Ouch - I noticed a slight glitch in "Middle-earth seen by the barbarians". Browsing my old Tolkien editions I noticed that I had not been aware of the entry in the Grey Annals (History of Middle-earth, Vol. 11) which states that the Swarthy Men entered Beleriand via Lothlann, far in the north. On the general map of Middle-earth in Fig. 3 I had accordingly placed the arrow that indicates their route too far to the south, between Belegost and Nogrod. This minor error I have amended now, a matching sentence added in the text and the edited print file uploaded to CreateSpace, both for the colour and the b/w edition of the collective volume. The old two-volume edition I shall leave unedited: There is no point in amending a map that, the readers and I agree, is anyway of inferior printing quality.
Welcome to Lalaith's Middle-earth Science Pages!
This page collects all additional essays on J.R.R. Tolkien's world of Middle-earth that have not been included in the books. You know, some collectors prefer to have anything related to Tolkien standing in their bookshelves. Hence, I have collected expanded and updated versions of the histories of the lesser Men of Middle-earth, on Adûnaic and Westron and on astronomy and calendar reckoning in illustrated books that are available both as ebooks and in print.
Samstag, 7. Mai 2016
Mittwoch, 27. April 2016
The Brolly of the Pelennor Fields
What if Lobelia Sackville-Baggins had joined the Fellowship of the Rings? Find the answer here:
'Begone, foul dwimmerlaik, lord
of carrion! Whoever desires to enter this city has to pass my brolly
first. Begone, if you be not painless! For living or dark undead, smite
you I shall if you dare to set but one more step ahead from here!'
Excerpt from "History of Middle-earth, Vol. XIII: The Rejected Pages". Chapter "The Brolly of the Pelennor Fields":
In
rode the Lord of the Nazgûl. A great black shape against the fires
beyond he loomed up, grown to a vast menace of despair. In rode the Lord
of the Nazgûl, under the archway that no enemy ever yet had passed, and
all fled before his face.
All save one. There waiting, silent and
still in the space before the Gate, sat Gandalf upon Shadowfax:
Shadowfax who alone among the free horses of the earth endured the
terror, unmoving, steadfast as a graven image in Rath Dínen.
'You
cannot enter here,' said Gandalf, and the huge shadow halted. 'Go back
to the abyss prepared for you! Go back! Fall into the nothingness that
awaits you and your Master. Go!'
The Black Rider flung back his
hood, and behold! he had a kingly crown; and yet upon no head visible
was it set. The red fires shone between it and the mantled shoulders
vast and dark. From a mouth unseen there came a deadly laughter.
'Old fool!' he said. 'Old fool! This is my hour. Do you not know Death
when you see it? Die now and curse in vain!' And with that he lifted
high his sword and flames ran down the blade.
Then Lobelia
Sackville-Baggins stepped up to Gandalf. There was a scornful frown on
her brow.
'Get out of the way, old scum,' she snapped at the astonished wizard and
poised herself between Shadowfax and the ghastly mare of the Nazgûl Lord.
Then she raised Rhosorthelian, the Rainscreen, Umbrella of
Westernesse, and prepared herself to club it on the Black
Captain's invisible scalp. With the same fell voice that she used on the Sackville-Baggins property to shoo her servants around she said:
| Begone, foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion! |
And when they heard those words, many a Man of Gondor was reminded of his wife or of his aunt or grandmother at home, and there was much groaning
and bowing of heads on the walls of Minas Tirith, and some brave warriors took their helms off and rubbed their
skulls in memory of suffered pain. And the Ringwraith made no answer but fell
silent, and it seemed that he was struck by the terrifying thought of a long forgotten youth most dreadful, in
ages past when Númenor had still been gleaming under the bright sun. And then, King, Ringwraith, Lord of the Nazgûl, he left the Gate and
vanished.
And the orcs and Variags and Men of Harad, they turned and
fled, for now doubt clutched their hearts, their laughter failed, their
hands shook and their limbs were loosed. The Power that drove them on
and filled them with hate and fury was no match to the memory of what
most they feared, and looking back at the fierceness of the Umbrella of
Westernesse that was wielded to terror by aunt Lobelia, they despaired.
And in that hour the great Battle of the field of Gondor was over; and
not one foe was left within the circuit of the Rammas, and to the land
of the Haradrim came a tale from far off: a rumour of the wrath and
terror of the Sackville-Bagginses.
'What,' said Gandalf deep in thought and wonder, 'is a dwimmerlaik?'
'A bogey I used to scare little Lotho with,' Lobelia said.
Donnerstag, 17. März 2016
A map of Europe projected on Middle-earth
The basis for this exercise was Tolkien's statement in Letter 294, recently confirmed by the draft for the Pauline Baynes map, that Hobbiton was located at the latitude (and, implicitly, the longitude) of Oxford. An earlier, more tentative version of this map I had produced many years ago, but now I was delighted to find that my computations from back then have been confirmed by Tolkien's notes on the Baynes draft!
The present map also helped to identify the latitude of Erebor. Entering this value into the free astronomy software "Stellarium" then allowed me to run a set of simulations that showed the positions of the sun and moon in the sky at Durin's Day and, from there, to establish the entire lunar almanac of "The Hobbit". The results of this simulation are part of my other book, "The Moon in 'The Hobbit'" (see the links at the bottom of this page).
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