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How did Tolkien actually portray the Rohirrim? - Page 2

© Michael Martinez

To begin with, we are presented with boats. They are everywhere in the sagas and nowhere in Rohan. Then Njal Thorgeirsson and his family are burned alive by their enemies (other Icelanders) in their own home. There is nothing of this type of brutal feuding in the history of the Rohirrim, although Helm Hammerhand did take action against the arrogant Freca, whose mixed Dunlending blood made him an outsider among the Rohirrim. Helm's slaying of Freca precipitated a great war with the Dunlendings and some of Gondor's enemies. In Njal's Saga Icelanders casually cross the North Sea to Scandinavia, a queen curses a marriage, men are slain on points of pride, the men leave the land to seek fame and fortune in other parts of the world, jealous women set men to killing each other -- although elements of great drama, such things do not occur in Tolkien's stories of the Northmen. We know from examples like Freca and Grima Wormtongue they were capable of greed, ambition, and evil, but these traits are hardly confined to the ancient Germans and Scandinavians anyway. Njal's Saga is essentially about the obligations of bloodlines. There is no hint of nationalism. Icelanders don't refrain from killing each other in the face of outside threats -- rather, they go about the process almost with total glee and abandon. Theirs was a harsh world with no incarnate evil beings such as Sauron to unite them all against a common foe. Rohan was founded by a single tribe (the Eotheod) who migrated south to help defend the kingdom of Gondor in exchange for a wider land to replace their own. The Rohirric culture underwent some changes through the centuries, but they retained their strong kings, did not fragment into feuding clans, and repeatedly went to Gondor's aid in war. The Rohirrim were a militaristic culture in many ways, and their kingdom was formed as a buffer state. That is why they call it the Mark or the Riddermark. "Mark" is an ancient Germanic word for a border region often administered by a military officer, but it also denoted a region held or worked in common by a community or people. Iceland was not founded by kings but rather by free farmers. In time the family chiefs convened the Althing, forming a commonwealth which lasted nearly 400 years before the system broke down into the chaos which precipitated the events on which Njal's Saga is based. There was no final singular authority to appeal to in Iceland as there was in Rohan.

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