The missing link between middle earth and known history

[Gaith]

^ Not gonna lie - one of my proudest moments as an undergrad History major was when I likened the Falklands and its Islanders to the hobbits of the Shire, both genuine groups of very British natives blissfully unconcerned with the squabbles and battles of the wider world's empires, who had to be protected, either by Rangers of the North or the Royal Navy, respectively.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I think I read somewhere that Tolkien often lamented the loss of the old southern Britonic and Celtic cultural folklore and tribal traditions that were almost entirely erased over the course of the various conquests & waves of colonisation from the continent, starting with the Romans and ending with the Germanic Angles & Saxons. So the stories of Middle Earth were meant to fill that gap, which is why it's so British and Euro-centric by design.

I think that its was more the loss of Anglo-Saxon folklore that he was trying to address, which he blamed on the subjugation of the native English population by the Normans after 1066, although it's likely much was never written down anyway and was only passed on by oral tradition.

Yes, Tolkien was more far interested the lost Anglo-Saxon mythology than the pre-Anglo-Saxon, even pre-Roman Brythonic-Celtic mythology which, as Asbo mentions, was preserved to some extent among the Welsh. Tolkien lamented that England didn't have a remembered native mythology anymore. His writings attempt to recreate what it might have been, something that draws upon Germanic and Scandinavian influence in light of the migrations to Britain in the post-Roman period.

A really good examination of the mythological roots of Middle-earth, one that I'd recommend, is Simon Cook's JRR Tolkien's Lost English Mythology.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Yes, Tolkien was more far interested the lost Anglo-Saxon mythology than the pre-Anglo-Saxon, even pre-Roman Brythonic-Celtic mythology which, as Asbo mentions, was preserved to some extent among the Welsh. Tolkien lamented that England didn't have a remembered native mythology anymore. His writings attempt to recreate what it might have been, something that draws upon Germanic and Scandinavian influence in light of the migrations to Britain in the post-Roman period.

A really good examination of the mythological roots of Middle-earth, one that I'd recommend, is Simon Cook's JRR Tolkien's Lost English Mythology.

I suspect the nearest thing to the original Anglo-Saxon folklore would be found among Frisians, Jutland Danes, and northern Germans in Schleswig-Holstein. There'd be less emphasis on goblins, trolls, gloomy forests and icy mountains, and more on the sea, sea monsters, cities flooding, and sailing.

 

[The Old Mixer]

The Lord of the Rings isn't the past ... it's the distant future.

IT'S A COOKBOOK!!!!!

 

[Nerys Myk]

Why are we looking for this link again?

 

[Jedman67]

Why are we looking for this link again?

shits and giggles, most likely. why do you ask?

 

[Nerys Myk]

shits and giggles, most likely. why do you ask?

Just wondering. Didn't feel like rereading the thread.

 

[Jedman67]

Don't blame you. It got tired pretty fast.

 

[Gaith]

Why are we looking for this link again?

 

[Ithekro]

I did fanfiction of sort that has the Red Book of Westmarch as one of its ancient texts. Though the fictional setting was more or less having Rohan being the surviving kingdom even after thousands upon thousands of year, with it blending Gondor's legends over time and royal marriages. The Kingdom of Rohan....set roughly in what today would be considered the Pacific Northwest, was the to European, a rather advanced nation of American Indians. One that continued to rival them as they moved west. Eventually civilization (well technology anyway) strikes and Rohan becomes an industrial age power by the end of the 19th century, still fighting an on again, off again war with the descendants of the servants of Sauron. The Worshipers of the Eye who for a time were known as the Aztecs.

Suffice to say the world is a bit different when you have a mix of European colonialism and a few strong native powers in the Americans. (It was a Naval sim so the focus was more on naval powers and ship than world building, but I did what I could with the GM's permission. Rohan held the Pacific Northwest and much of Central America south of Mexico as the place where Gondor fled after the Mt. Doom super volcano exploded at the end of the Fourth Age of the Sun. The Fifth Age goes until what today we would general call the Birth of Christ, though I attempted to have an event happen around the time of the giant star in they sky ending some other massive overlord's reign in the Mississippian Regiona to the East of Rohan. Our present day would be this version of Rohan's Sixth Age of the Sun). I had a lot of time and a Native American to pick over plot point with.

 

[publiusr]

I've liked the concept of a subjective past that--as time goes on--becomes as uncertain as the future. Take a Native American back in time--he doesn't see Pteranodons--but actual Thunderbirds.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I was hoping for more than nerd stuff.

 

[MAGolding]

Obviously we are supposed to imagine that sometime after the end of Lord of the Rings there was another great cataclysm in which Eru reshaped the world for some reason which is as unexplained as the date of the event. After that catastrophe the world resembled our modern geography.

Since writing began in Mesopotamia about 3600 BC or about 5,615 years ago, and since Tolkien said in a letter written about 1960 that Lord of the Rings was about 6,000 years earlier, or about 4,040 BC, that gives about 440 years - give or take decades or centuries - for things to be fine after LOTR and then lead to the catastrophe and then for society to rebuild itself and start writing and start recording events and the dawn of recorded history.

The hundreds of different dates calculated for the creation of the world in Genesis mostly cluster in two different groups, one group in the centuries around the year 3761 BC, the first year of the Jewish calendar, and one group in the centuries around the year 5509 BC, the first year in the Byzantine calendar. Thus Lord of the Rings should happen within less than a millennium before or after the Biblical Creation of the world.

On one hand Tolkien was a believing Roman Catholic. On the other hand, he probably did not have a strong belief in the literal accuracy of Genesis and other early books of the Bible. On the third hand, he probably did not feel comfortable extending the game of pretending that LOTR was real history into a era when it would be competing with the Biblical accounts as history or as a story.

And that discomfort is probably why I have never read anything which indicates that Tolkien ever wrote even a few notes or even thought about the one single most obvious omission in his Middle-earth legendarium - how and why mountains fell into the sea and sea floors rose up as new lands and the shape of lands and seas was drastically altered in the comparatively few centuries between the time of LOTR and the dawn of recorded history!

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

On one hand Tolkien was a believing Roman Catholic. On the other hand, he probably did not have a strong belief in the literal accuracy of Genesis and other early books of the Bible. On the third hand, he probably did not feel comfortable extending the game of pretending that LOTR was real history into a era when it would be competing with the Biblical accounts as history or as a story.

I understand that the modern Roman Catholic church does not require belief in the literal truth of the Old Testament. It's the New Testament that isn't open to question.

 

[Ithekro]

As mentioned I simply moved the timeline back another two thousand year and shifted Middle Earth to North America to account for the changes. (not that any of that is minor or warrented....it was just fun).

 

[Idran]

Since writing began in Mesopotamia about 3600 BC or about 5,615 years ago

3200 BC, actually, which gives even more time.