If you’ve read Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings and have seen the movies than maybe you wondered if any of these tales were based on a time that really existed or was it just pure fantasy?

Well, some of the tales do come out of the past  the Dark Ages, a time so-called by scholars to mark the relative lack of written records.  This was the period between the Romans leaving Europe and the establishment of the Christian religions throughout Europe and Iceland, say about 400 - 1000 CE.

Professor Bates tells us that Middle-earth really existed. Historical research has revealed that some 2000 years ago there arose a largely forgotten civilisation stretching from Old England to Scandinavia and across western Europe which foreshadowed Tolkien’s imagined world.

Tolkien readily admitted in his letters that the concept of Middle-earth was not his own invention, but an old Anglo-Saxon term for the magical world inhabited, in the first millennium, by the people now grouped together and known as Celts, Anglo-Saxons and Norse.  Fortunately some of their knowledge has survived and Professor Bates has put a lot of this information into this book.

He begins by telling how Middle-earth came about and about the people who lived there. These people lived in a land that was far more wooded than we know today and lived very close to nature. To them the land was a magical place inhabited by dragons, elves, dwarves, giants, wizards, monsters and other beings, some beneficial and many malevolent. And these beings were taken into account in everyday living.  So, many of the strange beings that Tolkien wrote about in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings were believed to exist

Professor Bates then documents many of the strange beings and myths associated with Middle-earth and makes links to the characters Tolkien wrote about.  So we learn about dragons, elves, wells of wisdom, plant magic, the raven’s omen, seeresses, ents, dwarves, spider monsters and the web of destiny amongst other things.

To the people of Middle-earth three realms made up the cosmos. These realms were Upper-world, Middle-earth and Lower-world and suspended among these three realms were nine other worlds. These three realms surrounded the World Tree, whose branches reached up to heaven, like three disks.

Gods and goddesses inhabited the Upper-world. These were the old warrior gods and fertility goddesses.  This was also the land of light elves who expressed the spirit of nature.

Middle-earth was where humans lived and was surrounded by a vast ocean containing an immense world serpent, so long that it encircled Middle-earth and bit its own tail. Close by, but over the ocean, was the world of giants or ents.  These beings established the Earth.  Dwarves also lived in this Middle realm, underground in the north, as did the ‘dark elves’.

The Lower-world contained the world of the dead and lay to the north and down from Middle-earth. Its citadel was Hel governed by a half black, half white female monster of the same name. It was a dark and forbidding place containing the wisdom of the dead.
 
To the people of Middle-earth the landscape looked quite different to the way we see it. Elves populated the trees and streams, dwarves forged magical weapons, dragons slumbered beneath the hills guarding treasure, wizards cast spells and seeresses foretold the future. Wizards made perilous visits the other realms to obtain knowledge and hence become wise.

Professor Bates identifies the source of many of the myths, strange beings and places used by Tolkien and for those wanting to research further a full reference list is given in the Notes. These include Tacitus’ account of the early German peoples written in 98CE, the 1000 year old medical manuscript in the British Library (Harley 585) known as Lugnunga, and Snorri Sturluson’s The Prose Edda written about 1200CE.

After the Norman Conquest and throughout the Middle Ages these pre-Christian beliefs were denigrated and dismissed as primitive superstitions and as an embarrassing interlude of history between the Romans and the Normans.  However it is interesting to observe that the Christian Church believed in many of these superstitions, their objection to them being that they gained their powers from sources outside the blessings of the Church and hence undermined the political power of the Church.  Where the Church could not successfully outlaw a magical practice they adopted it into Christian custom.  And so these age-old beliefs live on.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Real Middle-earth. This is a book that I am sure to refer to in the future.

Tags: brian bates