyright page for each physical book in a three book set of The Lord of the Rings , after the Introduction by Peter S. Beagle but before the Forward by J.R.R. Tolkien . I don’t know why the book was set this way, as I would have placed the epigraph after the Prologue, but since the edition of the book I use was released the same year my parents were born, I was not around to set the publisher straight.

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...