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Tolkien's Middle-earth doesn't look like Medieval Europe - Page 2

© Michael Martinez

Nonetheless, the Rohirrim lived in mountains and the English lived in the lowlands. The Rohirrim organized their Riders into an army called the Muster of Rohan, which was divided into three forces: the Muster of Edoras, the Muster of the East-mark, and the Muster of the West-mark. These musters could be supplemented by local levies (as Theodred, Second Marshal of the Mark and commander of the Muster of the West-mark, raised levies from the West-mark to fight Saruman). The fact that Tolkien distinguishes between the local levies, however, and the Riders of Rohan shows that the Riders were indeed a different kind of army. They were the first line of defense for Rohan, and the local levies seem to have provided infantry forces not included in the Muster. (Details concerning Rohan's military may be found in Unfinished Tales.) Visually, Middle-earth simply doesn't look like any historical period, and it shouldn't. Tolkien's stories are set in an imaginary time in our past, about 6,000 years ago (according to Letter 211 in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien). This puts the end of Middle-earth's Third Age at the dawn of Biblical events, and Tolkien was very specific about Middle-earth's pre-Judeo-Christian theology because it existed prior to that time frame (Cf. Letter 153: "There are thus no temples or 'churches' or fanes in this 'world' among 'good' peoples....this is a 'primitive age'....). Middle-earth thus has nothing like the Catholic church, nor any great religious schisms and persecutions, such as may be found in Europe during the Middle Ages. The religio-political setting of Middle-earth is very unlike that of Europe in any period. Mankind has not yet developed full religions with pantheons and hierarchies, although the worshippers of Sauron and Morgoth have been initiated into "dark cults" which lead men away from the one true god. There are four primary cultures in The Lord of the Rings: (1) the Shire and Bree, (2) the Elven realms of Imladris and Lorien, (3) the Rohirrim, (4) Gondor. Little in these four cultures resembles medieval Europe. The Shire and Bree are derived mostly from Tolkien's childhood memories of a village in Warwickshire. These are very familiar settings to the modern English audience and Tolkien intended them to be so. "'The Shire' is based on rural England and not any other country in the world," Tolkien wrote to his publisher Rayner Unwin in 1956. "The toponymy of The Shire...is a 'parody' of that of rural England, in much the same sense as are its inhabitants."

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