David - I have read these stories so many times and I find it really intriguing that my favorite characters in all the books are Tom Bombadil and The Ents. I recall vividly walking through the forest with my father as a child to gather firewood. He would only allow us to collect limbs and trees that had fallen dead to the forest floor. We would never take those still living, standing guard over those who dwelt beneath their shade.
An enviable sentence: "One must know the land to know the lore, and one must know the lore to know the land." I'm reminded of the affinities between Celtic and Czech lore and indigenous stories. Human cultures once drew their primary sources of meaning and storytelling from their ecological homes. It's unfortunate that "home" for many people is now a screen.
You also make me wonder about whether the notion of "wilderness" exists in the English mind. It seems that all of the forest places in Tolkien are inhabited, and that there is such a thing as "wildness" without the stark binary between culture and nature that Americans seem to imagine. There is a more complicated history of this in America that includes legal definitions of wilderness (along with rather arbitrary rules about primitive tools and travel). But do I have it right that there is not quite the same pure/impure, populated/unpopulated, wild/tame dichotomy in Tolkien's world that Americans tend to imagine when they think about ecology? (I partly blame the Sierra Club for this)
Timothy Morton's work is helpful when thinking about these terms. He prefers "ecology" to "nature," because the latter suggests that it is something apart--something over there to be visited. Ecology, however, is inclusive--we are included, as are our cities, towns, and structures.
In the Scarlet Letter, the forest is a character in itself. Dark and often evil. The home of the Dark Man. There's a wonderful scene where the sunlight fails to fall on Hester as if she's unworthy of the light because of the letter she wears.
I like the distinction between wilderness and wildness. In American history, there's the additional problem that the woods weren't uninhabited. Except perhaps for a brief period after European diseases had created, in the words of Cotton Mather, "prodigious pestilence as carried away not a tenth, but nine parts of ten, (yea, ’tis said, nineteen of twenty) among them, so that the woods were almost cleared of those pernicious creatures, to make room for a better growth. Those infidels were consumed in such vast multitudes, that our first planters found the land almost covered with their unburied carcasses." Mather celebrated this as a gift of providence.
One of my favorite moments, just after Weathertop, is when Strider leaves briefly and returns with athelas, which still grows in places the Numenoreans had settled. Although there's a whiff of colonialism here too, I like the idea that there are herbs in the countryside that reflect a past when things were different. In my own studies, I was able to find peppermint growing "wild" by streams and invading people's gardens, in the western Massachusetts town that had been the center of the peppermint oil trade. Peppermint isn't indigenous to North America; in fact, it's a sterile hybrid first discovered in Essex and cultivated in Mitcham, that can only reproduce by cuttings. I had forgotten, until I started rereading The Fellowship, that when I was a kid I had imagined the wild mint in my garden as kingsfoil.
I really like this connection to non-native peppermint growing wild in Massachusetts to athelas — and your memory of connecting the two when you were a kid. Backyard gardens, tended or otherwise, can be such a gift for children who want to live out the descriptions of fictional worlds like those of Tolkien. I remember doing the same when climbing the pine tree in our backyard in California, feeling the big trunk move, alive and full of what I imagined was a mind of her own :-)
John, there's so much richness in your piece this week about Tolkien's sense of ecology and history, and the way the connections among us undulate through the land itself. For me, his descriptions of the natural world and the specifics of the journey are the thing that make these books so memorable. I loved all those descriptions when I read LOTR as a young teen; I didn't hurry to skip them then, and I'm certainly not doing so now — indeed, I'm appreciating the quality of the descriptive prose even more.
In reading Book One again, I've also been struck by how much the journey is embedded in the landscape, including those layers of past history. I've been thinking about maps, and what we may be losing with the shift to GPS navigation. But more than anything, I've been thinking about my own love of trees and the sadness I feel whenever one is chopped down. I'm not sure if reading Tolkien in the 1970s inspired my sense that trees are living beings, existing on a different time scale than humans, but I do make that connection now. (I've added yet another book to the pile I want to re-read — which includes Nabokov's *Pale Fire* and now Richard Powers's *The Overstory*.)
Your piece this week — as well as AnnMarie's reference to Ireland and the lost language and history of the Celts — also made me think of "Bonny Portmore," the traditional song about the "Lords in Old England" chopping down the forest on Irish shores:
"All the birds in the forest they bitterly weep
Saying, 'Where shall we shelter, where shall we sleep?'
For the Oak and the Ash, they are all cutten down
And the walls of Bonny Portmore are all down to the ground."
Loreena McKennitt's version is especially beautiful, but there are others, too. Two links:
Thanks very much for the links--gorgeous! I'm glad you mentioned *The Overstay*. I was thinking about Tolkien the whole time I was reading that book. We'll have a lot more to say about trees when we get to Fangorn in a few weeks.
I really enjoyed this, thank you! Like Tolkien, I study Anglo-Saxon history/archaeology/literature, so I enjoyed your discussion of some of the poetry from that time. I also enjoyed your discussion of ecology and environment in Tolkien’s work: I hadn’t really thought of this before. It made me think of how I can weave this more into my own writing: a personal challenge for me this week, perhaps.
I do love the descriptions of landscape and plants in Tolkien. How often do we get such care and attention placed on the landscape characters are traveling through? I've heard so many people say things like "Tolkien will take pages and pages to describe a tree, and it's so boring", which is both annoying and not true. He might spend a few paragraphs describing landscape, but there's a reason for it. It provides such a sense of place. You feel it when the landscape has changed from the pastoral Shire to the miserable Midgewater Marshes or bleak Weathertop. Perhaps it's just my experience as a bit of a landscape photographer, but Tolkien gives the landscape the same amount of attention (and love) that photographer do, and I really appreciate that.
I also love how he will toss in some bit of Middle-earth lore-- the blades of Westernesse, the men of Carn Dûm, etc.. It helps give the books a sense of history (especially since the back story was pretty much all there), but everything doesn't have an explanation, rather like real world history often has no answers. We get a sense of the past, but without a full story or real context (unless we wade into The Silmarillion). Weirdly enough, I like that. I love history, but sometimes the mystery of an untold story is just as interesting as having every detail.
Thank you for this wonderful piece. During the week I was wondering how much of the stories of old and the knowledge of the layout of the lands am I supposed to hold on to going forward? Am I taking in enough of the different stories so as not to be lost as the books go on?!
But you're discussion of land and lore makes this reading all the more exciting for me. Taking in this new world and making sense of it in ways I love to read about my own country and history and language.
Place names in Ireland were all connected to the land, its history, its mythology and its use. So much of this history has sadly been lost as the use of the language declined. Over the last few years, it is a subject I have had a growing interest in.
Making the connection as you have, you have removed the anxieties I had of trying to take it all in.
On another note, it was asked last week about reading the poetry and songs sections. I have been reading them as I go, but I am also listening to the audiobook by Andy Serkis. I only listen to what I have already read and it is wonderful to listen to him perform.
You don't need to worry too much about retaining the lore. Tolkien will remind you of what you need to know. In this book, it serves largely as means to provide a sense of hidden depth. (This is different from the Silmarillion, where is takes up the whole matter of the book.) I have enjoyed what I have heard of Serkis's reading--he's very good!
Thanks so much, and especially for the poem from The Exeter Book, which I had never encountered before. The translation is lovely. And this discussion is enough to make me consider revisiting Tolkien for the first time since childhood.
John - beautifully written and researched, as always, so thank you for that.
Tolkien's emphasis on the connection with place, landscape, and nature draws me into the story. Having grown up in rural areas, I am keenly aware that the land has its own story, which is inextricably interwoven with those who have traveled over it. During my 20s, I spent a great deal of time hiking off-trail, particularly in the western U.S. It would always be a great pleasure to encounter some ruin or marker of past inhabitants - there is always a story there. In LOTR the character's knowledge of the history and stories of place add tremendous value to the arch of the story. For me, they are not tangents but essential pieces of the whole.
I completely agree. Again, I think that much of this stuff would have been cut by a 21st-century editor. JRRT was fortunate enough to have a very tolerant publisher!
Tolkien had a tolerant publisher, but I think people read differently in pre-digital days (or social media days) than they do now. If we aren't careful, the pleasures of deep reading and longform work will become another kind of lost history.
I first read LOTR in 1967 in my last year of high school. In those early reads of Tolkien I marveled how he made landscape come alive with physicality. They weren't word pictures, you were there in it. Ever since I have walked in natural settings with a Tolkien trained eye and ear. I majored in English in college and I was reminded of Tolkien when I read old and Middle English texts, not the other way around. His books are such a contribution to our literature and culture, I get annoyed when they are dismissed as fantasy.
My favorite part of any book is a well described description of the environment, surrounding in which the characters live. This makes the story come alive for me and I can feel a profound connection with the characters.
I get that Tolkien was pushing back against an overwhelming tide of industrialization, but aside from the Huorns (who are angry for good reason), does Tolkien ever acknowledge that nature (and not just the Shadow's corrupted versions of it) has its own nonhuman agenda, one that may be unfriendly to us? The Great Plague was definitely Sauron's work, but what about other parasites and diseases?
That’s a good question and perhaps a blind spot, although there are moments when the text acknowledges that aspects of the ecology behave irrespective of human intentions. I’m thinking, for example, of Caradhras in book 2.
If I recall correctly, Tolkien mentioned in a letter that figures like Old Man Willow were indicative of dark wills in the world that had little or nothing to do with Sauron (or older Morgoth), just as Tom Bombadil exists as he is, where he is, without being connected to Elves, the Valar, or other figures like them.
John, Your post is a perfect addition to Eleanor's and my shared video and separate posts on "setting" that goes up Friday March 22: https://marytabor.substack.com/p/dear-elizabeth Terrific essay on how Tolkien does his magic.
The forest and trees were so sacred to Tolkien. His letter response to the newspaper was wonderful to read. The Ents are his heroes and mine too.
"..the savage sound of the electric saw is never silent wherever trees are still found growing."
My absolute favorite scene in the Peter Jackson movies, and one I think they pretty much nailed, was the storming of Isengard by the Ents.
Agreed!
David - I have read these stories so many times and I find it really intriguing that my favorite characters in all the books are Tom Bombadil and The Ents. I recall vividly walking through the forest with my father as a child to gather firewood. He would only allow us to collect limbs and trees that had fallen dead to the forest floor. We would never take those still living, standing guard over those who dwelt beneath their shade.
An enviable sentence: "One must know the land to know the lore, and one must know the lore to know the land." I'm reminded of the affinities between Celtic and Czech lore and indigenous stories. Human cultures once drew their primary sources of meaning and storytelling from their ecological homes. It's unfortunate that "home" for many people is now a screen.
You also make me wonder about whether the notion of "wilderness" exists in the English mind. It seems that all of the forest places in Tolkien are inhabited, and that there is such a thing as "wildness" without the stark binary between culture and nature that Americans seem to imagine. There is a more complicated history of this in America that includes legal definitions of wilderness (along with rather arbitrary rules about primitive tools and travel). But do I have it right that there is not quite the same pure/impure, populated/unpopulated, wild/tame dichotomy in Tolkien's world that Americans tend to imagine when they think about ecology? (I partly blame the Sierra Club for this)
Timothy Morton's work is helpful when thinking about these terms. He prefers "ecology" to "nature," because the latter suggests that it is something apart--something over there to be visited. Ecology, however, is inclusive--we are included, as are our cities, towns, and structures.
In the Scarlet Letter, the forest is a character in itself. Dark and often evil. The home of the Dark Man. There's a wonderful scene where the sunlight fails to fall on Hester as if she's unworthy of the light because of the letter she wears.
Some medieval texts imagine the forest as dark and evil as well. For example, it is by the forest's side where we meet a demon in The Friar's Tale.
I like the distinction between wilderness and wildness. In American history, there's the additional problem that the woods weren't uninhabited. Except perhaps for a brief period after European diseases had created, in the words of Cotton Mather, "prodigious pestilence as carried away not a tenth, but nine parts of ten, (yea, ’tis said, nineteen of twenty) among them, so that the woods were almost cleared of those pernicious creatures, to make room for a better growth. Those infidels were consumed in such vast multitudes, that our first planters found the land almost covered with their unburied carcasses." Mather celebrated this as a gift of providence.
One of my favorite moments, just after Weathertop, is when Strider leaves briefly and returns with athelas, which still grows in places the Numenoreans had settled. Although there's a whiff of colonialism here too, I like the idea that there are herbs in the countryside that reflect a past when things were different. In my own studies, I was able to find peppermint growing "wild" by streams and invading people's gardens, in the western Massachusetts town that had been the center of the peppermint oil trade. Peppermint isn't indigenous to North America; in fact, it's a sterile hybrid first discovered in Essex and cultivated in Mitcham, that can only reproduce by cuttings. I had forgotten, until I started rereading The Fellowship, that when I was a kid I had imagined the wild mint in my garden as kingsfoil.
I love this--again, history is inscribed in the very flora and fauna.
I wonder if anyone else has seen / read this book?
https://www.npr.org/2017/08/31/547491042/tolkiens-passion-for-plants-moves-botantist-to-create-guide-to-middle-earth
I must seek that out! Thanks!
I really like this connection to non-native peppermint growing wild in Massachusetts to athelas — and your memory of connecting the two when you were a kid. Backyard gardens, tended or otherwise, can be such a gift for children who want to live out the descriptions of fictional worlds like those of Tolkien. I remember doing the same when climbing the pine tree in our backyard in California, feeling the big trunk move, alive and full of what I imagined was a mind of her own :-)
John, there's so much richness in your piece this week about Tolkien's sense of ecology and history, and the way the connections among us undulate through the land itself. For me, his descriptions of the natural world and the specifics of the journey are the thing that make these books so memorable. I loved all those descriptions when I read LOTR as a young teen; I didn't hurry to skip them then, and I'm certainly not doing so now — indeed, I'm appreciating the quality of the descriptive prose even more.
In reading Book One again, I've also been struck by how much the journey is embedded in the landscape, including those layers of past history. I've been thinking about maps, and what we may be losing with the shift to GPS navigation. But more than anything, I've been thinking about my own love of trees and the sadness I feel whenever one is chopped down. I'm not sure if reading Tolkien in the 1970s inspired my sense that trees are living beings, existing on a different time scale than humans, but I do make that connection now. (I've added yet another book to the pile I want to re-read — which includes Nabokov's *Pale Fire* and now Richard Powers's *The Overstory*.)
Your piece this week — as well as AnnMarie's reference to Ireland and the lost language and history of the Celts — also made me think of "Bonny Portmore," the traditional song about the "Lords in Old England" chopping down the forest on Irish shores:
"All the birds in the forest they bitterly weep
Saying, 'Where shall we shelter, where shall we sleep?'
For the Oak and the Ash, they are all cutten down
And the walls of Bonny Portmore are all down to the ground."
Loreena McKennitt's version is especially beautiful, but there are others, too. Two links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niS4Emp64q8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3YqCu2Y_dM
Thanks very much for the links--gorgeous! I'm glad you mentioned *The Overstay*. I was thinking about Tolkien the whole time I was reading that book. We'll have a lot more to say about trees when we get to Fangorn in a few weeks.
*Overstory*! Damned autocorrect...
I love Loreena McKennitt's version of this song!
I really enjoyed this, thank you! Like Tolkien, I study Anglo-Saxon history/archaeology/literature, so I enjoyed your discussion of some of the poetry from that time. I also enjoyed your discussion of ecology and environment in Tolkien’s work: I hadn’t really thought of this before. It made me think of how I can weave this more into my own writing: a personal challenge for me this week, perhaps.
Thanks! Just found your Stack and look forward to catching up with it.
I do love the descriptions of landscape and plants in Tolkien. How often do we get such care and attention placed on the landscape characters are traveling through? I've heard so many people say things like "Tolkien will take pages and pages to describe a tree, and it's so boring", which is both annoying and not true. He might spend a few paragraphs describing landscape, but there's a reason for it. It provides such a sense of place. You feel it when the landscape has changed from the pastoral Shire to the miserable Midgewater Marshes or bleak Weathertop. Perhaps it's just my experience as a bit of a landscape photographer, but Tolkien gives the landscape the same amount of attention (and love) that photographer do, and I really appreciate that.
I also love how he will toss in some bit of Middle-earth lore-- the blades of Westernesse, the men of Carn Dûm, etc.. It helps give the books a sense of history (especially since the back story was pretty much all there), but everything doesn't have an explanation, rather like real world history often has no answers. We get a sense of the past, but without a full story or real context (unless we wade into The Silmarillion). Weirdly enough, I like that. I love history, but sometimes the mystery of an untold story is just as interesting as having every detail.
Thank you for this wonderful piece. During the week I was wondering how much of the stories of old and the knowledge of the layout of the lands am I supposed to hold on to going forward? Am I taking in enough of the different stories so as not to be lost as the books go on?!
But you're discussion of land and lore makes this reading all the more exciting for me. Taking in this new world and making sense of it in ways I love to read about my own country and history and language.
Place names in Ireland were all connected to the land, its history, its mythology and its use. So much of this history has sadly been lost as the use of the language declined. Over the last few years, it is a subject I have had a growing interest in.
Making the connection as you have, you have removed the anxieties I had of trying to take it all in.
On another note, it was asked last week about reading the poetry and songs sections. I have been reading them as I go, but I am also listening to the audiobook by Andy Serkis. I only listen to what I have already read and it is wonderful to listen to him perform.
You don't need to worry too much about retaining the lore. Tolkien will remind you of what you need to know. In this book, it serves largely as means to provide a sense of hidden depth. (This is different from the Silmarillion, where is takes up the whole matter of the book.) I have enjoyed what I have heard of Serkis's reading--he's very good!
Thanks so much, and especially for the poem from The Exeter Book, which I had never encountered before. The translation is lovely. And this discussion is enough to make me consider revisiting Tolkien for the first time since childhood.
Thanks! Yes, do join in the reading if you have the time. I don't think that it will disappoint.
John - beautifully written and researched, as always, so thank you for that.
Tolkien's emphasis on the connection with place, landscape, and nature draws me into the story. Having grown up in rural areas, I am keenly aware that the land has its own story, which is inextricably interwoven with those who have traveled over it. During my 20s, I spent a great deal of time hiking off-trail, particularly in the western U.S. It would always be a great pleasure to encounter some ruin or marker of past inhabitants - there is always a story there. In LOTR the character's knowledge of the history and stories of place add tremendous value to the arch of the story. For me, they are not tangents but essential pieces of the whole.
I completely agree. Again, I think that much of this stuff would have been cut by a 21st-century editor. JRRT was fortunate enough to have a very tolerant publisher!
Tolkien had a tolerant publisher, but I think people read differently in pre-digital days (or social media days) than they do now. If we aren't careful, the pleasures of deep reading and longform work will become another kind of lost history.
Preaching to the choir, Martha! But I expect that you know that ;)
"By the time of William the Conqueror, 90% of England’s forests had been cleared."
Astonishing.
Yes, we think of environmental destruction exclusively as a post-industrial phenomenon. Not so.
I first read LOTR in 1967 in my last year of high school. In those early reads of Tolkien I marveled how he made landscape come alive with physicality. They weren't word pictures, you were there in it. Ever since I have walked in natural settings with a Tolkien trained eye and ear. I majored in English in college and I was reminded of Tolkien when I read old and Middle English texts, not the other way around. His books are such a contribution to our literature and culture, I get annoyed when they are dismissed as fantasy.
My favorite part of any book is a well described description of the environment, surrounding in which the characters live. This makes the story come alive for me and I can feel a profound connection with the characters.
Thank you. I consumed this post - you’ve given me so much to think about and reflect upon.
I'm glad you enjoyed it! The piece this week on "deep time" sort of follows up on it.
What is our new reading "assignment" for this week?
Good question! I should have mentioned it: read through the end of *The Fellowship of the Ring* for next week. I'll post an announcement.
Ironically, red squirrels are the only rodents to host leprosy (without much harm to themselves).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6367869/
I get that Tolkien was pushing back against an overwhelming tide of industrialization, but aside from the Huorns (who are angry for good reason), does Tolkien ever acknowledge that nature (and not just the Shadow's corrupted versions of it) has its own nonhuman agenda, one that may be unfriendly to us? The Great Plague was definitely Sauron's work, but what about other parasites and diseases?
That’s a good question and perhaps a blind spot, although there are moments when the text acknowledges that aspects of the ecology behave irrespective of human intentions. I’m thinking, for example, of Caradhras in book 2.
If I recall correctly, Tolkien mentioned in a letter that figures like Old Man Willow were indicative of dark wills in the world that had little or nothing to do with Sauron (or older Morgoth), just as Tom Bombadil exists as he is, where he is, without being connected to Elves, the Valar, or other figures like them.
John, Your post is a perfect addition to Eleanor's and my shared video and separate posts on "setting" that goes up Friday March 22: https://marytabor.substack.com/p/dear-elizabeth Terrific essay on how Tolkien does his magic.