Tolkien in General

It's just surface-level discussion so far: just general things about The Silmarillion.

{{ In connection to the piece I did while ago on this thread (few pages back I think) on Tolkien, faery and British history, this is a nice little short vid looking at a faery mound in Ireland. }}

{{ If you've ever wondered what the Glittering Caves behind Helms Deep looked like, probably pretty much exactly like this, Cheddar Gorge in Somerset, England, which according to Letters was Tolkien's inspiration for the description given by Gimli to Legolas of the caves. }}

{{ Well I've been down a Tolkien rabbit hole!
So it all started when I got a text from a friend that just read, “Have you heard about the Tolkien Doggerland theory?”
I had not, so I did some digging about, it's a theory from several years ago that seems to be doing the rounds again and for some reason has got some traction this time, and on the surface it's a lot of obvious nonsense.
Basically it says that Tolkien really was translating lost tales and myths recorded in the Red Book, the truth about which he and Christopher (and presumably now the Tolkien Estate)have been keeping secret all these years and that this Red Book is all that remains of the history of Doggerland.

You can get an idea of the sort of stuff it proposes here-

https://twitter.com/Robkearney1981/status/1294807323542720515

There are so many obvious reasons as to why this is nonsense that I won't insult you with going through them, but some further digging produced some interesting thoughts.

There is a remarkable correlation between Tolkien's lost ages of ME and pre-ice age Europe. And I don't just mean in general shape, I mean in placements of things, like forests, mountains and such.
Now to a degree this is to be expected, it is supposed to be Northern Europe in a lost age.

This is turns out was the premise of what I think is the article that started all this stuff, penned several years ago, it goes into the similarities between the landscape of Ice Europe and ME but its conclusion is not that Tolkien had access to some secret trove of lost history for which there is no other evidence, but something quite different; the idea that Tolkien effectively recreated the mythic landscape of pre-ice age Europe by inference.

When Tolkien was writing LotR's there were no maps of pre-ice age Europe, no idea about the extent of the landmass or that Doggerland was settled land for generations.
But he did have the myths and legends he loved and knew so much, so when Norse myths and Germanic myths concur that, for example, there was a grim dark forest east of the mountains, Tolkien naturally instinctively followed the myths, he put his dark forest of Mirkwood east of the mountains.
Extrapolate that sort of knowledge out as Tolkien, by design of placing his tale in a lost Europe, and by instinct based on the information in the sagas and tales he loved, and Tolkien recreated the general landscape of pre-ice age Europe out of the myths, and bizarrely in this way he has commemorated things that once existed and are genuinely lost to the world with the changing of the ages.
And I find that fascinating, that Tolkien may have in his own way incorporated myths that included glimpses of our real lost history into his recreation of that lost history. }}

Fits in with the Jungian idea that myths are universal.

{{ In this case it's more the specifics or possibilities of them that fascinate me. For example, there really was a Mirkwood, in the sense that roughly where Tolkien places it (southern Poland into Ukraine) there really was a legendary forest at the end of the last ice age remembered in tales with the same sort of ominousness as Tolkien's version.
Maybe more interesting is hobbits- where did they sneak into Tolkien's brain - the first thing he ever wrote about the was that they lived in holes. Why that? And where does he place them? The NW of ME. Why there? What little nudges of lore and learning in the subconscious of his mind was indicating this information?
And is it possible contained in the earliest European myths were memories of a little people who lived in houses underground in the far NW of Doggerland?

'Skara Brae, located in the Scottish Orkney Archipelago is a settlement consists of a cluster of 8 prehistoric dwellings that have had people scratching their heads on account of its dimensions as this excerpt explains: "These eight little dwellings came complete with stone beds, a central hearth, shell midden insulation, and indoor toilets draining outwards from the structures, but most interesting of all, are the dimensions of the doors and beds. The doorways and beds barely reach four feet, and so, the only logical conclusion to make from these dimensions is that the inhabitants were indeed diminutive in stature."
What is even stranger is that these Neolithic homes were located underground.
A manuscript written by the Bishop of Orkney in 1493 suggests that when the King of Norway, Harald Haarfagre, conquered Orkney in the 9th century, it was inhabited by the short-statured Papae...'

You can see here how small the doors are in comparison to modern people-



Originally these would have been roofed over and turfed-





Then you'd have to imagine it with a fire going in the central hearth for throwing magic rings into to test, furs and decorations painted on walls, the stone 'dressing tables' seem to have been for keeping personal items on, so Gandalf even had a mantelpiece to leave his letter on!

And Skara Brae wasn't one underground house, it was several all connected with passageways, more a Smial in fact, maybe the Brandybucks lived there!



And of course we can't dismiss all the Celtic mythology of the Little People hinting towards the same thing.

Are hobbits drawn from snippets of lore that in actuality remember the small stature inhabitants of the north of Doggerland who lived in underground houses? Is the fall of the north kingdom ancient echoes of the mysterious vanishing of the Picts? Or the people of Doggerland itself? It's fascinating to consider the possibilities. And to try to reverse engineer Tolkien as it were and see what glimpses of reality he may have accidentally unearthed.

If you read this Amarie I'd be interested if you have any insights into the word 'papae', as interestingly the area of Orkney where most of these buildings are located is called Papa Westary, known locally as Papay.}}

Quick googling tells me this is mentioned in Historia Norvegiæ.

Papae were Irish and Orkney munks, the Pict were called Peti.

----

The term ‘papar’ was the name given by the Norse to the clerics of the pre-Norse church.

“These islands were at first inhabited by the Picts and Papae. Of these, the one race, the Picts, little exceeded pigmies in stature; they did marvels, in the morning and in the evening, in building walled towns, but at mid-day they entirely lost all their strength, and lurked, through fear, in little underground houses.

" . . . And the Papae have been named from their white robes, which they wore like priests; whence priests are all called papae in the Teutonic tongue. An island is still called, after them, Papey

https://www.orkneyjar.com/history/vikingorkney/takeover.htm

{{ Thanks Amarie, interesting. We don't know exactly who lived in these dwellings, only that they seem to have been 'special' in some fashion.
The landscape was somewhat different back then, they were not right next to the sea but among fields leading to a salt water river estuary from which they got one of their main sources of food, oysters. These days extensive farming down the ages has rendered the land treeless, but even by about 3000bc woodland was sparse, but the land was super fertile (it's been farmed now constantly for 5000 years), this is why the household furniture, like dressers are made of stone instead of wood. But they did have some wood for some things (it's hard to imagine how they built some of the stone circles and burial mounds without the aid of wood frames, rollers, pivots and such), and it had to be brought from elsewhere, but more telling they also had meat. What's unusual here is that the only bones ever found are from cuts of meat, not a scrap of any other part of the animals. This would seem to indicate someone was precutting and packaging the food elsewhere to be brought there for them. This has led some to think they must have been an elite class perhaps priests or druid equivalent. So it's interesting the Norse records them as having this priestly association too.

But in terms of landscape we have a green rolling farmland, it's flat looking now but what's there now are just the tops of those rolling gentle hills, the rest, along with whatever other underground dwellings there were, have been claimed by the sea, it had small woods, little rivers and gentle streams, and a people of claimed diminutive stature living in houses built into the ground. In the NW of Europe. Does seem like a bit more than coincidence!
I can imagine Tolkien's English bias reading of such a beautiful, fertile, green land in the NW with its hole dwellers and immediately assuming it must be in England somewhere! }}}

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/dec/19/tolkien-and-cs-lewis-manuscripts-among-treasures-made-available-to-public-in-2023

I bought a book that arrived today, spent the afternoon reading it. At the end I just hugged the book to me and I couldnt stop the tears gliding down my face. It was " The Tolkien Family Album" by John and Priscilla Tolkien. Im so glad I bought this book. Its made me understand differently and I have a better feeling of not just the man but his family too. Im sure you clever bods have gone over this so Im sorry to dredge it up again but, I didnt realise how many times in his life and while he was with Edith, and then as a family, he moved from one property to another, from one town to another. Ive tallied up 20 moves. From when he was born in South Africa to when he passed away.
Bloemfontein
Kings Heath Birmingham
Cottage at Mosely
House in Hagley Road
Lodge cottage at Rednal ( his mother passes away )
Lodgings at Duchess Road
Rooms at Swiss Cottage Exeter College
Rented house in Warwick, ( Edith gave up this house to stay in lodgings at Great Heywood while Tolkien went to war )
Rooms in a village in Roos Humberside
Rooms at St Johns Street Oxford
Alfred Street
Hollybank House
St Marks Terrace
Darnley Road
Northmoor Road ( which they stayed the longest it seems )
Manor Road, Oxford
Holywell street
Sandfield Road, Headington
Lakeside Road, Bournemouth, where Edith passes away in 1971
Tolkien goes back to Oxford
Merton Street
Tolkien goes back to visit friends in Bournemouth and passes away on September 2nd 1973,
Me reading this book, sniffing and shedding a tear, 6th March 2024

No I didn't know he moved that much, but school does cause a lot of moving. For myself if I count various dormitories all as one I get 11 moves, otherwise 14.

{{ Ive never even seen that for sale anywhere Azriel let alone read it, and as far my buckied memory goes I dont think its ever been mentioned on here before either, so any bits of particular interest you want to share please do.
I had no idea he moved about so much either, it kind of explains his love of the idea of hobbits who stay in the same place for generations, often in the same home. I can see why that might be appealing to him after all those moves.}}

Il post up some pics of this book tomorrow, I wasnt aware of this book either but, since I bought it, Ive seen another pop up on good old Ebay. IL post up some inside pages, see what you think

The book just goes on and on. Pages filled with stories and pictures. I just loved it, sheer delight.

{{ Thanks for sharing those Az. Love the pic of Tolkien laughing not something you see too often in pictures, but get the impression of a rather deep well of humour in the man. I often feel the humour in LotR's never gets a mention despite having many comedy lines, especially those given to certain more, rural characters, two favourites are Butterbur's "And there were folk killed, if you'll believe me, killed dead!" and my personal favourite the Gaffers confused version of where Frodo and Sam have been for the last year which includes such gems as "I don't hold with wearing iron mongery, whether it wears well or no" and in particular his recounting of Sam's, no doubt hasty, version of the entire quest for the Ring as them "chasing Black Men up mountains".
Not to mention the comedy genius throughout that is 'crabbit Gandalf'.}}

Tolkien laughing is my favourite, a well worn smile makes him more of a man and leaves the serious academic behind,

Ok, so I was interested in buying the 2023 edition of " The Letters of J R R Tolkien", I read up on it and it seemed like the book was to expand more fully on a previous edition by Humphrey Carpenter. Then I found this review on Amazon.................

"The main benefit of this new, expanded, version of the original 1981 selection of The Letters of JRR Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien; is that it induced me to "read the whole thing" again, from beginning to end, without skipping (except for a few paragraphs of technical linguistics).

And the main benefit of this thorough re-reading (probably the third) was to realize how much I had forgotten of this indispensable gem of Tolkien's secondary literature. I really ought to have gone through the volume again, long before now; and for making me do it, I am very grateful to the 2023 edition!

If you are going to read any "Tolkien scholarship", then the Letters should be one of your first choices.

But it has to be said that - following a gap of more than forty years between the first and second edition - this new collection is distinctly underwhelming. This because the new edition is in its essentials qualitatively the same as the old edition: qualitatively the same, although quantitatively larger.

The reason behind this sameness is given in Chris Smith's Foreword to the revised edition; which is that the 2023 Letters are, in effect, the Zeroth (i.e. 0th) Edition of the 1981 Letters - that is, the 2023 Letters are the 1981 letters before cuts were made by Carpenter and Tolkien, to bring the volume down to a publishable size.

What we can now say is that the process of cutting the Zeroth edition down to the published 1981 Letters was very well done, because so little of substance was lost. Which (unfortunately) also means that there is not much that has been gained by making available this 40-plus-year-old selection of Letters.

Indeed, I found it hard to locate many of the expansions, short of continually comparing the two editions (which would have destroyed the pleasure of re-reading). There are quite a few new letters, mostly to family members, labelled with a, b, c, etc appended to the numbers, in the correct Chronological position (and without, therefore, disrupting the established Letter numbering scheme).

But many of the 2023 expansions were extra paragraphs added to the 1981-published letters - and the decision was made Not to indicate these expansions in the text (or anywhere) - so that they can only be discovered by a comparison of editions.

Such a lack of editorial explicitness adds to the impression of laziness in preparation of this not-really-new edition of Letters.

My points is that - although the 2023 edition is certainly better than the 1981 edition; the new selection does Not address the core deficiencies of the 1981 selection. I am thinking, in particular, of the lack of any specific reference to Tolkien's psychological and marital difficulties. It was understandable and proper that such references were excluded when Tolkien's children were still alive, but now they have all died it is overdue that these were articulated explicitly in print.

In particular I was disappointed to discover no new letters to cover the 1945-6 period of Tolkien's "nervous breakdown" after he took up the Merton professorship, and during which he was writing The Notion Club Papers.

This was when (apparently) Tolkien and his wife Edith seem to have (informally-) separated for some weeks, and JRRT went off to live with Christopher in an hotel.

I regard this as important in the history of Lord of the Rings, since it was only afterwards that writing of LotR was resumed after a long break.

This crucial period is covered by a distinct gap in the published Letters - whether because none were available, or because they have been excluded, I don't know.

I suppose (eventually....) time will tell. Perhaps this information is being held back for a desperately needed new authorized biography to replace/supplement Carpenter's unsympathetic, indeed semi-hostile, biography of 1977. In the meanwhile, new letter 38a to son Michael from 1940 provides confirmation of the significant and sustained marital problems of Ronald and Edith's middle years - and that these were explicitly known to at least the older boy children.

In sum; the 2023 Letters are in every way better than the 1981 Letters; yet... without really adding anything-much substantive to what was already known.

So that, overall, the 2023 Letters of JRR Tolkien represent a pretty enormous lost-opportunity to publish a genuinely new edition, rather than what is, in effect, an older-than-old edition! " by Bruce G Charlton.

Its going for anything from £21 up to nearly £40 that I managed to find.. chewing nails now....I think its still worth the buy if you can get it as cheap as possible.

Wow, JRR and Edith were briefly separated? This is all news to me. I suppose if you care about his personal life you'll want to get the new edition, but since I have a free digital version (probably abridged? Possibly illegal bootleg?) that I don't look at because it's not in book form I'm torn about whether or not I should pay for another version. I can argue both ways.

So the same lass that did such a good job exploring the reason for Tom Bombadil is now delving into why Tolkien didn't like Dune.  Like Bombadil this is covered ground; but she once again does a better job than others, digging up nuggets you are unlikely to see elsewhere, and dissects On Fairy Tales to analyze what was most likely to rub Tolkien the wrong way.  Out of professional courtesy Tolkien refused to go into his reasons for not liking Dune, and she is very clear she is speculating.

She never quite nails it until her last point: Lord of the Rings is about consolation, Dune is a warning.  One thing I don't think she was strong enough on was religion: Tolkien weaves religion into the fabric of the reality of his story, so doesn't have to mention it explicitly.  Herbert sees religion as a tool of those in power, so goes into some depth about it.  This would have really rubbed a devout Catholic the wrong way.

{{ Az- I stuck with my old edition of Letters, there did not seem to be enough new content in the new edition to justify the money for me.

Halfy- I'm not 100% sure why but something about her totally rubs me up the wrong way, I think if I ever met her we'd instantly dislike each other, you know that way sometimes you either instantly know if you'll get on with someone or not. And something about her, her mannerisms, or something just leaves me wanting to punch a wall. And I am quite sure she would feel the same if she met me, but then most people do!
And it's not the content as such, though I often disagree with her analysis she gives it well enough and argues her points just fine, she is certainly knowledgable but there's something there that just sets me on edge.}}

She's incurably bubbly, and yet puts on the airs of scholarship.  This can be annoying, but she's good at her research and analysis.  

Her piece on Bombadil was the best I've seen, mainly because it went into Tolkien's personal reasons for including him rather than trying to shoehorn him into the constructed mythology.