huinesoron

On the southern limits of the Shire (Oxfordshire, specifically) lie the Berkshire Downs, part of the greater North Wessex Downs. It is stated in various sources that J.R.R. Tolkien visited this area - once on a hiking trip in 1912, and later with his family while working on either The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings - and that it inspired the haunted Barrow Downs of LotR. This week, I got a chance to visit the area, and let me tell you, I am entirely convinced.

Image: Google Street View

The Downs are a world without a horizon. The landscape is all gently rolling hills, and other than the trees which stud them there's no indication of how far away any given green mound is. If it weren't for the road, it would be shockingly easy to become lost, wandering the hills until darkness took them.

Their way wound along the floor of the hollow, and round the green feet of a steep hill into another deeper and broader valley, and then over the shoulder of further hills, and down their long limbs, and up their smooth sides again, up on to new hill-tops and down into new valleys. There was no tree nor any visible water: it was a country of grass and short springy turf, silent except for the whisper of the air over the edges of the land, and high lonely cries of strange birds. - J.R.R. Tolkien, Fog on the Barrow-Downs

And not all the hills are natural. The seven barrows of, uh, Seven Barrows lie right alongside the road, and I'm certain I saw others crowning distant hills. I can imagine mist rolling between them, a silver carpet studded with green featureless mounds.

One thing Tolkien did not mention is the shocking suddenness with which the Downs fall away. From where we eventually parked, the south view was the gentle hills of the Downs; the north was flat countryside, stretching for more miles than I can count.

We turned out backs on that green country, heading up into the wild lands. Specifically, we took the ancient Ridgeway, following it down a shallow dip and back up the far side. A line of trees marked the roadway ahead of us, but our course took us beyond it: to the top of a shallow rise, where the Great Barrow waited.

Suddenly he saw, towering ominous before him and leaning slightly towards one another like the pillars of a headless door, two huge standing stones.. - J.R.R. Tolkien, Fog on the Barrow-Downs

Image: Own work

This is Wayland's Smithy, a burial mound dating back eight thousand years. At one time it was revered among the Saxons as the forge of the gods; later it was overgrown, a cave in the woods. But at all times it has been a place of power - tucked away on its hillside, like something out of another world.

And you can picture Tolkien coming up here with his children, and them playing around the 60 foot grassy mound. You can picture them clambering into the small chambers between the great leaning stones, and calling out "help, help, the monster has got us!". And then along comes Tolkien and peeks the head of a raggy Dutch doll over the stones: "Fear not - Tom Bombadil is here to rescue you!" You can see it, when you stand by the barrow.

When you leave the Barrow, the Middle-earth connections become if anything even stronger. Ahead of you, as you walk east along the ancient road of the Ridgeway, lies Uffington Castle - a great Iron Age hill-fort, with its entrance facing you: two great earthen banks, and a cut between them like a grand gateway.

Certainly the distances had now all become hazy and deceptive, but there could be no doubt that the Downs were coming to an end. A long valley lay below them winding away northwards, until it came to an opening between two steep shoulders. Beyond, there seemed to be no more hills. - J.R.R. Tolkien, Fog on the Barrow-Downs

And beyond that? Beyond that lies the Uffington White Horse, a chalk-carved figure of a galloping or rearing horse. A sign of a prancing pony, if you will, though there is no inn on the hilltop. Beyond that, on the very edge of the Downs, stands Dragon Hill - a flat-topped hill set apart from the rest of the uplands. It is said that Christopher Tolkien believed the area of White Horse Hill inspired Weathertop, and Dragon Hill certainly looks the part (even if it is a little small).

Image: Own work

The correlations aren't exact. Tolkien wasn't one to transpose our world directly into Middle-earth. But driving and walking through this ancient landscape, it's hard not to feel like one has at least one foot on the Barrow-Downs.

Current Mood: pleased
Crossposts: https://huinesoron.livejournal.com/171566.html

If asked what J.R.R. Tolkien wrote that would be appropriate to retell to children, you would probably immediately think of The Hobbit. Maybe you'd then go to Roverandom, or Farmer Giles of Ham, or - if you're particularly up on your obscure Tolkien books - Mr. Bliss.

You probably wouldn't think of the Silmarillion, Tolkien's posthumously-published pseudo-epic/history/scripture/myth of the Elder Days of Middle-earth. And yet, somehow, that's exactly what I've wound up retelling in the vernacular to my children.

Actually, the 'somehow' is quite simple: I wanted to use a story to demonstrate that doubling down on things that make you feel guilty is dumb, and landed on the tale of Feanor. I cut his story down to the barest bones - the only proper names I used were 'Feanor' and 'Melkor' (and yes, I should have said 'Morgoth', but that realisation came way too late) - but I covered all the high points: his creation of the Silmarils, his pride in them, Melkor's theft, the Kinslaying, his burning of the ships and abandonment of Fingolfin, and his death and cursing of his sons. I drove the point home by saying that six of Feanor's seven sons died because of the promise he made them keep, and that the seventh was basically miserable forever. Job done, end of story.

And then a couple of days later, one of the kids asked who was king of the Elves after Feanor died, and I found myself carrying on...

We're currently between parts five and six of the story. Part two was the coming of Fingolfin (they've got that name down pat), coupled with Maedhros' captivity and the eventual transfer of the crown to Fingolfin. Part three was, rather hilariously, a description of Beleriand, through the medium of the different ways the cities of the elves were protected from Melkor. I asked the kids for how they would do it, and for every suggestion they made, was able to find someone who'd taken the same approach. (They really liked Melian's magic shield, which is good, since we'll be seeing it again.)

Part four was The Coming of ~~Men~~ Humans, which let me lean into Finrod's presence and general awesomeness. We started with Finrod's coming to Beor's campsite, then did a little bit about the time Melkor impersonated a Human dissident, and then capped it off with the Lady Haleth, who went down well due to, again, general awesomeness.

For part five, I did the Bragollach - the Battle of Sudden Flame and the breaking of the peace in Beleriand. My daughter set up a "Fin-rod! Fin-rod!" chant for his minor part, and they managed to listen all the way through Fingolfin's duel. They do rather think the giant eagle who shows up occasionally is 'the god of the Air', but hey, they're kids; I'm not going to quibble. Next, as a special request, we're going to go back and cover the death of the Trees. I actually didn't mention it in the first part, only covering it in passing in part two, so it's kind of overdue. After that, it'll be on to Beren and Luthien, and I've already mentioned that one of the Silmarils gets rescued.

In fact, the whole way through I've foreshadowed what's to come. Sometimes that's been a direct lead-in to the next part - 'so hey, there's all these elves and dwarves around, but what about... us?'. But other times it's just been general ominous murmurings, like saying that Gondolin was the last of all the cities in Beleriand to fall. This is entirely deliberate; Tolkien did the same thing, and even more so in the earliest versions of the story, where the Doom of Mandos includes the words "Great is the fall of Gondolin!". (Come to think of it, the final version starts with 'Tears unnumbered...')

The whole affair has been almost hilariously simplified. I've chopped out almost all the names, and skipped over huge chunks of story when they don't fit the 15 minute block I have available. Character motivations are trimmed back to the absolutely necessary, and occasionally I invent whole sections - like how shocked the Elves were on discovering humans got old - when the kids raise questions that aren't in (my memory of) the book. I'm positive I'm getting things wrong all over the place, given how long it's been since I read the Silm cover to cover. But...

The further I get through the story, the more I feel like this is how Tolkien would want his stories to be experienced. The Legendarium is pseudo-mythic in origin. The very first stories were written as records of oral retellings - the Book of Lost Tales - and The Hobbit is also very much written to be read aloud (as, originally, it was). Tolkien mentioned somewhere that the First Age acted as an unexplored backdrop to Lord of the Rings. Reading the Silmarillion is a fantastic experience, but from an author's perspective it's pretty much like reading the Wikipedia entry for Beleriand. Retellings - whether in simplified form to kids, through fanfic, or, yes, in TV shows and movies to inevitably come - are how myths and legends were originally experienced, and I have a hard time shaking the idea that they still, in a way, are.

Current Mood: geeky
Crossposts: https://huinesoron.livejournal.com/169912.html

On January 14th, the Amazon 'Lord of the Rings' show revealed its first? main? fifteen cast members. In the absence of any other information, I thought it'd be fun to guess who (or mostly what) they might be playing.

My initial assumptions, before looking at any of the actors: the series will take place in the Second Age, centring on the island of Numenor and its contacts with Middle-earth proper. Given the title, it's likely the story will involve Sauron and the creation of the Rings - and given the nature of the media, I suspect that we'll see some very racially-homogeneous cultures. Specifically, I predict Numenoreans to be vaguely Mediterranean, Haradrim to be black, Elves to be as white as snow, and Dwarves to be... well, 'to look dwarvish', really. Someone will probably also be playing Sauron in pretty mode.

So with that aside, let's check out the cast.

( In order of... well, in order )

Current Mood: analytic
Crossposts: https://huinesoron.livejournal.com/169717.html

It's official: Amazon will be making a Middle-earth TV series. But it's not going to be The Lord of the Rings; the press release is very clear that they're looking elsewhere for their stories:

"We... are thrilled to be taking The Lord of the Rings fans on a new epic journey in Middle Earth.”

“We are delighted that Amazon, with its longstanding commitment to literature, is the home of the first-ever multi-season television series for The Lord of the Rings,” said Matt Galsor, a representative for the Tolkien Estate and Trust and HarperCollins. “Sharon and the team at Amazon Studios have exceptional ideas to bring to the screen previously unexplored stories based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s original writings.”

Set in Middle Earth, the television adaptation will explore new storylines preceding J.R.R. Tolkien’sThe Fellowship of the Ring.

(Emphasis mine.)

So what story are they planning to tell? Something that precedes the War of the Ring - if we take them at their word, something that precedes Bilbo's famous party. I have seen a comment that it "must be" something from Silm/UT, since the Tolkien Estate doesn't have the movie rights to Hobbit/LotR any more and therefore wouldn't have been involved, but I think that's probably wrong - the TV rights look likely to be separate to the film ones. So what will it be? In lieu of actual information, here are my top five guesses for what they could do.

(The honorary 6th place goes to 'The Hobbit', and the connected story of the Fall of Erebor. It would fit the bill, but I don't think it's likely. Not so soon after the movies.)

( The list )