I wonder if it is what he had in mind when writing his Middle Earth works:
Hobbits - English
Elves - French
Dwarves - German
Orcs - Russian
Haradrim - Middle Easterners
Valar/Maiar - Americans (super powerful people who are envied by all and whose home country is west across a great ocean.)
Okay, maybe that last one is a joke, but the others always seemed to fit well.
Hobbits were definitely country dwellers from England but I’d include pastoral folk from all of Britain and Ireland too. Not city folk!
Elves - Scandinavia
Dwarves - Poland & Ukraine.
Orcs - Germany.
Uruk-hai - Russia.
Easterlings - Greece.
Haradrim - Syria.
You'll find this interview interesting: https://youtu.be/bzDtmMXJ1B4
I love listening to Tolkien in interviews. Maybe I'm reading into it, but I always get the feeling the interviewer is trying to be clever and "deep", and speak to Tolkien on the professor's level, only to find out that Tolkien is always one level ahead. Case in point here, they are talking about Frodo and the interviewer talks about a Buddhist connection that J.R.R. ignores, then says Frodo has some Christ-like virtues, but Bilbo isn't Christ-like at all. "Oh, no?" replies Tolkien, and we can *hear* the wily smile.
shareYeah, especially when it came Tolkien they knew they had to up their game.
shareI'm so glad he was interviewed and we have recordings of him talking about his world.
shareI can imagine being in an old English pub and eavesdropping on Tolkien talk to his friends sitting at another table, I’d stay there for hours! 🍻
shareAs would I. To be an Inkling would have been marvellous.
Do you know, it's funny, although I love listening to Tolkien and I love his works, but I'm not sure I would have enjoyed being in his classes. I could see him going on in that swift mumble, possibly diving into such minutiae that I would have no hope of following his thoughts, and then because he's such an intelligent man, I could see him having a rather grand expectation of what ought to be "easy" to the average student, making his class difficult to follow and harder to pass.
I'd be the student that left that exam paper page blank, just for Tolkien to add "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit!"
As for the Inklings I'd be far too overwhelmed to be part of that but I would be very happy to serve the drinks and listen in.
I did that! I had a professor who told me that story so I left a page on the final exam blank!
shareI thought the elves could have been East Asians. If you've got a different race in reality why not use it ?
Hobbits - Irish
Elves - Nordics
Men (Rohan) - Germans
Men (Gondor) - Latin/Meds
Dwarves - Jews
Orcs - East Africans
Uruk Hai - West Africans
Goblins - South Asians
Haradrim - Arabs
Easterlings - Turks
Easterling - Middle Easterners
Haradrim - Africans
And no Brit would base a race of magic and beauty on the French
Ever since reading The Silmarillion, I've always seen parallels between the Elves and the Israelites, including different kingdoms and things like that, but mostly because of their nature as the Children of Illuvatar.
I don't think there's a one-to-one comparison. Of course, the Hobbits have an Englishness, but a specific kind of Englishness. The alliance between the free peoples of Middle Earth does feel a bit British Isles generally, all these different tribes and so forth.
One gets an Anglo-Saxon feeling from the Rohirrim, as well, but I don't think any race or group of Middle Earth are the spittin' image of a real group. That said, I agree that Hobbits are English, but specifically English people from bucolic, pastoral villages.
Elves have the "historic" function of Israelites here, but I'd also go with Wales, perhaps for the connection to King Arthur's myths. The Elves are - in some ways - fulfillment of potential, and Arthur is a high bar. Really, though, I think they have a lot of the British Isles generally, just in terms of the Fae. I also see them blended with Greco-Roman classical ideas.
Orcs are their opposites, representing the cruelty we can descend to, just as Elves are the wisdom we can ascend to.
As for the Dwarves, I think of vikings more than Germans, but I certainly see the German connection.
I picture Vikings as too tall in my mind, but then again my perception is probably colored by tv and movies where they are all 7 foot tall blond guys.
shareI definitely can see the Germanic influence as well. But I think, generally, no race in Tolkien is really a 1:1 with any real race. We can see similarities, but they are always confounded by the blurry blend he made. Elves have some Scandinavian things about them, of course, but you could argue they have some far East/ Japanese things about them, too. Or druidic things, or Native American things.
share