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Tolkien's Middle-earth doesn't look like Medieval Europe - Page 5

© Michael Martinez

But do the similarities between Meduseld and Heorot mean the Rohirrim are medieval? Of course not, and the fact that the Rohirrim were most renowned as horsemen is reminiscent of when the Romans encountered peoples from the eastern steppes whose prowess on horseback both amazed and terrorized their enemies. The Huns are the most famous mounted people to enter Europe, but the Goths are embedded in our imagination as a warlike nation of mounted warriors who moved into the empire and eventually helped bring about about its decline in the west. We have a different view of the Goths now than in Tolkien's day. Nonetheless, the Rohirrim's devotion to their horses, their expertise in mounted warfare, even their arms and armor all evoke images of Alaric's Goths charging across the field save for one discrepancy: Alaric's warriors did not use stirrups, whereas the Rohirrim did. It has also been argued that the great cavalry charges of the Rohirrim could not have been inspired by the armies of antiquity, but this is incorrect. Tolkien loved the classics, and he read them in the original Greek and Latin. On several occasions in his letters he makes casual reference to Alexander, the young Macedonian king who led armies across the known world. Tolkien was thus familiar with Alexander and knew his adventures. Although ancient cavalry most often attacked enemy flanks, one of the tactics Alexander perfected with his Companion Cavalry was the straight-forward charge, used to break through the center of an enemy line. Companion Cavalrymen even used extremely long spears. A popular misconception about the Macedonian cavalry is that they, like other ancient cavalry, had to use their spears overhand instead of couched underarm like medieval knights. But a Companion Cavalryman's spear was too long and cumbersome for such a tactic. It's also believed that a lighter-armed cavalry force, called prodromoi, may have been armed with even longer spears. So, are the Rohirrim derived from Goths and Macedonian cavalry? Not necessarily. Rather, they are too broadly painted as a horse-loving culture specializing in mounted warfare to be derived from any medieval European people. Nor are they culturally similar to the Anglo-Saxons whose language Tolkien used to represent the language of Rohan. The Rohirrim are idealized Northmen, romanticized beyond any singular identification, and as the Romans discovered, the peoples of northern Europe were a force to be reckoned with long before there was a medieval period in which Rome's accomplishments would recede into whimsical memory.

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