With the upcoming Amazon series “The Rings of Power” almost upon us, the world of JRR Tolkien is back in the spotlight. One of the critical successes of the tales of his fantasy land Middle Earth is that Tolkien built several languages and histories into the people that populated it before he even began the story. In fact, the Professor only really wrote the stories to “flesh out” the land and languages that he’d created. These were based primarily on old Norse, Celtic and Germanic legends.
He makes a land of contrasts. To the North, we have the Shire, where the Hobbits live. Tolkien created rural England here. It’s a real “green and pleasant land” where people know their place and are very content with it. So when the Orcs and Saruman come to the Shire at the end of the Lord of the Rings, they bring destruction to the trees and fields and look to add industry, like Coal powered mills, and to set the Hobbits to work in them.
In contrast, it is the land of Mordor. Set under a perpetual volcanic ash cloud, this land is depleted, and nothing can grow. In fact, for it to be fixed, the work of Remediation Contractors like Soilfix Remediation Contractors would need to be employed to make the ground capable of supporting crops again.
Whether the Amazon production is able to capture the spirit of the books, they are not as heavily based on them as Peter Jackson’s films were, remains to be seen.
