If you’re in the UK, this is for you! On Friday November 29 at 14:00 GMT, you can be present for a conversation with Philippa.
Other Minds and Hands: A conversation with Philippa Boyens is free to attend and will take place at Merton College, University of Oxford. Phillipa will be interviewed by Grace Khuri and other other members of the Oxford Tolkien Network: Giuseppe Pezzini, Mark Atherton, Stuart Lee, Catherine McIlwaine.
Available for pre-order from our friends at Weta Workshop is this beautiful statue depicting Radagast the Brown in Rhosgobel. This piece is superbly done, as usual, and perfectly recreates the quirkiness of Radagast and his home. There’s also a very cool easter egg that represents the beautiful place in which the films were made, New Zealand. You can pre-order this amazing piece for $999.
If you have been collecting the classic series, then this second statue of Radagast is for you. This classic series piece is available for $399. Both Radagast statues are due to ship in the first quarter of next year.
For lovers of the monsters of Middle-earth, who need a little eight legged friend in their collection, you could grab the very cool mini-Shelob statue for $179, this statue is also due to ship in the first quarter of next year.
On September 22nd, the very date of Bilbo’s and Frodo’s birthdays, a large group of Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves, Men, Wizards, and well-behaved Wargs, gathered for a day of merriment, feasting, and activities.
The Party took place under the sheltering trees of Griffith Park, in the Mineral Wells picnic area, close by a meandering river. The day was warm, but not too warm. The sun high and bright. The leaves sparkled green and gold in a fair breeze which ruffled the Baggins’ Birthday banner and the feathers adorning Hobbit hats. Tents dotted the landscape: an Elven enclave here, a Dwarven fortress there, a Hobbit hole beneath a tree.
The banqueting table was laden with dishes–pulled pork, barbecue chicken salad, spicy sausages, cheese samplings, Lembas, watermelon, pasta salad (I could go on and on, but it’s making my mouth water all over again.) There were even two big jugs of delicious homemade apple brew crafted from a long list of enticing ingredients.
Lots more Middle-earth on the way as new things are previewed and fans assemble on Bilbo & Frodo’s birthday this year.
Tales of the Shire preview & new release date
Weta Workshop & Private Division gave select fans and gamers a playable demo of Tales of the Shire, a console & PC game coming to all platforms – Nintendo Switch, Xbox, Playstation, PC, and mobile via Netflix Games. Developers also announced the release date has been pushed to March 25, 2025. We have a full writeup and video playthroughs in another article.
Game producer Calliope Ryder was at TwitchCon San Diego this weekend for a panel on Tales of the Shire, and posted a “fun facts” thread about shirefolk on X.
so lovely to chat all things cosy and Hobbity!! thank you @MerryKish and @itscozyk for looking after us so well 🙂
It was also revealed that the duck with a dwarven helmet is a featured character, and its name is Ladle (sp?)!
If my ears do not deceive me, the name of the armored duck in Tales of the Shire is Leidel?@talesoftheshire can probably correct me if am wrong… pic.twitter.com/OLtMDm0N9b
Richard Taylor and the team at Weta Workshop posted a 20-minute behind the scenes video of the game in progress.
War of the Rohirrim gets a poster & Warhammer tie-in
New Line Cinema’s feature anime film The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim debuted its theatrical poster for Hobbit Day!
Also announced, Warhammer is bringing Rohirrim into its Middle-earth™ Strategy Battle Game with TheLord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim™ – Battle of Edoras starter set. The 56 piece package includes a board map, some Edoras structures, and a ton of miniature painted figures that the Tabletop RPG is known for. Get all the details over at Warhammer website.
Official WB social accounts reawaken
The Hobbit Movie posted a charming little video to celebrate Hobbit Day.
Today of all days, don’t forget your second breakfast! Happy #HobbitDay. Don’t miss #LOTR The War Of The Rohirrim only in theaters this Christmas. pic.twitter.com/gzpAl3DfiJ
Fans spotted that an orchestra concert of ‘The music of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit’ is coming to Pasadena in March 2025, and tickets are now available at Ticketmaster. (Note this is not the full scores being played with the movie – stay tuned for news of The Return of the King with live orchestra coming to NYC early next year!)
Prime Video celebrates Sauron on Hobbit Day
Also posting on Bilbo’s birthday was official accounts for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, focusing on Sauron. This fan wants to know: is Harfoot Nori’s birthday also September 22?
While a lot of your favorite Tolkien influencers are being featured in official The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power marketing, including our own greendragon, more fans are getting into the TolkienTube game. The newest is Makers of Middle-earth from Anna María, who has previously joined us for SDCC panels and livestreams. Her first interview is with the legendary Jed Brophy!
Fans celebrate together worldwide for Hobbit Day 2024
New Zealand fans visited Hobbiton with Red Carpet Tours.
Header photo is from Diane in the TORN Discord, taken under the party tree at Hobbiton! We hope all our fellow fans had a happy, hobbity day of fun and festivity – and are enjoying the riches of this era in the Tolkien fandom.
This week in Reflections from the Shire we have a guest post from Tolkien lover, and Tiktok and Threads regular, Lea/Silmarilleanne about The Shibboleth of Fëanor and it’s appearance in The Rings of Power episode four. Enjoy!
~ Staffer Kelvarhin
Reflections from the Shire – The Shibboleth of Fëanor
Guest post by: Lea/Silmarilleanne
Keen-eared Tolkien fans may have noticed an interesting linguistic quirk spoken by Adar at the end of episode four of The Rings of Power. He greets Galadriel with a familiar Quenyan phrase – one used by Frodo to greet Gildor Ingolrion in The Lord of the Rings: “elen síla lúmenn omentielvo”, to quote Frodo. But Adar’s is slightly different, raising some interesting possibilities about his original elven identity.
Firstly, there’s the fact that Adar is speaking Quenya at all. This suggests he is a Noldo of Valinor – just as Galadriel is; Quenya the language originated in Valinor and is the the language of the High Elves. It was dropped in favour of Sindarin shortly after the exiled Noldor arrived in Middle-earth, thanks to the ban placed upon it being spoken by the Sindar King, Elu Thingol, after he was informed of the Kinslaying at Alqualondë, the victims of which were his own people, the Teleri. It was never spoken by any of the other elves of Middle-earth, becoming something of an archaic language of lore. Furthermore, Adar calls Galadriel “Altáriel”, the Quenyan form of the name Galadriel – an epessë (a kind of nickname) she was given in Valinor, and which was Sindarised to Galadriel in Middle-earth. This is all to say, were he anything other than a Noldo, it is extremely unlikely he would have spoken Quenya and known Galadriel’s Quenyan epessë.
The most intriguing part of all this though is instead of síla, Adar pronounces the word as thíla – or, more accurately þíla. This usage of the thorn in place of s suggests he is not only speaking Quenya, but a very specific dialect of Quenya – Fëanorian Quenya, known amongst many fans as ‘the Fëanorian lisp’ (indeed, those who spoke this way were dubbed ‘the Lispers’).
In The Shibboleth of Fëanor, published in The Peoples of Middle-earth, volume 12 of the History of Middle-earth, Tolkien at his philological best describes how sociopolitical matters affect language and vice versa. As the Shibboleth explains, the Noldor and the Vanyar, two of the three tribes of elves, once lived together in the city of Tirion in Valinor and shared a language, Quenya. The Vanyar relocated to the city of Valmar to be closer to the Valar, and as a result of this distancing, dialectical shifts occurred between the two peoples. The Vanyar retained the þ in their language, but amongst the Noldor there was a “conscious and deliberate change…based primarily on phonetic ‘taste’ and theory” to s.
The change was attacked and opposed by loremasters, who believed it would cause damage “in confusing stems and their derivatives that had been distinct in sound and sense”. The chief linguistic loremaster at this time was Fëanor, who as well as being a fastidious loremaster also had a very personal reason for objecting to the change. Fëanor’s mother, and first queen of the Noldor, was Míriel Þerinde. While the linguistic shift is said to have happened (or at least began) within her lifetime, Míriel herself adhered to the pronunciation þ, and “desired that all her kin should adhere to it also, at least in the pronunciation of her name”, therefore Þerindë as opposed to Serindë.
However, unprecedented amongst the elves of this time, Míriel died, and refused to be re-embodied. Embittered by this, her husband Finwë himself switched away from þ in favour of s, which had at this point become almost universal amongst the Noldor bar Míriel’s kin. Matters were worsened further when his second wife, Indis of the Vanyar, followed suit. As a Vanya, Indis had hitherto retained the þ in her speech, but she declared, “I have joined the people of the Noldor, and I will speak as they do”. Fëanor, hating Indis and seeing her as somewhat of a usurper in his mother’s rightful place, believed her switch to be a grave insult and belittlement of his mother, and came to view the rejection of Þ as a symbol of rejection of both his mother Míriel, and by extension himself, her son, as the chief of the Noldor next to Finwë.
Thus, he became yet more vehement in his objection of the shift, even while his behaviour turned those who had previously agreed with him to the opposing side:
“Had peace been maintained there can be no doubt that the advice of Fëanor, with which all the other loremasters privately or openly agreed, would have prevailed. But an opinion in which he was surely right was rejected because of the follies and evil deeds into which he was later led.”
Fëanor remained steadfast in his opposition, pointedly calling himself ‘Son of Þerinde’ and telling his sons, when they queried the difference in their speech from that of their kin, that they “speak as is right, and as King Finwë did before he was led astray”.
So even before the Rebellion of the Noldor and their exodus to Middle-earth, s in place of þ had become dominant, and this was further cemented in exile: “The s was certainly used in Beleriand by almost all the Noldor,” Tolkien writes, and this is followed by the note “It is not even certain that all Fëanor’s sons continued to use Þ after his death and the healing of the feud” between the Fëanorians and the family of Fingolfin, though it seems almost certain any elf who did retain the thorn would have been counted amongst the Fëanorian followers – thus is raised the question of Adar’s identity.
But Adar saying it to Galadriel adds yet another layer of significance. The Shibboleth of Fëanor further details how Finarfin, Galadriel’s father “loved the Vanyar (his mother’s people)” and that because of this love in his house, þ remained in standard use and he was moved neither one way nor the other by Fëanor’s shibboleth, acting purely as he wished. Galadriel therefore grew up in a household that retained the þ. However:
“opposition to Fëanor,” Tolkien writes, “soon became a dominant motive with Galadriel… so while she knew well the history of their tongue and all the reasons of the loremasters, she certainly used s in her own daily speech.”
In other words, she purposely transitioned to using s to spite Fëanor. Adar’s own usage of it then could also be retaliative or in a similar vein: he is aware of its import and meaning to Galadriel and could potentially be purposely using it as a means of aggravating her.
Certainly, the implications of him speaking Quenya – and specifically the Fëanorian dialect of Quenya – seems to contradict earlier indications in the show about him being one of the first orcs; the first orcs were made from elves taken during the days at Cuiviénen, long before the elves went to Valinor and Quenya the language even existed; at this time, they spoke only Primitive Quendian. It would also seem odd if Quenya is his mother tongue, why his name is Adar, the Sindarin word for father, as opposed to Atar as it is in Quenya. But how deep does the show want to delve? It could be a lot more straightforward – the show is going on the simplified premise of Quenya having been spoken by the elves since those early days, and the dialectical shift having happened since then simply being indicative of Adar’s extreme age. But if Adar is from amongst those first elves, as Galadriel claimed in the first series, that would put him of an age, older even, than Círdan, and yet Adar is very noticeably lacking the beard that is illustrative of Círdan’s long lifespan. On the other hand, if the show really is going this deep on the lore, exactly who is he? Theories of Adar being Maglor abound, since it would tick many of the boxes: Fëanorian speech, Noldo, dark hair, familiarity with the name Altáriel… But surely, even with a multitude of scars on his face, Galadriel would recognise her cousin? There is also, and perhaps most fundamentally, the issue of rights. While the Tolkien Estate has afforded Amazon some leniency and granted access to certain items outside the rights they own – most notably, the name “Annatar”, a word which does not appear in the Lord of the Rings and its appendices, which Amazon owns the rights to – it is another level entirely to grant them access to an entire character.
Regardless of whether Adar’s use of the “Fëanorian lisp” becomes significant and plot-relevant, or remains a little easter egg for keen-eared viewers, it has certainly conjured a lot of discussion, and a wonderful new level of interest in more casual fans, who have begun seeking out a once fairly obscure text like The Shibboleth of Fëanor.
About the author:Lea aka Silmarilleanne is a long-time lover of Tolkien’s works with a penchant for his languages and the House of Finwë. When her nose isn’t buried in a book or a PlayStation controller in her hands, she can most often be found talking Tolkien on Tiktok and Threads.
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In our latest episode of the Collecting The Precious Podcast, we are chatting about the amazing collectibles that we saw during San Diego Comic-Con 2024 from Weta Workshop, Vanderstelt Studio, Diamond Select Toys, Iron Studios, and Cliff Cramp Illustration. We’ll be discussing what we hope to see as we work towards next years SDCC, and we’ll also talk about Jim’s first time attending SDCC.
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