Writing of Beowulf

A page of the manuscript of Beowulf

Beowulf is an Old English epic poem written by an anonymous author. Beowuls is a hero of the Geats that helped Hrothgar, king of the Danes, in defeating the monster Grendel, who attacked the Hall of Heorot. After Beowulf killed the monster, Grendel's mother attacks the hall and is  also defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home and becomes king. Fifty years later, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is mortally wounded in the battle and later died. 

First of all Tolkien, as an expert of Old English, used the expertise on  Beowulf to create some of the races of Middle-earth such as "eotenas ond ylfe ond orcnéas", which were his orcs and elves. The Beowulf dragon can be compared to the dragon in The Hobbit, Smaug. The Beowulf dragon is aroused and enraged when a golden cup from his pile of treasure is stolen; then he flies out in and destroys Beowulf's hall; he is killed, but the treasure is cursed, and Beowulf too dies. In The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins steals a golden cup from the dragon's treasure, awakening Smaug, who flies out and burns Lake-town; the allure of gold is too much of a temptation for the Dwarf Thorin Oakenshield, who is killed afterwards by an orc. 

The epic poem Kalevala is published

The front page of "Kalevala"

One of the greatest influence on Middle-Earth is the Finnish epic Kalevala, in particular the tale of Kullervo. Similarities can be seen in the tale of Túrin Turambar: both are tragic heroes, commit incest with their sister who then kills herself after discovering it and both heroes kill themselves.

If in The Lord of the Ring the events are centred around the One Ring, in the Kalevala we have the magical item called Sampo, which provide its owner with great fortune but never makes clear its nature. The Sampo and the One Ring have a similar story: both are cause of the fight between the forces of good and evil and are destroyed nearly at the end of the story.

The Kavala main charcater Väinämöinen shares with Gandalf immortal origins and wise nature and at the end they departure on a ship to lands beyond the mortal world. The Finnish language was also used by Tolkien as a base for the Quenya Elvish language.

Birth of J.R.R. Tolkien

Photo of J.R.R. Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, on the 3rd of January 1892. 

Son of Arthur Tolkien, a bank clerk who moved to South Africa in the 1890s in the prospect of achieving a promotion, and Mabel Suffield. He also had a brother, Hilary, born on the 17th of February 1894. 

During his childhood in Africa, Tolkien was bitten by a spider. Many scholar believed that this event had an influence in the creation of the spiders of Middle Earth (Shelob and Ungoliant), but the author denied, sayng that he actually had no memory of this event.

At the age of three, he moved to England with his mother and brother. Later, they should have joined by his father. However, Arthur Tolkien died in South Africa due to rheumatic fever in 1896.

Trip to the Lauterbrunnen Valley, in Switzerland

Lauterbrunnen Valley and Rivendell

In the summer of 1911, Tolkien participated in a walking holiday in Switzerland, which have inspired his descriptions of the Misty Mountains and of Rivendell. 

«I am.... delighted that you have made the acquaintance of Switzerland, and of the very part that I once knew best and which had the deepest effect on me. The hobbit's (Bilbo's) journey from Rivendell to the other side of the Misty Mountains, including the glissade down the slithering stones into the pine woods, is based on my adventures in 1911: the annus mirabilis of sunshine in which there was virtually no rain between April and the end of October, except on the eve and morning of George V's coronation. (Adfuit Omen!)» (Letter 306 - to his son, 1967)

Tolkien starts writing "The Silmarillion"

Cover of "The Silmarillion"

After months in and out of the trenches, Tolkien succumbed to "trench fever" and was sent back to England in November. He spent the next month in hospital in Birmingham and by Christmas he had recovered.

During the war many of his  friends of the “Tea Club, Barrovian Society” had been killed in action. As an act to remember them but also to react against the war experiences, he had begun to write his stories.  This ordering of his imagination developed into the Book of Lost Tales, in which most of the major stories of the Silmarillion appear in their first form: tales of the Elves and the “Gnomes”, with their languages Qenya and Goldogrin, the first recorded versions of the wars against Morgoth, the siege and fall of Gondolin and Nargothrond, and the tales of Túrin and of Beren and Lúthien.

Publication of "The Fellowship of the Ring"

Cover of "The Fellowship of the Ring"

First of the three books that made up the epic novel The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien spent many years in writing it (more than ten years according to his biography). According to Tolkien, it should have been a children's story as The Hobbit, but soon became darker and serious in the writing. Also the audience was different: it was not intended for children but for an older audience, drawing on other stories that later will be seen in The Silmarillion.