March 21, 2003

Re: Wild Men and the Harad People By Grub
Stephen Faherty

Tolkien wrote all of his Middle Earth stories to be a sort of fictional history or fairy tale for the Old English (Anglo-Saxons) to replace what was lost by the Norman conquest. Therefore all of his writings take an Anglocentric or Eurocentric view. "Modern" Midlle Earth would be England or Europe, not Africa) there are geographic outline similarities between England and northwest Middle Earth. Tolkien was influenced by English (a thief stole a gold cup from the dragon in "Beowulf", like Biblo and Smaug), Irish, French, Norse, Finnish ( the spells in the Kalevala are sung just as in the "Silmarillion") and Greek mythologies; the Bible, the Annals of the North Kingdom and South Kingdom ( Arnor and Gondor are similar to Isreal and Judea); medieval history (Arnor was broken up just as was Charlemange's Empire; and his own experiences ( the aftermath of the Battle of the Somme "was" the Dead Marshes).

Therfore the peoples of Middle Earth loosely reflect that: Numenore "was" Atlantis; the Easterlings of Rhun would be similar to the Huns, Avars, Bulgars, Turks, Tartars and Mongols who invaded Europe from the east; and the Southrons of Harad would be similar to Persians, Carthagians, Arabs, Berbers and the Moors ( and Indians and Aficians) who invaded Europe from the south; and the Corsairs of Umbar, who were an amalgamation of renagade Numenoreans, rebels from Gondor and different people of the Haradirim "would be" the Berber, Arab and Turkish pirates (actually called Corsairs) who raid the north Mediteratean coast from Byzantium to Spain (similar to Gondor's south coast).

The Wild Men of the Drudan Forest were called the Druedain by the Elves and Woses by the Rohirrim, and were not related to the Dunlendings or the Hillmen of the Misty Moutains nor the various Easterling hordes. Wose is a British folklore little hairy troll of the forests. Obvisously ther were not (Tolkien's) trolls but men. Perhaps Neanderthals or some palolithic pre-Celtic inhabitants of Britain, or maybe the "missing link" between Big People (men) and Little People (hobbits). But whomever or not they were based on, the Orcs called them Olag-hai and feared and hated them as mush as the Elves and Dunedain.

Finally, you mentioned something about race, as did others on this site. Tolkiens was not a racist and his writings reflect that. As stated above, it was however from a relative "English" point of view. The three Elven rings were Red, White and Blue, just as the Union Jack. And most of his peoples were based on threes - either the Angles, Saxons & Jutes from England or the Holy Trinity. The Elves had three races: Vanyar; Noldor and Telerie; the Edain had three Houses: Beor, Haleth and Hador; and the Hobbits had three branches: the Fallohides (the Tooks and such), the Stoors ( the Brandybucks and the people of the Marish) and Harfoots (Gamgees, Cottons and the Hobbiton families). It should be noted that the Harfoots were the most numerous and had brown hair, eyes and skin. Sorry it was long answer.