As we all know, J R R Tolkien was, from an early age, fascinated by myth and heroic legend, reading all he could of the romances and epics of many nations.  In a letter to Milton Waldman, which appears in the Preface to the second edition of The Silmarillion, he wrote that he was ‘grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own … Of course there was and is all the Arthurian world, but powerful as it is, it is imperfectly naturalized, associated with the soil of Britain but not with the English; and does not replace what I felt to be missing…’

The Professor, then, had little time for the legends of King Arthur; but he did make one foray into those tales, and we are about to be able to read for ourselves the results of those labours!  Tomorrow, publishers Houghton Mifflin Harcourt release Tolkien’s narrative poem The Fall of Arthur, edited as ever by his son Christopher.  HMH’s press release tells us:

‘The Fall of Arthur, the only venture by J.R.R. Tolkien into the legends of Arthur, king of Britain, may well be regarded as his finest and most skillful achievement in the use of Old English alliterative meter, in which he brought to his transforming perceptions of the old narratives a pervasive sense of the grave and fateful nature of all that is told: of Arthur’s expedition overseas into distant heathen lands, of Guinevere’s flight from Camelot, of the great sea battle on Arthur’s return to Britain, in the portrait of the traitor Mordred, in the tormented doubts of Lancelot in his French castle.’

Alas, Tolkien never finished his poem; but amongst his manuscripts were sketches and drafts, which included ‘significant tantalizing notes. In these notes can be discerned clear if mysterious associations of the Arthurian conclusion with The Silmarillion, and the bitter ending of the love of Lancelot and Guinevere, which was never written.’

It’s a day of celebration for Tolkien fans whenever we have a chance to read more of the Professor’s work, and gain further insight into the explorations which lead to his great myth of Middle-earth.  You can read Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s full information about the book here; and you can order your copy from Amazon by clicking here. The Fall of Arthur will also be available as an e-book.  Happy reading!

[Order The Fall of Arthur from Amazon]

Back in September 1999, these were the questions on the minds of fans…

Q:What role did Glorfindel play after the incident at the Fords of Bruinen? I don’t remember any further mention of him and it seems strange that such a noble Elven Lord would not be involved at all in the War of the Ring.

- Quinton Carr

A: He wasn’t. But if you think about it, many “noble Elven lords” did not do anything *active* in the War after the Fellowship left Rivendell or Lorien. Elrond, Celeborn, noble Elven ladies like Galadriel, Arwen . . . their roles were peripheral. Not to mention the fact that I’m sure both Elrond and Celeborn had a goodly number of strong, well-armed Elves at their disposal, who didn’t go with the Fellowship *or* down to the battles in Gondor. But the answer is actually pretty simple, and Elrond gives it to us in “Fellowship:” “The number must be few, since your hope is in speed and secrecy. Had I a host of Elves in armour of the Elder Days, it would avail little, save to arouse the power of Mordor.” So that explains why none of them went with the Fellowship. Why did none of these mighty Elves save Elrohir and Elladan ride down to Gondor once it was clear that there would be battle? My answer has a couple of parts. Firstly, Elrohir and Elladan, according to the Tale of Years, were born after the wars at the end of the Second Age when Sauron was thrown down, and were not a party to them as their father was. They’d never gotten their “chance,” so to speak. As for the rest of them, they had all gone to war against Sauron at the end of the Second Age. They felt their time had passed, and moreover that the hour of the Secondborn was striking. They knew that the power of their Rings would fade if Frodo was successful, and that Men would rise and Elves would dwindle. They must have felt it was right for the men, i.e. the armies of Gondor and Rohan, to earn for themselves the privilege of ushering in the Fourth Age.

Now, I don’t know how long Glorfindel had been alive at this point. Whether he was around at the first overthrow of Sauron, I can’t say. All I know is that he, like Elrond and Celeborn and Erestor and Cirdan and all, elected not to go down to the war this time. Turgon says that there is some speculation about an earlier elf, also named Glorfindel, who had been killed in battle. The question revolves around whether or not this is the same guy, somehow returned to life and to Middle-earth, or is it a namesake? I haven’t delved into the History of Middle-earth volumes, but Turgon tells me more Glorfindel information can be found in the Peoples of Middle-earth, volume 12 of the History, on pages 377-384.

-Anwyn

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Q: I want to know if Bilbo was Frodo’s cousin or uncle.

- Heather Mackie

A: Chestnuts, chestnuts! The answer to this is in The Fellowship of the Ring, Book I, Chapter 1, page 1:

“Mr. [Bilbo] Baggins was generous with is money, … But he had no close friends, until some of his younger cousins began to grow up.The eldest of these, and Bilbo’s favourite, was young Frodo Baggins.”

If you take a look at Appendix C, “Family Trees” at the end of The Return of the King, you’ll see that Frodo was the Great-grandson of one Largo Baggins, whom Bilbo saw only as a Granduncle, if you can imagine such a thing. Now, according to modern American standards this familial relationship might seem quite thin, but in the Shire cousins are held very close to the heart, no matter how distantly related (unless of course you’re a Sackville-Baggins). Hobbits held great interest in their own genealogy, as Tolkien wrote, and the operative term “cousin” would probably be liberally applied to any of a number of different relatives.

- Quickbeam

Update!

Your answer about Bilbo and Frodo being “cousins” is accurate, as far as it goes. But their relation is slightly more complex than that, since they are related not only on the Baggins side, but on the Took side as well. But to explain it properly I have to refer to the technical names of different types of cousins, which most Americans, at least, do not understand.

A quick refresher course for those who do not share a Hobbitish interest in genealogy: the ordinal number before “cousin” (as in “first cousin”, “second cousin”, “third cousin”) refers to how many generations back you have to go before you reach siblings. If I had a son, he would be a first cousin with my sisters’ children. His children would be second cousins with my sisters’ grandchildren, and so on. Another way of looking at it is that first cousins share grandparents, second cousins share great-grandparents, and so on.

“Removed” refers to a difference in generation. Suppose I have a first cousin, and she has a daughter. That child is my first cousin once removed, the “removed” signifying that she and I are one generation apart. If she then had a son, that child would be my first cousin twice removed, and so on. If you think of a genealogical chart, you will notice that all first, second, third, etc. cousins will be on the same level horizontally; if you go one step down, you will get a “remove.”

All right: let’s apply this to Frodo and Bilbo. Looking at the chart in Appendix C, we find the common ancestor, Balbo Baggins. Among his children are Mungo and Largo; they are siblings. Mungo begat Bungo, and Largo begat Fosco; Bungo and Fosco are therefore first cousins. Bungo begat Bilbo, and Fosco begat Drogo; Bilbo and Drogo are second cousins. Finally, Drogo begat Frodo; therefore, Frodo and Bilbo are second cousins once removed — on the Baggins side.

But they’re also related on the Took side. Look at the Took family tree on the next page. You’ll see that Bilbo’s mother Belladonna Took was the sister of Mirabella Took, Frodo’s maternal grandmother. So (are you following this?) on the Took side, Frodo and Bilbo are *first* cousins once removed.

So while the short and easy answer is that Frodo and Bilbo are just cousins, the long answer is that, as the Gaffer explains on the third page of A Long-Expected Party:

“Mr. Frodo is his first *and* second cousin, once removed either way, as the saying is, if you follow me.”

I have no idea whether the readers of the Green Books would have any interest in this… but here it is, all the same.

–Si Rowe

Yes, indeed we ARE interested, and I appreciate the clarification! You’ve made easy work of this complicated family tree! And I really have no excuse for not knowing my trees.

–Quickbeam

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Q: Does Saruman survive after he is killed? Sauron was killed three times before he actually died. They were both Maia and they both had the same master Aulë the smith. So is it possible that Saruman lived?

–Saruman19

A: Very, very good question. Let me start by quoting you the passage that is also in my second “Counterpoint;” it is Saruman’s death scene.

“To the dismay of those that stood by, about the body of Saruman a grey mist gathered, and rising slowly to a great height like smoke from a fire, as a pale shrouded figure it loomed over the Hill. For a moment it wavered, looking to the West; but out of the West came a cold wind, and it bent away, and with a sigh dissolved into nothing.” [Excerpted from Return.]

To me, this seems final as regards Saruman’s demise, but let me first interject an interesting thought: Was Sauron ever actually killed before the War of the Ring? When was the last time he had a corporeal body? He “perished” once in the drowning of Númenor, and beyond that, I don’t know to which other two times you are referring, unless you refer to him fleeing Angband for Mordor, then at the end of the Second Age when the Ring was taken from him. As far as that last time, does it say he was killed, or merely that the Ring was taken and he was defeated? Sauron had long ago lost the ability to keep a corporeal body, but it seems obvious to me that his spirit was never dissolved before the Ring was destroyed. His own folly in putting the majority of his original power into an object outside himself was his undoing, in that when *that* “corporeal body,” the Ring, perished, the part of his spirit/power that was in it was dissolved, and the rest of his spirit could no longer survive. And on a final note about Sauron, he had long ceased to acknowledge Aulë as his master, and had been Melkor’s servant for as long as anybody could remember.

So, the point I’m making is that Maiar, good or evil, do not “die,” no matter what the state of their corporeal bodies, until their spirits are dissolved. I think it’s safe to say that Gandalf’s original corporeal form was killed in the battle with the Balrog. But at the end of the day, it was the spirit of the Balrog that was dissipated, not Gandalf’s, and those in charge (i.e., Valar) saw fit to allow him to take on another body. Sauron did not have the power, after the theft of the Ring, to take a body any more, and Saruman still had his own body. Well and good. Well, when Saruman’s body was destroyed, then what was left was the spirit, and the hobbits witnessed this being blown away on the West Wind. I feel that this was the final destruction of the Maiar spirit that had been Saruman, and that he would not have survived this. On a final note, my fellow Green Books staffperson Turgon mentioned that he had always thought of the breeze that blew away the mist as the Breath of Manwë. Talk about your poetic justice!

–Anwyn

Update!

A reader has written in to direct me to be more specific about the “death,” before the return, of Gandalf…

–Anwyn

In your answer to the question about Saruman’s death, you make a reference to Gandalf being returned after death by the Valar. That’s not exactly correct.

Gandalf’s words and a couple of letters by Tolkien (I can look up the exact references if you’re interested) indicate that when he was killed in his battle with the Balrog, Gandalf’s spirit left this world entirely, going beyond even the Valar’s ability to interfere. He was returned and imbued with new power by none other than Eru Ilœvatar Himself, the One.

–Tim Frankovich

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Q: Do Tolkien’s Elves have pointed ears? (I’ve never found any reference to this in any of his writings, and many artists portray them without pointed ears…)

–Quinton Carr

A: This is a tough question that has baffled many Tolkien-readers for years and years. The only evidence there is, and it can be interpreted in several ways, comes from a letter Tolkien wrote to the American publishers of The Hobbit, sometime around March 1938. This letter, a response to a request for some drawings of hobbits in various attitudes, is published in Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (Letter no. 27, p. 35). Part of the description reads as follows: “A round, jovial face; ears only slightly pointed and ‘elvish’.” The quotes around “elvish” are Tolkien’s own, so what does he mean? Elvish, as in his own Elves? Or “elvish” as in what the recipient of the letter might think of as “elvish”–i.e., a more public idea of “elvish”? I suspect Tolkien meant the latter, but the remarkable thing here is that Tolkien does imply that Hobbits have ears which are “slightly pointed”.

–Turgon

Update!

Carl F. Hostetter pointed (no pun intended) us to another consideration that really makes a much stronger case that Tolkien intended his elves to have pointed ears. In “The Etymologies”, a very important work for the study of Tolkien’s Elvish languages, first published in The Lost Road (1987), the two entries given for the elvish element “las” show that “las”, as in the Quenya *lasse, meaning “leaf”, is possibly related to “las” meaning “listen”, and *lasse meaning “ear”. Tolkien wrote: “The Quendian ears were more pointed and leaf-shaped than [?human]” (The reading of the last word is uncertain in the lightly pencilled manuscript.) Fascinating!

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Q: What’s the deal with the “stone giants” that are mentioned in The Hobbit? Are they chronicled anywhere in the history of Middle Earth? Are they allied with good or evil? Did they have any part in the War of the Ring?

–Quinton Carr

A: To answer you in order: No, neither, and no. The singular mention of them anywhere seems to be only in The Hobbit, during that thunderstorm as the travelers attempted to cross the high pass through the Misty Mountains. They were given neither names nor station in the vast Tolkien legendarium, though most beasts and creatures were. Then again, not every single denizen of Middle-earth is revealed plainly. There was the slimy, tentacled Watcher in the Lake that assaulted Frodo and the Fellowship as they stood just outside Moria’s East Gate. Consider it one of those occurrences where the mystery of the thing is an important storytelling device. Gandalf gives no details, no history, to the frightened and inquisitive Hobbits, and that leaves the reader’s mind to wander. What on earth could it be? Who set it there to guard the Gate? And why did it attack the Ringbearer first? By keeping some of these monsters/creatures more obscure, Tolkien makes them more fantastical, and thus they carry more of a wallop to the imagination.

Also, it has been suggested throughout the years that Professor Tolkien wrote The Hobbit directly for his children. My guess is that the inclusion of these Stone Giants could have been to add fairy-tale flavor to the proceedings, as you will find throughout The Father Christmas Letters.

–Quickbeam

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Q: You mentioned Glorfindel, what race was he, how awesome was he and what was he to do to help Elrond?

–Tim

A: Well, I think this question (or questions) is best answered with the words of the Professor:

“‘This is Glorfindel, who dwells in the house of Elrond,’ said Strider.

‘Hail, and well met at last!’ said the Elf-lord to Frodo. ‘I was sent from Rivendell to look for you. We feared that you were in danger upon the road.’” [Excerpted from Fellowship.]

So far so good. His race is Elven, and he dwells in the house of Elrond. Moving on:

“‘There are few even in Rivendell that can ride openly against the Nine; but such as there were, Elrond sent out north, west, and south. … It was my lot to take the Road … three of the servants of Sauron were upon the Bridge, but they withdrew and I pursued them westward.’ …

With his last failing senses Frodo heard cries, and it seemed to him that he saw, beyond the Riders that hesitated on the shore, a shining figure of white light; …

‘I thought that I saw a white figure that shone and did not grow dim like the others. Was that Glorfindel then?’

‘Yes, you saw him for a moment as he is upon the other side: one of the mighty of the First-born. He is an Elf-lord of a house of princes.’” [Ibid.]

As for how “awesome” he was, there you have it. He is a mighty Elf-lord with power to intimidate even Black Riders. Gandalf also says of him:

“Caught between fire and water, and seeing an Elf-lord revealed in his wrath, they were dismayed…”[Ibid.]

What was he to do to help Elrond? It seems clear that he obeyed Elrond’s orders, since it was Elrond who ordered riders into the wilderness to search for Frodo. It seems likely that whatever Elrond needed him to do, he would undertake.

–Anwyn

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Q: Who is Tom Bombadil anyway? Is he a Valar, Maia, or something else entirely? Does anyone even really know?

–Namuras

Also:

We have had a few major discussions in Barliman’s about this… Who was eldest–Fangorn or Tom Bombadil? Fangorn is said to be “eldest” in one spot, and Bombadil is known as “oldest” and “fatherless”. The folks at Barliman’s would love your insight on this matter!

–Jincey

A: Tom Bombadil is another really tough person to place and define in the whole scheme of Tolkien’s legendarium. This topic also has been debated for many years. About the best answer one can give, and it is still only a speculation, is that Tom Bombadil was some lesser form of Maia. After all, Tom refers to having been around Arda from very early on– “He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless–before the Dark Lord came from Outside.” And the reference to the Dark Lord must to refer to Morgoth, rather than Sauron. Treebeard’s title as “Eldest” must be some sort of honorific, for he and the Ents as a race seem likely to be slightly younger than Tom Bombadil.

–Turgon

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Q: Who was Aragorn I destroyed by?

–JacenS010

A: Aragorn I was a mighty chieftain of the Dúnedain and a direct descendant of Isildur. He was the Great-great-great-great-great-great- great-great-great-grandfather of Aragorn II (a.k.a. Strider, and later crowned King Elessar in The Return of the King). According to Tolkien’s record, Aragorn I was killed not by a whom but by a what:

“Aragorn I, it is said, was slain by wolves, which ever after remained a peril in Eriador, and are not yet ended.”

Please see his notes in Appendix A; “Annals of the Kings and Rulers” at the very end of the trilogy.

–Quickbeam

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Q: Maybe I misread the Fellowship, but in the scene at the Barrow-Down was Frodo actually wearing the princely white outfit like Merry and Pippin? When he was captured, he immediately looked in his pocket for the Ring. Now why would he search in his pockets for the Ring if he was wearing a different outfit? Also, Frodo said to the other Hobbits that their clothes were probably lost forever. So if Frodo was wearing something else, and the missing clothes were gone for good, wouldn’t the ring be in his old Shire pants and not in his new white outfit? Was Frodo in his normal outfit while the others were dressed up?

–CASH219767

A: I won’t try to quote directly from Fellowship on this, as the passages involved are rather lengthy, so I’ll just paraphrase. The short answer is yes, you did misread just a bit. Here’s the sequence of events:

1. Frodo becomes separated from Sam, Merry, and Pippin in the darkness and fog at the end of the day. He hears cries, his friends calling out for him in distress and alarm, but he cannot find his companions in the dark. So Merry, Sam, and Pippin were captured first.
2. Frodo hears a deep voice coming out of the ground, feels a freezing touch, and falls unconscious.
3. Frodo wakes up in the barrow. He is lying on his back and his hands are on his chest, but this seems to be the only thing the Wight has done with him. There is no mention of his clothes being different.
4. Frodo looks around and sees Sam, Merry, and Pippin all laid together, dressed in white with gold jewelry, with weapons laid at their sides, and across their three necks, “one long naked sword.” [Shiver!]
5. It’s obvious at this point that the other three were captured together in a bunch and dressed up like this, and laid there with spells on them. It becomes apparent later that the spells laid on them to keep them unconscious also gave them dreams in which they were forced to re-enact some of the battles that took place in those lands during the rule of Angmar. You remember that Merry speaks of the attack of the men of Carn Dûm, etc., once they wake up. Frodo was captured later, and laid down with lesser spells upon him and his clothes were not touched. The conclusion that he had fewer or even *no* spells laid upon him is evidenced by the fact that he woke up before the other three, had not been touched except to be brought into the Barrow and laid down, and did not have these dreams about battles.
6. He at first thought of putting on the Ring and trying to escape the Barrow, but decided he could not leave his friends. He hacked off the hand of the Barrow Wight, pitch black instantly fell, and he called for Tom Bombadil, who almost immediately appeared, bringing the walls and ceiling of the Barrow crumbling in, dissipating the Wight, and releasing Merry, Sam, and Pippin from the spell. Merry, Pippin and Sam wake up, look in amazement at the clothes and gold they are wearing, and wonder where their clothes are. Tom tells them that clothes are a small loss for people who escape drowning. JRRT goes on to tell us that Sam, Pippin, and Merry were soon too warm, for they had to put on in place of their clothes some of the heavier garments they’d brought with them to prepare for the winter. It says nothing about Frodo needing to change his clothes.

So there you have it, I hope that helps. The only other question that this brings up for me is: Why didn’t the Barrow-Wight take the Ring?

My only guess is that he was too weak a spirit to use it–he was bound in his Barrow and had no influence outside of it. This is clear from the fact that Tom is easily able to dissipate him as soon as the Barrow is demolished. I think he was too bound to the Barrow to be able to make any use of the Ring, but that’s just speculation for fun on my part.

–Anwyn

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Q: In The Two Towers, Aragorn states that Sauron does not allow his name to be spelt or spoken. So why in The Return of the King does Sauron’s Lieutenant clearly state “I am the Mouth of Sauron?”

–Namuras

Also: Aragorn states (Two Towers, p. 18 hardback) that Sauron never uses the name “Sauron”, nor does he “permit it to be spelt or spoken”. Reconcile this text with the text of Return of the King, p. 164 hardback, where the Lieutenant of Barad-Dûr clearly states, “I am the Mouth of Sauron.”

–Chris Nicholson

A: The passage on p. 18 of The Two Towers (hardcover), after Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas have seen some goblin-soldiers with S-runes on their shields, reads as follows:

‘S is for Sauron,’ said Gimli. ‘That is easy to read.’

‘Nay!’ said Legolas. ‘Sauron does not use the Elf-runes.’

‘Neither does he use his right name, nor permit it to be spelt or spoken,’ said Aragorn.

By implication, it appears that Aragorn is referring to the name ‘Sauron’ as his ‘right name’, but that might not necessarily be the case (Who in fact knows what Sauron’s true name was?). But it may be that Aragorn misstated the case, or misunderstood it slightly. Certainly the lowest of the hierarchy of Mordor were not allowed to speak Sauron’s name, but perhaps those higher-ups in fact were. Or it could be, too, that the “Mouth of Sauron” was speaking his master’s name in a way which the gathered hosts would recognize, or he might have used the name even as a show of pride in his own position as the “Mouth of Sauron.”

–Turgon

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Q: This is in response to your answer concerning the names of the Nazgûl. At the siege of Gondor, after the death of the Witch King, Gothmog leads the army of Sauron. He is described as “the lieutenant of Morgul.” I had always assumed he was a Nazgûl. My question, therefore, is: Of what race was Gothmog if he was not a Nazgûl?

–Balin

A: Sharp eyes and quick wits! My first answer was going to be very short: He was a Balrog. There is ample evidence for this, as it is stated in Lord of the Rings encyclopedias and in excerpts from The Silmarillion that he is a Balrog. But, like any good researcher, I checked another source, and in the index to Sil, it states the following: “Gothmog: Lord of Balrogs, high-captain of Angband, slayer of Feanor, Fingon, and Ecthelion.” Quite a résumé for one very long-lived Balrog, wouldn’t you say? But, reading on in the same source: “(The same name was borne in the Third Age by the Lieutenant of Minas Morgul; The Return of the King V 6.)” Oops! So while my answer was correct, that the *original* Gothmog was a Balrog, the question now becomes: is the Lieutenant of Minas Morgul, who would not seem to be the same spirit, since it makes a point of saying the name was ALSO borne, etc., a Balrog or a Nazgûl? I have to say I’m with you on this one, Balin, that all my reading leads me to believe that Minas Morgul was the Nazzie headquarters, so to speak, and that the Lieutenant would naturally be the second head-honcho Black Rider. So the conclusion is that the name Gothmog applied first to the leader of the Balrogs in the time of the power of Angband, and later to the second-in-command of the Nazgûl, during the War of the Ring.

–Anwyn

Update!

A few eagle-eyed readers have noted a discrepancy between Anwyn’s comment about Gothmog, and my (Turgon’s) comment in an answer from 9/5/99. Technically, Gothmog is described as the “Lieutenant of Morgul,” and this doesn’t tell us whether Gothmog is a Nazgûl, an Orc, or even a Man. Anwyn has interpreted that Gothmog is a Nazgûl. She may be correct, but it is not certain. In any case, a Captain can have more than one Lieutenant, so if Gothmog is a Nazgûl, and Khamul is the second to the Chief, Gothmog could have been the name of another Nazgûl.

- Turgon

Update!

Update! In a question from LONG LONG AGO, in September 1999, I got myself in trouble with the wording of my answer to a question about Gothmog. Because he was called “the Lieutenant of Morgul,” I referred to him as “second in command of the Nazgûl,” and not only got into hot water with lots of readers but into discrepancy with another answer given by Turgon. I wish to set the record straight–I have no clue what his place was within the Nine. I simply mean to say that I believe–and I could be wrong, of course–that Gothmog during the War of the Ring was the Nazgûl who was in charge at the tower of Minas Morgul. Thus he was the “Lieutenant” of that tower–he held it at the pleasure of the boss Nazgûl. I do not mean to imply I believe he is above Khamul in the ranks of the Nine or whatever. Thanks for all those who wrote in, anxious to be sure Khamul got his rightful place! J

- Anwyn

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Q: I was just wondering did they ever explain the origin of hobbits in Middle-earth?

–ThelookATP

A: The records do not seem to say much on this point, other than that the hobbits were more nearly akin to Men than any of the other races of Middle-earth. Though obviously their origins were earlier, they seem to have lived quite unobtrusively in the Vales of the Anduin until early in the Third Age.

–Turgon

Q: Greetings masters of lore. My question deals with the Nazgul. I know of Khamul, but I have not found the names of the other Nazgul. If they had names, what were they as well as who were they prior to their transformation? Furthermore, is there any story about their creation and why Sauron decided to choose them specifically?

-Reginold

A: Khamul seems to be the only named Ringwraith. What we know of him is given in the section “The Hunt for the Ring” in Unfinished Tales (1980). He was second to the Chief, and his name is given as Khamul the Shadow of the East. Some more about the Nazgul, or the Ulairi, can be found in some of the volumes of the History of Middle-earth, particularly in the section “The Story of Frodo and Sam in Mordor” in Sauron Defeated (1992), and in the work on the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings as printed in The Peoples of Middle-earth (1996). But, unfortunately, the histories of the men who became the Nazgul seems nowhere to be specifically illuminated.

-Turgon

Update!

Okay, we’ve had a number of people writing in and saying that all of the Nazgul are named in one of the Middle-earth games. Yup, we know about that. But the truth is that those names were made up by the people who created the game, not by Tolkien, so we don’t view them as authoritative. They’re simply not in Tolkien anywhere!

- Turgon

Update!

A few eagle-eyed readers have noted a discrepancy between my comment above and Anwyn’s comment an answer from 9/12/99. Technically, Gothmog is described as the “Lieutenant of Morgul,” and this doesn’t tell us whether Gothmog is a Nazgûl, an Orc, or even a Man. Anwyn has interpreted that Gothmog is a Nazgûl. She may be correct, but it is not certain. In any case, a Captain can have more than one Lieutenant, so if Gothmog is a Nazgûl, and Khamul is the second to the Chief, Gothmog could have been the name of another Nazgûl.

- Turgon

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Q: In The Hobbit, at the start of the quest, the dwarves believed that Gandalf was going along with them to Mount Doom [sic], 13 dwarves + 1 Gandalf = 14 in the Party; why were they worried about another member….. and if so surely they could’ve found another greedy dwarf?

-John & Tasha Miller

A: Actually, in The Hobbit the ultimate destination was not Mount Doom, but rather the Lonely Mountain, otherwise referred to as Erebor, once the seat of Thrór’s Kingdom in the North. The clearest answer regarding Bilbo’s inclusion with Thorin Oakenshield’s party is found in the pages of Unfinished Tales (1980). Look in Part Three: The Third Age, Section III: “The Quest of Erebor.” Here we learn of a conversation where Gandalf explains to Gimli, Frodo, Pippin & Merry how he had a chance meeting with Thorin many years earlier and learned of the dwarf’s burning desire for revenge. Originally, Gandalf was not impressed with Thorin’s poorly strategized plans of making armies and war against Smaug. He meant to convince him that stealth and secrecy was his best course of action. Gandalf also had other plans of getting rid of the dragon so that Sauron would not use him as an extension of his power. The wizard himself never intended to go along with Thorin’s Quest, but he knew of a certain Hobbit that he thought would be a valuable asset.

“Suddenly in my mind these three things came together: the great Dragon with his lust, and his keen hearing and scent; the sturdy heavy-booted Dwarves with their old burning grudge; and the quick, soft-footed Hobbit, sick at heart (I guessed) for a sight of the wide world.”

The dwarves were very much against adding Bilbo to the party, especially after meeting him in person, and it took a LOT of convincing on Gandalf’s part to get Thorin to yield to his counsel.

“‘Listen to me, Thorin Oakenshield!’ I said. ‘If this hobbit goes with you, you will succeed. If not, you will fail. A foresight is on me, and I am warning you.’”

In the end, a deal was struck where Thorin reluctantly took heed of Gandalf’s urging; allowing Bilbo to accompany them in exchange for Gandalf’s temporary inclusion in the party.

“‘Very well,’ Thorin said at last after a silence. ‘He shall set out with my company, if he dares (which I doubt). But if you insist on burdening me with him, you must come too and look after your darling.’

“‘Good!’ I answered. ‘I will come, and stay with you as long as I can: at least until you have discovered his worth.’”

And so the inspired number of 14 was created at the last possible second. The poor hobbit was “volunteered” because of Gandalf’s unswerving conviction that Bilbo was more important than anyone foresaw, and also because of his exceptional debating skills with Dwarves. Please see Unfinished Tales (1980) for the full account.

-Quickbeam (@quickbeam2000)

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Q: Why did Sauron never come forth himself to do war? Couldn’t he have flattened all of Minas Tirith with one outstretched hand?

-from the Q & A Introduction

A: Perhaps. But perhaps not. Remember that without the Ring, Sauron was not at his full power. When he created the Ring, Tolkien tells us that he allowed “a great part of his own former power [to] pass into it, so that he could rule all the others.” This allotment of power to the Ring seems to have been permanent. This is evidenced by the fact that if he *could* have won the War without the Ring, he would have done so. *With* the Ring, he would have been terrifyingly unstoppable. Without it, he had perhaps half, perhaps as much as two-thirds the power he possessed in the end of the Second Age, when it took *all of the combined power of Elves and Men* to defeat him. I.E. the Last Alliance of Gil-Galad and Elendil, when both races brought out and sacrificed their best to defeat him. When at last he was defeated and the Ring stripped from him, he became crippled as regards the amount of his power. Tolkien seems to imply that he was able to nurse himself back to health somewhat when he states “always after a defeat and a respite, the Shadow takes shape and grows again.” But it is clear that he could never return to full power without the Ring. So the conclusion is that if he could be attacked and defeated by Gil-Galad and Elendil, Elendil’s sons and the Hosts of Gil-Galad *with* the Ring, then perhaps the combined might of Gandalf, Aragorn, the Sons of Elrond, Theoden, Eomer & Eowyn, Denethor’s & Theoden’s armies, and Faramir… could have defeated him *without* it. I think it’s safe to say that if he could have captured Frodo and regained the Ring, we probably would have seen him make some attacks in a more personal way, but it’s as Denethor said: “He will not come save only to triumph over me when all is won. He uses others as his weapons. So do all great lords, if they are wise, Master Halfling. Or why should I sit here in my tower and think, and watch, and wait, spending even my sons?”

-Anwyn

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Q: The Istari are a council of wizards. They number 7 total but we only know about 3 of them, Saruman the White/Many colors, Gandalf the Grey/White, and Radagast the Brown. Each had their own particular abilities and interests. Who are the other 4 and what are their interests/abilities?

-Karl J. Jurek

A: This question has been asked by many visitors to the TheOneRing.Net. As to the Istari, only three seem to play any role in events related to The Lord of the Rings, Saruman the White, Gandalf the Grey, and Radagast the Brown. Saruman’s outburst at Orthanc, when he spoke of ‘the rods of the Five Wizards,’ seems to have been letting out some private information. Nowhere in The Lord of the Rings do we learn anything more about the two other wizards, though Tolkien seems to have considered the question on a few occasions, and come up with a few different theories. Some of Tolkien’s notes on the Istari appear in Unfinished Tales (1980). In one of these passages, apparently written around 1954, Tolkien named the other two as Ithryn Luin, ‘the Blue Wizards,’ who passed into the East and never returned. Some other notes indicate that they were named Alatar and Pallando. To complicate matters, some more notes are published in The Peoples of Middle-earth(1996), in a small section “The Five Wizards” in the section titled “Last Writings.” There Tolkien wrote:

“No names are recorded for the two wizards. They were never seen or known in the lands west of Mordor.” In a still further note, Tolkien wrote: “The ‘other two’ came much earlier, at the same time probably as Glorfindel, when matters became very dangerous in the Second Age. Glorfindel was sent to aid Elrond and was (though not yet said) pre-eminent in the war in Eriador. But the other two Istari were sent for a different purpose. Morinehtar and Romestamo. Darkness-slayer and East-helper. Their task was to circumvent Sauron: to bring help to the few tribes of Men that had rebelled from Melkor-worship, to stir up rebellion…”

These various notes are very interesting, and certainly worth looking up. Plus they give as best an answer as we’ll ever know to questions about the Istari.

-Turgon

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Q: If Samwise hated Bill Ferny so much, (bad enough to waste an apple, by throwing it at him) why then did he name the pony that he bought from Ferny, (the one he loved so much) Bill?

-John & Tasha Miller

A: First of all, your question lies more in the realm of subjective interpretation than it does in hard black & white facts. But my best interpretation is this: If you look closely at the text, Samwise does not actually refer to Bill Ferny as ‘Bill’… it seems he was using the Hobbit-ish practice of referring to an individual by the informal means of last-name-only, ‘Ferny.’ Perhaps because of his contempt for Bill Ferny we never hear Samwise give the courtesy of addressing him by first name. Several chapters later, before the Fellowship makes their departure from Rivendell, Samwise names the pony. Certainly not out of memory of Bill Ferny, but maybe because he was just fond of the name ‘Bill.’

-Quickbeam (@quickbeam2000)

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Q: Why do the Black Riders, though painted as so utterly terrifying, seem to have so little power for actual harm?

-from the Q & A Introduction

A: My answer to this is in two parts: the answer that is indicated by the content, i.e., what is it about the characters that makes them this way, and secondly the fact that it constitutes a literary device that Tolkien used.

Part One: Yes, the Black Riders are terrifying. But what is the main strength of their image? Just that: an image. The tall, black shadow. (Please, don’t anybody jump on the George Lucas/Jar Jar Binks racism bandwagon. I am using “black” here not as a color of a person/creature, but as Darkness, or a Shadow. Evil images, not skin color.) The tall black shadow, towering over smaller creatures, intimidating. Tolkien tells us their weakness flat out. They do not see well, hardly at all, in daylight. Thus they are at the mercy of the black horses for direction and guidance much of the time. They can smell. Well and good, but it takes time to sniff out prey, and as we’ve seen, rescue or help can come in the time it takes to sniff somebody out. The five Black Riders, advancing over the lip of the dell… horrifying image. But what was the main fear? The knife. They had to rely on steel weapons just like the “good guys,” or at least until Frodo succumbed to the temptation of the Ring and became one of them, visible in their world, when they would then be able (presumably) to wrest the Ring from him by force. Again, in Return of the King, we see the Witch-King relying on a weapon, his mace, to kill Eowyn. So when it comes to actual physical combat, they are hampered by their limited daylight vision, and just as reliant upon weapons as any mortal. We’re not talking about Dungeons and Dragons dark mages or dark clerics here, who can cast spells with a single word. No. These are formerly mortal beings who have crossed into the spiritual realm, but are still able to wield a presence in the physical. Personally I think they’re fortunate to be able to wield the influence that they do! Now if Frodo were to put on the Ring, it would be another matter. They got him with the knife when he put it on at Weathertop, and they would have done more had not the others with their flaming brands driven them away. At that point they let them alone not because they couldn’t do more, but because they believed there was no need: the wound would overcome Frodo and all they had to do was follow, and he would fall into their hands. So spiritually, they are a horror to any rational being. Physically, they are hampered, and can be foiled with fire, rushing water, and even by broad daylight.

Part Two: I believe Tolkien deliberately used them this way to create a literary device by which Frodo would have no choice but to continue the journey. Everybody has to have some strong motive for leaving their home and pursuing a Quest. Desire to serve the Good is one motive, but Fear is usually stronger. With these creatures driving behind, Frodo and the gang had no choice but to continue to Rivendell or risk capture and wraith-making at the hands of the Black Riders and the Dark Lord. Since my other answer was so long, I’ll keep to that. I think it’s clear enough.

-Anwyn

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Q: Why do the Eagles never show up until the very last minute?

-from the Q & A Introduction

A: I must confess I stole this question from a friend of mine who was frustrated with The Lord of the Rings because he felt Tolkien used too much of what is known as “deus ex machina.” Basically what this means is that just as soon as we see the hero getting into a situation that looks totally inextricable, something we never knew could be part of the equation swoops in to rescue them! As I understand it, it’s based on an old technique of Greek Theater–when the hero got into trouble, they raised him out of the action in a chair, signifying that the Gods had stepped in to rescue him. Thus, “deus ex machina” or “machine of the gods.” So the Eagles, in three instances, act very much like our chair of the gods. First in the Hobbit, rescuing the party from Wargs and goblins and coming in at the last minute in the Battle of Five Armies, then in The Lord of the Rings, helping to win the battle before the Black Gate, and most importantly, pulling Sam and Frodo out of the lava once their Quest was complete. Not to mention Gwaihir’s little “side trips,” rescuing Gandalf from the pinnacle of Orthanc and bearing him from the top of Silvertine.

Now why is this, that if they were such a force to be reckoned with, that they did not come south and join the armies to begin with? Why would they only offer help when it was dire? Doesn’t it say something about their character that they would hold back until things were desperate?

My answer is, I readily admit, not verifiable in print. I can only offer a hypothesis that fits the facts and let you take it as you will. My opinion is this: they are animals. Talking animals, yes, but animals nonetheless. As such they are not one of the Free Peoples. Now, Tolkien’s use of animals falls into two categories: much beloved servants, such as the horses of the Rohirrim, Shadowfax and Sam’s faithful Bill. Or, they fall into the villainous category, usually in the form of giant spiders (Mirkwood and Shelob) but also the horrible carrion beasts which carried the flying Riders. (Servitude again, but for the other side.) I think the Eagles fall into this category also, kind of an antithesis to the horrible carrion creatures of the Riders. We do not know about the intelligence of these creatures. They may have been speechless animals, but they retained enough intelligence to know a foe (recall the beast “screaming” at Eowyn after she defied the Witch-King). The Eagles retain that much intelligence and much more, so that they can put forth their strength for the use of the Good when they are most needed, but perhaps know they would not fit into the grand scheme of the war as a regular force. I guess they would fall into the category of Special Forces, used as a last resort! But that is my answer, that as animals they are not one of the free peoples and their primary role is service to the Good, *when* it becomes necessary. Even Shadowfax was not in use all the time, and when Gandalf wasn’t riding him, he did not go out to war as a soldier.

-Anwyn

Update!

Well, folks, some readers thought that I was not specific enough with my Eagles answers. There were several people who wrote in to tell me the following information, so I’m only posting a few versions. Thanks to all who wrote to clarify for me!

–Anwyn

The answer to the question of the Eagles lies in The Silmarillion. It is revealed there, that the Eagles and the Ents were both, in a sense, agents of the Valar (of one particular one, in fact, the one associated with nature-was it Yavanna? I’m at work and can’t look it up). They were created after she saw what had been done in the creation of the dwarves. So the Eagles only interfere when the Valar allow, so the deus ex machina is an appropriate analogy indeed. (There are also one or two instances where they interfere in The Silmarillion – one I recall was the rescue of Fingon-I think-from Thangorodrim.)

–Tim Frankovich

As an aside on the subject of the Eagles, and why they are usually late to the fray… Manwe‘ was the Lord and Master of the winds and the creatures of the winds, and so the appearance of the Eagles at the last minute is seen as a form of Divine intervention (the form being the Valar overriding their usual modus operandi and stepping in to influence events in Middle-earth).

–Tony Hillerson

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Q: Did Tolkien ever draw a detailed map of Numenor? If so does anyone out there know where its possible to find one?

-Aaron

A: Tolkien only ever drew one sketch-map of Numenor, and Christopher Tolkien redrew it to appear in Unfinished Tales (1980). It’s facing page one of the Introduction in the Houghton Mifflin hardcover edition.

-Turgon

Update!

Also: For an in-depth look at Numenor and many other fantastic maps of Middle-earth, grab yourself a copy of The Atlas of Middle-earth by Karen Wynn Fonstad. This book has been around for many years, but with Christopher Tolkien’s publication of The History of Middle-earth volumes, many changes were made and a new edition appeared. You’ve never seen anything so comprehensive in your life! Zillions of details from all Four Ages and across all the volumes of Tolkien’s masterworks are represented. Cartography, languages, battles, journeys, and amazing cross-sections of underground cities. I highly recommend it as a companion piece to anything you read by Tolkien, and you’ll never be lost in the woods again! The paperback edition is readily available on Amazon.com.

Welcome to our collection of TORn’s hottest topics for the past week. If you’ve fallen behind on what’s happening on the Message Boards, here’s a great way to catch the highlights. Or if you’re new to TORn and want to enjoy some great conversations, just follow the links to some of our most popular discussions. Watch this space as every weekend we will spotlight the most popular buzz on TORn’s Message Boards. Everyone is welcome, so come on in and join in the fun!

Every week on the Main Discussion Board, poster Roheryn shares a game she creates from Tolkien’s works.  We’ve been having fun playing SAST (Short Attention Span Theatre) from The Hobbit.  Come join the fun here.

In the Reading Room, posters are still discussing The Silmarillion.  They’re well into Chapter 12, “Of Men”. If you’ve ever wanted to delve into The Sil, but you weren’t sure you wanted to tackle the enormity of this deep Middle-earth history, the Reading Room is the perfect way to start.  Join them with Chapter 12 Part 1 and Part 2.

In Lord of the Rings Movie Discussion Board, we never get tired of sharing our favourite quotes from J.R.R. Tolkien’s works.  Stop by and let us know what yours are.

   There was a thunderous round of applause on the Feedback Discussion Board when Admin and long-time poster dernwyn pointed out that there are now banner circle pictures from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey mixed with the LotR pics!  For those who haven’t visited the Boards, you really must go take a peek.  When you read posts or visit the main pages of each Discussion Board, take a look in the upper left-hand corner of your screen.  Up until now, there have been pics from The Lord of the Rings.  Check out The Hobbit pics here.  For those of us who live on the Discussion Boards, this is Awesome!!

   Want Hobbit Movie News? Each week, TORN poster DanielLB ventures into the very rich and fast-moving Hobbit Discussion Board to collect the Hobbit Headlines of the Week.  Check out this week’s action here.

   We’ll share more topics next week and hope you can join in on the conversation!  Don’t forget, TheOneRing.net’s Message Boards have over 9,600 registered Tolkien fans, just like you.  Let your voice be heard!

You know the story of the mythological Greek king, Sisyphus, right?

For those who don’t recall, Sisyphus was just too crafty for his own good. So the Greek gods, never tolerant of being made to look foolish, designed for him the most frustrating of punishments: Sisyphus was compelled to roll a huge boulder up a steep hill. Just before he could reach the top, it would roll back down, forcing him to begin all over again.

Consistency and canon in Tolkien always feels a bit like that — something that hovers just out our of reach. More, the harder you push for it, the more it slips away from you.

The answer you seek isn’t in quite The Lord of the Rings, so you start examining what Tolkien wrote in the published Silmarillion. But that’s still too vague, so you delve into Unfinished Tales or the History of Middle Earth. You might find some hints, but they’re at best fragmentary, or worse, the stories offer conflicting information!

Of course, as humans we feel compelled to seek consistency and place things within a coherent framework — a framework that does not always exist.

Which is why people twist themselves into knots of logic to try and make sense of conflicting evidence of whether Balrogs do or do not have wings.

Or whether Galadriel departed Valinor with Feanor’s rebels, or — as Tolkien later preferred but never integrated into the Quenta Silmarillion texts — left independently but at the same time.

Or… well, I could go on, but I’m sure you get the idea.

Tolkien canon has a natural limit…

The fact is that no matter how hard you work at it, no matter how many resources you consult, there’s a limit to how consistent you can make canon. For some things in Arda, there is simply no single, definitive answer.

My take is that this inevitable inconsistency is not not only not necessarily bad, but actually a good thing. This may seem counter-intuitive, but I believe the uncertainty about “factual truth” works to increase our investment in the story.

Why? It makes us ask questions and discuss what “really” happened. We question and discuss not in the hope of a definitive answer, but as a means of discussing alternatives hypotheses.

It’s worth considering that history — or more precisely — our knowledge of it, is messy and fractured. And the further one tries to delve into history, the more fragmentary and conflicting this knowledge tends to become.

This is self-evident. Oral traditions fail; records are lost, destroyed.

The fractured, incomplete and contradictory nature of Tolkien’s legendarium mirrors this — and this is one of the keys to its deep verisimilitude.

It helps make it more believable, not less.

Just think how many ancient records of the Edain would have been lost in the Akallabeth when Numenor sank beneath the waves. Consider how many more would have been lost in the sack of Ost-in-Edhil by Sauron, in the destruction of Osgiliath during Gondor’s terrible kin-strife, and in the decades when Arnor dissolved under the twin influence of internal strife and the assaults of Angmar. More — much more — was lost than just the Palantiri, I fancy.

“…the assaults were driven back; and when the Shadow passed, Celeborn came forth and led the host of Lórien over Anduin in many boats. They took Dol Guldur, and Galadriel threw down its walls and laid bare its pits, and the forest was cleansed.” Appendix B, Lord of the Rings.

That last sentence has often puzzled; people wonder exactly how Galadriel might have accomplished such a task. More, why is she doing now what ought to have been accomplished when the White Council drove Sauron from Dol Guldur years before?

The parallels with Luthien’s destruction of Tol-in-Gaurhoth

Conveniently, the tale of Beren and Lúthien offers some guidance: after Lúthien rescues Beren from the captivity of Sauron at Tol-in-Gaurhoth, she puts forth her power to accomplish exactly the same feat.

“Then Lúthien stood upon the bridge, and declared her power: and the spell was loosed that bound stone to stone, and the gates were thrown down, and the walls opened, and the pits laid bare; and many thralls and captives came forth in wonder and dismay, shielding their eyes against the pale moon light, for they had lain long in the darkness of Sauron.” Of Beren and Lúthien, The Silmarillion.

The trick is that in this instance Lúthien’s power derives from the mastery of the tower that she had just wrenched from the defeated Sauron.

Christopher Tolkien confirms as much in his commentary on the Tale of Tinúviel in the second Book of Lost Tales. CJRT draws a clear thread from the Silmarillion version back to the proto-tale which describes how Tinúviel and Huan, the Captain of Dogs, extract from Tevildo the Lord of Cats (a kind of proto-Sauron) the words of magic that bind the stones of Tevildo’s tower together. Tinúviel then uses these words to reduce the fortress to rubble.

“So it was that in the end that weariness and hunger and fear prevailed upon that proud cat, a prince in the service of Melko, to reveal … the spell that Melko had entrusted to him; and those were the words of magic whereby the stones of his evil house were held together.” The Book of Lost Tales Volume II, The Tale of Tinúviel.

CJRT also adds:

“…since my father did not actually say there (in the Silmarillion) that Sauron told Lúthien what the words were, only that he ‘yielded himself’, one may miss the significance of what happened”. The Book of Lost Tales Volume II, The Tale of Tinúviel.

Following this line of logic, I believe it’s not entirely out of the question that in defeating the forces of Dol Guldur, Galadriel compelled a similar mastery from Sauron’s chosen lieutenant. Then, with the secrets of Dol Guldur in hand, she was able to destroy it in a way that the White council was unable to accomplish in TA 2941.

APRIL FOOLS

Global leader in high-quality family entertainment agrees to acquire world-renowned Middle-earth Enterprises, including THE LORD OF THE RINGS and THE HOBBIT franchises.

Acquisition continues Disney’s strategic focus on creating and monetizing the world’s best branded content, innovative technology and global growth to drive long-term shareholder value.

Middle-earth Enterprises to join company’s global portfolio of world class brands including Disney, ESPN, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and ABC.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: RETURN TO MIDDLE-EARTH feature animated  film targeted for release in 2016.

Burbank, CA and Berkeley, CA, April 1, 2013 – Continuing its strategy of delivering exceptional creative content to audiences around the world, The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) has agreed to acquire Middle-earth Enterprises in a stock and cash transaction. Middle-earth Enterprises, formerly known as Tolkien Enterprises, is a division of The Saul Zaentz Company, headquartered in Berkeley, California.

Under the terms of the agreement, the transaction value is $10 billion (US). The final consideration will be subject to customary post-closing balance sheet adjustments.

“Middle-earth Enterprises reflects the extraordinary passion, vision, and storytelling of JRR Tolkien, the greatest author of the 20th century,” said Robert A. Iger, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Disney Company. “This transaction combines a world-class portfolio of content, with Disney’s unique and unparalleled creativity across multiple platforms, businesses, and markets to generate sustained growth and drive significant long-term value.”

Middle-earth Enterprises owns exclusive worldwide rights to motion picture, merchandising, stage and other rights on certain literary works of J.R.R. Tolkien including The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, which are currently licensed to Warner Brothers Entertainment, Inc.  The Saul Zaentz Company evolved from Fantasy Records in Berkeley, California, the largest jazz label in the world. In 1972 Saul Zaentz and his Fantasy partners ventured into feature film, producing “Payday” starring Rip Torn. This was followed in 1975 with “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” directed by Milos Forman and co-produced with Michael Douglas, which won five Academy Awards including Best Picture. Zaentz produced “Three Warriors” in 1977 and the animated “The Lord of the Rings” in 1978.

“For the past 35 years, one of my greatest pleasures has been to see The Lord of the Rings passed from one generation to the next,” said Saul Zaentz, owner of The Saul Zaentz Company. “It’s now time for Middle –earth to move into new mediums. I’ve always believed that Middle-earth could live beyond movies, and I thought it was important to set up the transition during my lifetime. I’m confident that with Middle-earth Enterprises having a new home within the Disney organization, Middle-earth will certainly live on and flourish for many generations to come. Disney’s reach and experience give Middle-earth Enterprises the opportunity to blaze new trails in film, television, interactive media, theme parks, live entertainment, and consumer products.”

Under the deal, Disney will acquire ownership of Middle-earth Enterprises, a leader in entertainment and innovation.  After completion of the three Hobbit movies currently under license to Warner Brothers Entertainment, Inc., the deal applies to all future operating businesses in live action film production, consumer products, animation, visual effects, and audio post production. Middle-earth Enterprises, formerly known as Tolkien Enterprises,  is a division of The Saul Zaentz Company, headquartered in Berkeley, California, and the present intent is for Middle-earth Enterprises employees to remain in their current locations.

Philippa Boyens, Academy-Award winner for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, and screenwriter for the current Hobbit movies, will become President of Middle-earth Enterprises, reporting to Walt Disney Studios Chairman Alan Horn. Additionally she will serve as the brand manager for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, working directly with Disney’s global lines of business to build, further integrate, and maximize the value of this global franchise. Ms. Boyens will serve as executive producer on new Lord of the Rings and Hobbit feature films, with Peter Jackson serving as creative consultant. The Lord of the Rings: Return to Middle-earth is targeted for release in 2016, with more feature films expected to continue the Middle-earth saga and grow the franchise well into the future.

“Pixar is especially excited about combining the genius of JRR Tolkien and our animators. We’ve wanted to get our hands on Tom Bombadil’s yellow boots and bright blue jacket for ages,” enthused Ed Catmull, president of Pixar, a division of Disney.  “From the early poems to the Old Forest I hope to bring Tom to life for a new generation of Middle-earth fans. I’m particularly interested in bringing ‘Bombadil goes Boating’ to the big screen.”

The acquisition combines two highly compatible family entertainment brands, and creates a synergistic relationship between them that will also include integration of Middle-earth content into Disney theme parks in Anaheim, Orlando, Paris and Tokyo.

Driven by a tremendously talented creative team, the legendary Lord of the Rings franchise has flourished for more than 35 years, capped by 17 Academy Award and offers a virtually limitless universe of characters and stories to drive continued feature film releases and franchise growth over the long term. The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit resonate with consumers around the world and create extensive opportunities for Disney to deliver the content across its diverse portfolio of businesses including movies, television, consumer products, games and theme parks. The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit feature films have earned billions in global box office receipts to date, and continued global demand has propelled The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit among the world’s top product brands, and Middle-earth Enterprises as a leading product licensor. The franchise provides a sustainable source of high quality, branded content with global appeal and is well suited for new business models including digital platforms, putting the acquisition in strong alignment with Disney’s strategic priorities for continued long-term growth.

The Middle-earth Enterprises acquisition follows Disney’s very successful acquisitions of Lucasfilm, Pixar and Marvel, which demonstrated the company’s unique ability to fully develop and expand the financial potential of high quality creative content with compelling characters and storytelling through the application of innovative technology and multiplatform distribution on a truly global basis to create maximum value. Adding Middle-earth Enterprises to Disney’s portfolio of world class brands significantly enhances the company’s ability to serve consumers with a broad variety of the world’s highest-quality content and to create additional long-term value for our shareholders.

Continuing this strategy, Disney has also acquired the popular Tolkien community, TheOneRing.net (The One Ring, Inc. ) for $65 million. “We can all finally take a long vacation. It has always been our intent to profit from this community, and now we can’t wait to pass the torch over to such a well run corporate entity like Disney,” co-owner and founder Charwen Moonbeam says from his new estate on the private island of Charwenia. “We just know installments of ‘Bilbo Baggins Clubhouse’ will be a real winner with fans!” Staffer Entmaiden adds, “Hope you enjoyed our little April Fools folks!”

Edited by the Professor’s son, Christopher, the publication also includes “three illuminating essays that explore the literary world of King Arthur, reveal the deeper meaning of the verses and the painstaking work that his father applied to bring it to a finished form, and the intriguing links between The Fall of Arthur and his greatest creation, Middle-earth.”

But while we all wait, I thought people might enjoy this interesting speculation about what The Fall of Arthur might hold for us that I stumbled across over on Tolkien Library.

THE EXISTENCE of The Fall of Arthur has been known since the publication of Humphrey Carpenter’s biography of JRR Tolkien. Carpenter devoted a paragraph to the work, and uniquely, he actually quoted from it – five-and-a-half lines of alliterative verse. Given the level of interest in The Silmarillion when Carpenter was writing, and the total concentration on the canonical ‘Middle-earth’ works in the published Letters, to have that much information about anything else in the biography surely indicates that it was of importance to JRR Tolkien himself. It’s well worth quoting here what Carpenter had to say about The Fall of Arthur:

‘Another major poem from this period has alliteration but no rhyme. This is ‘The Fall of Arthur’, Tolkien’s only imaginative incursion into the Arthurian cycle, whose legends had pleased him since childhood, but which he found ‘too lavish, and fantastical, incoherent and repetitive’.

Arthurian stories were also unsatisfactory to him as myth in that they explicitly contained the Christian religion. In his own Arthurian poem he did not touch on the Grail but began an individual rendering of the Morte d’Arthur, in which the king and Gawain go to war in ‘Saxon lands’ but are summoned home by news of Mordred’s treachery.

The poem was never finished, but it was read and approved by E.V. Gordon, and by R.W. Chambers, Professor of English at London University, who considered it to be ‘great stuff – really heroic, quite apart from its value as showing how the Beowulf metre can be used in modern English’. It is also interesting in that it is one of the few pieces of writing in which Tolkien deals explicitly with sexual passion, describing Mordred’s unsated lust for Guinever (which is how Tolkien chooses to spell her name):

His bed was barren; there black phantoms
of desire unsated and savage fury
in his brain had brooded till bleak morning

But Tolkien’s Guinever is not the tragic heroine beloved by most Arthurian writers; instead she is described as

lady ruthless
fair as fay-woman and fell-minded
in the world walking for the woe of men.

[Read More]

Christopher Tolkien

Often, when a lengthy discussion of the Hobbit films takes place, someone asks “What about the other books? What about material from The Silmarillion, or Unfinished Tales? Will these be adapted to the big screen?”

The answer to this question is a simple one. As it stands, the literary executor of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work, his son, Christopher Tolkien, has refused to consider any further licensing of his father’s work for cinematic purposes.

Many fans are quite frustrated by this state of affairs. They know there is interesting material contained in these other sources, such as the well-known “Quest for Erebor.” That one short work alone would illuminate in key ways the motivations and decisions of principal characters in the films. (For the curious, the Quest for Erebor may be found in a shortened form in “Unfinished Tales”, and in a fuller form in the revised edition of Douglas Anderson’s “Annotated Hobbit.”)

None of this material is available to Peter Jackson’s production crew. Indeed, they must be quite careful to avoid any reference to these works, lest they are accused of using material that is beyond their access. One could even consider Gandalf’s scripted comment concerning the names of the two blue wizards as a nod to this ‘forbidden knowledge’ – in the film, Gandalf says their names are lost to him, when Tolkien knew the answers, and provided them in Unfinished Tales (Alatar and Pallando).

Movie buffs want to see the best possible Hobbit films, and they feel this untouchable material would have been valuable to the production. Further, they wish to one day experience part or all of The Silmarillion on the silver screen. In their eyes, this could all happen if Christopher Tolkien would just let up, and sell the rights.

Of courses, wishes aren’t horses in the world of intellectual property and copyright law. Christopher is the literary executor, and his decision stands. We have no legal right to complain.

But as fans, we don’t stop there! We want to know if Christopher is making the correct decision; we want know if it one we can or should support as the best decision; and we want to even voice an opinion as to whether we think Christopher has the ethical right to make the call (even though he, again, has full legal right.)

J.R.R Tolkien and son Christopher Tolkien

Let’s first ask: Is Christopher fit to be deciding the fate of his father’s work? Did his father make the right choice in naming him the executor?

Absolutely, the answer is yes. With the possible exception of Rayner Unwin, who enabled the publication of The Hobbit, and supported Tolkien’s work and maintained a friendship with him from the age of ten until his death, there has been no bigger fan of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work than his son Christopher. The son’s name is known to us primarily because he has provided many more pages of his father’s writing than anyone else. We would not have The Quest for Erebor or The Silmarillion as something we want filmed if it weren’t for Christopher’s efforts at getting these posthumous works published in the first place. He also brought us Unfinished Tales, allowed the publication of his father’s letters, gave us the twelve volume History of Middle-earth, the Children of Hurin, and so much more. It’s impossible to overstate the importance of Christopher’s contributions to the world of Tolkien. So J.R.R. Tolkien clearly chose the correct literary executor; he couldn’t have asked for a better steward of his work.

Now that we’ve established Christopher as a true fan, can we trust him to know his father’s wishes in this matter? After all, many children do not maintain closeness to their father. How about Christopher?

Tolkien’s letters show us that father and son maintained a close relationship throughout their shared Earthly existence. Christopher loved his father’s writings. As a young child, he sat with his father, who would read his writings to him. In the military, he read and reviewed chapters of the then-in-progress Lord of the Rings. He made many versions of the Middle-earth maps we love so well. We can see he loves his father’s work, and supported it. It’s extremely unlikely that he is not aware of whether or not his father wanted films to be made of his work. Christopher may not be honoring those wishes, but it’s difficult to believe that he has no inkling of his father’s wishes in this matter, as it came up during his lifetime.

That’s settled, so next, do we have any independent evidence ourselves as to what the father would have wanted done with his work?

Unfortunately, we don’t have much available to us to answer this question. In 1981′s “The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien”, in letter 202 he states “Stanley U(nwin) and I have agreed on our policy: Art or Cash. Either very profitable terms indeed; or absolute author’s veto on objectionable features or alteration.” This shows a balanced viewpoint: He loves his work, but he knows it can be a tool to provide income, and he is willing to use that tool. However, letter 207 provides a hint of regret that this trade-off must be considered. “I feel very unhappy about the extreme silliness and incompetence of Z(immerman) and his complete lack of respect for the original… But I need, and shall soon need very much indeed, money… so that I shall endeavor to restrain myself, and avoid all avoidable offence.”

We are left uncertain. Tolkien is willing to have his work filmed, but perhaps he was only willing to consider this because he desperately needed the money. So we can’t decide this for ourselves. We are left right at the beginning – still wondering if Christopher is doing the right thing. Well, let’s finally hear what he has to say! What does he have to say about the world of Tolkien?

In an interview given in Le Monde on July 9, 2012 (translated), he makes his views clear. He commented on the films themselves, but a more general quote on the legacy of commercialization is more pertinent to our inquiry:

“Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed into the absurdity of our time. The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has overwhelmed me. The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away.”

He is hardly mincing words, and some, even many (including myself), would say his words go too far. In an attempt to paint a single-toned picture, create a fully consistent view, he loses any subtlety and with it, a bit of validity. I would never have discovered the world of Tolkien without that ‘monster’ crossing my path in a 1973 holiday display at a local bookstore. This website, first made for the production of the films, has places devoted to discussing Tolkien’s work, and has created a community for discussion of the books that would not have existed but for this ‘cultural monster’.

So where does this leave us? After all this, we are still right at the beginning – wondering if Christopher is doing the right thing. This is why debate on this topic has continued to rage, instead of quickly settling. Many of us want more Tolkien on film. We aren’t going to get more, because Christopher won’t let us have any, and we aren’t sure what J.R.R. Tolkien would have done. Christopher has the legal right to make the call, is a good choice to be the one making the call, knows his father’s wishes better than anyone, but can we and should we support the decision?

Let’s do a thought experiment and try to guess why Christopher might have made the decision he has made, and see if we can empathize with it, and from that, support it. To do this, we can only look at his words and actions; we don’t know his intent. His words show his concern is over popular culture “reducing the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing”, and his actions show he has devoted his life to exposing his father’s written word to the world.
It’s clear to us that Christopher thinks his father’s work conveys something vital. He wants us to see what’s so inspiring about those words. I believe, that to his viewpoint, based on his experience over the decades, the more that work is filtered through the imperfect lens of adaptation, and becomes fodder for the grist-mill of popular culture, the further it gets from the purity of its source material. To Christopher, that’s a shame – he must “turn his head away.” When people get their Tolkien only from the films, or plays, or role-playing games, or other adaptations, they are missing the true value of his father’s work. Christopher has devoted much of his life to combating this problem.  To quote Galadriel, “Through the ages of the world we have fought the long defeat.” That’s what I think Christopher is doing – fighting what he sees as the long defeat – wherever he can, not only publishing as much of his father’s work as he can, but preventing further erosion of his father’s written word by simply not allowing further adaptations to take place. All this is speculation, but to me it’s reasonable.

At the end of the day, I do not know, but believe, that Christopher simply wants others to read what his father wrote.

By keeping much of what was written from the movie theater, if you want to read about Gandalf’s origins – you have to go to your bookshelf, you can’t fast forward to that on a DVD. If you want to find out just who Morgoth was, and why all of Middle-earth was considered his ring, you will have to go to your local library and check out some of the History of Middle-earth; you can’t skip to that chapter on Netflix. And with that bit of effort, borne out of wanting to find out more, you will transform yourself from a movie-watcher to someone who has directly discovered the true joy and depth of Tolkien’s world that only his writing can provide. Maybe there will be a day in the future when Tolkien is regularly taught in schools, so everyone knows what he has provided to us.  But “it is not this day.” This day, it helps to keep having reasons to go to the books; to have some parts of Tolkien’s world beyond the reach of any adaptation at all. Christopher is uniquely empowered to force us to go to the books, and, while I want more Tolkien on film, I can empathize with his. In addition, because I love the books so much, I find myself supporting his decision. (For the most part, as I think Quest for Erebor could have been licensed.). I hope, after reading all this, that you can support his decision as well.

Both film and book have brought so many joy. I believe we should celebrate the existence of both. Thank you, Peter Jackson, for creating the films, introducing so many to Tolkien’s world. And thank you, Christopher Tolkien, for making sure all of us still have plenty of reasons to go back to the books, where a deeper joy awaits.

- JPB

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JPB is a computer programmer who likes Tolkien – how rare is that! He has been a fan of the Professor’s work since having a boxed set recommended to him by a clerk at a bookstore he was visiting with his mother at age 12. He wishes he could somehow thank that clerk, and also the person who put Tolkien’s artwork on the box, as his mother agreed to the purchase largely because the Elvish heraldic devices against the red background ‘looked so nice.’

In the latest edition of Total Film Magazine, James McAvoy reveals he would like to play a younger Gandalf if a prequel was ever made. (Before getting too excited – or not – Christopher Tolkien is pretty adamant he would never sell the film rights to the Silmarillion.)

From TotalFilm.com:

“I’d like to play Gandalf,” he told us, laughing.

‘Gandalf: Origins’, we offer? “It’s called The Silmarillion! It’s a collection of poems and songs that chart the ancient history of Middle-earth. My true geek is coming to the fore, but they’re really, really beautiful stories.

“In part of that is the genesis of Gandalf, or Mithrandir, or Stormcrow, or any of his many, many names. Anyway, maybe that’s the one!”

Would McAvoy make a good Gandalf? Do you think the Silmarillion rights will ever be sold? Tell us what you think below! [TotalFilm.com]

Yet those fans who went on to immerse themselves in J.R.R. Tolkien’s wider lore will find inspiration. For the most part, director Peter Jackson does not exercise an extra heaping of artistic license. Rather, Jackson—reportedly something of a nerd himself—borrows from the larger Tolkien literature to create a rich Hobbit tableau.

“Jackson knows the lore pretty well and wanted to bring that larger material in there wherever he could,” said Michael Drout, an English professor at Wheaton College who founded the academic journal Tolkien Studies and edited the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia. It’s this so-called textuality—or texts behind texts behind other texts—that lends Tolkien’s work the air of reality, he said, and which Jackson seeks to capture in his films.

Jackson isn’t free to tap into any detail he wants from Tolkien’s wider works, however. “He had a very difficult task in that the movie rights extend only to The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings,” said John Rateliff, an independent Tolkien scholar and author of The History of the Hobbit. “He’s well aware that there’s a great deal more material set in that world, but contractually not allowed to use that material in the movies.”

[Read More]

Barrister-turned-novelist Simon Tolkien said the unstoppable success of the film adaptations of his grandfather’s classic Lord of the Rings trilogy caused a bitter feud within his family.

Mr Tolkien said the problems led to an ‘incredibly, dreadfully painful’ feud with his father Christoper.

The 53-year-old author of The Stepmother and the Inspector Trave trilogy said ‘nothing could prepare’ his family for the release of the films, which he said was like being ‘hit by a juggernaut’.

He said the success of the films, which grossed almost $3 billion worldwide, made him feel as if he had ‘disappeared’.

He told The Sunday Times: ‘It was like being hit by a juggernaut. One minute, I was Simon Tolkien, a barrister from London. The next, I was JRR Tolkien’s grandson. This might sound strange, but I began to lose sight of who I was. It was as if I — me, Simon — had disappeared. I felt suffocated.’

It was reported at the time that the family row stemmed from Mr Tolkien’s willingness to cooperate with director Peter Jackson despite opposition from the rest of the estate. However this was later denied.

Mr Tolkien said: ‘Maybe some people assumed it was about money…I don’t know.

‘In hindsight, I think all of my anger was being driven by this feeling that I was trapped. All I ever was going to be was the grandson of a very famous writer. That was the sum total of my achievements.’

He and his father have since managed to reconcile their differences and he even dedicated his latest book to his father. He said: ‘I guess I feel lucky that I got the chance to put things right with my dad.

[Read more]