Worldbuilding Wednesday 4/30/25: In Praise of Dwarven Women

Artists’ ideas of what a Dwarf woman might look like

One of the elements that got fans so excited about The Rings of Power was its focus on Dwarves and their society, including their wives and female children. Aha! We might finally see what bearded Dwarven women looked like!

Well, no, they turned out to be facial-hair free. Though in one episode from Season 2, I thought I detected some stubble on a group of gals. Not a deal-breaker for me, I enjoyed the series well enough.

Before this, a suitably bearded Dwarven jewelry seller turned up in a market scene in The Battle of the Five Armies. She was the only one, and I missed her cameo (granted, I wasn’t paying close attention to the movie) but it raised possibilities.

I think Dwarven women would be proud of their soft, silky beards, seeing them as part of their femininity and what sets them apart from men. They would braid these silky strands, or ornament them with jewelry. Different mining settlements would have different styles. Perhaps in Khazad-dum it was the style at the time to be clean-shaven, hence Disa’s being beardless. The writers might have have given an offhand comment somewhere, like a dwarf saying “You know, in Brazalbhruzum the women wear their beards long, gives a man something to tickle his nose with.” There! Solved it. Season three is filming now, so maybe…?

As Dwarves keep their own language a secret from outsiders, their names are of the Mannish variety. I generated this list to sound German and Norse and suitably Wagnerian-sounding.

 

Names of Dwarven Women

Basra

Berilka

Berta

Bevra

Dhovrë

Eglanyd

Eikar

Ferdya

Flenda

Grilda

Hukkë

Hultha

Husta

Kosgrulda

 Lummi

Magnebel

Nanda

Nenda

Sklathe

Skoghe

Storsha

Thamië

Thina

Thutara

Ulga

Umma

Vanda

Yora

 

Apex Predators of Middle-earth

Simbakubwa kutokaafrika, or the Hyena-lion: the real Warg?

Though Tolkien described the landscapes of Middle-earth in great detail, he didn’t go much into its animal life, and when he did it was similar to what you’d encounter on a walk in the English countryside. With the addition of various fell creatures, of course. But these were met only if you wandered far and were out on an adventure.

Nevertheless, I thought I’d talk about what kind of ecosystem this Europe-sized piece of land possibly held. Who ate who, and who was at the top?

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A Few Substandard Hobbits

Slavic nations certainly had some unusual Hobbits, but what of the rest of Europe? Let’s see.

This underground comix- inspired Bilbo is tied with this one as the most horrible Hobbit depiction of all time. It’s a J’ai Lu publication, which is par for the course. Is he fighting a troll? An aardvark? Who knows.

A German Hobbit in that very annoying late 1960s semi-abstract children’s book style which could be cranked out very quickly by the artist. I didn’t like it as a child, and I still don’t like it now. Not least because Gollum is just an amorphous mass and not a real being. C’mon, the artist wasn’t even trying. 

Up, up, and away with a Gorilla-footed Bilbo who is wearing a t-shirt with his own name on it, plus suspenders! He looks like Jeremy Boob from the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine cartoon. To add to the 1960s feel the art director used a crazy daisy font for “Hobbit.” The Smaug isn’t bad, but he’s in a completely different style, and he’s crying! That’s not the Smaug from the book!

Then there’s this very weird Fred Flintstone Hobbit from Russia who has only three toes and four fingers, and a single tooth front and center. He looks more like an ogre like than a diminuitive Hobbit, towering over the dwarves to his rear.  And I know Tolkien mentioned Hobbits had red, rosy cheeks, but Bilbo’s is all over red, like a devil’s.

 

A Middle-earth Music Festival

I wonder if the promoters got permission from the Tolkien Estate for this?

Frodo’s Journey

I had a long discussion with my sister about how many miles, exactly, Frodo and Sam traveled from their home in The Shire to the pits of Mt. Doom. Oddly, this information wasn’t readily apparent online, for all the Tolkien websites and maps and graphics out there. After some digging, I came up with this.

For those in the U.S., his trip began in Horton, Kansas, near the Kikapoo Indian Reservation, ended up in Fernandina Beach, Florida. That’s quite a walk, and transposable to a regular mileage map I guess. But I knew there was something better out there.

This site, courtesy of The Lord of the Rings Project, has an interactive graph showing you the days and miles walked per book. Much better!

To answer the question, it’s 1,800 miles. Those Hobbit feet must have been pretty calloused.

Worldbuilding Wednesday 4/16/25: Villain Lairs of Middle-earth

Gollum’s starkers! And Frodo faints at the hideous sight!

Tolkien’s work is full of evil fortresses, towers, and strongholds. My favorite among them is Angmar. Isn’t that an evocative name! It just oozes evil.

Others are Thangorodrim, Minas Morgul, Durthang, and Barad-Dur. Unpleasant-sounding names, all of them.

In that vein, here’s some evil place names that would fit very well into Middle-earth, all randomgenned of course.

 

Evil Places of Middle-Earth

Idgarbad

Elgnar

Minas Angmel

Anskodar

Mitharagrim

Durlvar Nan

Dimeld Gast

Carn Boen

 Barad Morkast

Morgaul

Birinsgor

Orchast

Cirith Gronang

Rurdamang

Barad Dolmen

Nurgn Tor

Beren and Luthien, Egyptian Style

Luthien Before Morgoth, by Cuarthol

One of the First Age tales in The Silmarillion is how Luthien, an elf, falls in love with Beren, who is human, and aids him in his quest to recover the three Silmaril jewels from Morgoth. This part of The Sil has a more fairy tale flavor than the rest of the book, involving overt magic use, transformations, and a structured quest. In one part of it Luthien, on facing the dark lord, performs an enchanting dance routine that puts him and all his entourage asleep, enabling her and Beren to steal back the jewels.

The artist above interprets the scene in ancient Egyptian style. Morgoth wears the three Silmaril atop his crown of cobras, while Luthien has bat wings because she’s snuck into Thangorodrim in the guise of a vampire. Vampires were only mentioned in this story and in the stanzas of a few Elven poems. They were not in The Hobbit or LOTR, at least as far as I can remember. I guess the use of this supernatural creature fell by the wayside as the author’s style evolved.

And to tell you the truth, vampires don’t really “fit” into Middle-earth anyway, even as the creations of Morgoth which they are said to be. It’s their overt Christian tone. Even though Tolkien’s vampires are more like giant vampire bats who can change into humans, the name itself conjures images of Dracula and his anathema to crucifixes to most Western readers. (No Jesus in Middle-earth.) Not to mention bloodsucking, hypnosis, and sexual predation.

Another creature that doesn’t fit is the werewolf, though, again, Tolkien’s conception was different: these were evil spirits in the bodies of monstrous wolves. They differed from wargs, which were an evil race of actual wolves, the non-supernatural kind. Tolkien’s werewolves did not have an alternate human form, nor did they infect others with their bite or fall under the moon’s influence. Again he seems to have appropriated the name for dramatic effect, that of bolstering the bad guys’ evil.

Interestingly, fellow Inkling C. S. Lewis also threw in some werewolves when writing Prince Caspian, the second book of The Chronicles of Narnia. As in Tolkien’s tale it was a one-off. Werewolves were not mentioned in the later books and, to me at least, seemed out of place Narnia’s mythos. I think it’s likely the two writers indulged in some less high-minded pulp fiction together and took inspiration from that.

Real-life bats and wolves have received much-needed rehabilitation to their images in recent decades: wolves as intelligent, socially complex apex predators and bats as vital and versatile members of the ecosystem who work to keep destructive insect populations down. Not to mention being faster flyers even than birds and some species being insanely cute.

Worldbuilding Wednesday 4/9/25: Undiscovered Hobbit Types, Part 2

A cute but feral-looking Bilbo on the cover of a Czech edition of The Hobbit

Continuing on with this series.

Tolkien says in several places that Hobbits are more akin to Men than either Elves or Dwarves. If so, they share Men’s mortality in that they do not go to Valinor after death, but somewhere else (even though Frodo and Sam did.) However, their lifespans are longer than that of Men. How did this come about?

One could say that they are Tolkien’s favorite race and he couldn’t bear to give them any less. Remember his main heroic human character, Aragorn, also had an extended lifespan because he was descended from the Dúnedain. But I can also create my own reason.

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