On 2 January 1967 he wrote to Otto B. Lindhardt, of the Danish publisher Gyldendals Bibliotek, who were planning to publish The Lord of the Rings in Danish, that experience in attempting to help translators or in reading their versions has made me realize that the nomenclature of persons and places offers particular difficulty, but is important since it was constructed with considerable care, to fit with the supposed history of the period described. I have therefore recently been engaged in making, and have nearly completed, a commentary on the names in this story, with explanations and suggestions for the use of a translator, having especially in mind Danish and German (TolkienGeorge Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). On 16 January he wrote to *Joy Hill at Allen & Unwin:
I have completed and Miss Jenkinson [his secretary] has typed out a commentary on the names in The Lord of the Rings, especially devised to be (I hope) useful to anyone translating the book into German or Danish . I think it would save me a considerable amount of time when the German and Dutch projects go forward, and also enable the translators to avoid a lot of the mistakes, and in some cases nonsense, that I now discover in the extant translations. [TolkienGeorge Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins]
Tolkiens commentary for many years was photocopied by Allen & Unwin and sent to translators of The Lord of the Rings as an aid to their work. After Tolkiens death it was edited by his son *Christopher and published in A Tolkien Compass, ed. Jared Lobdell (1975), pp. 153201, as Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings. In 2005 Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull made a fresh transcription of the Nomenclature from the professional typescript as corrected by Tolkien, with reference also to an earlier version in manuscript and typescript; this was published in The Lord of the Rings: A Readers Companion (2005), pp. 75082. (In the first edition of the Readers Companion entries for Mathom and Smials were inadvertently omitted from the Nomenclature. These were absent in the editors copy-text, but present in A Tolkien Compass.)
A Northern Venture. Collection of verses by members of the *Leeds University English School Association, published by the Swan Press, Leeds, in June 1923. See further, Descriptive Bibliography B4. The volume includes three poems by Tolkien, *Enigmata Saxonica Nuper Inventa Duo, *The Happy Mariners, and *The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon. Among other contributors are *Wilfred R. Childe, *E.V. Gordon, and *A.H. Smith.
Northernness. Tolkien considered himself a man of north-western Europe, and in his professional life was concerned with the languages, literature, and culture of that region. As he wrote to his son *Michael on 9 June 1941:
I have spent most of my life, since I was your age, studying Germanic matters (in the general sense that includes England and Scandinavia). There is a great deal more force (and truth) than ignorant people imagine in the Germanic ideal. I was much attracted by it as an undergraduate in reaction against the Classics . I have in this [Second World] War a burning private grudge against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler . Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light. Nowhere, incidentally, was it nobler than in England, nor more early sanctified and Christianized. [Letters, pp. 556]
During the nineteenth century scholars in Northern Europe began to discover and take pride in a common Northern heritage, recognizing a culture and literature which they could place beside, and contrast with, the long-established classical traditions of Greece and Rome. Comparative Philology showed the roots and interrelationship of Germanic and Scandinavian languages. The literature of Iceland, previously little known, was seen as a major contribution to the Northern heritage, and there was also an interest in that countrys early form of democracy. An article in the Oxford Magazine applauding the establishment of the Vigfússon Readership in Ancient Icelandic Literature and Antiquities at *Oxford in 1941 hailed this new link forged between Iceland and England: the lands of thousand-year-old Althing and venerable Parliament; the lands of two ancient European vernacular literatures, through the splendid fragments of whose combined traditions we can look beyond the Middle Age[s] and glimpse the far past of the North (The Vigfússon Readership, Oxford Magazine, 13 November 1941, p. 65).
But this interest in the North was not confined to scholars. Marjorie J. Burns notes in J.R.R. Tolkien and the Journey North, Mythlore 15, no. 4, whole no. 58 (Summer 1989), that
by 1892, when Tolkien was born, English popular thought had for some time been turning from the classical world. Southern tastes and southern considerations, particularly from mid-century onward, had been increasingly replaced by Northern ideals. Britains Nordic ancestry was taken up like a banner and pointed to as indicative of all that the nation should hold in highest esteem .
The English, who had previously played down their Northern ties, now chose to deny their Southern past, to see the South as un-English, as decadent, feeble, and lacking in vigor or will . Neither position is just, of course. Culturally, linguistically, racially, Englands heritage is mixed; but Northern Romanticism, and that human knack of ignoring what doesnt appeal, now allowed the English to see themselves basically as Norsemen only slightly diluted in race, as Vikings only slightly tempered by time. [p. 5]
For a study in depth of this fascination with the North, see Andrew Wawm, The Vikings and the Victorians: Inventing the Old North in 19th-Century Britain (2000).
Tolkien says in *On Fairy-Stories that of all his childhood reading he most enjoyed the nameless North of Sigurd of the Völsungs, and the prince of all dragons. Such lands were pre-eminently desirable (*Tree and Leaf, p. 40). The Story of Sigurd he read, in *Andrew Langs Red Fairy Book (1890), was written for children, based on the translation by *William Morris of the Old Norse (or Icelandic) Völsunga Saga. The legend of Sigurd provides a good example of the common heritage of Northern Europe: it appears in medieval works written in different languages and places, including the Elder (or Poetic) Edda, the Völsunga Saga (founded on the Elder Edda), and Snorri Sturlusons Prose Edda (Old Norse); Þidreks Saga (a Norwegian translation of northern German heroic tales); and the Nibelungenlied (a southern German or Austrian heroic epic). A version was also known to the Anglo-Saxons, shown by a reference in *Beowulf to Sigemund slaying a dragon guarding a hoard (in most other versions Sigemund is the father of Sigfrid, and not a dragon-slayer).
The English, who had previously played down their Northern ties, now chose to deny their Southern past, to see the South as un-English, as decadent, feeble, and lacking in vigor or will . Neither position is just, of course. Culturally, linguistically, racially, Englands heritage is mixed; but Northern Romanticism, and that human knack of ignoring what doesnt appeal, now allowed the English to see themselves basically as Norsemen only slightly diluted in race, as Vikings only slightly tempered by time. [p. 5]
For a study in depth of this fascination with the North, see Andrew Wawm, The Vikings and the Victorians: Inventing the Old North in 19th-Century Britain (2000).
Tolkien says in *On Fairy-Stories that of all his childhood reading he most enjoyed the nameless North of Sigurd of the Völsungs, and the prince of all dragons. Such lands were pre-eminently desirable (*Tree and Leaf, p. 40). The Story of Sigurd he read, in *Andrew Langs Red Fairy Book (1890), was written for children, based on the translation by *William Morris of the Old Norse (or Icelandic) Völsunga Saga. The legend of Sigurd provides a good example of the common heritage of Northern Europe: it appears in medieval works written in different languages and places, including the Elder (or Poetic) Edda, the Völsunga Saga (founded on the Elder Edda), and Snorri Sturlusons Prose Edda (Old Norse); Þidreks Saga (a Norwegian translation of northern German heroic tales); and the Nibelungenlied (a southern German or Austrian heroic epic). A version was also known to the Anglo-Saxons, shown by a reference in *Beowulf to Sigemund slaying a dragon guarding a hoard (in most other versions Sigemund is the father of Sigfrid, and not a dragon-slayer).
While still at school, as part of a general interest in German *languages, including Old English and Gothic, Tolkien also began to learn Old Norse so that he could read the story of Sigurd in the original. He shared his appreciation of Icelandic literature with his fellow pupils at *King Edwards School, Birmingham in a paper on Norse sagas he read to the school Literary Society (*Societies and clubs) on 17 February 1911. According to a report in the King Edwards School Chronicle, Tolkien described a saga as a
story of things which happened indeed but so long ago that marvels and miracles of the strange old Northern brand have crept into the tale. The best sagas are those of Iceland, and for pictures of human life and character they can hardly be bettered in any literature . They tell how brave men of our own blood, perhaps lived and loved, and fought, and voyaged, and died.
One of the best is the Völsunga Saga a strange and glorious tale. It tells of the oldest of treasure hunts: the quest of the red gold of Andvari, the dwarf. It tells of the brave Sigurd Fafnirsbane, who was cursed by the possession of this gold, who, in spite of his greatness, had no happiness from his love for Brynhild. The Saga tells of this and many another strange and thrilling thing. It shows us the highest epic genius struggling out of savagery into complete and conscious humanity. [Literary Society, n.s. 26, no. 186 (March 1911), pp. 1920]
Tolkien also praised the story of Burnt Njal, and thought Howard the Halt the best among shorter works. He concluded with a sketch of the Norse religion and quotations from various sagas. The Chronicle reporter thought that the passages Tolkien read aloud constituted one of the charms of the paper.