To what extent are books created from nothing?
The answer of course, is nothing. All books have sources of inspiration, even if they reside in the collective unconscious. Personally, I have never ceased to be impressed by Tolkien. J.R.R. Tolkien never stopped writing. Most people know the number of drafts, tales, legends and books he wrote, creating cohesion and maturity in his story.
One could do worse than take a look at Christopher Tolkien's work in ordering his father notes into a wealth of material. Or take a look at the The Book Of Lost Tales 1 and 2 as example - later to be reworked into Tales of Hurin and the Silmarillion. The Book of Lost Tales is not light reading - even though it was his first major work, begun in 1916-1917 when he was 25 yrs. old, and left incomplete several years later.
I wanted with this blog to bring out both the Barrow Wight figure from Lord of the Rings - since the scenes passing through The Barrow Downs were cut from the film and not so familiar to many - and compare this to some of the sources and descriptions from real Scandinavian places, legends and sagas related to the legend of The legend of the Draugr, something I have been working with in the first book of The Elements series Beyond The Light Of Reason, introducing aspects of the Draugr legends introduced in the saga of Hromund Gripsson. In this respect, I have been inspired by the quote at the introduction to Tolkien's Lost Tales:
It stands at the beginning of the entire conception of Middle-Earth and Valinor, for the Lost Tales were the first form of the myths and legends that came to be called The Silmarillion. Embedded in English legend and English association, they are set in the narrative frame of a great westward voyage over the ocean by a mariner named Eriol to Tol Eressëa, the Lonely Isle, where Elves dwelt; from them he learned their true story history, the Lost Tales Of Elfinesse. In the Tales are found earliest accounts and original ideas
Of what was to become the TLOTR. Which is why no other book is comparable. It was just one big work of evolution...
Similarly, a lot of the research I used to grow the book have been lying dormant on a hard drive, long before I ever started blogging in 2013. Therefore, I wanted to reveal some of the research and photographic journies I have undertaken, The Elements fast becoming 'my life work'.
Briefly, HWFF is about a Swedish detective in 1987 with a tainted past struggling to piece together the reason why a body without its eyes, nails through it's feet in the middle of the Tiveden National park - and links to serial murders from the 70's. This murder and the mystery it is part of has been inspired by the same legends serving Tolkien I want to bring out and illustrate with my own photographs (all the shots with the sepia look are my own) - taken from my travels out and about Scandinavia researching The Elements. The rest are credited to the relevant sites.
Briefly, HWFF is about a Swedish detective in 1987 with a tainted past struggling to piece together the reason why a body without its eyes, nails through it's feet in the middle of the Tiveden National park - and links to serial murders from the 70's. This murder and the mystery it is part of has been inspired by the same legends serving Tolkien I want to bring out and illustrate with my own photographs (all the shots with the sepia look are my own) - taken from my travels out and about Scandinavia researching The Elements. The rest are credited to the relevant sites.
Tolkien's Barrow Wights
A Barrow Wight as a name is an invention of JRR Tolkien. As a legend, though, it is something Tolkien has taken from Norse mythology.
“Known in the Elvish language as Tyrn Gorthad ("Hills of Tombs"), the Barrow-downs, located east of the Old Forest in the Bree-land region of Eriador, is a place of mystery best avoided by unwary adventurers. By day, the area seems harmless enough – a quiet region of gently rolling plains and grassy mounds topped by ancient standing stones, marking the final resting place of great warriors from ages past. But the spells which lay across the Barrow-downs are deceiving, and the mists that roll in as the day wanes can disorient and entrap even the bravest souls, turning the once-pleasant hills into dark shapes crowned with sharp teeth of stone. In the dreadful gloom, evil spirits from Angmar dwell amongst the standing stones and within the burial mounds, inhabiting the bodies of the long-dead warriors and raising them as terrifying Wights driven to collect the living and bring them forever into this land of the dead.”
Barrow Wights are the undead spirits inhabiting the mounds in the bleak, misty landscape of the Barrow Downs. Places that have more in common with the moors of England and Wales than Scandinavia. However, as I become more and more aware, there is always a basis for the Tolkiens invention of imagination which brings to mind the old adage 'nothing is created from nothing.'
In the real Scandinavia, not Middle Earth, burial mounds and the later stones of commemoration were to be found close to the places where people lived their normal, everyday lives. For the Norse and the Vikings, the concept of the afterlife was very close to such lives and life a close part of death. Death, if it was to be feared, was captured in legend and such legends were a a very real part of the collective existence of the Norse people. This blog explores the real, legendary roots authors such as Tolkien have explored, this author following the wonderful tradition of storytelling inspired by the past.
Burial mound and sacred site, North Götland Sweden
Runestone, nr. Skærgaarden west coast, Sweden
The Draugr
'They sailed west to Gaul and soon found the barrow'
The Draugr is the Norse name for the undead. Once a body was placed in a grave, it didn't just stay there and decay to dust. It became possessed, taken over by the wandering spirit of the ground. Animated with power and life. An undead corpse.
'after six days had passed, they came to an opening in the barrow. They saw a great ugly man sitting in a chair, blue-skinned and stout, all clad in gold, so that it glittered. He chattered much and blew on the fire.'
A body was like a receptacle that could be inhabited by evil spirits. The barrow, or burial mound being a Draugr's waiting place of choice. The howe or barrow - an earthen mound within which a stone burial chamber resided lined with timbers upon which the earthen mound was built was the standard means of commemorating for eternity Nordic warriors of distinction.
Burial mounds, southern Sweden
Until Viking times, when commemoration runic stones would tell tales of immortalizing the lives and times of important people forever more. Tolkien himself took the Draugr and elevated it to the The Barrow Wight. Yet, it is not to Tolkien I turn but the original legend of the Draugen - one Draugen, two Draugr. Otherwise known as the Haugbui. (Haug comes from haugr - meaning 'howe'). Compare the above, a CPG of the mythical landscape from LOTR to a shot of a real burial barrow, taken from Moesgaard, Denmark.
Barrow burial mound and passage entrance, Moesgaard Denmark
'Day passed, and dusk fell, and it grew dark in the barrow. Then the drow went to wrestle with Hromund, but he cast down his cauldron ...'
The legend of the Norse undead, the Draugr is a product of the vivid imagination of a hardy people working hard to survive the cold and dark of a Scandinavian winter, the draugr would leave their barrows attacking the neighborhood, coming forth from the mounds of the earth from late-autumn, roaming and terrorizing the landscape during the winter. The Draugr were not zombies and neither should we use constructions of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to understand them as such. We must cleanse our prejudices and try to adopt the mind-frame of the person living in a hard land but one rich in belief.
Stenshuvud National Park, Sweden
For these people there was no life, then death. Afterlife also implied a knowledge of the past. As well as the present and the future, a re-manifestation in new guise of the three Norns of Nordic fate. For this author at least, it is the art of John Howe I feel comes closest to capturing the Draugr as described in Nordic legend.
(The Draugr) 'went crazy, and he filled the barrow with an evil reek. Then he set his claws to the back of Hromund's head and broke hold of the bone to his loins ...'
Burial ground in a forest, the north coast of Seeland, Denmark
The Draugr were possessors of magic, able to control the weather and not least standoffs against the men of valor - the fight of full-blood Nordic heroes as internalized in the sagas such as Hromundar saga Greipssonar. The Draugr, a hel-blár - as black as the night (or ná-foir). The stench of rotting corpses, though failing to decay, almost indestructible. This was the Draugen.
All of these sources have been used to construct a real-world depth to murder and intrigue as the detective interviews the suspects, both becoming isolated from the outside world... This blog is work in progress. Thanks for reading.
'He struck the head off the drow, and burned him up in the fire, then went out of the barrow. Then the men asked how Thrain and he had parted. He said that he went in choice, --"then I struck off his head.'
Hrómund Saga Gripssonar
