The Anglo-Saxon Myth
In Appendix F to THE LORD OF THE RINGS Tolkien writes:
Having gone so far in my attempt to modernize and make familiar the language and names of Hobbits, I found myself involved in a further process. The Mannish languages that were related to the Westron should, it seemed to me, be turned into forms related to English. The language of
Rohan I have accordingly made to resemble ancient English, since it was related both (more distantly) to the Common Speech, and (very closely) to the former tongue of the northern Hobbits, and was in comparison with the Westron archaic.
...a few personal names have also been modernized, as Shadowfax and Wormtongue[1].
[1]This linguistic procedure does not imply that the Rohirrim closely resembled the ancient English otherwise, in culture or art, in weapons or modes of warfare, except in a general way due to their circumstances: a simpler and more primitive people living in contact with a higher and more venerable culture, and occupying lands that had once been part of its domain.
Despite this admonition from the author himself, many people choose to believe that the Rohirrim were indeed modeled closely upon the Anglo-Saxons. I am unlikely to persuade the hardened heart that this view might be erroneous, but I present below some observations about the Anglo-Saxons and the Rohirrim.
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Why did Tolkien use Old English to represent the language of
Rohan?
Perhaps the most commonly cited argument for ignoring the author's warning against identifying the Rohirrim with the Anglo-Saxons is the fact that he used Old English to represent their language.
Christopher Tolkien published some of his father's loose notes concerning the geography and background of Middle-earth in THE TREASON OF ISENGARD. Of languages, J.R.R.
Tolkien wrote:
Language of Shire = modern English
Language of Dale = Norse (used by Dwarves of that region)
Language of Rohan = Old English
'Modern English' is lingua franca spoken by all people, (except a few secluded folk, like Lorien) -
but little and ill by Orcs
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In UNFINISHED TALES Christopher Tolkien writes:
"It is an interesting fact, not referred to I believe in any of my father's writings, that the names of the early kings and princes of the Northmen and the Ëothëod are Gothic in form, not Old English
(Anglo-Saxon) as in the case of Leod, Eorl, and the later Rohirrim.
Vidugavia is Latinized in spelling, representing Gothic Widugauja ('wood-dweller'), a recorded Gothic name, and similarly Vidumavi Gothic Widumawi ('wood-maiden').
....Since, as is explained in Appendix F(II), the language of the Rohirrim was 'made to resemble ancient English', the names of the ancestors of the Rohirrim are cast into the forms of the earliest recorded Germanic language.
"Old English" actually consisted of various dialects of an older language that was spoken by many tribes in northern Europe. Partly because of their isolation in the British Isles, and partly because of a unique mixture of influences, the dialects of the Anglo-Saxons diverged from the
"main tree", so to speak. This divergence was gradual from the 5th Century up until the 11th Century, when the Norman Conquest introduced French into the upper echelons of English society.
Concurrent with the divergence of Old English was the development of Old Norse, which began with a "phonetic shift" that occurred over a period of about two centuries, typically given as the Seventh and Eighth Centuries, so that by the time the Vikings (Danes) started settling in England in the Ninth Century, their language was changed enough to be "different" from Old English (and other German dialects on the Continent).
Tolkien used this concurrency of Old English and Old Norse to imply a concurrency between Rohirric and Dalish, with both deriving from the more ancient language which he chose to Page 61
represent with Gothic:
Old Northman Gothic
| |
+------+--------+ +--------+--------+
| | | |
Rohirric Dalish Old English Old Norse
This linguistic device works well for native English speakers because Old English still sounds enough like modern English in some respects that we can feel more comfortable with the language of Rohan than we do with the names of the Dwarves (and the Kings of Dale: Girion, Bard, Bain, Brand). The Dalish sounds "foreign", whereas the Rohirric sounds "archaic", and this effect underscores the distance between the Rohirrim and the Men of Dale.
In fact, because the hobbits of the Shire still had a few words in common with Rohan, the language of Dale needed to be more "distant" from their perspective. Thus modern English and Old English were excellent choices for representing the various relationships between all the languages.
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Hence, Tolkien's use of Old English to represent the language of the Rohirrim does not in any way favor the refutation of his admonition not to identify the Rohirrim with any particular tribe or nation.
But what about "Beowulf?"
Didn't Tolkien use material from the classic Anglo-Saxon poem?
“Beowulf" had an unmistakable influence on Tolkien's work, and other Anglo-Saxon literature also influenced him. He was, after all, a philologist specializing in the study of Anglo-Saxon, though he was also quite knowledgeable in other languages.
But though "Beowulf" survived in an Anglo-Saxon manuscript, it is a common mistake for people to think that it somehow represents an Anglo-Saxon culture or world-view. The poem is thought to have been composed sometime in the 8th Century (700s) when the Angles and Saxons still had close ties with Continental Germans. It was very common for the skalds to travel from land-to-land, telling the same stories and poems to audiences in many regions of the north.
The story of "Beowulf" unfolds in Scandinavia and it concerns the Danes and Geats (a people of southern Sweden). There are in fact some historical names intermixed with the fictional characters. Many people have commented on the resemblance of Theoden's hall in Edoras to Heorot, the great hall of Hrothgar in "Beowulf". But Heorot was merely a typical northern hall.
Such structures were built by the Scandinavians and Germans, and not just the Anglo-Saxons.
There is nothing peculiar to the Anglo-Saxons in either Heorot or Theoden's hall.
Another popular element people point to is the similarity of Eowyn's cup-giving to the "Anglo-Saxon Cup Ceremony". But the Cup-giving was a custom among all the German and Scandinavian tribes, and even among many Celtic peoples. Highly ornamental drinking cups, Page 62
horns, and cauldrons have been found throughout Europe. In fact, the Cup-giving was so well-known that one gruesome legend tells us that the King of the Lombards forced the daughter of the last King of the Gepids to marry him after the Lombards conquered the Gepids. He forced the princess to drink from a gilded cup made from her father's skull.
"Beowulf" was undoubtedly a classic tale that was heard in many ancient halls throughout the northern world. It would have been recognized in many lands and so represents a "northern European" culture, rather than an Anglo-Saxon one. Therefore any elements that Tolkien borrowed from Beowulf and other "Anglo-Saxon" poems like "Widsith" and "Deor" were pretty generic in cultural terms.
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Okay, but were The Rohirrim unlike the Anglo-Saxons in any
Significant way?
Absolutely.
Tolkien went to great pains to detail the culture of Rohan. It would be impossible, had he intended to make them look like Anglo-Saxons, for us to find significant differences between the Rohirrim and the Anglo-Saxon people. But there are significant differences.
For one thing, the Saxons were a seafaring people. The Rohirrim never used ships of any sort.
They undoubtedly had some knowledge of boats, but Tolkien's Northmen are not pirates in any phase of their history, whereas the Saxons first entered history as pirates, and they did not lose their seafaring abilities.
The Rohirrim also differed from the Anglo-Saxons in that they were not several tribes drawn together. When we speak of the Anglo-Saxons we really are referring to many groups of Saxons and Angles, as well as the Jutes and some Frisians. The Saxons were a West German people, related to the Franks, but the Angles and probably the Jutes came from Jutland -- they were essentially Danes.
In fact, the Danelaw, the region of England that was colonized by the Danish Vikings in the 9th and 10th Centuries, overlapped with almost all of the ancient lands of the Angles.
There are no tribal divisions among the Rohirrim. Nor was Rohan ever divided into many kingdoms. And the government of Rohan seems to be centered on a stronger monarchy than the Anglo-Saxons were ever able to establish. In fact, the nearest parallel in Rohan to the great English Earls would be the Lords of Westfold, of whom Erkenbrand was the one living at the time of the War of the Ring. Yet he was not only intensely loyal to Theoden, he apparently was much more under the King's authority than many of the English earls were.
Of course, the Rohirrim developed their entire culture around the use and breeding of horses.
They raised other animals (Eomer makes reference to herds and flocks, so they seem also to have raised sheep and perhaps cattle). But the horse was the center of the Rohirric culture.
There was no similar society among the Anglo-Saxons.
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The Rohirrim lived in the mountains, too. The Anglo-Saxons were not a particularly mountainous folk. All of the Rohirric towns and villages were situated in the great valleys, and their refuges were hard to reach. The Anglo-Saxons lived in the lowlands and between the forests.
The armaments of the Riders of Rohan were also pretty generic. The best description Tolkien provides of these professional warriors is given in THE TWO TOWERS, when Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas first see Eomer's eored (company) approaching them:
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Now the cries of clear strong voices came ringing over the fields. Suddenly they swept up with a noise like thunder, and the foremost horseman swerved, passing by the foot of the hill, and leading the host back southward along the western skirts of the downs. After him they rode: a long line of mail-clad men, swift, shining, fell and fair to look upon.
Their horses were of great stature, strong and clean-limbed; their grey coats glistened, their long tails flowed in the wind, their manes were braided on their proud necks. The Men that rode them matched them well: tall and long-limbed; their hair, flaxen-pale, flowed under their light helms, and streamed in long braids behind them; their faces were stern and keen. In their hands were tall spears of ash, painted shields were slung at their backs, long swords were at their belts, their burnished shirts of mail hung down upon their knees.
These are not Anglo-Saxon warriors. They resemble Goths in several ways, and also sound a bit like Vikings. But their armaments were not atypical for Riders of Rohan. The Rohirrim held a formal muster and Theoden expected some twelve thousand Riders to assemble (or, rather, said he could have assembled that many if there had not already been battles in Rohan by the time Hirgon, the Errand-rider of Denethor, arrived with the Red Arrow of summons).
As for the armaments of Anglo-Saxons, Malcom Todd, a Professor of Archaeology at the University of Exeter, wrote this in his book, EVERYDAY LIFE OF THE BARBARIANS: The sword played a relatively minor role in Germanic warfare before the late Roman period, and even after that time it hardly ranked as the weapon of the common man. Centuries were to elapse before fine Frankish blades were to be highly prized by Viking soldiers….The one-edged slashing weapons of the pre-Roman Iron Age were gradually replaced by two-edged swords, but the introduction of this more versatile weapon was not accompanied by any significant increase in the number of sword-bearing warriors.
The Riders of Rohan
Copyright © Anke Eissmann. Used by permission.
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Further on he writes:
It is remarkable that despite fairly frequent contact with Roman frontier armies, and despite endemic intertribal disputes and private feuds, no great advances were made in armour and arms, with the exception of sword-blades, during the Imperial centuries, Even as late as the sixth century [500s], the war-gear of the Germans could be unfavourably commented upon.
And:
The Anglo-Saxons Closest of all the Teutonic peoples to the Franks in weapons and tactics were the Anglo-Saxon settlers in southern England. It has already been noted that, like the Franks and the rest, their use of cavalry was negligible. The offensive weapon of the rank and file was the spear, of which several types are documented, that with a long leaf- or lozenge-shaped head being the best known. These spear-heads commonly measure between 10 inches [about 250 mm]
and
18 inches [about 450 mm] in length. The sax was frequently carried by the fifth- and sixth-century warrior, in Anglo-Saxon England as well as in Frankish Gaul, and was closely, almost mystically, associated with the Saxon name and race....Body-armour is ill-attested, except for the leading warriors. Helmets are even more rarely mentioned in Anglo-Saxon law than in Frankish, and only three specimens have been recorded -- all from princely graves. Leather caps may have protected lesser heads, but probably not many. The shield might be oval or rectangular....
Finally, concerning the use of bows (which Eomer's men used against the Orcs and which many of the Rohirrim at the Hornburg used), Todd writes:
The bow and arrow, exotic in Merovingian Gaul and Anglo-Saxon England, was more widely used by other Germans. The Alamanni used a simple D-shaped one-piece bow, and, very rarely, a bow composed of several different materials. Bone or horn was usually combined with wood in these composite bows.
In the late Roman period the long-bow put in an appearance in the north. From which part of Europe this weapon was introduced is unknown but it was not from either the Roman Empire or from the nomadic peoples. Probably this was something the Germans developed for themselves.
The fact that about 40 long-bows and several bundles of arrows were present in the Nydam deposit suggests that small units of bowmen may have been used in the later fourth century specifically against armoured Roman troops. Some of the Nydam arrowheads are narrow and heavy, and thus well suited to piercing body-armour.
In UNFINISHED TALES Christopher Tolkien reveals too many details concerning the Riders and the Muster of Rohan to repeat here. It was not, however, a feudal army of either the French or the English design. The Army of Rohan was unlike any army fielded by the Anglo-Saxons, who used local levies called fyrds to reinforce the main (royal) forces. There were, to be sure,
"local levies" in Rohan, but these were raised only in great need. The Muster of Rohan, divided into three smaller groups, was expected to defend the country.
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What About The Burial Mounds outside Edoras?
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There was nothing particularly "Germanic" about the funeral mounds of the House of Eorl, let alone of an "Anglo-Saxon" nature. Although the Anglo-Saxons built similar mounds, so did the Scandinavians (many have been excavated at Uppsala in Sweden, and in Denmark), and so did other Germans, and so did the Celts. In fact, the wagon-burial of Theoden appears to be based on archaeological finds of Celtic wagon-burials from the First Millennium BC.
Many comparisons have been made between the Ship-Burial of Sutton Hoo and Theoden's burial. There are several problems with such a comparison. For one, Sutton Hoo was first excavated late in the 1930s just before World War II broke out. Although Tolkien wrote the passage describing Theoden's burial several years later, there is no mention in his letters or in THE HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH of any connection between the two. The excavation was thorough but left many unanswered questions, and Tolkien does not seem to have been interested in those questions (long since answered by subsequent scholarship).
The lack of a ship in Theoden's mound doesn't seem to bother many people since, after all, many ship-burials were only symbolically linked with ships by shaping the mounds into ship contours.
But Theoden's mound isn't so shaped. Although I have called it a "wagon-burial", Tolkien does not state specifically that Theoden's wain was interred in the mound with him. The mound was raised about a house of stone, which itself is not typical of ship-burials, but does resemble some wagon-burials (most of which were placed in wooden houses).
I should also note here that many people also overlook the significance of what Tolkien wrote in the note I cited above: "a simpler and more primitive people living in contact with a higher and more venerable culture, and occupying lands that had once been part of its domain." At what point in their history did the Anglo-Saxons fit this general description? The Fifth Century AD, when there was still a Roman Empire and the lands they were occupying in Britain were formerly part of that empire. There is certainly a great deal more contact between the Rohirrim and Gondor than there was between the Anglo-Saxons and Rome, but they were able to observe what survived of Roman culture through their neighbors the Celts and Franks. Some people argue that the Rohirrim are like the Anglo-Saxons of the late period, and there are greater similarities between these two peoples. But culturally the late Anglo-Saxons were no longer on the periphery of a great civilization, and Tolkien only reluctantly agreed to such a comparison when asked if the Rohirrim resembled the warriors in the Bayeux Tapestry (which depicts how William of Normandy conquered England):
I have no doubt that in the area envisaged by my story (which is large) the 'dress' of various peoples, Men and others, was much diversified in the Third Age, according to climate, and inherited custom. As was our world, even if we only consider Europe and the Mediterranean and the very near 'East' (or South), before the victory in our time of the least lovely style of dress (especially for males and 'neuters') which recorded history reveals -- a victory that is still going on, even among those who most hate the lands of its origin. The Rohirrim were not 'mediaeval', in our sense. The styles of the Bayeux Tapestry (made in England) fit them well enough, if one remembers that the kind of tennis-nets [the] soldiers seem to have on are only a clumsy conventional sign for chain-mail of small rings.
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Mail was an ancient armorial tradition, having been developed in the southern Mediterranean region around the Third Century BC. Germanic warriors who served in the Roman Empire, including the Goths, wore such armor and the styles of the Rohirrim need not wait for the Eleventh Century AD to find precedence in history.
So, in conclusion, there was very little similarity between the Rohirrim and the historical Anglo-Saxons with which Tolkien was so familiar. The Rohirrim were idealized Northmen, a romantic people intended to convey the best traditions from myth, legend, and history of a northern people who were no better and no worse than other men.
NOTE: Tom Shippey, in THE ROAD TO MIDDLE-EARTH, argued that Tolkien really did base the Rohirrim on the Anglo-Saxons:
This led him, indeed, into yet further inconsistencies, or rather disingenuousnesses. Tolkien was obliged to pretend to be àtranslator'. He developed the pose with predictable rigour, feigning not only a text to translate but behind it a whole manuscript tradition, from Bilbo's diary to the Red
Book of Westmarch to the Thain's Book of Minas Tirith to the copy of the scribe Findegil. As time went on he also felt obliged to stress the autonomy of Middle-earth -- the fact that he was only translating analogously, not writing down the names and places as they really had been, etc.
Thus of the Riddermark and its relation to Old English he said eventually 'This linguistic procedure [i.e. translating Rohirric into Old English] does not imply that the Rohirrim closely resembled the ancient English otherwise, in culture or art, in weapons or modes of warfare, except in a general way due to their circumstances...' (III, 414).
But this claim is totally untrue. With one admitted exception, the Riders of Rohan resemble the Anglo-Saxons down to minute details. The fact is that the ancient languages came first. Tolkien did not draw them into a fiction he had already written because there they might be useful, though that is what he pretended. He wrote the fiction to present the languages, and he did that because he loved them and thought them intrinsically beautiful. Maps, names and languages came before plot. Elaborating them was in a sense Tolkien's way of building up enough steam to get rolling;
but they had also in a sense provided the motive to want to. They were 'inspiration' and ìnvention' at once, or perhaps more accurately, by turns.
Professor Shippey should know better. In fact, as I have shown above, there is no distinct reference to the Anglo-Saxons in Rohirric culture. That is, virtually nothing which is uniquely an Anglo-Saxon custom or trait is to be found in the Rohirrim. Numerous elements in Tolkien's depiction of the Rohirrim are far more easily identifiable with other peoples, including the Goths and Scandinavians (both of whose literature Tolkien studied extensively and knew intimately, a fact Professor Shippey does not concede in his elaborate argument): Thus 'Rohan' is only the Gondorian word for the Riders' country' they themselves call it 'the Mark'. Now there is no English county called 'the Mark', but the Anglo-Saxon kingdom which included both Tolkiens' home-town Birmingham and his alma mater Oxford was 'Mercia' - a Latinism now adopted by historians mainly because the native term was never recorded.
However the West Saxons called their neighbours the Mierce, clearly a derivation (by ì-mutation') from
Mearc; thèMercians' own pronounciation of that would certainly have been thèMark', and that was no doubt once the everyday term for central England. As for the 'white horse on the green Page 67
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Tolkien's study, two miles from 'Wayland's Smithy' and just about on the borders of 'Merica' and Wessex, as if to mark the kingdom's end. All the Riders' names and language are Old English, as many have noted;*but they were homely to Tolkien in an even deeper sense than that.
Professor Shippey should not rely upon such a flimsy argument. "Mark" comes from a very common ancient Germanic word which survived on the continent. "Mark" means "march", or borderland. The Mercians were a border folk, living between the other Angles and Saxons and the Welsh (the "foreigners", the remaining Celts who had been driven to the western regions of Britain by the invading Germans). Tolkien's use of the word "Mark" for the Rohirrim's own designation of their country is a clear extension of the ancient Germanic custom for using this term of a border region. The titles of nobility such as Margrave, Markgraf, and Marquess all retain the "mark-" element, referring to a March Count, a borderland count. A count was originally a military officer appointed by a king to defend a region of the country, and the title was derived from Roman tradition (as in the Count of the Saxon Shore, a military office charged with defending southern Britain against sea borne Saxon raids):
As has already been remarked, though, the Riders according to Tolkien did not resemble the
'ancient English...except in a general way due to their circumstances: a simpler and more primitive people living in contact with a higher and more venerable culture, and occupying lands that had once been part of its domain'. Tolkien was stretching the truth a long way in asserting that, to say the least! But there is one obvious difference between the people of Rohan and the àncient English', and that is horses. The Rohirrim call themselves the Eotheod (Old English eoh=`horse'+peod=`people'); this translates into Common Speech as 'the Riders'; Rohan itself is
Sindarin for 'horse-country'. Prominent Riders call themselves after horses (Eomund, Eomer, Eowyn), and their most important title after 'King' is `marshal', borrowed into English from French but going back to an unrecorded Germanic *marho-skalkoz, 'horse-servant' (and cp. the name of the hobbits' Hengest). The Rohirrim are nothing if not cavalry. By contrast the Anglo-Saxons' reluctance to have anything militarily to do with horses is notorious. The Battle of Maldon begins, significantly enough, with the horses being sent to the rear. Hastings was lost, along with Anglo-Saxon independence, largely because the English heavy infantry could not (quite) hold off the combination of archers and mounted knights. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry for 1055 remarks sourly that at Hereford 'before a spear was thrown the English fled, because they had been made to fight on horseback'. How then can Anglo-Saxons and Rohirrim ever, culturally, be equated?
First of all, the Rohirrim did NOT call themselves "Eotheod". That was what their ancestors were called. In a linguistic analysis Professor Shippey's word is virtually untouchable, but the historical framework he provides for the Rohirrim is questionable. The Rohirrim called themselves the Eorlingas, the "sons of Eorl" (a common Saxon custom, which survived in both the Continent and England):
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A part of the answer is that the Rohirrim are not to be equated with the Anglo-Saxons of history, but with those of poetry, or legend. The chapter 'The King of the Golden Hall' is straightforwardly calqued on Beowulf. When Legolas says of Meduseld, 'The light of it shines far over the land', he is translating line 311 of Beowulf, lixte se leoma ofer landa fela. 'Meduseld' is indeed a Beowulfian word (line 3065) for `hall'. More importantly the poem and the chapter agree, down to minute detail, on the procedure for approaching kings. In Beowulf the hero is stopped first by a coastguard, then by a doorward, and only after two challenges is allowed to approach the Danish King; he and his men have to 'pile arms' outside as well. Tolkien follows this dignified, step-by-step ceremonial progress exactly.
Tolkien's "step-by-step" adherence to "Beowulf's" actions is also questionable. Professor Shippey skips over the fact that Beowulf and his men were first hailed by a lone sentinel watching the coastline of Denmark. Meduseld certainly owes something to Heorot, a Danish hall which is an idealized vision of all the halls of the northern world. Professor Shippey would have the reader believe only the Anglo-Saxons built such dwellings for their chiefs and kings, but in fact all the Germanic and Celtic peoples had such long-house style halls for their leaders. So there is nothing Anglo-Saxon about the fact of the hall. And the story of "Beowulf", though recorded in Anglo-Saxon, is not about Anglo-Saxons -- it's about Germanic warriors in a Germanic world. The Anglo-Saxons did not think of themselves as distinct from other Germanic peoples, not in that way. This is a purely modern contrivance, and one which has conveniently lent itself to the absurd arguments favoring the erroneous Anglo-Saxon identification of the
Rohirrim.
And as for the "ceremony of piling arms", it was the custom throughout all the ancient world for strangers to give up their arms when entering the presence of a king or chieftain. "Beowulf" is hardly presenting anything unique in this respect. This argument improperly implies the custom was unique to the Anglo-Saxons:
Thus in 'The King of the Golden Hall' Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli are checked first by the guards at the gates of Edoras (='enclosure'), and then by the doorward of Meduseld, Hama.
He too insists on the ceremony of piling arms, though Tolkien's character object more than Beowulf does, largely because he is a volunteer and in any case fights by choice bare-handed.
There is a crisis over Gandalf's staff, indeed, and Hama broods, reflecting rightly that 'The staff in the hands of a wizard may be more than a prop for age'; he settles his doubts with the maxim
'Yet in doubt a man of worth will trust to his own wisdom. I believe you are friends and folk of honour, who have no evil purpose. You may go in.' In saying so he echoes the maxim of the coastguard of
Beowulf (lines 287-92), à sharp shield-warrior must know how to tell good from bad in every case, from words as well as deeds. I hear [from your words] that this warband is friendly...I will guide you.'
On the other hand, one charged with the defense of a nation does not permit an armed warband to wander through the lands unwarded. Again, a very common practice is unreasonably equated to an extremely different situation in THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Beowulf and his men outnumbered the coast guardsman. He had no choice but to accompany them to Heorot.
Gandalf and his companions were, on the other hand, not accosted as they entered the country of
Rohan, but were admitted to the king's city and processed according to the needs of the king's defense. The scenarios are so blatantly different that this comparison is quite misleading: Page 69
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The point is not, though, that Tolkien is once more writing a 'calqued' narrative, but that he is taking advantage of a modern expansive style to spell out things that would have been obvious to
Anglo-Saxons -- in particular, the truths that freedom is not a prerogative of democracies, and that in free societies orders give way to discretion. Hama takes a risk with Gandalf; so does the coastguard with Beowulf. So does Eomer with Aragorn, letting him go free and lending him horses. He is under arrest when Aragorn re-appears, and Theoden notes Hama's dereliction of duty too. Still, the nice thing about the Riders, one might say, is that though 'a stern people, loyal to their lord', they wear duty and loyalty lightly. Hama and Eomer make their own decisions, and even the suspicious gate-ward wishes Gandalf luck. 'I was only obeying orders', we can see, would not be accepted as an excuse in the Riddermark. Nor would it in Beowulf. The wisdom of ancient epic is translated by Tolkien into a whole sequence of doubts, decisions, sayings, rituals.
Perhaps the wisdom of ancient epic was indeed being translated by Tolkien, but he relied upon more than one epic source, and his roots lie farther back than "Beowulf": One could go further and say that the Riders spring from poetry not history in that the whole of their culture is based on song. Almost the first thing Gandalf and the others see, nearing Meduseld, are the mounds covered in simbelmyne either side of the way. Simbelmyne is a little white flower, but also means 'ever- mind', 'ever-memory', 'forget-me-not'. Like the barrows it stands for the preservation of the memory of ancient deeds and heroes in the expanse of years.
The Riders are fascinated by memorial verse and oblivion, by deaths and by epitaphs. They show it in their list of kingly pedigrees, from Theoden back to Eorl the Young, in the suicidal urges of
Eomer and Eowyn to do 'deeds of song', in the song that Aragorn sings to set the tone of the culture he is visiting: 'Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?...'
Song is very important to the Rohirric culture, but it is not "based on song". If there is any culture in Middle-earth which is "based on song" it would be the culture of the Lindar, the early Nelyar, from whom came the Teleri. Rohan's culture is based upon an idealized vision of the Northman, the mounted Northman. It is the horse which is central to Rohan's culture, not music.
Music was common to all the lands of Middle-earth. Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves, and Men all celebrated their deeds, gains, and losses with song. The working of power, the acts of
"sub-creation" which Tolkien attributed to the Elves and Dwarves, and even to the Valar, were founded in their use of song. Song permeates Middle-earth and its environs and inhabitants, and is by no means a unique attribute of the Rohirrim.
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Professor Shippey justifies this absurd exclusion of the full culture that Tolkien was representing in the Rohirrim by arguing that...
Tolkien may have known that the confusing Anglo-Saxon words for colour were once words for the colour of horses' coats, like Hasufel=`grey coat', suggesting an early society as observant of Page 70
horses as modern African tribes of cows. Maybe the infantry-fixation of historical periods was the result of living on an island. Maybe the Anglo-Saxons before they migrated to England were different. What would have happened had they turned East, not West, to the German plains and the steppes beyond? In creating the Riddermark Tolkien thought of his own 'Mercia'. He also certainly remembered the great lost romance of 'Gothia', of the close kin of the English turning to disaster and oblivion on the plains of Russia. No doubt he knew the dim tradition that the word
'Goths' itself meant `Horse-folk'. This is what adds 'reconstruction' to 'calquing' and produces fantasy, a people and a culture that never were, but that press closer and closer to the edge of might-have-been.
Here is a great blunder which reveals how shallow a role Professor Shippey assigns to history in his analysis of the Rohirrim. The Anglo-Saxons had no choice but to move west. They were themselves on the western fringes of the Germanic world. To migrate east they would have had to push through far more powerful peoples. The Angles were merely one tribe among many living in Jutland. They were Danes among Danes, and retained much of their Danish tradition after settling in Britain. The Saxons were a confederation of tribes in western Germany, living between the Weser and the Elbe rivers. Beyond their German neighbors were Wends, Poles, and other peoples as wild and barbaric as they.
The Goths and other east German tribes migrated southward along the Vistula river centuries before the Angles and Saxons began their expansions. The west Germans could not have duplicated that migration, because new peoples had settled in the lands which formerly permitted a large Volkwandering that led to the emergence of Alaric in the annals of Rome.
And the
Goths, Vandals, and other eastern tribes were themselves pushed westward by the Huns in the fourth century. How, then, could the Angles and Saxons have moved eastward? For what reason? There was never any hope of their acquiring a steppe culture, and to suggest that they need only have turned east instead of west is quite naive.
In the end, Shippey has to concede that the Rohirrim are not historically akin to the Anglo-Saxons, but rather are only a poetic memory of them. But instead of referring to Anglo-Saxon poetry which might more easily be identified with the Anglo-Saxons (such as "the Wanderer"), he relies upon forging connections between "Beowulf", a mixture of Anglo-Saxon and Danish traditions which echo the larger traditions of the broad Germanic world, and suggests they were only a step away from being Goths, the people who most resemble the Rohirrim in culture.
And yet even the Goths lack something of the profound unity and purpose of the Rohirrim.
The
Goths when they entered history were wanderers and refugees. It would be many centuries before they found something which they could call a homeland, and then only a few of them would enjoy that homeland, and then only for a few centuries. The Visigoths alone of the Gothic nation found anything like a true peace for their generations. They left behind them a swath of lost Gothic hopes and compromising colonies of Goths who had grown weary of the endless chase for the national dream.
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The Kingdom of Dale
This is one of the most enigmatic parts of Middle-earth, and I think that's a shame. Dale (and Page 71
Lake-town) hold forth the promise of many interesting stories that Tolkien never found the time (or, perhaps, the desire) to tell his reading audience.
In THE HOBBIT Thorin Oakenshield says that Dale was founded in his grandfather's day, and yet in other writings Tolkien implies that Dale existed in the Nineteenth Century when the Wainriders destroyed the Kingdom of Rhovanion. We could contrive explanations for the apparent discrepancy, but all of our suppositions and guesses fail to provide the satisfaction that the author's pen would give.
Dale and Lake-town were the only towns Tolkien ever described in the region between the Celduin and Carnen rivers but he surely envisioned other towns, unnamed but important to the region. In THE HOBBIT he speaks of roads leading into the east from Mirkwood but not of their destinations.
The Men of Lake-town traded with their kin who lived along Celduin in the south. Some of these other Men apparently settled in Dale when Bard re-established the city in Third Age 2944. But Tolkien speaks of the Northmen living between Carnen and Celduin growing strong and driving out enemies during two periods: Thror's reign in Erebor and the years after Bard restored Dale.
It is logical to look for a town close to the Emyn Engrin (Iron Hills) because there was an ancient dwarf-colony there, and the Carnen ran south from the hills, marking the easternmost boundary of Dale's kingdom. But how close to the hills would this town have been?
Another logical place for a town is in the wooded belt that lay east of Celduin in the region near the Mountains of Mirkwood. This was north of the place where the Old Forest Road ended at the shore of the Celduin. One should think there would be a town at the road's end, but in THE
HOBBIT we are told that the road vanished as it ran east, so any ancient town there was probably long since destroyed or deserted in Tolkien's mind.
Another logical place for a town would be the confluence of the two rivers. Of course, we don't know how far southward Dale's authority extended. If there were Northmen living in that region, they may have had their own kings.
The map in THE LORD OF THE RINGS does not indicate so, but the map of Wilderland (Rhovanion) in THE HOBBIT implies that a line of hills or highlands marches east from Erebor to the Emyn Engrin. One should think the Dwarves of the Emyn Engrin followed some sort of ancient road to Erebor when they went to reinforce Erebor. Could there have been a town between Erebor and the Emyn Engrin?
The Men of the Long Lake are our only example of how the Northmen of the region lived.
These were a river-folk, skilled in the making and use of large boats for war and trade. They had originally lived on the western shore of the lake, but that town was destroyed and they moved out into the lake itself until Smaug destroyed that town.
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We catch a glimpse of a rich and powerful community in THE HOBBIT, for they raised horses and cattle and conducted trade with the Elves of Northern Mirkwood and the Men living to the south. The lake-town was built with timber, including the boles of huge trees that had to be Page 72
drawn from Mirkwood, probably with the aid of the Elves.
Tolkien envisioned the rebuilt Lake-town coming under the crown of Dale, although he did not explain how that should be so. Yet all mention of this fact was dropped from THE LORD OF
THE RINGS in favor of an ambiguous statement about Dale's kingdom extending far to the south and east.
An interesting statement that has always intrigued me is that Bard recruited men from the west.
Where in the west? Did men come all the way from the Vales of Anduin to live in Dale? Were there woodmen living in Mirkwood in the northeastern eaves of the forest? We never hear of any communities of Men in that region, nor do we see indications of them on the maps, but in UNFINISHED TALES there is mention of Men migrating south along the eastern side of the forest early in the Third Age. Interestingly, THE PEOPLES OF MIDDLE-EARTH tells us that the Edain originally migrated northward along the eastern eaves of the forest: The men with whom [the Longbeards] were thus associated were for the most part akin in race and language with the tall and mostly fair-haired people of the 'House of Hador', the most renowned and numerous of the Edain, who were allied with the Eldar in the War of the Jewels.
These men, it seems, had come westward until faced by the Great Greenwood, and then had divided: some reaching the Anduin and passing thence northward up the Vales; some passing between the north-eaves of the Wood and the Ered Mithrin....
Since Thranduil's people didn't settle in northern Mirkwood until about the year 1050 in the Third Age, Tolkien may have decided there were still Men living in the northern woods at the end of the Third Age. Thus we can postulate the following groups of Men were living in the region around the middle of the 30th Century:
The Men of Lake-town (mixed with survivors of Dale)
The Men of northern Mirkwood
The Men of Carnen
The Men of eastern Mirkwood
Probably there were several "tribes" living along the Celduin, but Tolkien provided us with no clues about where they lived.
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The Great King Bladorthin
Most commentators think Bladorthin, who died before the Dwarves of Erebor could deliver specially made spears to him for his armies, was an Elf because his name ends with "-thin". And yet there is no apparent etymology for the name. The only "Elvish" word containing "-blad" is the abandoned name "Bladorion".
We do know something about the history of the region of Erebor, however, and there is no mention of another Elvish kingdom nearby. Thranduil was the only Elven king to live near Erebor during the centuries prior to Smaug's arrival when Dwarves lived there. Nor are the Elves a particularly war-like people, especially if another Elven realm did exist -- for they would have been Silvan Elves or Avari, essentially "Wood-elves".
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It is perhaps significant that "Blad" sounds like the Anglo-Saxon name "Blaed(a)" (renowned), and that "Bladorthin" was originally intended to be the name of the Wizard Gandalf (who in THE HOBBIT is presented as an old man).
The evidence seems to point toward Bladorthin's being a Man, not an Elf. If we make the assumption that he was a man, can we also place him in some historical period? Perhaps so. For the memories of Thorin and Balin are the source of the legend of Bladorthin, and they were discussing treasures which were historically associated with Thror's reign when Bladorthin was mentioned.
Therefore it may be that Bladorthin himself lived in Thror's time, and that perhaps he was a King of Dale. Thror ruled in Erebor from 2590 to 2770, and we know that Girion was slain by Smaug in 2770. It may be that as many as 5 or 6 kings preceded Girion (assuming Dale was established soon after Thror settled in Erebor).
We know that Girion gave his emerald necklace (with 500 jewels) to the Dwarves for the arming of his "eldest son". An eldest son implies Girion had at least one other and perhaps two or more sons in addition to the "eldest". At what age would a prince have been richly outfitted by his father? 14? 16? 18? Perhaps Girion was in his mid- to late 30s when the eldest son was armed.
But how long before Smaug's arrival would that have been?
We can look at the problem from another direction. Girion's wife and "young child" escaped to Lake-town when Smaug destroyed Dale and Bard the Bowman was that child's descendant. Bard became King of Dale in 2944 and he died in 2977. It may be that he lived about as long as a King of Rohan, in which case we can guess that Bard's genealogy as similar in design to that of King Thengel of Rohan, who died in 2980. By estimating generations backwards, we can guess that Girion's father should have been alive in 2770 as an old man. So why would he not have been?
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The Long Winter presents itself as a possible answer. Although Tolkien had not yet conceived of it when he wrote THE HOBBIT, had he fleshed out the genealogy of the Kings of Dale he might indeed have decided to end a reign in 2758-9, just as he ended the reign of Helm Hammerhand during that winter. Thus, if Girion's father died in the Long Winter, he would have come to the Throne of Dale at a young age.
Furthermore, his people would have suffered terribly in the winter just as the peoples of Rohan and Eriador suffered in it. If Girion's father had been preparing for war, the preparations would have been cut short by the deaths of the king and many of his warriors.
And that brings us back to Bladorthin. Would Tolkien have decided that Bladorthin was Girion's father? We'll never know. But so many pieces fall together to support the idea that it seems hard to imagine Tolkien would have reached any other conclusion.
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