[Old blog] "Êl síla erin lû e govanned vin!" or: my Tolkien-History

My journey to Middle-Earth began with a book, discovered in the depths of the library that found it's way into the hands of a wee Elfling, who came to the archive for a book about the Theory of Relativity in the first place.

Little did I know of fantasy-literature back then and if I knew who misplaced the Lord of the Rings amongst books about Physics, I would love to bestow my gratitude on them.

It was however not the first time I came in contact with this book for one year earlier, when I was 10 the first movie came out and I can still remember sitting at the cinema with my dearest mother, when suddenly a trailer came up that left me both frightened and intrigued.

But when I found the book with the interesting looking cover, I opened it at a random page to start reading and get a glimpse of the the author's style to find out if it was any good.

It was the chapter where Frodo meets Gildor Inglorion and I was completely hooked, protectively pressed the book to my chest and hurried to the librarian to make it my property for the next week.
It did not even take me a week to Finnish it, I simply could not stop reading. I didn't associate it with the trailer I had seen one year earlier for I have to admit that 10 year old me completely misinterpreted the plot in the cinema.

It was like a magicbook to me.

If you have been following me on Tumblr for a while, you might already know that it was then, that I fell in love with a certain minor character who can imitate bird-sounds and cross rivers by walking over a rope as if he was on a road. I might as well add that Haldir was my first fictional love and that I hoped until the last pages that he would show up again. When I saw the Two Towers though, I wish that he hadn't.

When I was 12 the Return of the King came out and having read the book I wanted to see it. My parents would not allow that I saw it at the cinema because they thought it was a rather scaring movie for their little Elfling, so they lent the DVDs for us to watch in the shelter of our home and a not so big screen. It was the right decision because the Nazgûl scared me so much, that I hid under a blanket, while the same time I was a tad obsessed with them. Obsessed enough that I dressed up as a Ringwraith for several Halloweens to come.

I had a friend who lived in another part of Austria and who too knew the movies by heart. We would silence the film and speak the text along with the movie and we would reinact most of the scenes. The amount of times I died as Haldir is scarce to be counted (I have to applaud my friend on her ability of playing the Uruk-Hai and Aragorn at once).
One winter I would dress up as an Elf with clothes I found all over the house and play in the snow without proper gear for about seven hours. I got the cold of my life but I think it was very much worth it for Orcs don't slay themselves, you know? As a matter of fact, I love reinacting LotR scenes until today - my mother once caught me during a very epic moment of Aragorn's speech at the Black Gate, holding an ewer instead of a sword and changing the text to "Elves of the west".

And speaking of obsession, this is also where my love for the Noldor started. Not only was I in awe of the word itself, I also immediately adored the armor of the warriors of the Second Age. Love at the first sight, if you will...
Not even in my fanciest dreams did I think that one day I would not only have the Highelven Warrior Sword gracing my walls, but also own a complete, homemade set of noldorin armor, inspired by the Prologue-Elves. I would say this particular armor and this sword were two of the three items I wanted the most from all the
movies.

This scene is probably the most watched one from all the movies. Or mabye it is Haldir's entrance in Helm's Deep...

Because I got into the movies so late, I did not see them in the theaters until three years ago when I went to an extended marathon that was one of the most intense Tolkien-experiences.

When I was 13, I taught myself how to write in Tengwar without having a guide or an alphabet-list. I have always been very talented for writing systems and riddles so it did not take me very long to understand the system of the font.
Still do I own many old school-notes or even diaries written in this style and even today I prefer to take my notes at University in Tengwar for I deem it a lot faster to write.

I focused on the Lord of the Rings a lot for there was so much knowledge to gain and so many details to find out. Having had no internet, it took me about 4 more years to realize, that there were more books on Middle-Earth, in fact, that there were quite a lot.

In this time I had already gained the reputation of being a complete geek for LotR and until that day my classmates remember me as that. I even bit someone at school who offended Haldir and got detention for it, this is how serious it was to me.
I even have a binder in which I filed everything I could find regarding Tolkien – newspaper articles, handwritten poems – everything. I am still very proud of my work and my fandom-binder rests in a place of honor in the Tolkien-section of my library.

Bonuspoints if you can sense who this Elf is

The first book I got was the Lost Tales which I did not really understand, having not read the Silmarillion yet. And since the later had such a bad reputation of being not very enjoyable and confusing I would not go get it. Not yet.

When I graduated high school, my main essays were on Tolkien (for English) and the portrayal of Elves in German literature (for German). That was the moment I started to learn Sindarin because I had a segment on Elvish in my essay and wanted to understand at least a little of the language. Being somebody who is not very talented with languages (in all honesty!) I am very surprised that I still managed to learn and understand this language. I would not say I am very fluent but I can translate whatever I want.
I can remember that my headmistress used to call me “her little Elf” because I was so much into the matter and it was no longer a secret, that I knew almost everything about Elves that one could know.

Almost.
I happened to stumble upon Lucinda-Ithil's artwork on deviantART where she created a heraldic artwork for Fingolfin. Something about the artwork and especially about the name (I strangely have a thing for names starting with F) made me research on that and I again I ended up at a book called The Silmarillion. This time though I would not let other people's opinions keep me from reading it because I knew there would be the adventures of elven heroes – and even more important, the complete elven history in it.
I went to the next bookstore and proudly brought the Silmarillion home. I already started reading on the train because I was so curious and after just a few pages I knew that I had found my new favorite book. I am still wondering how it is possible to squeeze so many emotions and so much story into a book as tiny as this. It must be magic.

Every feanorin loves shiny crystals and especially Silmarils...

One day my shieldmaiden wrote me a very excited text message telling me that there was an event called HobbitCon that sounded like pure heaven to the both of us. She told me it was a bout 12 hours by train away and would happen in three days. We immediately decided to go and bought our tickets before we even had a hostel booked. Worst case, we thought, we would sleep on the street. But that was not yet to come.

Not yet.

HobbitCon and later RingCon became a fixed date in our calendars and one time we were even graced with the honor of hosting workshops on Tengwar and Khuzdûl. When I held my lecture, I was already wearing my finished feanorian cosplay, that went through some more upgrades later and that I can now declare as finished.
Summing it up I can say that I made a great amount of dear friends at these conventions and I would not want to know how empty my life would be without them. I even met my sister in spirit through the fandom on Tumblr, when I had just joined the network.

When the last Hobbit movie came out, my sister and I who never had the chance to attend any Tolkien-themed-premiere, decided to go there and have the time of our lives (and also sleep in the streets for the first time in our lives...). You can read more on that in this entry.

I don't think Tolkien will ever stop being a part of my life and interest for there is always more to learn, more to discuss and more to think about. This passion has helped e a lot in my not so happy school-years and still it never fails to fascinate me.

❝Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?... If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!❞
~J.R.R. Tolkien