The Lord of the Rings as [Greenlandian] Fantasy in The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien [edited title]

[Parmandur]

Celtic (a language of which, if I remember correctly, he said he disliked the sound).

No, he loved Welsh, that's why he put so much of it into Sindarin.

 

[Parmandur]

Basically Tolkien knew a huge amount of legends and mythology, but was incredibly ignorant about archaeology to think that he could somehow "slip this in there". Even in the 1930s that was a profoundly silly idea.

Tolkienhad a weird relationship with his framing device, and waffles for literally decades between imagining himself as a descendent of Elros (in a psychedelic dream time travel story stretching across history) and dropping it. Any given letter might just catch him on some random part of that spectrum.

I would imagine he was familiar with the archaeology, since he would have rubbed shoulders with colleges working it the field. It’s probably more accurate to say he didn’t care, as he was writing myth, not history.

It was a bit of a cliche to put your fantasy world in some kind of forgotten past of the real world. REH and others were already doing that. It was his chum C S Lewis who invented setting fantasy on other planes of existence.

Aaaackshullay, that would be William Morris in The Well at the World's End: Lewis in Magician's Nephew was alluding to that work and suggesting it was canon in Narnia, just like it did Sherlock Holmes, King Arthur, E. Nesbit, and the Lord of the Rings (Incle Andrew's rings are made from some dust from Numenor). Lewis was like that.

 

[Dausuul]

I don't think Tolkien would have agreed, and it's nonsensical.

He wouldn't have agreed with what he himself wrote?

I mean, sure, his vision of Middle-Earth evolved over his lifetime, but by the point he was answering questions about it in his letters, the legendarium was extensively developed. There's no reason to suppose his conception of Numenor changed much after letter 211.

 

[Hriston]

Broadly speaking, Tolkien imagined his stories as part of our world legendary past, but his view of when exactly they fit into this past changed over the years. In the version of the mythology represented in Lost/Unfinished Tales, there were much closer connections to Earth actual history, with direct references to Babylon, Troy and Rome, with the latter invasion of Britain (Tol Eressea) triggering the last great migration of the Elves westward.

These ideas were later abandoned, in favor of pushing the mythology farther back into Earth's past, but this did not significantly alter the cultural, societal, and technological levels represented in the stories, which are definitely well beyond what is attested for real world Neolithic.

I'm not sure what "cultural, societal, and technological levels" you're talking about. Tolkien, as an author, describes very little about these things, so I'd appreciate more specificity about what you think is being represented. This is complicated by the fact that Tolkien's fantasy depicts different peoples at different "levels". The Elves, especially those who came from Valinor, have a very high level of culture influenced by divine tutelage. The men of Gondor have knowledge of engineering and other mental abilities that far exceed those of common men. The activities of these more advanced peoples were mainly taking place in areas which are now underwater. Tolkien says very little about the cultural realities of the common folk of Middle-earth with which a valid apples-to-apples comparison could be made with the archaeological record. Then there's the problem that what's "attested" can't possibly be the sum total of everything that has ever existed. There has to be some room for imagination, especially in a fantasy where that's kind of the point.

Edit: fixed typo

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I feel like he wouldn't have written what he did in that letter if he didn't care in that particular way, but who knows! Also, I dunno about Oxford specifically, but talking about universities and academics in general, there's vastly less rubbing shoulders in terms of subject knowledge than one might expect. It is not uncommon even for actual history professors to be wildly out of touch with stuff the archaeology department at the same university is doing, let along the English department (and I can't imagine Oxford's sub-college system helped with that)

I was a postgrad RA for four years (Manchester, not Oxford) and I did a fair bit of rubbing shoulders with academics in other disciplines (perhaps because astrophysics was a bit dull). But Tolkien was at Oxford from the discovery of Tut’s tomb in Egypt to Sutton Hoo less than 160 miles away. And that was Saxon, his period*. Meanwhile actual Stone Age discoveries were being made 160 miles in the other direction at Stonehenge and Avebury. I find it hard to believe he missed that stuff. Preferred to ignore it seems more likely.

*and if I remember correctly the Saxons chose the Sutton Hoo site because it already had Stone Age mounds.

 

[Parmandur]

I was a postgrad RA for four years (Manchester, not Oxford) and I did a fair bit of rubbing shoulders with academics in other disciplines (perhaps because astrophysics was a bit dull). But Tolkien was at Oxford from the discovery of Tut’s tomb in Egypt to Sutton Hoo less than 160 miles away. And that was Saxon, his period*. Meanwhile actual Stone Age discoveries were being made 160 miles in the other direction at Stonehenge and Avebury. I find it hard to believe he missed that stuff. Preferred to ignore it seems more likely.

*and if I remember correctly the Saxons chose the Sutton Hoo site because it already had Stone Age mounds.

I mean, I don't think he really cared about historical plausibility much at all, not like he cared about internal consistency. He was writing a Platonist myth to deal with his trauma, not a theoretical history proposal.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Tolkien, as an author, describes very little about these things, so I'd appreciate more specificity about what you think is being represented

Err what?

Tolkien tells us a huge amount about culture and technology. We have Georgian English Shire, facing destruction by steam engine, to Saxons (with horses instead of ships) in Rohan, almost brought down by gunpowder. There are lots of references to iron and steel (it would be hard to describe mithril as harder than steel to someone unfamiliar with steel) weapons, mail coats (not Stone Age!) and even a Germanic town in The Hobbit. Not to mention Bilbo’s silver spoons which Lobelia hid in her umbrella (which I think was invented some time after the wheel).

You could make a case that the woses had a Stone Age technology, but that’s due to extreme isolation.

 

[Dausuul]

When LotR was written, it was rare to acknowledge that your story was set in a totally invented world, even if it obviously was. The claim that Middle-Earth is a "prehistory" of the real world is the sort of fig leaf used to excuse such invention. I don't think we need hold Tolkien to any particularly high standard of plausibility here.

But it's fun to try and reconcile these things. So, let's suppose that Middle-Earth really is a pre-historical version of real Earth. (Note: Throughout the following, I am speaking from the point of view that I see Tolkien espousing in his work. I do not agree with this point of view, particularly as regards technological progress! But Middle-Earth is a world where moral forces influence physical reality, so we can't incorporate ME into the history of real Earth without accepting the nature of those forces as Tolkien described them.)

1. The technology shown at the end of the Third Age is far beyond that of the real-world Bronze Age, which in Tolkien's chronology came afterward. We see highly developed steel arms and armor, full-sized cavalry horses, etc. Therefore, the technology of LotR must somehow have been lost.

2. The history of Arda involves a general theme of decline. The world of the Third Age is diminished from the Second, the world of the Second Age is diminished from the First, etc. This follows the idea put forth in "Morgoth's Ring," that the corruption of Morgoth was a poison steadily working away at all of Arda, even after Morgoth himself was cast out.

3. In the real world, technology tends toward an "industrial" mode (standardized, hierarchically organized, overseen by elites and closely joined with the interests of the state) when a society becomes large and stable enough to make this practical. See for example China and ancient Rome.

4. In LotR, industrial-style production is consistently linked to the powers of evil: Sauron and the fallen Saruman. So we may assume that what we regard as technological progress is in fact a continued decline, Morgoth's corruption reaching toward its final ascendancy. (I think Tolkien actually said this at some point, though I don't have a reference off the top of my head.)

5. This means the technology seen in LotR is not the same as that of the medieval age, despite the obvious resemblance. It is purer, less tainted by Morgoth's influence. I would guess the swords, armor, and other artifacts were far superior in quality, manufactured by artisans of skill unmatched in latter days, who could and did devote a great deal of time -- perhaps years -- to each item. Since this would drastically slow down the pace of manufacture, the only way for a large stock of such things to exist is if they were preserved and maintained for a very long time. This is consistent with the reverence for heirlooms shown throughout the cultures of Middle-Earth, apart from Mordor and Isengard.

6. We may also note the extraordinary timespans involved in Tolkien's chronology, where it's common for societies to exist more or less unchanged for thousands of years, in stark contrast to the history we know. This, too, seems an indication of the purer, less-corrupt world of the Third Age: Preservation is easier, reverence for tradition is greater, and rapid "progress" is not as desired.

7. This still leaves the question of what happened to the relics of the Third Age. Why have we not unearthed the ruins of Minas Tirith or the foundries of Isengard? The answer may involve a catastrophe akin to the War of Wrath or the downfall of Numenor, which reshaped much of the world; after all, the geography of Middle-Earth doesn't match anywhere in the real Earth, so something drastic must have happened in the interim. It's also possible that Morgoth's minions at some point made a deliberate effort to obliterate Gondor from history, to wipe away for good all memory of Numenor and its children -- an effort which was thwarted once again by hobbits in the form of the Red Book, a copy of which survived and found its way down through the ages to a certain professor at Oxford.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

having rejected the Arthurian mythos as too Celtic/Welsh and too French

Maybe celts, Welsh and Gallic, are just more romantic than pragmatic Saxons!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

7. This still leaves the question of what happened to the relics of the Third Age

Maybe it was even further back in time so no relics survive? Silurian hypothesis - Wikipedia.

The people of Middle Earth were never human, they were lizard people.