Week 50: Wetlands – Tuesday 6th February 2024
#TolkienTrewsday #TolkienTuesday #Tolkien
Welcome to #TolkienTrewsday #TolkienTuesday.
The hub for this Twitter-based event can be found here.
Tolkien Trewsday (the Hobbit name for Tuesday!) invites the #Tolkien community to form a fellowship to collectively tweet about a pre-selected theme about Tolkien, his works and his life.
Each week a new theme will be selected, often via a poll or by a guest host/curator, and together we will build a collective outpouring of creativity, knowledge and love for J.R.R. Tolkien and the adaptions based on his works.
The inspiration for this comes from the highly successful #FolkloreThursday which engaged lovers of Folklore, academics, artists and more to use Twitter to discuss it.
We only ask that if you are joining in, please do so with courtesy and kindness in your tweets. This is a positive-action community event, open to all and supportive of fan diversity. Intolerance, racism, bigotry have no place here.
💬 This week’s theme
Week 50: Wetlands – Tuesday 6th February 2024
Some of the more famous wetlands in Middle-earth include the Dead Marshes, Midgewater Marshes, Swanfleet (near Tharbad) and in the Rings of Power we get the Grey Marshes. Ideas for content this week include:
- Waterways - usage and dangers
- Wildlife/habitats/peoples (River Hobbits, Gollum, etc)
- How do adaptions visualise wetlands?
How to contribute
We are keeping it very simple. All you need to do to join is tweet something about the current week’s theme and use the following hashtags in your tweet:
#TolkienTrewsday #TolkienTuesday #Tolkien
Your tweet, besides following the theme, can be anything.
Tolkien Trewsday Calendar and Introducing infographics (Click image to enlarge)
The Midgewater Marshes in Standing Stone Games’ “The Lord of the Rings Online.”
(Author’s screenshot taken on 4 February 2024)
Week 50: Topographia of Middle-earth #1 - Wetlands
Having reached fifty weeks, we return to a blog post for Tolkien Trewsday! This week’s theme was chosen as a link to World Wetlands Day (RAMSAR website | Official website), something I planned to do since we started in 2023. This year World Wetlands Day was on Friday 2nd February 2024.
According to the World Wetlands Day website, wetlands can be defined as:
“Land areas that are saturated or flooded with water either permanently or seasonally.”
They are divided into three categories:
“Inland wetlands:
Marshes, lakes, rivers, floodplains, peatlands and swampsCoastal wetlands:
Saltwater marshes, estuaries, mangroves, lagoons and coral reefsHuman-made wetlands:
Fish ponds, rice paddies and salt pans”
In J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth landscapes have a character of their own. The land itself feels alive and interacts with the characters that traverse it – sometimes assisting and at other times resisting or leading them to danger. With this in mind, I want to introduce a new section to The Green Book of the White Downs blog to accompany and compliment two other sections: The Middle-earth Bestiary as seen in Week 13 (Theme: “Animals”) and Ruins of Middle-earth from Week 21 (Theme: “Third Age”).
The new section will be called “Topographia of Middle-earth” (or the topography of Middle-earth) in a nod to the works of medieval historian and priest, Gerald of Wales.
Logo for Topographia of Middle-earth
The logo image is a screenshot from The Lord of the Rings Online, taken atop Weathertop during a sunset. I’ve used my usual Photoshop “Poster Edges” filter. Fonts are Faith Collapsing (“Topographia”), Century Gothic (“of Middle-earth”) and the runes are Tolkien Dwarven Runes (“Arda Marred” repeated, left and right).
Like with both Ruins of Middle-earth and the Middle-earth Bestiary, I aim to focus Topographia of Middle-earth on both the Tolkien texts and also adaptions based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s works including films, television and games. More specifically, I will explore how Standing Stone Games’ “The Lord of the Rings Online” (LOTRO) MMPRPG visualises and uses the landscapes within Tolkien’s works. I also aim to examine the ongoing television series “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” produced by Amazon Studios.
For this week, with limited time, I am going to add a few notes about wetlands within LOTRO and on Twitter I’ll put some thoughts during the course of Tolkien Trewsday.
📜 Topographia of Middle-earth: three example entries
The details of this section are still being refined, but a typical entry (as a blog post) will likely have:
Name of location (with the adaption focused on: e.g. LOTRO, The Rings of Power, etc)
Location: Where is it situated in Middle-earth.
Type: From the list of wetlands provided above.
Etymology: Origin of the name (either Tolkien or created for the adaption).
Sources: From LOTRO Wiki and Tolkien Gateway
Bestiary: Eventually connecting to the Middle-earth Bestiary section, lists local flora and fauna
Ruins: Listing any notable ruins and linking with the Ruins of Middle-earth section.
Topographia: A brief description of the area and features.
Other sections may include notable academic references, peoples and personalities known to inhabit the area, etc.
📌 Rushock Bog
LOTRO
Location: The Shire
Type: Swamp
Etymology: rush + hassock = "coarse grass"
Sources: LOTRO Wiki | Tolkien Gateway
Bestiary: Bog slugs, gnat swarms, bog-toads
Ruins: Remains of a stone troll (caught out in the sunlight)
Topographia:Situated in the north west of the Shire, a stream feeds Rushock Bog that then leads into the Water, a river running through the Shire that flows into the Brandywine River (Baranduin). This river system is part of the Baranduin drainage basin.
Rushock Bog lies just south of small village of Needlehole, nestled on the edge of Yondershire. Dwarf travellers from Ered Luin visit here. Surrounding Rushock Bog to the east and south are Bindole Wood, the Hill and Delving Fields.
Rushock Bog consists of small islands surrounded by water and the area is covered with tall grasses.
📌 Midgewater Marshes
LOTRO
Location: Bree-lands
Type: Marsh
Etymology: Named after insects. Tolkien says the name is a translation of the Icelandic MývatnI (see Tolkien Gateway entry)
Sources: LOTRO Wiki | Tolkien Gateway
Bestiary: Midges, sickle-flies, Neeker-breekers, giant spiders
Ruins: Marshwater Fort, “Sunken Stones”, Goblinhole Ruins
Topographia:The marshes east of Bree-town, Combe and Staddle known for being treacherous to navigate, even for Rangers. The insects the marsh is named after are a constant pest.
To the north is Chetwood and to the east is the Weather Hills. The Great East Road borders the marsh to the south.
Swanfleet in Standing Stone Games’ “The Lord of the Rings Online.”
📌 Swanfleet (Nîn-in-Eilph)
LOTRO
Location: Swanfleet
Type: Inland delta
Etymology: Nîn-in-Eilph (Sindarin) = "water-lands of the Swans"
Sources: LOTRO Wiki (Wadewater) | Tolkien Gateway
Bestiary: Swans, Egrets, Herons, Storks, Bog-lurkers, Neeker-breekers, Sickle-flies, Beavers, Toads, Snakes, Dread-turtles, Avanc
Ruins: Tharbad (to the south), Gwâl Cruban and more
Topographia:Swanfleet is an inland delta or marsh where various rivers, including the Glanduin ("Border-river"), Mitheithel (Hoarwell), Bruinen (“Loudwater”) and others, merge to form the Gwathló (Greyflood). The area borders the ancient lands of Cardolan and Eregion. This region is historically known for some of the older civilisations that have made settlements here including Elves and Númenóreans.
The area is abundant with flora and fauna, hence the fens earning the name “Pools of Song” (LOTRO only reference?).
The maps of LOTRO have many wetlands, which will eventually be catalogued and included in the Topographia of Middle-earth. These include:
- Harloeg (Lone-lands)
- Agamaur (“Red Swamp”, Lone-lands)
- Dunbog (Dunland)
- The Dead Marshes (Dagorlad or “the Wastes”)
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Addendum 1: Updated title logos for Ruins of Middle-earth and Middle-earth Bestiary
I’ve spent a little time whilst creating this blog post to update the title logo for the Middle-earth Bestiary section. I include the logo for the Ruins of Middle-earth section below.
Logo for Ruins of Middle-earth
Logo for Middle-earth Bestiary
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