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Tolkien's Middle-earth doesn't look like Medieval Europe - Page 3

© Michael Martinez

Anyone who has visited an English pub knows the sights, sounds, and smells Tolkien envisioned for the conversations in Hobbiton's Ivy Bush, Bywater's Green Dragon, and Bree's Prancing Pony. The atmosphere is ripe with ale. The hum of numerous conversations keeps the night buzzing. The barkeep is intently discussing matters with his friends, unlike an American bartender (say) who listens politely to what strangers have to say. The Hobbits with their umbrellas, waistcoats, silk handkerchiefs, and brass buttons are anything but a medieval people. They are very modern and very rustic at the same time. Tolkien is thus at ease in comparing the sound of a fireworks display in the Shire with the sound of an "express train". Not that Hobbits had express trains, but rather, that their world is so familiar to a modern reader -- a modern English reader -- it shouldn't seem medieval at all. Hobbits built with brick and stone, too, an uncommon style for medieval peasants, who often built with wattle and daub.. In the book Frodo and his companions ride past "some hundred stone houses of the Big Folk, mostly on the Road, nestling on the hillside with windows looking west" when they enter Bree. The Bree structures built for the movies look like wattle and daub buildings (identified as "Tudor style" by some). No stone. The windows don't appear to be looking west. And never mind what happened to the hill, which appears not to be part of the set at all. Of course, Bree will not ruin the movies. In fact I've been told it's to be filmed at night and in the rain (although it's not raining when Frodo arrives at Bree in the book), so purists like me won't have too much to grumble about. The Elven cultures don't compare to anything in our medieval experience. The House of Elrond is viewed as a sort of country manor by many people, but there are no serfs in evidence. Tolkien was very inspecific in describing Elrond's house, although he painted it. In fact, Tolkien made several renderings of the house, but the most prominent features are the porch and the second storey, the latter being the floor with the vanishing windows. In one image it has three windows to a side, in another it has two, and in the final rendition, a spectacular watercolor named "Rivendell", there is only one window. Elrond's house was not the only Elven abode in the valley of Rivendell, but it's the only one we see. We are told in The Road Goes Ever On that Gildor's people lived in or near Rivendell. Even if all of Elrond's servants and counsellors actually lived with him this custom is so ancient as to be far removed from the concept of a medieval lord supporting villeins and soldiers on his estate.

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