J.R.R. Tolkien – Page 6

Dining in Middle Earth: A Farewell Feast in Bag End

February 17, 2016February 27, 2016Eppu

“In the evening Frodo gave his farewell feast: it was quite small, just a dinner for himself and his four helpers… The dining-room was bare except for a table and chairs, but the food was good, and there was good wine: Frodo’s wine had not been included in the sale to the Sackville-Bagginses.”

Our take on Frodo’s last dinner in Bag End has Sam Gamgee’s fish and chips at the center, accompanied by boiled cabbage wedges with rosemary mint sauce. For dessert there is a simple blueberry soup. And with it all, a glass of wine for toasting the good old hole farewell.

Since this is quite a small, pre-long-distance-move dinner, the props are mostly simple, too: plain ceramics, plain glass, and wooden utensils on a bare table. Since the “good wine” was explicitly not included in the sale, we went with the spirit of indulgence and picked a fancier glass for it.

Check out what’s it about in the introduction, or read the how-to!

Images by Eppu Jensen

Geeks eat, too! Second Breakfast is an occasional feature in which we talk about food with geeky connections and maybe make some of our own. Yum!

Making A Long-Expected Party

January 21, 2016February 27, 2016Erik

Here’s a look at how we made yesterday’s A Long-Expected Party.

The menu

Potato and cream soup
Roast pork with apples, root vegetables, and ginger gravy
Roasted asparagus
Stuffed pears
Red wine

As Elves love song and Dwarves love the gems of the earth, so Hobbits love their food. We know more about Hobbit food than about the cuisine of any other culture on Middle Earth, so it is a surprise to find that in the description of the festivities for Bilbo Baggins’s 111th birthday, we learn nothing about what was actually on the table. (Though clearly there was plenty of it, whatever it was.) That means that for our very first Middle Earth dinner, we have to use a little imagination. Fortunately, there’s a lot to go on.

Since this is a party of special magnificence (with supplies brought in all the way from Dale), I’ve tried to make a combination of typical Hobbit fare with a few special or exotic twists.

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Dining in Middle Earth: A Long-Expected Party

January 20, 2016February 27, 2016Eppu

“When every guest had been welcomed and was finally inside the gate, there were songs, dances, music, games, and, of course, food and drink. There were three official meals: lunch, tea, and dinner (or supper). But lunch and tea were marked chiefly by the fact that at those times all the guests were sitting down and eating together. At other times there were merely lots of people eating and drinking – continuously from elevenses until six-thirty, when the fireworks started.”

Our version of Bilbo Baggins’s party of special magnificence begins with an appetizer of potato and cream soup, followed by roast pork and root vegetables served with ginger gravy and asparagus on the side. It ends in dessert, with baked stuffed pears. (Of course, in proper Hobbit fashion, you may start and end with whatever you like.) A glass of red wine washes it all down.

Our imagined table comes with a variety of kitchenware styles. Glass and green glazed crockery complement basic redware pottery. There are wood and metal utensils, including a fork and silver soup spoon. The colors green and yellow were pulled from the general description of Hobbits’ preferences. A potted plant and candles finish off the table setting.

Check out what’s it about in the introduction, or read the how-to!

Images by Eppu Jensen

Geeks eat, too! Second Breakfast is an occasional feature in which we talk about food with geeky connections and maybe make some of our own. Yum!

Dining in Middle Earth

January 13, 2016December 15, 2016Erik

“As for the Hobbits of the Shire, with whom these tales are concerned, in the days of their peace and prosperity they were a merry folk… with mouths apt to laughter, and to eating and drinking. And laugh they did, and eat, and drink, often and heartily, being fond of simple jests at all times, and of six meals a day (when they could get them).”

So Tolkien introduces us to his Hobbits, lovers of good food and good company. There is plenty of eating and drinking in The Lord of the Rings, from humble Hobbit fare to Elven delicacies, from the foraged meals of rangers in the wild to the feasts of great kings.

In 2016, we’re taking up a project to eat our way through The Lord of the Rings. Every month, we’ll prepare and present a dinner inspired by foods from the novel, working our way through the story from Bilbo’s 111th birthday party to Frodo’s return to the Shire. Along the way, there are some meals that Tolkien describes in such detail that we can read the menu straight from the page. In other places, he offers only tantalizing hints that require us to engage in gastronomical-literary archaeology to fill a table.

We’re doing our best to stay true to the novel in the project, so where Tolkien gives us a clear idea of what the characters eat, we stick to it. When we have to figure something out on our own, we use clues from The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and ideas from historical cookery to guide us.

We’ll share the results of our work with you around the middle of the month. A post introducing the month’s meal and showing the results of our labors will come out on a Wednesday. The following day, we’ll offer a behind-the-scenes view of how we researched the food, decided on a menu, prepared the dishes, and designed the setting, complete with recipes you can try for yourselves. We’ll collect links to all the entries on this post, so you can always come back here to get caught up, or check the dining in Middle Earth tag to find them all.

A note on the behind-the-scenes posts: we’ll be referencing passages from the book and since there are many different editions of the text with different paginations, we’re using the book and chapter divisions given in Tolkien’s table of contents. For example, the first half of The Fellowship of the Ring is identified as Book 1. In that book, chapter 4 is “A Short Cut to Mushrooms,” so we reference that chapter as (1.4); we reference Hobbit chapters with (H).

January: A Long-Expected Party / Making A Long-Expected Party

February: A Farewell Feast in Bag End / Making A Farewell Feast in Bag End

March: Supper at the Prancing Pony / Making Supper at the Prancing Pony

April: Food in the Wild / Making Food in the Wild

May: In the House of Elrond / Making In the House of Elrond

June: Dinner with Durin’s Folk / Making Dinner with Durin’s Folk

July: Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit / Making Herbs and Stewed Rabbit

August: Rangers’ Rations / Making Rangers’ Rations

September: The Courtesy of the Golden Hall / Making The Courtesy of the Golden Hall

October: Flotsam and Jetsam / Making Flotsam and Jetsam

November: The Return of the King / Making the Return of the King

December: A Proper 1420 / Making a Proper 1420

Image by Eppu Jensen

Geeks eat, too! Second Breakfast is an occasional feature in which we talk about food with geeky connections and maybe make some of our own. Yum!

Sean Bean on the LotR Joke in The Martian

October 9, 2015Eppu2 Comments

Finland’s national public broadcasting company Yle interviewed actor Sean Bean (article in Finnish; the 4-minute video in English) during his promo tour for The Martian.

(Note: I wasn’t able to share the video; you’ll have to follow the link to Yle and play it there.)

Bean mentions that the Lord of the Rings reference – Project Elrond – was something he didn’t know how to react to. My partial transcription from the interview (from ca. 1:50-2:30) picks up with Bean’s answer to how it came about:

“I don’t know. I think it was in the script originally and it stayed in there, and it was very funny ’cause I’ve never been in a f– I was in a film that– then– which was– within a film. So it was very funny. [Laughs.] And, erm, you know, I just kind of listened to it, I didn’t know how to react, really [laughs], to that. It’s an unusual kind of situation I was in. But it was great, it’s great. I love that, it’s nice.”

When asked whether they joked about the reference on set, Bean answered:

“Not really, no, you said it and everyone went, like– [indistinct; laughs.] You know, I couldn’t kind of go, like, ‘Oh yeah, I was in [that]’, you know. But I– So I just kind of– [makes a gesture of playing it cool] went on with it.”

Other questions touch on the large number of team leader roles he’s played or characters who die (which Bean doesn’t seek out, specifically), how Bean built the character of Mitch Henderson with director Ridley Scott, and the kind of roles Bean would like to play in the future.

Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.

The Martian and Tolkien

October 6, 2015March 4, 2016Erik

The Martian got me thinking about Tolkien (and not just because of the Council of Elrond reference, although I loved that bit). On a basic level, The Martian is about the same thing that The Lord of the Rings is about. No, Mark Watney doesn’t have to destroy a magic ring and Frodo and Sam weren’t planting potatoes in Mordor, but the question that both works keep coming back to is the same: how do you make good decisions when you don’t have the information you need?

I was thinking about The Lord of the Rings recently after listening in on a conversation between a couple of fantasy geeks about why they don’t like Tolkien. Their complaints were that Tolkien’s writing moves slowly, people talk about things instead of doing them, and most of the action doesn’t even happen on the page. These are all perfectly valid points, and if you prefer action to talking, they are good reasons to read something else. We all like the things we like and there’s no right or wrong about it. What struck me, though, was that the things they didn’t like about Tolkien are precisely the things I love.

There is a rich vein of fantasy literature all about heroes who charge boldly into the thick of battle and remake the world by sheer force of their will. Tolkien’s heroes are not of this kind. For him, what makes a hero is slowing down, thinking carefully, and making the best decision you can, even when you can’t be sure your choice is the right one.

My favorite part of The Lord of the Rings is the Council of Elrond. I know that I am in a minority in this and that even many people who love Tolkien find the whole chapter tedious. I understand the objections, but I can’t help loving the fact that dealing with the ring is something the heroes have to puzzle over and work out. Some fantasy writers would just slip in a helpful ancient prophecy or have Elrond drop a little exposition on the party and get the Fellowship on the road as soon as possible. (Peter Jackson, working within the constraints of film, understandably comes pretty close to this.) But Tolkien lets them take their time, piecing together scraps of information that are all fragmentary and biased. What they end up with is not a perfect answer but the best they can do with what they have. The courage of Tolkien’s heroes is less about facing the danger of Sauron and more about facing the fact that the best decision they can make might still be wrong.

And that’s what I love about The Martian. Mark Watney is a Tolkienian hero. He has to make the best decisions he can even when he can’t be certain what NASA is doing a planet away, or if anyone even knows he’s still alive. He survives not by strength or force of will but by slowing down, thinking things through, and facing the inescapable uncertainties of his predicament. He does the best he can with what he has. Or, as he puts it: sciencing the shit out of things.

I could use a few more heroes like this. We have enough heroes who swing swords, shoot guns, drive cars, and punch things. Let’s have more heroes who plant potatoes. Sam Gamgee would approve.

Images: The Martian via moviepilot.com. Sam Gamgee via dwarfsandhobits.tumblr.com

In the Seen on Screen occasional feature, we discuss movies and television shows of interest.

The Story of Kullervo: Tolkien Inspired by the Finnish Folk Epic

September 25, 2015October 15, 2022Eppu

J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Story of Kullervo edited by Verlyn Flieger will be published only a few weeks from now in the U.S. The October release was preceded by a late August launch in the U.K.

According to the publisher’s statement,

“Kullervo son of Kalervo is perhaps the darkest and most tragic of all J.R.R. Tolkien’s characters. ‘Hapless Kullervo’, as Tolkien called him, is a luckless orphan boy with supernatural powers and a tragic destiny.

“Brought up in the homestead of the dark magician Untamo, who killed his father, kidnapped his mother, and who tries three times to kill him when still a boy, Kullervo is alone save for the love of his twin sister, Wanona, and guarded by the magical powers of the black dog, Musti. When Kullervo is sold into slavery he swears revenge on the magician, but he will learn that even at the point of vengeance there is no escape from the cruellest of fates.

“Tolkien wrote that The Story of Kullervo was ‘the germ of my attempt to write legends of my own’, and was ‘a major matter in the legends of the First Age’; his Kullervo was the ancestor of Túrin Turambar, tragic incestuous hero of The Silmarillion. In addition to being a powerful story in its own right, The Story of Kullervo – published here for the first time with the author’s drafts, notes and lecture-essays on its source-work, The Kalevala, is a foundation stone in the structure of Tolkien’s invented world.”

As The Kalevala is my national epic, it feels odd to see the storylines and names used with little or no change by a celebrated international author. I’m used to thinking of my country and culture as small and unimportant. Perhaps that is our strength, after all – we’ve managed to hold on to some unique features in our little corner of Europe.

If the original folk epic interests you, an English-language version of The Kalevala is available for free at Project Gutenberg.

This post has been edited for formatting.

Crowdfunding Campaign to Build Minas Tirith for Real

August 14, 2015Eppu

Turns out a group of people in Great Britain is hankering after a real Minas Tirith so much that they started an Indiegogo campaign to fund the building effort:

“We are a team of Tolkien fans who are passionate about creating a beautiful, inspirational and fully-functioning replica of Peter Jackson’s depiction of Minas Tirith, as seen in his Lord of the Rings films.

“We all share a love of Tolkien’s work, and a desire to challenge the common perception of community and architecture. We believe that, in realising Minas Tirith, we could create not only the most remarkable tourist attraction on the planet, but also a wonderfully unique place to live and work.”

If the project sounds far-fetched to you, rest assured: the team knows it’s a long shot:

“Please only donate within your means, and in the knowledge that this project is a light-hearted venture with virtually no chance of succeeding. […] We make no claim on the image or name of Minas Tirith, and will happily cancel this project should any dispute arise over such.”

Two things come to mind: it’s a fascinating example of 1) how throwing money at something has become an established way to show public support for a project or person, and 2) how the Internet allows people to engage in collective daydreaming across the globe.

Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.

2016 Tolkien Calendar Illustrated by Tove Jansson

July 29, 2015March 2, 2016Eppu

According to The Tolkien Society, the Official Tolkien Calendar for 2016 will be released tomorrow, July 30, 2015. The calendar is illustrated by Tove Jansson, a Finnish visual artist and author.

Jansson (1914-2001) is best known as the creator of Moomins. However, she also illustrated Swedish translations of The Hobbit and Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Some of these illustrations were later used in Finnish translations.

Jansson's illustrations for early Swedish and Finnish translations of The Hobbit. The estate of Tove Jansson, via Tolkien Library. — Jansson’s illustrations for early Swedish and Finnish translations of The Hobbit. The estate of Tove Jansson, via Tolkien Library.

The publisher’s description of the calendar reads:

“Jansson illustrated The Hobbit in 1961 for the Swedish and Finnish editions, creating a dozen enchanting full page drawings plus many smaller vignette pieces. Never before published in an English-language edition, the 2016 calendar contains all twelve of these illustrations, many of the vignettes, and a full-colour centrefold featuring her dramatic cover painting of Smaug attacking the Dwarves. The calendar is introduced by Tolkien expert and author Brian Sibley, who corresponded with the artist and provides insightful commentary regarding the genesis of the illustrations and Jansson’s tireless work continuing to build the world of The Moomins. The Official Tolkien Calendar has been an established publishing event for Tolkien fans and Hobbit collectors for the last four decades, and the 2016 edition will continue to delight and surprise.”