classify J.R.R. Tolkien

[oubit]

(left)

[mike2]

Keltic Nordic, perhaps?

I'm a big fan of LOTR, the Hobbit, and the Silmarillion. Whatever his racial type, Tolkien was a genius, most certainly.

[Crimson Guard]

Dinaric /Mediterranoid.

He was OK,but his work was a ripoff of Plato's The Ring fo Gynes and Wagner Rings story. I prefer real mythology,not copycat.

[Cerdic]

crimsonguard said:

Dinaric /Mediterranoid.

He was OK,but his work was a ripoff of Plato's The Ring fo Gynes and Wagner Rings story. I prefer real mythology,not copycat.

Tolkien originally conceived his work as an invented mythology to stand in for the mythology that the English have completely lost. No stories of Eostre or Seaxnot or any other Anglo-Saxon god have survived. No one really knows how similar or different the English myths were from those of the Scandinavians, the latter, of course, have partially survived.

[mike2]

I've heard that whole "he ripped off the Wagnerian Nibelungenlied" criticism before and frankly I think it's been dismissed already. Just because both stories have rings and dwarves in them doesn't mean Tolkien's work is plagiarized. He invented hobbits and the entire mythology of Middle Earth all by himself, for goodness sake. Cerdic hit the nail on the head. Tolkien primarily wrote his stories on Middle Earth for himself because he was dissatisfied that his native England had no real surviving mythology of its own. So he decided to make one. And he did a pretty damn good job.

[Platypus]

Keltic Nordic..(Dinaricized Nordic/Atlantid or both)

I Agree with Mike the guy is a genius. He was able to muster all myths, and all forms of myth telling, from the fable to the epic, and re-told it in a modern key.
I read the book when I was 11 and i was very fascinated by all the different races of men and elves dwarfs and hobbits etc. Nowadays I stick more on the Human types..unless we categorize Alpines as Dwarves!!!

PS dont worry Crimson..Sicily has good writers too, Tomasi di Lampedusa author of the Leopard being my favourite!

[Agrippa]

Nordid/Atlantid with slight Dinarid admixture ~ Keltic

[nbz]

North Atlantid with Dinarism.

I think the Dinarism of many Western Europeans, like him, could have a Pyrenees connection.

Lets not forget that many Basques have noses like that.

[Agrippa]

nbz said:

North Atlantid with Dinarism.

I think the Dinarism of many Western Europeans, like him, could have a Pyrenees connection.

Lets not forget that many Basques have noses like that.

Yes, those Dinaroid element lacks the high skull of real Dinarids and other traits either...Baskids have Dinaroid tendencies.

[Crimson Guard]

Please he looks a little bit like Jimmy Durante.

Tolkien was influenced by Greco-Roman and Scandinvian myths..And its more than a mere coinsidence that his work greatly mirrored these other mythological stories...So no its not been dismissed.

Like I said,he was alright,but I never found his stories to be that good.

Whats also funny is that Meditterrean means in English Middle Earth,lol!

[oubit]

platypus said:

Nowadays I stick more on the Human types..unless we categorize Alpines as Dwarves!!!

Actually, i always imagined the Hobbits to be rather alpine, Dwarves maybe armenoid, Gondorians like Hellenes, the Rohirrim as Germanics, the Elves maybe like elegant nordic-baltid mixes and the Easterlings more like Iranians. The way tolkien described the Orcs in a letter reminds a lot to the way Huns were depicted by contemporary historians as Iordanes, which makes a lot of sense, if you have in mind the parallels between Theoden and the Visgothian king Theodorid.

[Platypus]

This is a kind of mind-masturbation... but many elements of the Lord of The Rings are inspired by Tolkiens passion for Anglo Saxon and hence early medieval history:

The Rohirrim, (which in the film are the kind of Viking looking horse riders) apparently where a tribute to the Anglo-Saxons of Mercia, who lived in whats now the English midlands, which the Tolkiens belonged to.

Hobbits are said to simbolize rural England, and Tolkiens chidhood experiences in the coutryside.

Dwarves and Elves belong to Old Germanic folklore, though the Elves also remind of the Irish 'Sidh'

Gondor, as a fallen divided Kingdom, can be compared to The Carolingian, Roman and Byzantyne Empire

The Easterlings, at all the nomadic and Steppe peoples that threatened Europe:Huns, Avars, Magyars, Mongols

Orc, seems to derive from the word 'Ogre' (monster) which we could speculate to derive from 'Hungar/Ugrian' another word for Magyar.

[mike2]

Yeah, despite how much Tolkien hated allegory, many of the human peoples of Middle Earth especially do seem to have real world correspondents.

It's pretty obvious that the straw-headed Rohirrim are Middle Earth's Anglo-Saxons. After all, the whole reason Tolkien wrote his epic was to give England a mythology.

The dark-haired Gondorians correspond to the cultured, but doomed Byzantines. Minas Tirith is therefore a sort of Constantinople. I guess if one played this analogy out even further, the Numenoreans could represent the Greeks, the forebearers of the Byzantines and of European culture in general.

It's only natural to want to associate the Easterlings with Middle Eastern peoples like Arabs or Assyrians, but I doubt that was Tolkien's intent. It's much more likely that he had an Eastern European people in mind, as you said. He did describe the Easterlings as "short and broad, long and strong in the arm; their skins were swart or sallow, and their hair was as dark as their eyes." I also doubt he had Mongoloids in mind when he wrote of the Easterlings. I think the orcs are more representative of the demonized Huns more than anybody else.

The Haradrim on their might oliphaunts undoubtedly represent white and black Africa. Gollum described the Near Haradrim as having "dark faces. ... They are fierce. They have black eyes, and long black hair, and gold rings in their ears, yes, lots of beautiful gold. And some have red paint on their cheeks, and red cloaks; and their flags are red, and the tips of their spears; and they have round shields, yellow and black with big spikes. Not nice; very cruel wicked Men they look. Almost as bad as Orcs, and much bigger."

Interestingly, Negroids also make an appearance as the Troll-men, or Far Haradrim from the deepest and darkest regions of the south.

I think these similarities are what makes Middle Earth eerily familiar. The peoples of that world are primordial representations of the peoples of our own.

[Educate Me]

I like the book, but I dont consider it a masterpiece.

[henerte]

Yeah! And Boromir must be some Bulgarian national hero! ;D

Never read Tolkien, but, of course, it won't stop me from expressing my personal opinion. ;D I don't like this mish-mash, melting pot of everything what "european" mythology gave us - too colourful to me, Eowyn, Boromir, Gandalf, Gimli - sounds like united forces of Europe against....

Sounds like he was a percursor of multi-kulti and european integration! ;D