Tolkien Society Reading Day 03/25/2010 Tolkien's Seafarers

[Elentári]

This year's theme is Tolkien's Seafarers

This essay has been posted by TORn member squire...

Tolkien against the sea

The Tolkien Society got me thinking. This year’s Tolkien Reading Day had a nautical theme – some breezy thing about International Seafarer Day. Why? Is Tolkien a particularly “nautical” writer? I admit this had never occurred to me. From the very idea of Middle-earth, a land before time that approximates continental Europe with land bridges to England and Africa; to the endless series of quests across mountains, forests, fields and caverns that Tolkien loves to describe in breathtaking language; to the most famous fantasy race of Halflings that ever turned pale at the thought of crossing open water, Tolkien has always seemed to me to have his literary feet planted firmly in dry land, like the roots of his beloved trees.

[MithLuin]

Haha, maybe so, but by far the most active of the Valar is Ulmo, always influencing events in Middle Earth while the rest of them seemingly ignore what's going on there.

Tolkien has some highly praiseworthy things to say about water - and some of his more famous characters are, of course, mariners. Eärendil need hardly be mentioned, but the entire race of Numenoreans (who are always looked back on with a level of respect) were famous for being mariners. Of course, Ar-Pharazôn met a rather unfortunate end, but...

Anyway, it's true that Tolkien didn't write much about journeys at Sea, even if some of his characters took them (his Tale ends with Frodo, Bilbo, Gandalf, etc...sailing west over the sea).

For Tolkien Reading Day this year, I did more writing than reading...and one of my stories was about....drumroll...Tolkien's mariners

Final Voyage

(As always, head the warnings.)