England in Middle-earth

England and Englishness are represented in multiple forms within J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth writings; it appears, more or less thinly disguised, in the form of the Shire and the lands close to it; in kindly characters such as Treebeard, Faramir, and Théoden; in its industrialised state as Isengard and Mordor; and as Anglo-Saxon England in Rohan. Lastly, and most pervasively, Englishness appears in the words and behaviour of the hobbits, both in The Hobbit and in The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien has often been supposed to have spoken of wishing to create "a mythology for England"; though it seems he never used the actual phrase, various commentators have found it appropriate as a description of much of his approach in creating Middle-earth, and the legendarium that lies behind The Silmarillion. His desire to create a national mythology echoed similar attempts in countries across Europe, especially Elias Lönnrot's creation of the Kalevala in Finland.

England

An English Shire

Further information: The Shire and The Scouring of the Shire

 

Sketch map of the Shire

England and Englishness appear in Middle-earth, more or less thinly disguised, in the form of the Shire and the lands close to it, including Bree and Tom Bombadil's domain of the Old Forest and the Barrow-downs.^[1] In England, a shire is a rural administrative region, a county. Brian Rosebury likens the Shire to Tolkien's childhood home in Worcestershire in England's West Midlands in the 1890s:^[2]

Sarehole, with its nearby farms, its mill by the riverside, its willow-trees, its pool with swans, its dell with blackberries, was a serene quasi-rural enclave, an obvious model-to-be for ... Hobbiton and the Shire.^[2]

The Shire is described by Tom Shippey as a calque upon England, a systematic construction mapping the origin of the people, its three original tribes, its two legendary founders, its organisation, its surnames, and its placenames.^[3] Others have noted easily perceived aspects such as the homely names of public houses like The Green Dragon.^[4][5][6] Tolkien stated that he grew up "in 'the Shire' in a pre-mechanical age".^[7]

Tom Shippey's analysis of Tolkien's calque of the Shire upon England^[3]

Element	The Shire	England
Origin of people	The Angle between the Rivers Hoarwell (Mitheithel) and the Loudwater (Bruinen) from the East (across Eriador)	The Angle between Flensburg Fjord and the Schlei, from the East (across the North Sea), hence the name "England"
Original three tribes	Stoors, Harfoots, Fallohides	Angles, Saxons, Jutes^[a]
Legendary founders named "horse"^[b]	Marcho and Blanco	Hengest and Horsa
Length of civil peace	272 years from Battle of Greenfields to Battle of Bywater	270 years from Battle of Sedgemoor to publication of Lord of the Rings
Organisation	Mayors, moots, Shirriffs^[c]	like "an old-fashioned and idealised England"
Surnames	e.g. Banks, Boffin, Bolger, Bracegirdle, Brandybuck, Brockhouse, Chubb, Cotton, Fairbairns, Grubb, Hayward, Hornblower, Noakes, Proudfoot, Took, Underhill, Whitfoot	All are real English surnames. Tolkien comments e.g. that "Bracegirdle" is "used in the text, of course, with reference to the hobbit tendency to be fat and so to strain their belts".^[T 1]
Placenames	e.g. "Nobottle" e.g. "Buckland"	Nobottle, Northamptonshire Buckland, Oxfordshire

The vanishing "Little Kingdom"

 

Both the Shire and Bree have comfortable English-style public houses that serve beer. The medieval Cott Inn, Devon, is pictured.

Bree and Bombadil are still, in Shippey's words, in "The Little Kingdom", if not quite in the Shire. Bree is similar to the Shire, with its hobbit residents and the welcoming Prancing Pony inn. Bombadil represents the spirit of place of the Oxfordshire and Berkshire countryside, which Tolkien felt was vanishing.^{[10][1][T 2]}

Shippey analyses how Tolkien's careful account in The Lord of the Rings of the land in the angle between two rivers, the Hoarwell and the Loudwater, matches the Angle between the Flensburg Fjord and the River Schlei, the legendary origin of the Angles, one of the three tribes who founded England.^[11]

Lothlórien, too, carries overtones of a perfect, timeless England; Shippey notes how the hobbits feel they have stepped "over a bridge in time" as they cross yet another pair of rivers to enter Lothlórien.^[11]

Tom Shippey's analysis of Tolkien's river angles^[11]

Rivers	Place	Peoples	Time
Flensburg Fjord, Schlei	Germany	The forefathers of the English	Long ago, before England was founded
Hoarwell, Loudwater	Eriador	The forefathers of the Hobbits	Long ago, before the Shire was founded
Nimrodel, Silverlode	Lothlórien	The Elves, as they used to be	Long ago, in "the Elder Days ... in a world that was no more"

 

Mines, ironworks, smoke, and spoil heaps: the Black Country, near Tolkien's childhood home, has been suggested as an influence on his vision of Mordor.^[12]

Industrialised England

Further information: Mordor

England appears in its industrialised state as Isengard and Mordor.^[1] In particular, it has been suggested that the industrialized area called "the Black Country" near J. R. R. Tolkien's childhood home inspired his vision of Mordor;^[12][13] the name "Mordor" meant "Black Land" in Tolkien's invented language of Sindarin, and "Land of Shadow" in Quenya.^{[T 3]} Shippey further links the fallen wizard Saruman and his industrial Isengard to "Tolkien's own childhood image of industrial ugliness ... Sarehole Mill, with its literally bone-grinding owner".^[14]

Anglo-Saxon England

 

A reconstructed Viking Age longhouse similar to Beowulf's Heorot

Further information: Rohan (Middle-earth) and Beowulf in Middle-earth

Anglo-Saxon England appears, modified by the people's extensive use of horses in battle, in the land of Rohan. The names of the Rohirrim, the Riders of Rohan, are straightforwardly Old English, as are the terms they use and their placenames: Théoden means "king" in Old English; Éored means "troop of cavalry" and Éomer is "horse-famous", both related to Éoh, "horse"; Eorlingas means "sons of Eorl"; the name of his throne-hall is Meduseld, which means "mead-hall". The chapter "The King of the Golden Hall" is constructed to match the passage in the Old English poem Beowulf where the hero approaches the court of Heorot and is challenged by different guards along the way, and many of the names used come directly from there.^{[15][16][17][T 4]} The name of the Riders' land, the Mark, is Tolkien's reconstruction of the Germanic word from which the Latinised name "Mercia", applied to the central kingdom of Anglo-Saxon England and the region where Tolkien grew up, derives.^[18]

Englishness

Hobbits

Englishness appears in the words and behaviour of the hobbits, throughout both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.^[19] Shippey writes that from the first page of The Hobbit, "the Bagginses at least were English by temperament and turn of phrase".^[20] Burns states that^[19]

it too lies within the English, in the best of English-kind. It lies in the courage and tenacity Tolkien admired in his fellow countrymen during the First World War; it lies in the English ability to recognize duty and carry resolutely through...

It is the same with the hobbits, who return and rebuild the Shire. Though it is their complacent and comfort-seeking qualities that stand out most consistently, a warrior's courage or an Elf's sensitivity can arise in hobbits as well.^[19]

Burns writes that Bilbo Baggins, the eponymous hero of The Hobbit, has acquired or rediscovered "an Englishman's northern roots. He has gained an Anglo-Saxon self-reliance and a Norseman's sense of will, and all of this is kept from excess by a Celtic sensitivity, by a love of earth, of poetry, and of simple song and cheer."^[19] She finds a similar balance in the hobbits of The Lord of the Rings, Pippin, Merry, and Sam. Frodo's balance, though, has been destroyed by a quest beyond his strength; he still embodies some of the elements of Englishness, but lacking the simple cheerfulness of the other hobbits because of his other character traits, his Celtic sorrow and Nordic doom.^[19]

'English' characters

Kindly characters such as Treebeard, Faramir, and Théoden exemplify Englishness with their actions and mannerisms. Treebeard's distinctive booming bass voice with his "hrum, hroom" mannerism is indeed said by Tolkien's biographer, Humphrey Carpenter, to be based directly on that of Tolkien's close friend, fellow Oxford University professor and Inkling, C. S. Lewis.^[21] Marjorie Burns sees "a Robin Hood touch" in the green-clad Faramir and his men hunting the enemy in Ithilien, while in Fangorn forest, she feels that Treebeard's speech "has a comfortable English ring".^[1] Théoden's name is a direct transliteration of Old English þēoden, meaning "king, prince";^[22][23] he welcomes Merry, a Hobbit from the Shire, with warmth and friendship.^[24] Garry O'Connor adds that there is a striking resemblance between the wizard Gandalf, the English actor Ian McKellen who plays Gandalf in Peter Jackson's Middle-earth films, and, based on Humphrey Carpenter's biographical account, of another Englishman, Tolkien himself:^[25][26]

He has a strange voice, deep but without resonance, entirely English but with some quality in it that I cannot define, as if he had come from another age or civilization. Yet for much of the time he does not speak clearly. Words come out in eager rushes ... He speaks in complex sentences ...^[27]

Shakespearean plot elements

Further information: Shakespeare's influence on Tolkien

Shippey suggests that Tolkien cautiously respected the English playwright William Shakespeare, and that he appears to have felt some kind of fellow-feeling with him, given that they were both from the county of Warwickshire in the English midlands, where Tolkien had passed his happiest childhood years.^[28] Some of the plot elements in The Lord of the Rings resemble Shakespeare's, notably in Macbeth. Tolkien's use of walking trees, the Huorns, to destroy the Orc-horde at the Battle of Helm's Deep carries a definite echo of the coming of Birnam Wood to Dunsinane Hill, though Tolkien admits the mythic nature of the event where Shakespeare denies it.^[28] Glorfindel's prophecy that the Lord of the Nazgûl would not die at the hand of any man directly reflects the Macbeth prophecy; commentators have found Tolkien's solution – he is killed by a woman and a hobbit in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields – more satisfying than Shakespeare's (a man brought into the world by Caesarean section, so not exactly "born").^[28]

Tom Shippey's analysis of Shakespearean prophecy in The Lord of the Rings and Macbeth^[28]

Plot element	Work	Prophecy	Events	Explanation
A forest seems to move	The Lord of the Rings	(unexpected)	Walking trees (Huorns) destroy Orc-horde at Battle of Helm's Deep	Mythic
	Macbeth	Birnam Wood shall come to Dunsinane Hill	Macduff's men cut branches, carry them to Dunsinane	Ordinary
A villain seems to be protected	The Lord of the Rings	Not by the hand of Man will he fall	A woman, Éowyn, and a Hobbit, Merry, kill the Lord of the Nazgûl; Merry's sword was made exactly for this purpose^[T 5]	Mythic
	Macbeth	None of woman born shall harm Macbeth	Macduff, delivered by Caesarean section so not strictly "born", kills Macbeth	Ordinary

A mythology for England

Main article: A mythology for England

Tolkien has often been supposed to have spoken of wishing to create "a mythology for England". It seems he never used the actual phrase, but commentators have found his biographer Humphrey Carpenter's phrase^[29] appropriate as a description of much of his approach in creating Middle-earth, and the legendarium that lies behind The Silmarillion.^[30][31] Tolkien's desire to create a national mythology^{[T 6]} echoed similar attempts in countries across Europe, especially Elias Lönnrot's creation of the Kalevala in Finland, which Tolkien read and admired.^[32][33] Other attempts had been made in Denmark, Finland, Germany, Scotland, and Wales in the 18th and 19th centuries.^[34] The mythology was initially intended as a home for his invented languages such as those that became Quenya and Sindarin, but he discovered as he worked on it that he wanted to make a properly English epic, spanning England's geography, language, and mythology.^[35]

Tolkien recognised that any actual English mythology, which he presumed, by analogy with Norse mythology and the clues that remain, to have existed until Anglo-Saxon times, had been extinguished. Tolkien decided to reconstruct such a mythology, accompanied to some extent by an imagined prehistory or pseudohistory of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes before they migrated to England.^[31][36] Tolkien therefore looked to Norse and other mythologies for guidance.^[37] He found hints in Beowulf^[35] and other Old English sources. These gave him his ettens (as in the Ettenmoors) and ents, his elves, and his orcs; his "warg" is a cross between Old Norse vargr and Old English wearh.^[38] He took his woses or wood-woses (the Drúedain) from the seeming plural wodwos in the Middle English Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, line 721; that comes in turn from Old English wudu-wasa, a singular noun.^[39] Shippey comments that

As for creating a "Mythology for England", one certain fact is that the Old English notions of Elves, Orcs, Ents, Ettens and Woses have through Tolkien been re-released into the popular imagination to join the much more familiar Dwarves ..., Trolls, ... and the wholly-invented Hobbits."^[37]

Notes

1. Shippey comments that both nations have forgotten their origins.^[8]
2. Old English: hengest, stallion; hors, horse; *marh, horse, cf "mare"; blanca, white horse in Beowulf^[3]
3. Sheriff, Shirriff is derived from Old English scir-gerefa "Shire-reeve", an officer of the shire.^[9]

References

Primary

1. Tolkien 1967
2. Carpenter 2023, #19 to Stanley Unwin, 16 December 1937
3. Carpenter 2023, #297 to Mr. Rang, draft, August 1967
4. Tolkien 1954, book 3 ch. 6 "The King of the Golden Hall"
5. Tolkien 1955, book 5, ch. 6 "The Battle of the Pelennor Fields": "No other blade, not though mightier hands had wielded it, would have dealt that foe a wound so bitter, cleaving the undead flesh, breaking the spell that knit his unseen sinews to his will."
6. Carpenter 2023, #131 to Milton Waldman (at Collins), late 1951

Secondary

1. Burns 2005, pp. 26–29.
2. Rosebury 2003, p. 134.
3. Shippey 2005, pp. 115–118.
4. Duriez 1992, pp. 121ff.
5. Tyler 1976, p. 201.
6. Rateliff 2009, pp. 11ff.
7. Carpenter 2023, #213 to Deborah Webster, 25 October 1958
8. Shippey 2005, p. 116.
9. "sheriff (n.)". Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved 19 May 2021.
10. Shippey 2005, pp. 111–112, 123.
11. Shippey 2001, pp. 196–199.
12. Jeffries, Stuart (19 September 2014). "Mordor, he wrote: how the Black Country inspired Tolkien's badlands". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 August 2020.
13. Baratta 2011, pp. 31–45.
14. Shippey 2005, p. 194.
15. Shippey 2005, pp. 139–145.
16. Burns 2005, p. 143.
17. Solopova 2009, p. 21.
18. Shippey 2001, pp. 91–92.
19. Burns 2005, pp. 28–29.
20. Shippey 2005, p. 132.
21. Carpenter 1977, p. 198.
22. Wynne, Patrick H. (2006). "Theoden". In Drout, Michael D. C. (ed.). The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (first ed.). Routledge. p. 643. ISBN 978-0-415-96942-0.
23. Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote. "þeóden". An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Prague: Charles University.
24. Chance 1980, pp. 119–122.
25. O'Connor 2019.
26. O'Connor, Garry (26 November 2019). "How Ian McKellen Almost Didn't Play Gandalf". LitHub. Retrieved 1 May 2021.
27. Carpenter 1977, Part One: A visit. page 13.
28. Shippey 2005, pp. 205–209.
29. Carpenter 1977, p. 67.
30. Butler 2013, p. 114.
31. Drout 2004, pp. 229–247.
32. Chance 1980, pp. 1–3.
33. Shippey 2005, pp. 345–351.
34. Fimi 2010, pp. 50–62 "Fairies, folklore, and the 'mythology for England'".
35. Hostetter & Smith 1996, Article 42.
36. Cook, Simon J. (2014). "J.R.R. Tolkien's Lost English Mythology". RoundedGlobe. Retrieved 2 September 2020.
37. Shippey 2005, pp. 350–351.
38. Shippey 2005, p. 74 footnote.
39. Shippey 2005, pp. 74 footnote, 149.

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