The landlady of  The Hobbit pub in Portswood is raising money to help pay legal fees as wrangling over the small print of a deal made over copyright with Hollywood’s Saul Zaentz Company (SZC) continues.

Pub landlady Stella Roberts said she could not discuss the negotiations as she had signed a confidentiality agreement but said “We are very frustrated. We’re living in limbo here. We just want the whole thing finished. We just don’t know what to do. We’ve been advised to carry on trading as we were, because we haven’t got a lot of choice.”

A letter from SZC in March had asked the pub to remove all JRR Tolkien branding. The company later agreed to license Tolkien brands in order to resolve the dispute over the pub’s name.

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During the San Diego Comic-con Andy Serkis spoke extensively about his portrayal of the character Gollum. In doing so, he made some startlingly specific comments about the character’s age.

Here, TORn guest writer Elpidha Lirgalad examines the implications, and reaches some very interesting conclusions about what it could mean for the Hobbit trilogy. These views are her own, and do not necessarily represent those of TheOneRing.net or its staff.

WARNING: Spoilers and speculation!

How old is PJ’s Gollum? And what could that mean?

A guest post by Elpidha Lirgalad

Ever since the release of Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring in 2001, some eagle-eyed fans have been asking why it appears that no time passes at all between Bilbo’s 111th birthday party and Frodo’s departure from the Shire. Continue reading “Greenbooks guest post: how old is PJ’s Gollum?”

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The International Astronomical Union (IAU) recently approved a proposal to assign names to nine impact craters on the planet Mercury.

What does this have to do with Tolkien fandom? Well, in keeping with the established naming theme for craters on Mercury, they are all named after famous deceased artists, musicians, or authors or other contributors to the humanities. One of the craters has been named in honour of JRR Tolkien.

The IAU has been the arbiter of planetary and satellite nomenclature since its inception in 1919.

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Parma Eldalamberon (The Book of Elven-tongues) is a journal of the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship, a special interest group of the Mythopoeic Society. This new issue presents previously unpublished writings by J. R. R. Tolkien about an early version of one of his invented scripts, edited and annotated by Arden R. Smith, under the guidance of Christopher Tolkien and with the permission of the Tolkien Estate.

The Qenya Alphabet is an edition of Tolkien’s charts and notes dealing with the circa-1931 version of the writing-system later called Fëanorian Tengwar. It includes 40 documents in which Tolkien’s examples of the scripts are reproduced using electronic scans of black-and-white photocopies of the original manuscripts. Continue reading “New Eldalamberon from Elven Linguistic Fellowship”

Novelist Helen Cross, who herself lives in Birmingham, uncovers the story of the young J.R.R. Tolkien, falling in love with Edith Bratt. Their relationship was the inspiration for the love story of Beren and Luthien at the heart of The Silmarillion.

Listen to Cross in this BBC radio program broadcast just last weekend as she visits key locations in Birmingham, Cheltenham and Oxford, and tells the story of Tolkien’s young life and the love story at the heart of it. NB: you may have to be in the UK to listen to this. Thanks to Ringer David for the tip.

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Ringer Lissuin provides a translation of the Aftonbladet article about the self-sufficient Hobbit village planned for Stockholm in Sweden.

You’ll soon be able to live like a Hobbit — in Sweden

An entire village from The Lord of the Rings is going to be built — on Musk Island. Soon you’ll be able to live like Bilbo in Stockholm’s archipelago. The Lord of the Rings village will entice stressed-out city dwellers to live under the ground. Continue reading “Translation: Swedes plan self-sufficient Hobbit village”