This Saturday at 6pm EDT, Hall of Fire journeys to the hidden Gondorian fastness of Henneth Annûn with Frodo and Sam as we resume our Lord of the Rings chapter chats.
There, safe from the forces The Dark Lord, Captain Faramir tries to untangle the riddle of the strange halflings that have chanced into his territory, while Frodo and Sam attempt to keep their mission, and the true nature of Isildur’s Bane, secret.
Faramir smiled grimly. `Then you would grieve to learn that Boromir is dead? ‘
‘I would grieve indeed,’ said Frodo. Then catching the look in Faramir’s eyes, he faltered. ‘Dead?’ he said. ‘Do you mean that he is dead, and that you knew it? You have been trying to trap me in words, playing with me? Or are you now trying to snare me with a falsehood?’
Glaurung the dragon, one of the chief weapons Morogth used to defeat the Eldar in Beleriand. Artwork: John Howe. In this new TORn library piece, guest writer Dr Timothy Furnish explores dragons and dragon-slaying in the Tolkien-verse. Are there reasons why only Men slay dragons in the world of Arda, and not elves or dwarves? Read on and find out!
Why did Tolkien imagine only men killing dragons?
by Dr Timothy Furnish, PhD.
Dragons were very important to J.R.R. Tolkien, who acknowledged that his very first attempt at fiction-writing, when he was seven, centered around a “great green dragon.”[1]
In his seminal work Beowulf: the Monster and the Critics, Tolkien noted that in myth “there are… many heroes but very few good dragons.”[2] And in On Fairy Stories he confessed that he “desired dragons with a profound desire.”[3]Continue reading “Why did Tolkien imagine only Men killing dragons?”
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
You’ve undoubtedly heard that that Peter Jackson will be hosting a simultaneous world-wide LIVE Fan Event in a eleven different cities to celebrate the forthcoming release of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.
Everyone around the world will be able to watch the LIVE stream of the Q&A on the web at The Hobbit on Youtube. So don’t panic!
However, if you live close enough, you may be able to attend an event at your local theater!
Can’t wait until The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Extended Edition is released on DVD and Blu-ray November 4th? Can’t download it on iTunes? Want to know exactly what those 13 minutes of extra footage are going to reveal? Well, wait no more! We have a detailed list of each extended scene, as well as a few screencaps for good measure. Warning: SPOILERS AHEAD!
04:10: Additional footage of Thranduil at Erebor. (Bilbo’s voiceover): “All would pay homage to him, even the great elven King Thranduil… (new) As the great wealth of the dwarves grew, their store of good will ran thin. No one knows exactly what began the rift. The elves say the dwarves stole their treasure. The dwarves tell another tale. They say the Elven king refused to give them their rightful pay. It is sad, Frodo, how old alliances can be broken, how friendships between peoples can be lost. And for what?” Continue reading “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Extended Edition Scene Guide”
Time is running out to submit your story for this months Rewrite Tolkien contest, featuring characters from The Hobbit in the style of Edgar Allan Poe. Contest deadline is Monday, October 28th at 12:00pm (noon), Eastern Standard Time. The winner will have their story read live on the first TORn Tuesday of November. Please read the submission guidelines here and good luck!
Humphrey Carpenter’s excellent biography, Tolkien, was published way back in 1977, and it is still considered the best of its kind. I remember reading it shortly after it came out and learning that in 1911, when Tolkien was a young man of 19, he formed part of a group taking a walking tour in the Swiss Alps. It was his first and only experience of really large mountains, and as he later made clear in several of his letters, the experience inspired the mountain landscapes in his Middle-earth writings.
At the time, I vaguely thought it would be wonderful to take a tour of the places Tolkien and his companions visited, to see exactly what had fired his imagination. Over the years that vague thought occasionally resurfaced, but I never imagined that I would actually be able to do it. Not until December 1, 2012, when TheOneRing.net posted an announcement that there was to be a tour based on that idea: “In the Footsteps of Tolkien.” Continue reading “In Tolkien’s Real Misty Mountains”
This Saturday at 6pm EDT, Hall of Fire journeys to the hidden Gondorian fastness of Henneth Annûn with Frodo and Sam as we resume our Lord of the Rings chapter chats. 
You’ve undoubtedly heard that that Peter Jackson will be hosting a simultaneous world-wide 
