J.R.R. Tolkien’s Double Worlds and Creative Process

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J.R.R. Tolkien’s Double Worlds and Creative Process

Language and Life

Arne Zettersten

J.R.R. TOLKIEN’S DOUBLE WORLDS AND CREATIVE PROCESS

Copyright © Arne Zettersten, 2011.

All rights reserved.

First published in 2011 byPALGRAVE MACMILLAN®in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.

Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world.

Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Zettersten, Arne. J.R.R. Tolkien’s double worlds and creative process : language and

life / Arne Zettersten. p. cm. 1. Tolkien, J. R. R. (John Ronald Reuel), 1892–1973—Criticism and

interpretation. 2. Tolkien, J. R. R. (John Ronald Reuel), 1892–1973—Knowledge—Language and languages. 3. Fantasy literature, English—History and criticism. 4. Language and languages in literature. I. Title.

PR6039.O32Z98 2011823�.912—dc22 2010038983

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.

Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.

First edition: March 2011

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-62314-9

ISBN 978-1-349-38461-7 ISBN 978-0-230-11840-9 (eBook)DOI 10.1057/9780230118409

Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Preface ix

1 Our First Meeting 1

2 Language behind Everything 11

3 Like Lightning from a Clear Sky 19

4 Tolkien’s Double Worlds 25

5 Middle- earth 33

6 From Bloemfontein to Birmingham 49

7 From Sarehole to Shire 61

8 An Orphan Drawn to Reading 75

9 Student Life at Oxford 87

10 Soldier at the Front 99

11 Experience of War in Tolkien’s Fiction 111

12 Research as Motor 123

13 Interlude at Leeds 135

14 Interplay between Research and Fiction 143

15 A Don on a Sidetrack 149

16 The AB Language: A Unique Discovery 167

17 Fantasy: For Children and Adults 173

18 The Final Years 191

19 Facts and Fiction 199

20 On the Truth of Myth 205

vi CONTENTS

21 The Reception of The Lord of the Rings in the World 209

22 New Media 215

Epilogue 223

Appendix 225

Bibliography 231

Name Index 239

Illustr ations

1.1 Edith and J.R.R. Tolkien in their garden on their golden wedding day 1966 2

1.2 Tolkien in his study 1966 with a map of Middle- earth 8

5.1 “A Long Expected Party.” The earliest version of the beginning of The Lord of the Rings. Marquette University, Tolkien Collection, MS 1/1/2 34

12.1 The Book of Mazarbul. Page 1 of Book II, chapter 4. Marquette University, Tolkien Collection, MS 3/4/12 125

15.1 Time- scheme for The Lord of the Rings. Marquette University, Tolkien Collection, MS 4/2/18:6 150

17.1 Page 10 of Mr Bliss drawn by Tolkien at the end of the 1920s. The book was published in 1982. Marquette University, Tolkien Collection, MS 4/1 177

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Preface

“Ridiculous! Preposterous!” J.R.R. Tolkien was wont to exclaim, whenever he heard someone’s opinion of himself or of his work. I had the pleasure of getting to know Tolkien in Oxford and of working within his area of research, medieval language and literature, in the 1960s and 1970s, when his renown had reached its first high-point, and when he had begun to both relish and abhor all the attention. I had been invited by The Early English Text Society, Oxford University Press, to join the same group of researchers as Tolkien, with the task of editing the Ancrene Wisse, a series of medieval English manuscripts, of which Tolkien had just published the most important.

After all those meetings and conversations with Tolkien, I have now, thirty years after his death, tried to weave together all the threads to understand and explain just how a studious Oxford professor could so shake the world of literature, as to become the preeminent author within the genre of fantasy and moreover be acclaimed as the writer of the twentieth century.

My book is the result of a fresh reading of Tolkien’s scholarly papers, set in relation to the visual power of his fantasy writing. I will demonstrate how all the questions about Tolkien’s specialness can be logically answered. Tolkien was often enthusiastic about sonorous ancient languages, early heroic poetry, and adventure-packed inter-national mythology. All of these enthusiasms informed his writing. Tolkien was unique and took more delight than any listener in his own ability to tell a story. All of this influenced his enthusiastic style of communicating.

Tolkien mastered an array of Indo-European languages both living and dead. He also constructed a long series of private languages, like Nevbosh and Naffarin, and fictional languages such as Sindarin and Quenya. He discovered, identified (and named) the mediaeval “AB language,” about which I wrote my own doctoral thesis in 1965.

My focus here is strictly on Tolkien’s creative process throughout the various phases of his life as a writer, a career full of alternations between the primary, real world and the secondary world of fiction,

x PREFACE

between academic research and fantasy, between historical literature and a nascent postmodernism, between evil in literature and human-ity in life. Tolkien was complicated, certainly, but not unfathomable, and like his writings, he was deeply human.

Of Tolkien’s contemporaries, I am especially grateful to Norman Davis, who succeeded him as professor at Merton College and was president of The Early English Text Society, Oxford. He introduced me to Tolkien when I was twenty-seven years old, and also to the society’s secretary, R.W. Burchfield, later editor in chief of the mighty Oxford English Dictionary. Others I talked to about Tolkien and his life in Oxford were Professor Eric Dobson, Jesus College, Oxford, Professor John Lawlor, Keele University, and Professor John Spencer, Hong Kong University. During the last few years, especially at the various conferences arranged to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Lord of the Rings, I have rubbed shoulders with almost all the leading Tolkien researchers. I have learned a great deal, particularly from Tom Shippey, Christina Scull, Wayne G. Hammond, and Verlyn Flieger.

It was a great privilege to me to get to know Humphrey Carpenter, who wrote the official biography of Tolkien and who had hopes of writing a revised and enlarged edition in the near future. Sadly, he passed away in 2005. Many others have contributed to varying extents with valuable insights into Tolkien and his work, among them Peter Gilliver, Oxford English Dictionary, actor Sir Ian McKellen (Gandalf in the films), author Lars Gustafsson, who as early as 1961, inter-viewed Tolkien in Oxford for the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, Anders Stenström (Beregond), Stockholm, Professor Jean Hudson, Malmö, and my brother Gunnar Zettersten, Stockholm. My wife, Dr. Gerd Bloxham Zettersten, my sharpest critic, has contributed many crucial improvements to the original text and also to the work of translation into English. With regard to the translation, I am par-ticularly grateful to Bryan Errington, senior lecturer at Gothenburg University, for his specialist help in revising the English version of my book. I thank too the director of the Atlantis publishing house, Stockholm, Dr. Peter Luthersson, and the production manager, Lennart Rolf, for excellent help with technical matters.

From the outset, Christopher Tolkien has been supportive of my plan to write a book about my friendship with his father and about the relationship between research and fantasy. I have also been received graciously by Priscilla Tolkien when I met her in Oxford and Birmingham. Cathleen Blackburn, Manches Solicitors, Oxford,

PREFACE xi

representing The Tolkien Trust, has always been in every way helpful. So too have Dr. Judith Priestman and Colin Harris, Department of Western Manuscripts, Bodleian Library, Oxford, David Brawn and Chris Smith at HarperCollins, London, and librarian Maggie Burns, Birmingham Central Library. I am especially grateful to head archivist Matt Blessing, Special Collections, University Archives, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for allowing me the privilege of giving the opening speech at the Tolkien exhibition at Marquette University in 2004, in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Lord of the Rings in the United States.

C H A P T E R 1

Our First Meeting

“Mr. Zettersten! Do come in!”

Suddenly there he was, J.R.R. Tolkien, standing in front of his house at number 76 Sandfield Road, in Headington, just outside Oxford. He had kept an eye out for me from the sizeable detached house, which had a small front garden with a few bushes and trees near the wooden gate and fence. I could only assume there must be a proper garden further back.

The house was in plastered gray, its three gables looming large over the peaceful street. Its large windows, both downstairs and upstairs, were divided into small panes. Tolkien was standing by the garage, later so famous, which he had converted into a study and library. He exuded friendliness and a palpable sense of expectation.

It was an overwhelmingly beautiful day in June 1961, of a green-ness one is often tempted to believe exists only in England. Tolkien turned out to have a surprisingly robust physique, straight of back and with a natural heartiness in his manner. That first meeting, to be followed by many more during the 1960s and 1970s, was the most hugely agreeable surprise to me. I had prepared thoroughly—I had read all that Tolkien had written about the English language and almost all his output in the genre of fantasy, The Lord of the Rings particularly carefully. Nonetheless I was nervous as I approached the gable to the left, where the entrance to the house was and where Tolkien waited, hand outstretched. I trembled before the meeting, primarily because I was aware of the huge weight of knowledge he commanded in the field of language, both practical and theoretical. I was twenty- seven and in good shape, yet the slight upward slope had affected my breathing somewhat.

In the moment I met Tolkien, it occurred to me suddenly that I might lose my ability to talk and might forget all his writings, not to mention the contents of The Lord of the Rings. The few steps from

2 J.R.R. TOLKIEN’S DOUBLE WORLDS

Figure 1.1 Edith and J.R.R. Tolkien in their garden on their golden wed-ding day 1966. Photo: Pamela Chandler. Copyright: Diana Willson

gate to garage were doubt- ridden and heavy. I had time to study Tolkien’s appearance. His hair, parted on the left, was combed so that it lay moderately thick on the back part of his head. His hairline was rather high and rose a little higher to meet his parting; the open, powerful face under the broad forehead was all the more dominating. The eyebrows were bushy, though not quite to the extent I had seen

OUR FIRST MEETING 3

in photographs in newspapers and books. Suddenly I was there, and his firm and warm handshake roused me to life and allowed me to reclaim my lost self- confidence.

“How lovely to meet you! We’re going to have such a lot to talk about. Let’s start with a cup of tea.”

I came to know J.R.R. Tolkien during the last thirteen or so years of his life. I began exchanging letters with him in 1959 when I was twenty- five and had just started in the field of research into medieval languages, a subject that had occupied Tolkien since the 1920s, that is, almost forty years. My first letter from him was dated May 19, 1959. Now he stood at the height of his career, with a limited but remarkable output of linguistic scholarship, plus a whole new venture into fantasy literature that would later see him acclaimed as “Writer of the Century.”

I had walked slowly and expectantly on this clear summer morn-ing, from the center of Oxford out to Sandfield Road in the suburb of Headington, a couple of miles to the east. Headington was once a small village on the gentle mound of what is still called Headington Hill, but in those days the village had been totally absorbed by Oxford. In the early 1960s, it was still a place where a good num-ber of the houses were slightly remote, and it was entirely possible to retreat from the world as if one were living in the country. It was considered by many to be a rather impressive achievement to walk all the way from the city center to Headington.

I had started my walk eastward along Oxford’s pulsing thorough-fare, High Street, or “The High” as it was always known. Even as early as the 1960s this was bedeviled with heavy traffic. I had passed Merton Street on my right, where Tolkien would come to live in the final year of his life, 1972–1973. Merton Street presented a contrast to “The High” with its leisurely tempo, students cycling by on their way to Merton College—dating from 1264 and one of the oldest col-leges in Oxford, and to which Tolkien had been attached since 1945.

Just a few paces further along “The High” soars the clock tower of Magdalen College. This tower and nearby Magdalen Bridge provide the setting for the students’ lively annual May Day celebrations, when a choir of students sings from atop the tower soon after daybreak. Magdalen Bridge carries “The High” over the river Cherwell, a tribu-tary of the Thames. On the first of May, the bridge swarms with stu-dents, some of whom will always be persuaded to leap into the water. Others prefer punting, pushing themselves along the shallow river by means of a long pole in the traditional flat- bottomed boats that may be hired from the boathouse.

4 J.R.R. TOLKIEN’S DOUBLE WORLDS

On the other side of the street, directly opposite Magdalen College, I also passed one of Tolkien’s most favourite haunts, the botanical gardens, the oldest in all England, founded in 1621. Here stands one of Tolkien’s favorite trees, a black pine (Pinus niger), beneath which he enjoyed sitting. The last known photograph of him was taken near this tree by his grandson Michael on August 9, 1973, two weeks before Tolkien’s death. The black pine, which is now four or five meters in diameter, is still impressive. It has a bushy crown with outstretched branches and long, sturdy needles. It looks like a giant with many limbs, clambering skyward. Thoughts can easily turn to Tolkien’s tree people, the Ents in The Lord of the Rings. The name “black pine” comes from its bark, dark gray or black and heavily scored with deep furrows. Tolkien adored trees. Had there been tree- huggers in the 1940s, when Tolkien was busy completing The Lord of the Rings, then he would certainly have been one.

I was convinced that a meeting with Tolkien required rather care-ful preparation. I was therefore keen to get a feeling of the special atmosphere of Oxford in some of the environments where Tolkien had flourished. During my walk to Headington via the London Road and the slight slope up toward Headington Road, I had plenty of time to consider what I had embarked on.

My earliest written contacts with Tolkien had been mediated by Professor Norman Davis, who had taken over the prestigious Chair of English Language and Literature after Tolkien’s retirement in 1959. I had begun writing my doctoral dissertation in English at the University of Lund, Sweden, at the beginning of the 1960s. In 1958, at the age of twenty- four, I had begun to lecture in English phonetics at the English Department with Professor Olof Arngart as my super-visor. My dissertation, which was to be finished in 1965, dealt with the AB language, meaning the thirteenth- century Middle English literary language, on which Tolkien was the leading expert. I had made my first contact with Tolkien by letter on May 15, 1959, which he immediately answered on May 19. It was probably quite easy for the experienced professor of English to realize from the beginning how closely my interests within language research coincided with his own.

I felt like the young Frodo, when—at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings—he pays a visit to the aging Bilbo at Hobbiton. I could not help it, but after just a few minutes, I noticed that there was some kind of father- son spirit or community of interests, which made it natural for me to look up to Tolkien and for him to respect me as a prospective coworker or colleague in the editorial work for the

OUR FIRST MEETING 5

Early English Text Society. Oxford. The aim of this project was to publish all the seventeen manuscripts of the medieval prose text, The Ancrene Wisse, “The Rule for Anchoresses.” This was Middle English literature of high linguistic, literary, and cultural value, which came into existence at the beginning of the thirteenth century. I realized that I would quickly become one of the group of philologists among whom Tolkien was the legendary forerunner. I was after all still in my tweens, “as the hobbits called the irresponsible twenties between childhood and coming of age at thirty- three” (The Lord of the Rings, p. 21). I turned out to be the youngest editor in this project, which was initiated as early as 1944.

During this first meeting with Tolkien, I found time to ask my most burning questions on the language and literature of the medi-eval period. This pattern recurred every time we met. I was always keen to receive answers to a series of questions about the editorial work for the Early English Text Society. When I was most occupied with these text editions in the 1960s, Professor Norman Davis was the president of the society. I was to be the editor who finalized the project in 2000 with the last edition in the series of Ancrene Wisse manuscripts.

The day after my first visit to Tolkien in Sandfield Road in 1961, Norman Davis asked me carefully about the outcome of our meet-ing. “We got on swimmingly,” I said. This was really true, and it was something that I could never have figured out in advance. Nor could I have predicted that Tolkien would immediately ask so many ques-tions about my studies and my research. I had called on him in order to discuss my dissertation and above all to get ideas about solving some intricate etymologies.

It was evident—even during our first discussions—that the role of a communicator of knowledge gave Tolkien great intellectual enjoy-ment. He expressed strong emotions in his story- telling, and it was impossible to avoid being struck by his irresistible joy in communi-cating. This joy had been well known during the whole of Tolkien’s career at Oxford. He had also been known to be difficult to under-stand during lectures. Not only did he speak unusually quickly, but he also had a remarkable narrative technique, which many had dif-ficulties in grasping. He was always in a hurry and had too much to say, which made his speech rather incomprehensible. It took at any rate a certain time to get used to Tolkien’s way of speaking, and most people did not get the opportunity. Humphrey Carpenter mentions in his biography (p. 63) that Tolkien himself had revealed that he had bitten his tongue once playing rugby, which had made his speech

6 J.R.R. TOLKIEN’S DOUBLE WORLDS

somewhat slurred. Carpenter did not really believe this, since Tolkien was known to speak a little unclearly even before that.

Tolkien’s style of speech may be studied with the help of the inter-esting CD collection of radio and TV interviews published by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in 2001. It is obvious how difficult it must have been to follow Tolkien as he spoke, even though a radio or TV interview would have created a more relaxed setting than a lecture at the university, a social gathering at a pub, or a lively meeting with colleagues after a dinner in his own college, Merton. Tolkien’s mode of expressing himself did not allow him to leave enough time for emphasizing important words or expressions, as is normal for lecturers with rhetorical aspirations. Tolkien was an enter-tainer rather than a conventional speaker. My impression was that the social environment meant everything for Tolkien, and that he enjoyed using colorful and amusing examples with a select vocabulary.

Tolkien had a special way of being amused by his own, often drastic comments and roared with laughter when he came to particularly vivid scenes in his stories. One could never—really never—be downhearted or in low spirits in his company. He sometimes interspersed his speech with ironic, sophisticated remarks, both orally to journalists and inquisitive admirers and in written form in many of the letters that are published. Some of his remarks to journalists were occasionally misinterpreted, as is evident in several of his comments on interviews in newspapers.

I myself had no problem in understanding Tolkien’s special pro-nunciation. I usually understood every word that flowed from his rich vocabulary. There were many reasons for this. First of all, we always met privately in his home, or at lunch or dinner at his college, where I mostly sat beside him or opposite him and could occupy myself with lip- reading as a complement to listening carefully. In addition, I was both a language historian and a phonetician and had taught phonet-ics and analyzed English pronunciation in detail. In my own scholarly writing, I used practically all the linguistic vocabulary that Tolkien used in his, which also gave me a strong motivation for wanting to understand every word that he uttered. Since we wrote and com-mented on similar texts in English, the formation of concepts and the structure of language were the same. I certainly lacked his advanced imagery (even if I grasped everything) and his ability to associate to the mythologies of world literature.

It was mostly when I was confronted with new personal names and place- names from The Silmarillion (which was published by Christopher Tolkien in 1977) that I misunderstood some words, but this was rather seldom. I also had to keep up with Tolkien’s tempo

OUR FIRST MEETING 7

and be aware that some name may have been introduced recently and had to be understood in its context. It was necessary to listen with total concentration, as he often inserted “don’t you think?” or “what do you think?” in the course of his rapid flow.

Tolkien did not care much about traditional English intonation. He may have appeared conventional in many people’s eyes, but his conversation was most unconventional and strongly personal. At our first meeting, I had expected to confront a learned medievalist who could explain everything about thirteenth- century English, which I had decided should be the topic of my dissertation. Instead I met an enthusiastic lover of stories, adventures, and myths who could end-lessly communicate the knowledge of his own Middle- earth. Although Tolkien was reputed to be difficult to understand during a lecture, I could never agree with all the inattentive listeners who complained.

On visiting J.R.R. Tolkien in Oxford in the 1960s, I was always met by great hospitality. He was always full of tricks and practical jokes.

Sometimes we met in his study upstairs, sometimes we had tea with his wife, Edith, in the drawing- room on the ground floor, but most of the time we met in his garage library.

There was a wealth of papers and reference books, maps, and manuscript pages of different versions of legends connected with The Silmarillion. There were also translations into various languages of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien often wrinkled his forehead when he was thinking and laughing, which happened most of the time. His pipe seemed to have great significance in his behavior and was part of his body language. Sometimes he kept it in his hand, sometimes he sucked it without lighting it. He moved the upper part of his body while he swung his pipe. It is easy to imagine that listeners could not concentrate on understanding everything in such a situation. When we met, Tolkien treated my own discussion points with great care. His eyes would gleam, he often laughed with great delight, and he would scrutinize me carefully with friendly, roguish eyes when he wanted to trigger a reaction or meet with opposition.

During the 1960s, I often wondered why Tolkien always showed such enthusiasm before and during our meetings. This was not just due to our mutual respect for each other’s results within medieval research. When I looked through all our points of contact and mutual interests, I realized that there were obvious similarities as regards lin-guistic training, the study of literature, and philological research. The points where we differed most were Tolkien’s remarkable creativity and achievements within fantasy literature as well as extensive reading

8 J.R.R. TOLKIEN’S DOUBLE WORLDS

in and knowledge of early European literature. He did not share my interest in modern linguistics and literature. I have to admit that Tolkien did not show any signs of wanting to commit himself to new philological research projects during the 1960s. The truth is that the Middle English text edition of The Ancrene Wisse from 1962, which is central among his philological studies, was his last major piece of academic research. It was a worthy finale to an interest that covered more than five decades.

Another reason for Tolkien to be keen to meet me was that I rep-resented the Nordic language area and was able to pronounce and read texts from all the Nordic countries and also compare all the differences historically. Tolkien was totally enchanted when, on one occasion in the 1960s, I read the same Bible text to him in Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. I took a text from the Gospel according to St. Mark in Gothic translation kept in the Silver Bible at the library of Uppsala University, Sweden. I read that piece too, which proved to be most fascinating to the sound- minded Tolkien, from both a historical and a phonetic point of view. The East- Germanic language, Gothic, was one of Tolkien’s great favorites among languages. We managed to

Figure 1.2 Tolkien in his study 1966 with a map of Middle- earth. Photo: Pamela Chandler. Copyright: Diana Willson

OUR FIRST MEETING 9

stage a kind of mini- symposium in comparative Germanic language research with only two participants.

The fact that the Swedish language in a limited way can be called a tonal language, where different meanings of the same word may be due to tonal differences, somewhat similar to the situation in Chinese, Vietnamese, and so on, amused Tolkien greatly. He was, however, even more struck by the well- known fact that Norwegian has two national languages, one version based on Danish and spoken by the majority, and New Norwegian, which is more dialect- based. He was also tickled by my examples of glottal stops in Danish and, above all, by the way the vocal chords begin to vibrate when the expiration increases. These oral exercises were known to Tolkien only from a theoretical point of view, so he appreciated all my practical examples. Tolkien could read and understand Finnish rather well, which was not the case with me, but it was easy for me to read some Finnish texts aloud in order to emphasize even more the great differences between the languages of the Nordic countries both in structure and pronunciation. To me, as a young linguist, it was a great experience to be able to entertain this legendary fantasy author, who at the same time was a world authority in certain specific scholarly areas. Normally it was of course Tolkien who took command of the entertainment with his story- telling gifts.

In the 1960s and before, it was normal, indeed necessary, for a graduate student working for a doctor’s degree in English at a Nordic university to study the ancient Germanic languages rather intensively. One might say that most doctoral candidates were trained to become competent linguists, well acquainted with word forms in the ancient Germanic languages. Of these Old Germanic languages, Old English (Anglo- Saxon) was studied most intensively, but the oldest Germanic language, Gothic, was also studied seriously.

Tolkien was quite delighted that I, like himself, had read the extant part of Wulfila’s translation of the bible from Greek to Gothic, originally from the 360s A.D. and nowadays kept in only one copy, from c. 550, at Uppsala. I could therefore easily follow his discus-sions of Gothic words and expressions. Bishop Wulfila, who lived c. 311–383, translated a part of the New Testament into Gothic, and this is the only major text extant in the Gothic language. The Silver Bible is a magnificent manuscript, written with silver and gold ink on purple- colored parchment. It was probably produced at Ravenna.

What distinguished Tolkien from all other scholars was the fact that he could speak Gothic and that he could construct—with great power of insight—words in Gothic that would have been regarded as real, if the corresponding texts and contexts could have been expected in

10 J.R.R. TOLKIEN’S DOUBLE WORLDS

written form. His memory and his ability to reach linguistic conclusions were so unusual that he could quickly figure out how ancient languages would have sounded in different periods. This ability made a strong impression on me, and I realized that it must have been the foundation for his invention of artificial languages in his fantasy fiction.

The various mythologies from Nordic and other countries con-stituted another area where my reading experience and knowledge livened up our debate. Tolkien had found a conversation partner who knew the Icelandic sagas, the Finnish national epos Kalevala, and, in particular, the Old English heroic poem, Beowulf, set in sixth- century Denmark and the country of the geatas (Götaland) in Sweden. I had even been to Roskilde in Denmark and the little village of Lejre outside Roskilde, both associated with the likely background of Beowulf.

When I began to study Tolkien’s scholarly articles as a twenty- five- year- old research student at Lund in 1959, my curiosity led me immediately back to The Lord of the Rings, the first part of which I had read as a student in 1954. As I read more articles by Tolkien, when I began writing my doctoral thesis in the 1960s, I was tempted to trace and read most of his fiction. I realized from the beginning that Tolkien’s research and fiction were intimately connected and should be understood in parallel. Consequently I became better prepared to discuss his literary work together with him.

This perhaps provides an additional explanation why Tolkien enjoyed discussing both The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion with me. I was certainly an attentive and docile listener who could ask the right questions at the right moment. My strategic listening could be precisely adapted to the performance that Tolkien always gave, when the topic was his own fiction. He always remained a most enjoy-able entertainer, even when the audience was as small as a young, inquisitive scholar from Lund.

C H A P T E R 2

Language behind Everything

Språksnille (= linguistic genius) was a Swedish word that Tolkien became attracted to. He enjoyed the beauty of sounds, especially in Welsh and Finnish, but also in the Scandinavian languages. I once sent Tolkien a clipping from the Swedish daily, Dagens Nyheter, in which he was called a språksnille. He wrote back to me immediately, as he used to do: “I am actually not a språksnille, as Dagens Nyheter says on 7 February 1973. . .” But this is exactly what he was and that can be shown in many ways.

Tolkien was amused, when we discussed the word snille, that we could easily agree that it was related to the German word schnell “quick” (as in Schnellzug), corresponding to a less known English word snell, which has survived in Scotland and parts of northern England and means “smart,” but also “bitter, sharp,” He had all these qualities in his own spoken language. He was quick and smart in his diction, but he could also, when he reacted against an injustice or false interpretation of his own work, be bitter and sharp, agitated and critical, even bitingly satirical and sarcastic. Almost all our dis-cussions about words and their etymology were, however, followed by expressions of joy and happy laughter. I quickly learned that all relations between languages and their families should be studied as a pleasure, and that all comparisons between languages or meanings of words could be presented as advanced entertainment.

Language and linguistic matters were always at the center of Tolkien’s thinking. When discussing literature and myth, we mostly drifted on to language. When we discussed cultural differences and historical changes, Tolkien always argued on the basis of examples from language. He was always adamant on one point, namely, that his fantasy stories would fit the various languages that he had con-structed. This standpoint was illustrated by an important letter to his American publishers, Houghton Mifflin Co. (Letter 165), in which

12 J.R.R. TOLKIEN’S DOUBLE WORLDS

Tolkien claims that his work “is all of a piece, and fundamentally linguistic in inspiration.”

This is one of Tolkien’s key statements and he continues in the same letter. “The invention of languages is the foundation. The ‘sto-ries’ were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows.”

These quotations form a starting point for the understanding of Tolkien’s whole literary work. They may help us to pick out the nuances of his attitude to languages and his views on different lan-guages and dialects. At the same time, it is essential to relate this to the background of how the English language developed in the British Isles, where several of the languages that Tolkien mastered competed with each other, for example the Celtic languages, Latin, the Scandinavian languages, French, and the Norman dialect. The more I learnt to know Tolkien and was able to understand his deep knowledge of these languages, the easier I understood that he had a maximum basis for supporting all the conclusions he drew about early English. It is understandable that he was tempted early in his life to study Middle English, which had become such an exciting mixture of many components.

One linguistic field I remember discussing with great interest with Tolkien was the rather new theory about how vocabulary could play a part in deciding where the likely origin of the Indo- European lan-guages could be placed. Tolkien was a word- lover and etymologist of great renown and loved to discuss what words or types of words were common to Indo- European languages. Once I prepared myself before one of our meetings by writing down a long list of such names, particularly among the animal and plant families. Since words like birch, beech, oak and pine, bear, sheep, dog, horse, fox, and wolf exist in many Indo- European languages, we must look for countries or climate zones that show examples of these animal and plant species, for example an inland climate in central Europe, if we want to draw conclusions about the original home of the Indo- Europeans.

The words for “honey” or “mead” are often cited in this context, since such words exist in most Indo- European languages. This is also true of the existence of “bees,” which must be around in order to produce honey, which in turn is the basis for mead and similar intoxi-cants. Honey bees probably did not exist in those parts of Asia that had previously been discussed as possible home of Indo- European languages. Tolkien loved this type of argument, where one conclusion is built on another and where the debate leads to a concrete result. He was hugely amused when I told him that it was still possible to

LANGUAGE BEHIND EVERYTHING 13

drink mead based on an old Viking recipe among the ancient buriel- mounds of Old Uppsala.

There are many dramatic events and changes connected with the early history of the British Isles. Celts, Romans, Scandinavians, and Frenchmen succeeded each other and invaded the isles dur-ing a period of about 1500 years. The Vikings were probably those who were best known for dramatic incidents and raids. The Viking raids began as early as the eighth century. These became gradually more and more frequent, and in the ninth century, the country was divided into two parts—the eastern and northern half of the country being dominated by the Scandinavians, to be called The Danelaw (=“The Danish law”). The Vikings were called Danaes “Danes” in the Old English sources, but there were also many Norwegians and a fair number of Swedes among the invading Vikings. The country of the West- Saxons, Wessex, became the most important region for the English toward the end of the ninth century and offered the great-est resistance against the Vikings, primarily through the West- Saxon King Alfred (849–901). England did not become a united country until the latter half of the tenth century.

At the beginning of the eleventh century, when the Danes had become more and more integrated within the country, the Royal crown was inherited by the Danish King Canute or Cnut, who reigned from 1016 to 1035 over Denmark, England, and Norway, with the North Sea as a huge inland sea in a mighty kingdom. Oxford was therefore Danish during this period. The fact that King Canute was crowned there in 1018 proves that he held Oxford and its geo-graphical position in great esteem. Tolkien enjoyed tremendously my interest in the rather obscure crowning of King Canute in Oxford. My impression was that this crowning was not one of the highlights in the history of Great Britain, either at school or university level. Tolkien was, however, quite exhilarated each time we discussed how Vikings or other Scandinavians behaved on English ground in the course of history. He even suggested jokingly that I was a modern Viking who had invaded the very core of the English research milieu, when I became involved in the editorial work for the Early English Text Society, Oxford.

The next foreign invasion came in 1066 when the Normans sailed with their army from Normandy in northern France. Their leader, William the Conqueror, defeated the English in the battle of Hastings and was proclaimed king of England in the same year. The merging of the Anglo- Saxon or Old English language, which was Germanic, and the new Norman- French language, which was Romance, begins