Abby Epplett, Historian

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.

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...

During this week and next week, I am taking a brief break from the appendixes to create more illustrations for the people of Middle-earth. I will focus on Maiar, a Race of angel-like or god-like beings who traveled as invisible spirits or took a wide range of physical forms. While this term did not appear in The Lord of the Rings , many Maiar appeared in the text, and explanations of Maiar and their powers were given in The Silmarillion . Wizards and balrogs will appear this week, while Maiar symbolizing the environment and crafts will appear next week.

A major motif in The Lord of the Rings is the presence of large bodies of water, especially rivers and the Sea. In the Prologue “1 Concerning Hobbits”, the narrator explains that Hobbits had developed an antagonistic view of this type of water, along with the exploration and cultures associated with it. Hobbits of the Shire and the neighboring settlement Westfarthing lived not far from three Elf-towers located in the appropriately named Tower Hills and believed “one could see the Sea from the top of that [tallest] tower… no Hobbit had ever been known to climb it… the Sea became a word of fear among them, and a token of death”. (8) This passage also describes their dualistic relationship with Elves because of that Race’s association with the Sea. Although Hobbits admired, even envied, Elf culture by appropriating their crafts and a variant of their writing system, along with being ruled by the Elf-like or Elf-descended Fallohide Hobbits, as discussed in my post last week , at t...