Until now.

It started innocently enough. I wanted to commemorate what I considered no small achievement: reading all 12 volumes of the History of Middle-earth in one year. I made the pledge and started the trek in January of 2011, and managed to turn the last page in mid-December of that year. (I wrote about the experience here and here)

So what could I do to mark this considerable milestone?

I’d had every opportunity in my younger days to become one of the Inked. Lived with several bands, traveled around with all sorts of characters in a circus-like caravan for years before pretending to settle down and got a “real job”.

But never once did I feel the urge to get a tattoo. Big, small, cool or silly, it never crossed my mind as anything I would ever want to do. “How permanent!” “Do I really want everyone to see and judge me?” “Wouldn’t it affect my job or the impression customers and co-workers would get?” All of that crossed my mind, but not in any sort of huge, conflicting way. I just never wanted one.

So why, when searching for an appropriately Big Sign statement to mark the conclusion of my most recent Tolkienian Journey, was that one of the first things that came to mind?

Mayhap, as some have speculated (myself included), it’s a sort of midlife crisis, only instead of a Porsche I got some ink. (By the way – if this truly is the midpoint of my life, 50% gone and 50% still to come, I’ll take it, say thankee-sai.)

Others have said, simply, “I think he’s lost his mind…”

Possibly so.

I haven’t overanalyzed it too much, which is admittedly unlike me in most respects, but have come to terms with the fact that – guess what? – people change their minds sometimes.

So I kept it simple, opting for a medium-sized version of JRRT’s Sigil, thinking it would probably hurt less, take less time, and cost less than a bigger, more intricate piece. All true.

Everyone I spoke to who’d already experienced the needle said, “You’re gonna want another one. Maybe even before the first one’s done.”

“Nah. This’ll be all I need.”

They were right.

About a month after the Sigil healed up I got another much bigger one on the opposite arm. It’s non-Tolkien but represents something just as important, just as much a part of me: Music. I designed the concept and my artist embellished it perfectly. Loved it. Still do.

But that still wasn’t enough.

A few months after that I decided I needed to build on the first one and add lots of my favorite imagery from Tolkien’s works. Every book I’d read would be fair game, from The Hobbit to Hurin to The History. But where to start for inspiration and ideas?

I checked out The Internets, of course. Duh.

Here’s where (I thought, anyway) it got interesting.

All of what I found looked extremely cool, highlighting all the stuff that made me love the stories to begin with. There were lots of quotes (“Not all who wander…” is rightly a favorite, it seems), plenty of Elvish script, and many versions of The White Tree. But a lot of what I found was Dark – not everything, but most of the big, colored pieces would definitely have made Sauron (or maybe his Mouth) smile.

I’m the first to admit that the Ringwraiths (especially mounted on the dreaded Fell Beasts, winging their way into battle), Balrogs, the lidless eye, all of the orcs, goblins and myriad other evil denizens of Middle-earth look cool, especially in action, in color, and as interpreted by various artists.

Unlike my own middle-aged motivations, I did analyze this phenomenon briefly, and came to the following conclusion.

Evil, especially in stories, movies, comics, and other artistic media, almost always looks cool. Some would argue, rightly, than when seen in its True Form it can be as hideous as the acts it facilitates or commits itself. (Witness the Emperor in Star Wars, who – let’s face it – never looked all that cool to begin with but who got worse looking as his cowl drew back more and more. That’s what pure evil does to one, apparently.)

In my early adolescence nearly all I listened to was very hard rock. It started, similarly to the way Bieber and Gaga and countless homogenized new-school hip hoppers act as a gateway drug for today’s impressionable future pop consumers, with Kiss. I liked the costumes, the makeup, the onstage antics – blood and fire-breathing? Was I at a Ren Fair by mistake? And most of all the wicked cool album covers.

When I outgrew the theatrics and moved on to a greater appreciation of the music itself, it still needed to be loud guitars, pounding drums, and long, epic stories. If there were battles in the songs themselves, so much the better.

Sabbath, Zeppelin, and eventually Rush – the longest-lasting obsession thus far – met all those criteria, and their album art and concert themes were usually as grandiose and over the top as anything I’d ever seen.

There was almost always an overlay of evil in the music and the associated artwork. Sometimes overt – Sabbath and its legion of wannabes, and I’ll never forget the first time I saw Eddie the ‘ead on an Iron Maiden cover – steadily more subtle as the bands and I grew up together. Zeppelin’s “No Quarter” is oozing with a menace never seen, lurking just over the horizon – maybe they won’t be home tonight, after all. 2112, Rush’s opus that first showed me how art and philosophy and thoughts a little deeper than I’d ever heard before could exist in Rock, depicts the ultimate evil empire. The difference with all of their tunes, though, is that there is almost always a protagonist fighting against that malevolent force. (But not always winning. “We have assumed control…” anyone?)

Which brings me back to my choices.

I did not want anything representing evil, or even hinting at it, on my body for the rest of my life. (Which is not to say that those bearing these awesome examples are bad or evil people, or that they like evil things, or support evil in the upcoming elections, or anything like that… That’s just what they like, and it’s their choice. It’s just not the message I want to send.)

So no One Ring, no Sauron, no evil minions or flying monstrosities for me.

I knew I wanted imagery representing all of the Free Peoples of Middle-earth, so I started there. I drew some rough sketches for each of the four “panels” that would make up the half-sleeve covering my upper right arm from shoulder to elbow, then took them into my artist for a consult. Shane Sudduth from Inksomnia went way above and beyond the call in working with me, taking my drawings and incorporating his ideas and experience to bring the final work to life in ways I didn’t even know enough to hope for. I’d taken voluminous amounts of research to share with him, including some backstory and tons of printed and drawn pictures, usually several versions of each element so we could decide together how it would lay out.

Shane said he’d never had any of his clients provide that much background, which made my inner nerd beam, and said he probably wouldn’t have to do much more himself. He asked that I come back in about 2 weeks and we’d take a look at the initial design then.

To my surprised delight, when I returned to the shop and went back into Shane’s space he opened with, “Dude, I have never done this much research for a tattoo in my life – half-sleeve, full-sleeve, whatever. I watched all three extended versions again, took notes and screen grabs, and read for hours online. I was here until 2 AM a few nights ago. I think this is gonna be awesome.”

He’d added some major and some not-so-major elements to my in initial designs and each was a vast improvement on those original ideas. Blown away, I was eager to get started, so we did the outline that first day.

Six sessions and around 18 hours later, here’s how it came out:

 We managed to keep all of my original design ideas – each of the main Free Peoples are in some way represented – and there are elements from The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, Children of Hurin, The Lord of the Rings, and The History, along with some Elvish script (including each of my daughters’ names in Tengwar script). Can you spot all the references?

I probably won’t get any more tattoos for a while, if ever. The length of time, the cost, and the perpetually healing state of my arm had me itching to get it finished, and when we finally did I ended up with a work of art that I could not be more pleased with. Each time I see it I like it a little more.

So why do people get tattoos? Probably for as many reasons as there are people, and as there are different types of tattoos. I’ve seen super cool ones, and some that were not so cool – to me. Some that were beautifully designed and executed, and many that were not. Some fantastic quotes, and some that seemed kind of stupid – again, to me. (Shane is of the opinion that if a picture is worth a thousand words, why not get a picture instead of a thousand words? But I know there are exceptions to that rule).

The armchair psychologist in me says this:

Tattoos are external manifestations of internal thoughts, feelings, archetypes, themes, tropes, loves- whatever- sometimes conscious, sometimes not, sometimes positive, sometimes not. I believe each says something about its bearer. Sometimes that something is as shallow as the needle pricks when it embeds the ink, sometimes as deep as the blood it draws from way down inside. Some are as purely artistic as anything ever brushed onto canvas or chipped into marble or carved onto vinyl, some are purely cartoonish, funny or nonsensical. But, for me, and especially lately, they’re never less than interesting.

And if I’m going to have something on my body for the rest of my days, however many that may be, it had better be something as important to me, as big a part of my life, as are the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.

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Alatar is the latest writer to join TheOneRing.net staff. A Tolkienite from way back, Alatar first read the Trilogy when he was 15, and has done so about once a year since – it’s now over 25 times, and each pass brings some new insight and even greater appreciation. All things Tolkien continue to fascinate him, from The Silmarillion to the Children of Hurin to all 12 volumes of The History of Middle-earth to Tolkien’s letters. He’s very careful to keep his footing when stepping out his front door, but that doesn’t always guarantee that adventures won’t ensue. The views of our writers are not necessarily those of TheOneRing.net. 

Radagast’s house by Angus McBride, card art for Middle-earth Collectible Card Game

Rhosgobel. The very word conjures images of poorly named bovines or countrified female pups. We’re told it means “russet village”, “walled house” or “brown town”, which is fitting since it was the last known dwelling of the mysteriously ineffective Radagast the Brown.

The fourth of the Istari to be sent by the Valar to aid Middle-earth in the fight against Sauron, Radagast essentially became a hippie, eschewing contact with Elves and Men and preferring the company of the birds and the beasts for whom he was named. (‘…which is in the tongue of Númenor of old, and signifies, it is said, “tender of beasts”.’) No word on whether he was as avid a fan of Longbottom Leaf as at least one of his fellow Wizards, but I’m guessing so.

Where he lived, exactly, has oft been debated – albeit not very hotly.

Consensus seems to be that his dwelling, the previously mentioned Rhosgobel, was situated somewhere near the southwestern edge of Mirkwood, roughly 100 miles north of Dol Guldur and in reasonably close proximity to Lorien, which could account for the similarities to the flets of Lothlorien seen in the very few existing drawings of the place.

From the little we know about the Brown one, this design fits with his unintrusive, Nature-first lifestyle. Friend of Beorn the shapeshifter, and according to Gandalf a “master of shapes and changes of hue” himself, his house echoes the Beornish sensibility and isolation that clearly says, “I prefer the company of green, furry or feathered things to that of the two-legged variety.”

There is even a diagram of how the inside of the house may have been constructed:

Thanks to blogger Dan (no last name) for this design and explanation: “… a plan of Rhosgobel, the enchanted home and refuge of Radagast the Brown.  It is located on the western edge of the narrows of Mirkwood and is a celebration of the abundant forms of . . . life.”

Said to “surround a large, furry oak”, (depicted centrally in Dan’s layout at left) other descriptions claim that Radagast’s lodgings were “a u-shaped wooden house nestled in the woods surrounding a small blue pool of water or pond.” (2011: Lord of the Rings Living Card Game)

There is little mention of Radagast in Tolkien’s main works, scant few comments in the History of Middle-earth, and only a handful in Unfinished Tales. In the Fellowship, for example, he’s the one who warns Gandalf that the Nine are abroad. He is perhaps best remembered as the one who sends Gwaihir the Wind Lord to rescue Gandalf from the clutches of Saruman. (It’s interesting to note that in the books this is done “unwittingly”, as is his helping to entrap Gandalf in the first place. For so few mentions, nearly all of them paint a picture of a sort of benign ineptitude, an accidental existence that has both positive and negative repercussions. Too much leaf?)

It is later told at the Council of Elrond that when scouts were sent to round up all the enemies of Sauron for help in the coming fight, the delegation sent to Rhosgobel found no trace of him. This has led most online pundits to surmise that after forsaking the company of Man and Elf Radagast abandoned his home and went totally native, retreating deep into Mirkwood and not involving himself further in the many trials the rest of Middle-earth was suffering. In all the arguments for and against this tactic, including whether or not he failed in his mission and was therefore denied re-entry into Valinor, nothing is said of the possibility that he simply didn’t want to be seen or found. Isn’t it possible that this “master of shapes and hues”, presumably as powerful as Gandalf, Saruman, even Alatar and Pallando (the mysterious and elusive Blue Wizards of the East, about whom there is woefully less information), could have simply vanished or otherwise disguised himself when the Elven emissaries came calling at Rhosgobel? I think it likely.

Tolkien makes no mention anywhere that I could find to the house itself. All we have to go on are the extrapolations of those who, like so many of us, use the known as a springboard to imagine the ultimately unknowable. And who then (thankfully!) share those possibilities with the rest of us.

There are other places I’d put on my Middle-earth bucket list ahead of Rhosgobel, without doubt. Rivendell and Lothlorien, to start with. Mithlond, Minas Tirith, Buckland, Edoras and Helm’s Deep just to name a few more.

But a layover at the magic treehouse of Radagast would not be out of the question, either.

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Alatar is the latest writer to join TheOneRing.net staff. A Tolkienite from way back, Alatar first read the Trilogy when he was 15, and has done so about once a year since – it’s now over 25 times, and each pass brings some new insight and even greater appreciation. All things Tolkien continue to fascinate him, from The Silmarillion to the Children of Hurin to all 12 volumes of The History of Middle-earth to Tolkien’s letters. He’s very careful to keep his footing when stepping out his front door, but that doesn’t always guarantee that adventures won’t ensue. The views of our writers are not necessarily those of TheOneRing.net.