[pixelartarchive]

Castle seen from forest by Mark Ferrari.

[iamfitzwilliamdarcy]

Site where St. Jeanne d’Arc was martyred, Rouen, FR

[inland-delta]

Henri Lehmann, Portrait of Clementine Karr,1845; frame by Theodoor Willem Nieuwenhuis,1896

[voordeel-ts]

Irish Architecture

[americaneldritch]

A coloring of Romance Comes Down out of Hilly Woodlands, by Sidney Sime, for Lord Dunsany’s A Dreamer’s Tales (1910).

[bottomwell]

Sascha Schneider (1870 - 1927

Emotion of Dependency (c.1893)

[leatherandmossprints]

‘Bonfire celebrating Midsummer Night’ by Nikolai Astrup, c. 1912-1926.

[tinyhappykoala]

[life-spire]

Madeira, Portugal (by Julia Solonina)

See more of Portugal | Europe.

[allthingseurope]

Neuschwanstein Castle, Germany (by Sandra Frey)

[neckkiss]

By Kenny Barker

[happyheidi]

lazy days of summer by EdwinaFran

[beastmidlands]

What’s left of Crawford Castle belongs to the crows🌜

[wishbow]

bog monster - pam wishbow - 2020

[socialmaya]

[orwellsunderpants]

[image description: tweet by Netchimen’s Reverie that reads “Tolkien describing places that are evil: no trees grow there” /end description]

This is doubtless because of his experience of the trenches in the Great War.

Like, this is what things looked like to soldiers who fought in that war (image in black and white of a solitary soldier walking across a muddy wasteland pocked with puddles):

Here’s Delville Wood, the site of a battle in 1916 (sepia image of a wasteland dotted with broken and dead trees):

Here’s an image from the Battle of the Somme, in which Tolkien participated (image of soldiers standing above and inside a trench or earthwork in a grey wasteland; smoke from artillery is on the horizon)

So yeah: no trees = evil was Tolkien’s own direct lived experience. It’s precisely why Mordor and the wastelands around it look like they do in his books.

[brunhiddensmusings]

the plateau of gorgoroth, the heartland of mordor, is described as being scarred by countless pits dug by orcs the true seat of evil is full of foxholes and trenches

[khantoelessar]

There’s a lesson to be learned here.

[purlturtle]

I hope Tolkien would be happy to learn that a hundred years on, trees grow again here:

From The Atlantic.

[nightbringer24]

I think that Tolkien would be very happy to see that.

[the-evil-clergyman]

Title Page from Parsifal, or the Legend of the Holy Grail by Willy Pogany (1912)

[feefal]

Fungi deity👁️