Tolkien's inspirations

[Ardamir the Blessed]

While reading J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter, I noticed that he mentions many of Tolkien's inspirations and influences, intentionally it seems. I took the opportunity to start listing these inspirations in alphabetical order, along with their sources. Thus most of them are from the biography so far, but I have already started using other sources as well. Many of them are speculative, especially those marked with a '?' in the list, but some are obvious. Please post additional inspirations in the thread, and try also to provide the sources, and quotes. I will keep the first posts updated with all inspirations that we find. The list so far:



TOLKIEN’S INSPIRATIONS


apes in the dark forests of the Southpet monkeys in South Africa ? –

LOTR, ‘Helm’s Deep’:Against the Deeping Wall the hosts of Isengard roared like a sea. Orcs and hillmen swarmed about its feet from end to end. Ropes with grappling hooks were hurled over the parapet faster than men could cut them or fling them back. Hundreds of long ladders were lifted up. Many were cast down in ruin, but many more replaced them, and Orcs sprang up them like apes in the dark forests of the South.J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography:One day a neighbour’s pet monkeys climbed over the wall and chewed up three of the baby’s [Tolkien’s] pinafores.

AragornArthur of the Arthurian Legend

Bag EndGuide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings:It was the local name for my aunt's [Jane’s] farm in Worcestershire, which was at the end of a lane leading to it and no further ...

BagginsGuide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings:Intended to recall 'bag'—compare Bilbo's conversation with Smaug in The Hobbit -- and meant to be associated (by hobbits) with Bag End ...

Bandobras 'the Bullroarer' TookGeorge von Hohenzollern -

The Hobbit, ‘An Unexpected Party’:‘He [the Bullroarer] charged the ranks of the goblins of Mount Gram in the Battle of the Green Fields, and knocked their king Golfimbul's head clean off with a wooden club.J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography:‘She [Tolkien’s aunt Grace] alleged that the family name ['Tolkien'] had originally been ‘von Hohenzollern’, for they had emanated from the Hohenzollern district of the Holy Roman Empire. A certain George von Hohenzollern had, she said, fought on the side of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria at the Siege of Vienna in 1529. He had shown great daring in leading an unofficial raid against the Turks and capturing the Sultan’s standard. This (said Aunt Grace) was why he was given the nickname Tollkühn, ‘foolhardy’; and the name stuck.

Battle Pit, thethe sandpit at Sarehole -

LOTR, ‘The Scouring of the Shire’:The dead ruffians were laden on waggons and hauled off to an old sand-pit nearby and there buried: in the Battle Pit, as it was afterwards called.J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography:Not far from Sarehole Mill, a little way up the hill towards Moseley, was a deep tree-lined sandpit that became another favourite haunt for the boys [Ronald and Hilary]. see also Hobbits: hole-building

Belladonna Took Mabel Suffield, Tolkien’s mother

Beren Himself, J.R.R. Tolkien –

J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography:Several of the tombs bear glazed photographs of the deceased, and the inscriptions are florid. In consequence a grey slab of Cornish granite rather to the left of the group stands out clearly, as does its slightly curious wording: Edith Mary Tolkien, Luthien, 1889-1971. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Beren, 1892-1973.see also Beren and Luthien, meeting of

Beren and Luthien, meeting of Edith Bratt sang and danced for Tolkien in a small wood in the village of Roos -

J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography:Near Roos they [Ronald and Edith] found a small wood with an undergrowth of hemlock, and there they wandered. Ronald recalled of Edith as she was at this time: ‘Her hair was raven, her skin clear, her eyes bright, and she could sing - and dance.’ She sang and danced for him in the wood, and from this came the story that was to be the centre of The Silmarillion: the tale of the mortal man Beren who loves the immortal elven-maid Luthien Timiviel, whom he first sees dancing among hemlock in a wood.

Bilbo Himself, J.R.R. Tolkien

Bree Brill in Oxfordshire, England ? -

LOTR, ‘Fog on the Barrow-Downs’:… four miles along the Road you'll come upon a village, Bree under [b]Bree-hill, with doors looking westward.Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings:Chetwood is a compound of Celtic and English, both elements meaning 'wood'; compare Brill, in Oxfordshire, derived from bree + hill.
Birmingham ? -

LOTR, The Prologue:… it was in the one thousand six hundred and first year of the Third Age that the Fallohide brothers, Marcho and Blanco, set out from Bree; and having obtained permission from the high king at Fornost, they crossed the brown river Baranduin with a great following of Hobbits. They passed over the Bridge of Stonebows, that had been built in the days of the power of the North Kingdom, and they took all the land beyond to dwell in, between the river and the Far Downs.J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography:By the summer of 1896 Mabel Tolkien had found somewhere cheap enough for herself and the children [Ronald and Hilary] to live independently, and they moved out of Birmingham to the hamlet of Sarehole, a mile or so beyond the southern edge of the city.
London ?

[Ardamir the Blessed]

Bungo Baggins Arthur Tolkien, Tolkien’s father

Bywater the pool at Sarehole Mill –

J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography:
Over the road a meadow led to the River Cole, little more than a broad stream, and upon this stood Sarehole Mill …… they [Ronald and Hilary] would scamper away from the yard, and run round to a place behind the mill [at Sarehole] where there was a silent pool with swans swimming on it. At the foot of the pool the dark waters suddenly plunged over the sluice to the great wheel below: a dangerous and exciting place.LOTR, ‘Three is Company’:
Soon it [Hobbiton] disappeared in the folds of the darkened land, and was followed by Bywater beside its grey pool.Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings:
Bywater. Village name: as being beside the wide pool occurring in the course of the Water, the main river of the Shire …see also the Gladden Fields


Hall Green village near Sarehole ? -

J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography:
There were few houses at Sarehole beside the row of cottages where the Tolkiens lived, but Hall Green village was only a little distance away down a lane and across a ford.LOTR, ‘The Shadow of the Past’:
The conversation in The Green Dragon at Bywater, one evening in the spring of Frodo’s fiftieth year …

Bywater, the Pool at see Bywater

Dead Marshes, the The House of the Wolfings and The Roots of the Mountains by William Morris, and Northern France after the Battle of the Somme –

Letter #226:
The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme. They owe more to William Morris and his Huns and Romans, as in The House of the Wolfings or The Roots of the Mountains.

Elendil Noah of the Christian Bible –

Letter #131:
Elendil, a Noachian figure, who has held off from the rebellion, and kept ships manned and furnished off the east coast of Númenor, flees before the overwhelming storm of the wrath of the West, and is borne high upon the towering waves that bring ruin to the west of the Middle-earth.Letter #156:
So ended Númenor-Atlantis and all its glory. But in a kind of Noachian situation the small party of the Faithful in Númenor, who had refused to take pan in the rebellion (though many of them had been sacrificed in the Temple by the Sauronians) escaped in Nine Ships (Vol. I. 379, II. 202) under the leadership of Elendil (=Ælfwine, Elf-friend) and his sons Isildur and Anárion …

Elves of Mirkwood, the the French ? – see Tooks, Elvish blood of

(Far) Harad South Africa ?


Gandalf Merlin of the Arthurian Legend

Gollum Golem ?

Gollum, spider-likeness of see Shelob ?

Gladden Fields, the a pool at Sarehole ? -

LOTR, ‘The Shadow of the Past’:
And there in the dark pools amid the Gladden Fields …J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography:
… they [Ronald and Hilary] would scamper away from the yard, and run round to a place behind the mill [at Sarehole] where there was a silent pool with swans swimming on it. At the foot of the pool the dark waters suddenly plunged over the sluice to the great wheel below: a dangerous and exciting place.see Bywater

Goblins see Orcs

Green Dragon, the Hall Green village near Sarehole ? – see Bywater

Hobbiton Sarehole south of Birmingham, in Warwickshire, England

Hobbits The Tolkiens - see Hobbits: emigration into Eriador

Hobbits: emigration into Eriador LOTR, Prologue:Why they [the Hobbits] later undertook the hard and perilous crossing of the mountains into Eriador is no longer certain. Their own accounts speak of the multiplying of Men in the land, and of a shadow that fell on the forest, so that it became darkened and its new name was Mirkwood.J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography:
Opinion differed among the Tolkiens as to why and when their ancestors had come to England. The more prosaic said it was in 1756 to escape the Prussian invasion of Saxony, where they had lands.

Hobbits: hole-building the sandpit at Sarehole ? – see the Battle Pit

Hobbits: memories of legendary past J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography:
Ronald, now in his fifth year, was slowly adjusting to life under his grandparents’ roof. He had almost forgotten his father, whom he would soon come to regard as belonging to an almost legendary past. The change from Bloemfontein to Birmingham had confused him, and sometimes he expected to see the verandah of Bank House jutting out from his grandparents’ home in Ashfield Road; but as the weeks passed and memories of South Africa began to fade … ?

Lotho Sackville-Baggins Edwin Neave ? -

LOTR, ‘Three is Company’:
After lunch, the Sackville-Bagginses, Lobelia and her sandy-haired son, Lotho, turned up …J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography:
His [Tolkien’s] Uncle Willie and his Aunt Jane were still living at home, and there was also a lodger, a sandy-haired insurance clerk who sat on the stairs singing Polly-Wolly-Doodle’ to the accompaniment of a banjo, and making eyes at Jane. The family thought him common, and they were horrified when she became engaged to him.The Oliver Road house was closed, the scant furniture was stored, and the boys were sent away to relatives, Hilary to his Suffield grandparents and Ronald to Hove to stay with the family of Edwin Neave, the sandy-haired insurance clerk who was now married to his Aunt Jane.The Return of the Shadow, ‘Delays are Dangerous’, note 5:
It is said in both variants that Lobelia 'and her pimply son Cosimo (and his overshadowed wife Miranda) lived at Bag-end for a long while afterwards / for many a year after.

Lúthien Edith Bratt, Tolkien’s wife

Farmer Maggot: stealing mushrooms from LOTR, ‘A Short Cut to Mushrooms’:
He [Farmer Maggot] caught me [Frodo] several times trespassing after mushrooms, when I was a youngster at Brandy Hall.J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography:
An old farmer who once chased Ronald for picking mushrooms was given the nickname ‘the Black Ogre’ by the boys [Ronald and Hilary].We [Ronald and Hilary] spent lovely summers just picking flowers and trespassing.

Misty Mountains The Alps

The English Channel ? – see Hobbits: emigration into Eriador and Tooks, Elvish blood of

Númenor Atlantis

[Ardamir the Blessed]

Númenor, Downfall of The Flood of Noah of the Christian Bible - see Elendil

Old Mill, the J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography:Over the road a meadow led to the River Cole, little more than a broad stream, and upon this stood Sarehole Mill, an old brick building with a tall chimney.Letter #303:As for knowing Sarehole Mill, it dominated my childhood. I lived in a small cottage almost immediately beside it, and the old miller of my day and his son were characters of wonder and terror to a small child.LOTR, Foreword:Recently I saw in a paper a picture of the last decrepitude of the once thriving corn-mill beside its pool that long ago seemed to me so important.

Orcs Turks ? – see Bandobras 'the Bullroarer' Took

apes ? –

LOTR, ‘The Uruk-Hai’:You speak of what is deep beyond the reach of your muddy dreams, Uglúk,' he [Grishnákh] said. 'Nazgûl! Ah! All that they make out! One day you'll wish that you had not said that. Ape!You're as bad as the other rabble: the maggots and the apes of Lugbúrz. see also apes in the dark forests of the South

maggots ? –

Orcs are several times referred to as ‘maggots’ in LOTR.

Quenya Finnish

Rivendell ‘the Dell’ at Sarehole ? -

J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography:
But in order to get to the place where we [Ronald and Hilary] used to blackberry (called the Dell) we had to go through the white one’s [the Sarehole miller’s son’s] land …

Sandyman (Old) The miller at Sarehole Mill ? –

LOTR, ‘A Long-expected Party’:
You shouldn’t listen to all you hear, Sandyman,’ said the Gaffer, who did not much like the millerLOTR, Foreword:
I never liked the looks of the Young miller, but his father, the Old miller, had a black beard, and he was not named Sandyman.see also Ted Sandyman

saplings (of the White Tree for example) J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography:
In the early morning and late afternoon the child [Tolkien] would be taken into the garden, where he could watch his father tending the vines or planting saplings in a piece of walled but unused ground.?

Shelob J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography:… when Ronald [Tolkien] was beginning to walk, he stumbled on a tarantula. It bit him, and he ran in terror across the garden until the nurse snatched him up and sucked out the poison. When he grew up he could remember a hot day and running in fear through long, dead grass, but the memory of the tarantula itself faded, and he said that the incident left him with no especial dislike of spiders. [see Letter #163]Letter #163:I knew that the way [for Frodo, Sam, and Gollum] was guarded by a Spider. And if that has anything to do with my being stung by a tarantula when a small child, people are welcome to the notion (supposing the improbable, that any one is interested). I can only say that I remember nothing about it, should not know it if I had not been told; and I do not dislike spiders panicularly, and have no urge to kill them. I usually rescue those whom I find in the bath!

Shire, the Worcestershire, England

Letter #44:Though a Tolkien by name, I am a Suffield by tastes, talents, and upbringing, and any comer of that county [Worcestershire] (however fair or squalid) is in an indefinable way 'home' to me, as no other part of the world is.
Oxfordshire, England ?

spiders of Mirkwood According to The Annotated Hobbit by Douglas A. Anderson, Tolkien was interviewed on January 15, 1957, by Ruth Harshaw for an American radio show called ‘Carnival of Books’, and said (concerning The Hobbit):I put in the spiders largely because this was, you remember, primarily written for my children (at least I had them in mind), and one of my sons [Michael] in particular dislikes spiders with a great intensity. I did it to thoroughly frighten him and it did!Anderson continues:Throughout his life, Tolkien’s son Michael had what he called “a deep-rooted abhorrence of spiders.”see also Shelob

swans, swanships swans in the pool at Sarehole –

J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography:… they [Ronald and Hilary] would scamper away from the yard, and run round to a place behind the mill [at Sarehole] where there was a silent pool with swans swimming on it.

Tale of the Children of Húrin, the The Kalevala, the Finnish epic

Ted Sandyman The miller’s son at Sarehole mill -

J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography:There were two millers [at Sarehole Mill], father and son. The old man had a black beard, but it was the son who frightened the boys with his white dusty clothes and sharp-eyed face. Ronald named him ‘the White Ogre’. When he yelled at them to clear off they would scamper away from the yard …LOTR, Foreword:I never liked the looks of the Young miller, but his father, the Old miller, had a black beard, and he was not named Sandyman.

‘Took’ Tollkühn, ‘foolhardy’ ? - see Bandobras 'the Bullroarer' Took

Tooks, Elvish blood of The Hobbit, ‘An Unexpected Party’:
It was often said (in other families) that long ago one of the Took ancestors must have taken a fairy wife.J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography:The family [Tollkühn] was also supposed to have connections with France and to have intermarried with the nobility in that country, where they acquired a French version of their nickname, du Temeraire.[Tolkien’s] Aunt Grace preferred the more romantic (if implausible) story of how one of the du Temeraires [Tolkiens] had fled across the [English] Channel in 1794 to escape the guillotine, apparently then assuming a form of the old name, ‘Tolkien’. This gentleman was reputedly an accomplished harpsichordist and clock-repairer.

Towers of Teeth, The The two-towered Dutch Reformed church in Bloemfontein ? –

J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography:
Around the square were clustered solid indications of civilisation: the colonnaded Parliament House, the two-towered Dutch Reformed church, the Anglican cathedral, the hospital, the public library, and the Presidency.

Treebeard C.S. Lewis

trees, Tolkien’s love of J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography:During the first year of the boy’s [Tolkien’s] life Arthur Tolkien made a small grove of cypresses, firs, and cedars. Perhaps this had something to do with the deep love of trees that would develop in Ronald. ?

Túrin Kullervo in the Kalevala, the Finnish epic

Ungoliant see Shelob

Valarin Babylonian ? –

Ardalambion - Valarin (http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/valarin.htm):It has been suggested that Tolkien's inspiration for Valarin was ancient Babylonian; some feel that the general style of Valarin is reminiscent of such words as "Etemenanki", the name of the great tower (ziggurat) of Babylon. However, such views are purely conjectural, and we may rightly ask why Tolkien would use Babylonian as a model for the language of the gods of his mythos. More likely he simply aimed for a very peculiar style, since this is supposed to be a language wholly independent of the Elvish language family, and moreover a tongue developed and spoken by superhuman beings.

Water, the J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography:
Over the road a meadow led to the River Cole, little more than a broad stream, and upon this stood Sarehole Mill …