I’ve been writing a good deal about locations in this series so far. That’s a common interest among film fans and readers of Tolkien’s books. It’s a subject which I’m interested in and hope to return to in future postings. However, I want to deal quickly with the question of where on earth might have inspired the scenery described in this chapter. It was Switzerland between Interlaken and Lauterbrunnen where Tolkien enjoyed a walking holiday in 1911. That much is well documented.
I regret very much that I have never had the pleasure of going there. Walking through an Alpine meadow in spring sunshine surrounded by snow capped mountains must be a sublime experience.
Just to set the scene for this article, I’m including a photo from a recent walking expedition to Scafell in the English Lake District. (Click on the photo for a higher resolution.) I was heading into the unknown and it was getting a bit challenging. Thankfully our friend and trained mountain leader has the map. But this is not the Alps.
Regarding Bilbo and his fellow travellers in Chapter 4 of The Hobbit story, I am more interested in where they are in relation to the Faerie realm, sometimes called Elfland.
If you are new to Tolkien’s writings, the word Faerie might cause some confusion and frustration. Tolkien tends to state it as a given. So you look it up and it’s where the Fairies live. OK. What are fairies? Try Tolkien’s essay, “On Fairy Stories” and apart from his criticism of dictionary definitions and common ideas as inadequate, we get Fairies are creatures who live in Faerie.
Well, Tolkien does warn on page one of “On Fairy Stories” about asking too many questions. Perhaps this means we have to do a little background reading before looking more deeply into the writings of a professor “at play”. You can try that but you might find Tolkien was being evasive for a reason. Wikipedia is a good a place to start as any (by all means check the sources). You will see lots of different marvellous beings from many different traditions all claiming citizenship of the Faerie realm. I don’t want to go into those classifications. We have our usual suspects here: dwarves, elves, goblins and a dragon. Oh, and Tolkien’s invention, Mr Baggins, a hobbit, and stone giants. But where on earth is the scene set? And how does it relate to real life?
Some fairy stories suggest that magical lands exist far away only to be found by knights errant in search of adventure. Woodlands and caves are mentioned as dwelling places for certain types of fairies. Other tales suggest that some fairy creatures, such as brownies and sprites, live alongside humans in their houses or at least at the bottom of the garden.
There is also the idea that the events in fairy stories took place once upon a time, a long time ago when magic was still to be found and experienced. Then there are stories with portals where characters are transported to another time and place. Tolkien starts in his own invented world called Wilderland, later expanded into Middle-earth, which implies the influence of Norse mythology. Time-wise, the action takes place between the dawn of Faerie and the Dominion of Men. But this chapter is interesting because we make a further transition into another realm within Wilderland world which perhaps denotes a boundary in Tolkien’s imaginative thinking.
We pick up The Hobbit story when our heroes have left the safety of Rivendell and are heading for the challenge of crossing the Misty Mountains which Tolkien has already built up in the reader’s mind as a severe test. This process of ramping up the scariness continues in the opening pages: “Gandalf knew that something unexpected might happen…” Tolkien has used just about every trick in the story teller’s book to get us on the edge of our seats here and, rather like teenage boys going on a fairground ghost train ride, we may not believe it, but we want to be scared. It’s a bit like a Gothic novel. He doesn’t quite say, “It was a dark a stormy night” but that’s the general idea.
So, we are mentally prepared for a fright when the party is trapped by a thunder storm. Despite Gandalfs’s caution, they move into what appears to be a comfortable cave only to discover, too late, that they have strayed into the entrance of the evil goblins’ kingdom. But isn’t Tolkien stretching our imaginations a bit to expect us to believe that the wall of a cave can just open like a sliding door and close again like a camera shutter? Well, maybe.
Things aren’t always as well thought through from a mythological point of view in The Hobbit as they are in The Lord of The Rings. Anyway, this is Tolkien’s plot device to get his characters from the outside Wilderland world resembling the Swiss Alps to a subterranean supernatural realm ruled by a hierarchical race of grotesque goblins which are monstrous even by fairy tale standards.
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October 19th, 2009 at 9:32 am
Not such a far-fetched thesis, Andrew. Since my undergrad days, I’ve kind of been stuck reading this transition as purely literary — part of Bilbo’s maturation process. But you’re right: Tolkien was maturing as a writer, too — through the discussions of The Inklings, and in practice as a writer of publishable fiction. I’ve often wondered how MacDonald could be cited as an influence while Tolkien’s grander vision ends up being so divorced from MacDonald’s — and now I get it. Thanks!
October 19th, 2009 at 10:24 am
Yes, Greg, Andrew’s insights are nothing short of amazing. And it’s been great to see Andrew mature as a writer, too!
October 20th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Mark and Greg, Thanks for your kind words and encouragement. Exploring The Hobbit in detail is becoming quite an adventure. Since I finished this post, I’ve been trying to imagine what would have happened if Chesterton had wandered into a certain pub in Oxford, when famously lost on tour, and found The Inklings in session. I think the poor old Oxford Dons would have got home very late and mentally exhausted.