| Rohan | |
|---|---|
| Middle-earth location | |
 Artist's impression of the flag of Rohan[T 1] | |
| First appearance | The Two Towers |
| In-universe information | |
| Other name(s) | the Riddermark, Calenardhon, the Mark |
| Type | Adopted home of the Rohirrim |
| Ruler | Kings of Rohan |
| Location | North-west Middle-earth |
| Locations | Edoras,Dunharrow,Helm's Deep |
| Lifespan | FoundedT.A. 2510 |
| Founder | Eorl the Young |
| Capital | Aldburg, thenEdoras |
Rohan is a fictional kingdom ofMen inJ. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy setting ofMiddle-earth. Known for its horsemen, theRohirrim, Rohan provides its allyGondor withcavalry. Its territory is mainlygrassland. The Rohirrim call their land the Mark or the Riddermark, names recalling that of the historical kingdom ofMercia, the region of Western England where Tolkien lived.
Tolkien grounded Rohan in elements inspired byAnglo-Saxon tradition, poetry, and linguistics, specifically in itsMercian dialect, in everything but its use of horses. Tolkien usedOld English for the kingdom's language and names,pretending that this was in translation of Rohirric. Meduseld, the hall of KingThéoden, is modelled onHeorot, the great hall inBeowulf.
Within the plot ofThe Lord of the Rings, Rohan plays a critical role in the action—first against thewizardSaruman in theBattle of the Hornburg, then in the climacticBattle of the Pelennor Fields. There, Théoden leads the Rohirrim to victory against the forces ofMordor; he is killed when his horse falls, but his nieceÉowyn kills the leader of theRingwraiths.
Tolkien's own account, in an unsent letter, gives both the fictional and the actual etymologies of Rohan:
Rohan is stated (III 391, 394) to be a later softened form ofRochand. It is derived from Elvish*rokkō ‘swift horse for riding’ (Q[uenya]rocco,S[indarin]roch) + a suffix frequent in names of lands [e.g.Beleriand,Ossiriand]. ...Rohan is a famous name, fromBrittany, borne byan ancient proud and powerful family. I was aware of this, and liked its shape; but I had also (long before) invented the Elvish horse-word, and saw how Rohan could be accommodated to the linguistic situation as a late Sindarin name of the Mark (previously calledCalenarðon 'the (great) green region') after its occupation by horsemen. Nothing in the history of Brittany will throw any light on the Éorlingas. ...[T 2]
In Tolkien's Middle-earth, Rohan is an inland realm. Its countryside is described as a land of pastures and lush tall grassland which is frequently windswept. The meadows contain "many hidden pools, and broad acres ofsedge waving above wet and treacherous bogs"[T 3] that water the grasses. The cartographerKaren Wynn Fonstad calculated Rohan to be 52,763 square miles (136,656 km2) in area (slightly larger thanEngland).[1]
Rohan is bordered to the north by theFangorn forest, home to theEnts (tree-giants)[a] led byTreebeard, and by the great river Anduin, called Langflood by the Rohirrim. To the northeast are the walls of Emyn Muil. After the War of the Ring, the kingdom is extended northwards over the Limlight to the borders ofLothlórien.[T 4][T 5] To the east are the mouths of the River Entwash, and the Mering Stream, which separated Rohan from the Gondorian province of Anórien, known to the Rohirrim as Sunlending. To the south lie theWhite Mountains (Ered Nimrais). To the west are the rivers Adorn and Isen, where Rohan borders the land of theDunlendings. To the northwest, just under the southern end of theMisty Mountains, lies the walled circle of Isengard around the ancient tower of Orthanc; at the time of the War of the Ring, it had been taken over by the evilwizardSaruman. The area of the western border where the Misty Mountains and the White Mountains drew near to each other is known as the Gap of Rohan.[T 4]
The capital of Rohan is the fortified town ofEdoras, on a hill in a valley of theWhite Mountains.[T 6] "Edoras" is Old English for "enclosures".[3] The town of Edoras was built by Rohan's second King, Brego son of Eorl the Young. The hill on which Edoras is built stands in the mouth of the valley of Harrowdale. The river Snowbourn flows past the town on its way east towards the Entwash. The town is protected by a high wall of timber.
Meduseld, the Golden Hall of the Kings of Rohan, is in the centre of the town at the top of the hill.[T 6] "Meduseld", Old English for "mead hall",[4] is meant to be a translation of an unknown Rohirric word with the same meaning. Meduseld is based on the mead hallHeorot inBeowulf; it is a large hall with a thatched roof that appears golden from far off. The walls are richly decorated with tapestries depicting the history and legends of the Rohirrim, and it serves as a house for the King and his kin, a meeting hall for the King and his advisors, and a gathering hall for ceremonies and festivities. It is at Meduseld thatAragorn,Gimli,Legolas, andGandalf meet with KingThéoden.[T 6] Legolas describes Meduseld in a line thatdirectly translates a line ofBeowulf, "The light of it shines far over the land", representinglíxte se léoma ofer landa fela.[5] The hall isanachronistically described as havinglouvres to remove the smoke, derived fromWilliam Morris's 1889The House of the Wolfings.[6][7]
Upstream from Edoras, deeper into Harrowdale, are the hamlets of Upbourn and Underharrow. At the head ofDunharrow (from Old EnglishDûnhaerg, "the heathen fane on the hillside"[8]) is a refuge, Firienfeld, in the White Mountains.[T 7] Aldburg, capital of the Eastfold, is the original settlement of Eorl the Young. The Hornburg, a major fortress guarding the western region, is inHelm's Deep, a valley in the White Mountains.[T 8]
The kingdom of Rohan, also called the Mark, is primarily divided into two regions, the East-mark and the West-mark. They are each led by a marshal of the kingdom. Rohan's capital, Edoras, lies in a small but populous region in the centre south of the kingdom, the Folde.[T 9] In an earlier concept, Rohan's capital region was called the King's Lands, of which the Folde was a sub-region to the south-east of Edoras.[T 10] North of the Folde, the boundary between the East-mark and West-mark runs along the Snowbourn River and the Entwash.[T 11] Most of the rest of Rohan's population is spread along the foothills of theWhite Mountains in both directions from the Folde. In the West-mark the Westfold extends along the mountains toHelm's Deep (the defensive centre of Westfold) and to the Gap of Rohan. Beyond the Gap of Rohan lies the West Marches, the kingdom's far west borderland.[T 8] The Eastfold extends along the White Mountains in the opposite direction (and was thus a part of the East-mark). It is bound by the Entwash to the north. Its eastern borderland is called the Fenmarch; beyond this lies the Kingdom of Gondor.[T 12]
The centre of Rohan is a large plain, divided by the Entwash into the East Emnet and the West Emnet.[T 13] These regions fell respectively into the East-mark and the West-mark. The northernmost region of Rohan, and the least populous, is the Wold. The Field of Celebrant (named for a synonym of the RiverSilverlode), even further north, is added to Rohan after theWar of the Ring.[T 14]
The Rohirrim are distantly related to theDúnedain ofGondor, having descended from the same place. Unlike the inhabitants of Gondor, who are portrayed as enlightened and highly civilized, the Rohirrim are shown as being at a lower level of enlightenment.[10]
The names and many details of Rohirric culture are derived from Germanic cultures, particularly that of theAnglo-Saxons and their Old English language, towards which Tolkien felt a strong affinity. Anglo-Saxon England was defeated by the cavalry of the Normans at theBattle of Hastings, and some Tolkien scholars have suggested that the Rohirrim are Tolkien's wishful version of an Anglo-Saxon society that retained a "rider culture", and would have been able to resist such an invasion.[11] The Tolkien scholarTom Shippey notes that Tolkien derived theemblem of the House of Éorl, a "white horse upon green", from theUffington White Horse carved into the grass of thechalk downs in England.[9]
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While Tolkien represents the Rohirrim with Anglo-Saxon culture and language, their ancestors are given Gothic attributes. The names of Rhovanion's royal family, (the ancestors of the Rohirrim), include such names as Vidugavia, Vidumavi and Vinitharya, which are ofGothic origin. Vidugavia specifically has been seen as an synonym forVitiges, king of theOstrogoths in Italy from 536 to 540.[12] Tolkien saw this as a parallel with the real-world relationship between Old English andGothic.[13]
In response to a query about clothing styles inMiddle-earth, Tolkien wrote:
The Rohirrim were not "medieval", in our sense. The styles of theBayeux Tapestry (made in England) fit them well enough, if one remembers that the kind of tennis-nets [the] soldiers seem to have on are only a clumsy conventional sign forchainmail of small rings.[T 15]
The armies of Rohan were largely horsemen. The basic tactical unit was theéored, Old English for "a unit of cavalry, a troop",[14] which at the time of theWar of the Ring had a nominal strength of 120 riders.[T 16]
In time of war, every able man was obliged to join the Muster of Rohan. Rohan was bound by the Oath of Éorl to helpGondor in times of peril, and the latter asked for their aid through the giving of theRed Arrow. This has a historical antecedent in the Old English poemElene, in whichConstantine the Great summoned an army of mountedVisigoths to his aid against theHuns by sending an arrow as a "token of war".[15] Gondor could also call the Rohirrim in need by lighting the warning beacons of Gondor, seven signal fires along the White Mountains fromMinas Tirith to the Rohan border:Amon Dîn,Eilenach,Nardol,Erelas,Min-Rimmon,Calenhad andHalifirien.[T 17]
At the start of theWar of the Ring a Full Muster would have been over 12,000 riders.[T 18] Among the horses of the Rohirrim were the famedmearas, the noblest and fastest horses that ever roamedArda. It was because of the close affiliation with horses, both in war and peace, that they received their name.[T 19]
Tolkien generally called the language simply "the language of Rohan" or "of the Rohirrim". The adjectival form "Rohirric" is common; Tolkien once also used "Rohanese".[T 17] Like many languages ofMen, it is akin toAdûnaic, the language ofNúmenóreans, and therefore to theWestron or Common Speech.[17]
The Rohirrim called their homeland theRiddermark, a modernization by Tolkien of Old EnglishRiddena-mearc, meaning, according to the Index toThe Lord of the Rings, "the border country of the knights"; alsoÉo-marc, theHorse-mark, or simply theMark.[19] They call themselves theÉorlingas, the Sons of Éorl. Tolkien rendered the language of the Riders of Rohan,Rohirric, as theMercian dialect of Old English. Even words and phrases that were printed inmodern English showed a strong Old English influence.[T 21] This solution occurred to Tolkien when he was searching for an explanation of theEddaic names of the dwarves already published inThe Hobbit.[18] Tolkien, aphilologist, with a special interest inGermanic languages,pretended that the names and phrases of Old English were translated from Rohirric, just as the English used inThe Shire was supposedly translated from Middle-earth'sWestron or Common Speech.[18][T 20] Examples includeéored[14] andmearas.[20] The Riders' names for the cunningly-built tower of Isengard, Orthanc, and for the Ents, the tree-giants of Fangorn forest, are similarly Old English, both being found in the phraseorþanc enta geweorc, "cunning work of giants" in the poemThe Ruin,[21] though Shippey suggests that Tolkien may have chosen to read the phrase also as "Orthanc, the Ent's fortress".[2]
InThe Two Towers, chapter 6, the Riders of Rohan are introduced before they are seen, byAragorn, who chants in the language of the Rohirrim words "in a slow tongue unknown to theElf and theDwarf", alai thatLegolas senses "is laden with the sadness of MortalMen". The song is called theLament of the Rohirrim. To achieve a resonant sense of the lost past, the now-legendary time of a peaceful alliance of the Horse-lords with the realm ofGondor, Tolkien adapted the shortUbi sunt ("Where are they?") passage of the Old English poemThe Wanderer.[22][23][24][25]
| The Wanderer 92–96 | The Wanderer in modern English | Lament of the Rohirrim by J. R. R. Tolkien[T 22] |
|---|---|---|
| Hwær cwom mearg? Hwær cwom mago? Hwær cwom maþþumgyfa? Hwær cwom symbla gesetu? Hwær sindon seledreamas? Eala beorht bune! Eala byrnwiga! Eala þeodnes þrym! Hu seo þrag gewat, genap under nihthelm, swa heo no wære. | Where is the horse? where the rider? Where the giver of treasure? Where are the seats at the feast? Where are the revels in the hall? Alas for the bright cup! Alas for the mailed warrior! Alas for the splendour of the prince! How that time has passed away, dark under the cover of night, as if it had never been. | Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing? Where is thehelm and thehauberk, and the bright hair flowing? Where is the hand on the harp-string, and the red fire glowing? Where is the spring and the harvest and the tallcorn growing? They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow; The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow. Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning? Or behold the flowing years fromthe Sea returning? |
"Thus spoke a forgotten poet long ago in Rohan, recalling how tall and fair was Eorl the Young, who rode down out of the North," Aragorn explains, after singing theLament.[T 22]
In the 13th century of theThird Age, the Kings of Gondor made close alliances with the Northmen ofRhovanion, a people said inThe Lord of the Rings to be akin to theThree Houses of Men (later theDúnedain) from theFirst Age. In the 21st century, a remnant tribe of such Northmen, theÉothéod, moved from the valleys ofAnduin to the northwest ofMirkwood, disputing with theDwarves over the treasure-hoard ofScatha the dragon.[T 23]
In 2509, Cirion theSteward of Gondor summoned the Éothéod to help repel an invasion of Men fromRhûn andOrcs fromMordor. Eorl the Young, lord of the Éothéod, answered the summons, arriving unexpected at a decisive battle on the Field of Celebrant, routing the orc army. As a reward, Éorl was given the Gondorian province ofCalenardhon (except for Isengard).[T 23]
Eorl the Young founded the Kingdom of Rohan in the former Calenardhon; the royal family was known as the House of Eorl. The first line of kings lasted for 249 years, until the ninth king Helm Hammerhand died. His sons had been killed earlier, and his nephew Fréaláf Hildeson began the second line of kings, which lasted until the end of the Third Age. The two lines of kings are buried in two lines ofgrave mounds below the royal hall at Edoras,[T 23] like those atGamla Uppsala in Sweden, orSutton Hoo in England.[26]
In 2758, Rohan was invaded byDunlendings under Wulf, son of Freca, of mixed Dunland and Rohan blood. The King, Helm Hammerhand, took refuge in theHornburg until help fromGondor andDunharrow arrived a year later. Soon after thisSaruman took over Isengard, and was welcomed as an ally.[T 23]
Saruman used his influence through the traitorGrima Wormtongue to weakenThéoden. Saruman then launched an invasion of Rohan, with victory in early battles at the Fords of Isen, killing Théoden's son, Théodred.[T 24] Saruman was defeated at theBattle of the Hornburg, where the tree-likeHuorns came from the forest of Fangorn to help the Rohirrim.[T 8]
Théoden then rode with his army toMinas Tirith, helping to break its siege in theBattle of the Pelennor Fields and killing the leader of theHaradrim, but was killed when his horse fell. He was succeeded by his nephewÉomer. His nieceÉowyn and the hobbitMerry Brandybuck killed theLord of the Nazgûl.[T 25]
Éomer rode with the armies ofGondor to theBlack Gate of Mordor and took part in theBattle of the Morannon against the forces ofSauron. At this time, the destruction of theRuling Ring in Mount Doom ended the battle and the war.[T 26] Éowyn marriedFaramir, Prince ofIthilien.[T 27]
The Tolkien scholarJane Chance writes that Théoden is transformed by Gandalf into a good bold "Germanic king"; she contrasts this with the failure of "the proudBeorhtnoth" in the Old English poemThe Battle of Maldon. In her view, in the account of the battle of Helm's Deep, the fortress of the Riddermark, Tolkien is emphasising the Rohirrim's physical prowess.[28]
The philologist and Tolkien scholarTom Shippey notes that the Riders of Rohan are, despite Tolkien's protestations, much like the ancient English (the Anglo-Saxons), but that they differed from the ancient English in having a culture based on horses. They use many Old English words related to horses; their name for themselves isÉotheod, horse-people, and the names of riders like Éomund, Éomer, and Éowyn begin with the word for "horse",eo[h].[29] In Shippey's view, a defining virtue of the Riders ispanache, which he explains means both "the white horsetail on [Éomer's] helm floating in his speed" and "the virtue of sudden onset, the dash that sweeps away resistance."[27] Shippey notes that this allows Tolkien to display Rohan both as English, based on their Old English names and words likeéored ("troop of cavalry"), and as "alien, to offer a glimpse of the way land shapes people".[27] Shippey states further that "the Mark" (or the Riddermark[30]), the land of the Riders of Rohan – all of whom have names in the Mercian dialect of Old English, was once the usual term for central England, and it would have been pronounced and written "marc" rather than the West Saxon "mearc" or the Latinized "Mercia".[31]
The Tolkien scholarThomas Honegger, agreeing with Shippey's description of the Rohirrim as "Anglo-Saxons on Horseback", calls the sources for them "quite obvious to anyone familiar with Anglo-Saxon literature and culture".[11] The resemblances, according to Honegger, include masterly horsemanship, embodying the Old English sayingÉorl sceal on éos boge, éored sceal getrume rídan ("The leader shall on horse's back, warband shall ride in a body").[11] The Riders are a Germanic warrior-society, exemplifying the "northern heroic spirit", like the Anglo-Saxons.[11] But the "crucial" fact is the language; Honegger notes that Tolkien had represented Westron speech as modern English; since Rohan spoke a related but older language, Old English was the natural choice in the same style; Tolkien's 1942 table of correspondences also showed that the language of the people of Dale was represented byNorse. Honegger notes that this does not equate the Rohirrim with the Anglo-Saxons (on horseback or not), but it does show a strong connection, making them "the people most dear to Tolkien and all medievalists."[11]
Jane Ciabattari writes onBBC Culture that Lady Éowyn's fear of being caged rather than "doing great deeds" by riding to battle with the Rohirrim resonated with 1960sfeminists, contributing to the success ofLord of the Rings at that time.[32]
ForPeter Jackson'sThe Lord of the Rings film trilogy, the Poolburn Reservoir inCentral Otago, New Zealand was used for Rohan scenes.[33] The theme for Rohan is played on aHardanger fiddle.[34] A fully realised set for Edoras was built on Mount Sunday in the upper reaches of theRangitata Valley, near Erewhon in New Zealand. Some of the set was built digitally, but the main buildings atop the city were built on location; the mountain ranges in the background were part of the actual location shot. The interiors of buildings such as the Golden Hall, however, were located on soundstages in other parts of New Zealand; when the camera is inside of the Golden Hall, looking out the open gates, the image of the on-set Edoras set is digitally inserted into the door-frame. The site was known among the cast and crew for being extremely windy, as can be seen during the film and DVD interviews. After filming, Mount Sunday was returned to its original state.[35]
In the aisles were the sleeping-places of the Folk, and down the nave under the crown of the roof were three hearths for the fires, and above each hearth a luffer or smoke-bearer to draw the smoke up when the fires were lighted.
Traditionally used to play Norwegian folk repertoire, the Hardanger fiddle gained international fame when played in the soundtracks of The Lord of the Rings, providing the main voice for the Rohan theme.
