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Cirashala
Valinor
May 22 2019, 1:03am
Post #1 of 24
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Real life places that inspired Tolkien
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Hello all! I know that there were places and events that Tolkien experienced that influenced his works, notably the Swiss Alps inspiring the Mountains of Moria. Are there any other real-world places, events, or historical (like the Kine of Araw being reminiscent of ancient Aurochs, for example) that are known to have influenced Tolkien's world?
My writing and novels: My Hobbit Fanfiction My historical novel print and kindle version My historical novels ebook version compatible with all ereaders You can also find my novel at most major book retailers online (and for those outside the US who prefer a print book, you can find the print version at Book Depository). Search "Amazing Grace Amanda Longpre'" to find it. Happy reading everyone!
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Solicitr
Gondor
May 22 2019, 2:03pm
Post #3 of 24
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one is certainly plausible, even likely, given that T expressly linked the Misty Mountains in TH to that Swiss walking tour. Far more convincing than claims I've seen made by various places in Ireland-- a country Tolkien never set foot in until after the LR was finished!
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hanne
Lorien
May 22 2019, 3:35pm
Post #4 of 24
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Warwick Castle and Perrott’s Folly
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Here are another two I have seen claims for. Perrott’s Folly in Birmingham is a tower that was visible from the boy Tolkien’s bedroom window. It includes a chimney and would have constantly belched black smoke during his childhood. It’s been claimed as an inspiration for Orthanc.The shape is certainly different from what Tolkien described and drew, so perhaps it's just a general "ominous dark tower" sort of thing. Sorry that the public domain pic is so cheery; you can google for others. Warwick Castle on its green mound inspired Tirion on Tuna, the city of the Noldorin Elves in Aman, according to Tolkien biographer Humphrey Carpenter. In the Book of Lost Tales, Tolkien explicitly said the city, then called Kortirion, was prehistoric Warwick.
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Greenwood Hobbit
Valinor
May 23 2019, 8:13am
Post #5 of 24
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There's a place called Bagginswood in the West Midlands -
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it would be lovely to think that was the inspiration for the surname of Bilbo and Frodo.
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hanne
Lorien
May 23 2019, 4:03pm
Post #6 of 24
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Thank you. And look what else is on the map. Coincidence???? :) :)
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Greenwood Hobbit
Valinor
May 23 2019, 5:03pm
Post #7 of 24
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has quite a lot of Shire-like place names: Buttonoak, Far Forest, Greenway, Gladden Brook, Witchery Hole, Weyman's Wood, Withybed Wood etc.
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Solicitr
Gondor
May 23 2019, 5:51pm
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one specific place-name in ME that was definitely derived from a RW one is Bree, or rather Bree-Hill; it comes from the village of Brill in Buckinghamshire, not far from Oxford,* which anciently was Breghyll and which Tolkien noted with amusement was a bilingual redundancy, Brythonic "breg" meaning "hill." *Close by are Worminghall and Thame, which found their way into Farmer Giles
(This post was edited by Solicitr on May 23 2019, 5:52pm)
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Na Vedui
Rohan
May 23 2019, 11:08pm
Post #9 of 24
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... Tolkien's published Letters might help with that - but there are lots of things that one suspects he may have known about, given his range of interests. Some examples: - real villages and towns in Britain whose names also occur in the Shire, such as Nobottle and Bucklebury, or ones very similar to Middle-earth placenames, such as Crickhowell in Wales (cf. Crickhollow), Amroth, also in Wales (cf Dol Amroth). - real-world names with the same "flavour" as their Middle-earth counterpart. One good example is Meriadoc. Merry Brandybuck belongs to Buckland, which was colonised by Hobbits, eastwards, from the Shire after the Shire was settled. Real-world Saint Meriadoc was associated with Brittany, on the west coast of France, settled by Celtic speakers from Britain long after they had been established in Britain. Another is Bard. There is a legend from the Lincolnshire Wolds of a Sir Hugh Barde who slew a dragon. In a similar vein, an ancient name for Cornwall is Belerion. This is a region that has lost a lot of land to inundation - the Scilly Isles, off the tip of it, were once one mass of land and attached to the mainland. This is quite similar to Tolkien's name Beleriand for the region that gets drowned at the end of the First Age - indeed in an early version of the story he uses Belerion rather than Beleriand. Another thing I discovered recently and posted a thread about, is that there are real "Silmarils" - gems that really glow in the dark. A book of Serbian folklore published c. 1914, has stuff about female spirits called Vilis, dressed in white, good friends but bad enemies, whose feats included throwing down fortresses. Shades of Galadriel and Dol Guldur? - and in the same book were spirits who became giants and threw rocks around in the mountains in storms, like the Stone Giants. Serbia would be very topical at the time of the First World War and I'm wondering - did Tolkien actually read that particular book or at any rate delve into Serbian folklore at some time? Then there are literary predecessors which may have contributed something (though not everything) to Tolkien's characters. Two that I strongly suspect: 1. John Buchan's Dickson McCunn (in "Huntingtower") - the retired Scottish grocer who becomes embroiled in wild adventure and applies his business head to the situation as well as relishing the romance of it - a kinsman of Bilbo Baggins, I think 2. Blind Pew in Stevenson's "Treasure Island", who tips Billy Bones the Black Spot, is after the treasure, and has a very Black Rider-ish creepy nastiness. (And oddly enough, not far from where I live in Wales is a very old house called Rhydarwen - Arwen's Ford. But that one doesn't count for a Tolkien-hunt, being the film version, not the book! Rather nice, though.)
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
May 24 2019, 12:42am
Post #10 of 24
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A book of Serbian folklore published c. 1914, has stuff about female spirits called Vilis, dressed in white, good friends but bad enemies, whose feats included throwing down fortresses. Shades of Galadriel and Dol Guldur? …also Lúthien and Sauron's stronghold in Beleriand..
"I reject your reality and substitute my own." - Adam Savage
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Solicitr
Gondor
May 24 2019, 4:10am
Post #11 of 24
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did point out in Appendix F that he "translated" many of the names of Buckland and the Marish into Celtic approximations, to represent the Stoorish strain. He also made a point of making the given names in the gentry families those out of our own early-medieval kings and heroes, and deliberately pretentious ones considering having surnames like Boffin, Bolger and Took (Fredegar, Bandobras, Saradoc, Gerontius etc.) The Bagginses apparently weren't quite so posh! Al though he did postulate that he chose Meriadoc simply because it could be shortened to Merry, in order to translate Kalimac > Kali.
(This post was edited by Solicitr on May 24 2019, 4:11am)
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Solicitr
Gondor
May 24 2019, 2:31pm
Post #13 of 24
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External history! Now we're cooking with gas! The character we know as Merry was first named Marmaduke. Actually, he goes further back, to the first draft of Book I in some aspects of the original hobbit walking party: Bingo Bolger-Baggins and his cousins Frodo and Odo Took (that's right, no Sam). Frodo gave up his name to ex-Bingo and more or less evolved into Merry, being the more sensible of the pair, while Odo bifurcated and managed to give rise to Pippin while surviving alongside for a while and eventually in a roundabout way becoming Fatty Bolger (just "Fatty" early on, Fredegar came much later). I don't see much evidence for the "pretentious" hobbit names until the work on the Appendices, where Tolkien stuffed the family trees full of them; everything in the drafting uses basic names like Frodo, Otho, Rory, Ted and so on. In terms of relative dating, it seems these postdate Appendix F, which was the earliest of the appendices to be begun (it started as a draft for the Prologue that got out of hand, and was taken up almost as soon as T had finished the main narrative). Place-names are bit of a different matter, and in the Shire a lot of them are actually Christopher's. Tolkien's own map had very few place-names that don't appear in the text, and CT was given free reign to fill in the blanks, for which he used a dictionary of English place-names. "Meriadoc" instead of just Merry didn't appear IIRC until the Treebeard chapter, when Tolkien decided Merry and Pippin were nicknames not their full names. And, so, yes, he was sort of telling the truth in App F when he said it was chosen 'backwards' to fit Merry.
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Hasuwandil
Lorien
May 26 2019, 4:36am
Post #14 of 24
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In addition to the Lauterbrunnen Valley, the nearby town of Interlaken is said to be the inspiration for Laketown. For some reason I had an idea in my head from long ago that Laketown was inspired by the archaeological discovery (and an illustration thereof) of a similar settlement from the Hallstatt or La Tène cultures. In fact, for some reason I thought it was Hallstatt itself, which is indeed beside a lake in Austria, but was economically important as a salt mine, and I've been unable to find that there was ever a settlement on Lake Hallstatt itself. However, in trying to answer my question, I found this two-page TORn post: https://www.theonering.net/...-and-the-fancontest/ Page two of this post lends credence to the idea that my memory was not entirely false.
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Hamfast Gamgee
Tol Eressea
May 27 2019, 8:45am
Post #15 of 24
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There are certainly shades of Strider in Alan Beck, in the survival in the wild manner.
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Hamfast Gamgee
Tol Eressea
May 27 2019, 8:48am
Post #16 of 24
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I've been to a place called Buckland
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In Hertfordshire. Not much too it really, just a farm and a chinese restaurant!
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Solicitr
Gondor
May 28 2019, 2:52pm
Post #17 of 24
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common enough place-name in England, since it simply means book-land (bocland), land held by charter or deed.
(This post was edited by Solicitr on May 28 2019, 2:52pm)
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Eowyn of Penns Woods
Valinor
May 30 2019, 2:20am
Post #18 of 24
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Rather than risk being compared to Bilbo and his after-dinner speeches...
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I will reference my earlier work on the subject only by dragging out my vintage photo comparison, because it's just sooo obvious here: I'm still finding relatives and ancestors from Wengen, Lauterbrunnen, Interlaken, etc. The DNA is strong. =)
********************************** NABOUF Not a TORns*b! Certified Curmudgeon Knitting Knerd NARF: NWtS Chapter Member since June 17,2011
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dernwyn
Forum Admin
/ Moderator
May 30 2019, 12:56pm
Post #20 of 24
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And have you found evidence yet that one of them might have taken a "fairy wife"?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "I desired dragons with a profound desire"
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Solicitr
Gondor
May 30 2019, 1:52pm
Post #21 of 24
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other place which almost definitely is on the list, although nowhere is it documented, is smack in the middle of Oxford, where the Cherwell flows into the Isis. Go there on a fall afternoon, and then re-read the description in FR of the Withywindle. Brown water and willows, described to a T.
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Ataahua
Forum Admin
/ Moderator
Jun 1 2019, 10:00pm
Post #23 of 24
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there's a place in South Taranaki, NZ, that reminds me strongly of the Barrow Downs. Just outside the sneeze-and-you'll-miss-it locality (not even a town) of Pungarehu is a grass-covered lahar field. These large, rounded hills put me in mind of the Barrows and whenever I drive past them, I picture Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin wandering among them with their ponies. The lahars are difficult to photograph to get a sense of the scale of them, but here are some examples (including an aerial).
Celebrimbor: "Pretty rings..." Dwarves: "Pretty rings..." Men: "Pretty rings..." Sauron: "Mine's better." "Ah, how ironic, the addictive qualities of Sauron’s master weapon led to its own destruction. Which just goes to show, kids - if you want two small and noble souls to succeed on a mission of dire importance... send an evil-minded beggar with them too." - Gandalf's Diaries, final par, by Ufthak. Ataahua's stories
(This post was edited by Ataahua on Jun 1 2019, 10:01pm)
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