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I continue my journey through Middle-earth, now postcards from house of Tom Bombadil and Barrows-downs ♡

@tolkienhorrorweek : Day Four: Barrow-Downs

Day 4: The Barrow-downs & the Old Forest | cold be hand and heart and bone | mists and mires

A sacrifice trapped in the mist.

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Chapter 8: Fog on the Barrow-Downs

So you may recall that in the last post I foreshadowed dead ancient things. The Barrow-downs have been a looming presence for a few chapters now. They were mentioned before the hobbits left the Shire, then they glimpsed them from the hilltop in the Old Forest, and then there was a mention when Tom Bombadil was telling them stories that his house is right next to them, describing them as a…

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The barrow-downs are best known for their part in the journey of Frodo Baggins, but their origins come much earlier, with the earliest Men of Middle-earth. T...

Nerd of the Rings is a YouTube channel that covers content from the Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and the Silmarillion, along with other tolkien books, movies, and music - any and all of Middle-earth. This breakdown of the Barrow-downs & Barrow-wights is worth checking out!

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An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Major Character Death Relationships: Lady of the Blue Brooch/Last Prince of Cardolan Characters: Lady of the Blue Brooch, Original Characters Additional Tags: Third Age, Dúnedain - Freeform, Barrow-downs, Worldbuilding, Tragedy, Grief/Mourning, Curses, Suicide Summary: As Amon Sûl burns and the north falls beneath the shadow of Angmar, one woman cries out for vengeance.

A short extract of the history of the Barrow-downs.

With the spooky season fast approaching, I thought I’d dust off this old draft - part of my eternal obsession with the Barrow-downs and those oh-so-tantalising snippets of their backstory in the Appendices. A sad story, rather than a spooky one, but I think it still just about fits the bill.

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Today in Tolkien - September 28th

Today the hobbits set off from the house of Tom Bombadil and are captured by a Barrow-wight on the Barrow-downs.

Gandalf reaches Sarn Ford, the southern crossing of the Brandywine. If he’d ridden north rather than going west to the Shire, he’d have reached Bree shorly before the hobbits i stead or shortly after them - and/or he’d have run into the Ringwraiths, as the Witch-king is encamped along the road just south of Bree.

The origins of the barrows on the Barrow-downs are ancient, as is told in Appendix 2:

It is said that the mounds of Tyrn Gorthad, as the Barrowdowns were called of old, are very ancient, and that many were built in the days of the old world of the First Age by the forefathers of the Edain, before they crossed the Blue Mountains into Beleriand. [!! I hadn’t remembered this!] Those hills were therefore revered by the Dúnedain after their return; and there many of their lords and kings were buried.

Regarding the Barrow-downs, here is the account the hobbits hear from Tom Bombadil:

They heard of the Great Barrows, and the green mounds, and the stone-rings upon the hills and in the hollows among the hills. Sheep were bleating in flocks. Green walls and white walls rose. There were fortresses on the heights. Kings of little kingdoms fought together, and the young Sun shone like fire on the red metal of their new and greedy swords. There was victory and defeat; and towers fell, fortresses were burned, and flames went up into the sky. Gold was piled on the biers of dead kings and queens; and mounds covered them, and the stone doors were shut; and the grass grew over all.

Sheep walked for a while biting the grass, but soon the hills were empty again. A shadow came out of dark places far away, and the bones were stirred in the mounds. Barrow-wights walked in the hollow places with a clink of rings on cold fingers, and gold chains in the wind. Stone rings grinned out of the ground like broken teeth in the moonlight.

The first paragraph is describing the early years of Arnor in the Third Age, first during its height, and then after it was divided into three kingdoms (Arthedain, Rhudaur, and Cardolan), which warred intermittently with each other (mostly over Weathertop and its palantír). The Barrow-downs were in the disputed territory between the three kingdoms.

Around the mid-1300s of the Third Age, the Witch-king established his kingdom in Angmar (the far northeast of Eriador, beyond the Ettenmoors), but had not yet made the Barrow-downs haunted; in fact, when he invaded Arnor in the 1400s, some of Dúnedain held out against his forces from refuges in the Barrow-downs and even in the Old Forest. (I wonder if Tom Bombadil helped them then?) Appendix A recounts that: Some say that the mound in which the Ring-bearer was imprisoned had been the grave of the last prince of Cardolan, who fell in this war. In the 1600s the Witch-king sent a plague into Arnor, and it was also at this time that “evil spirits out of Angmar and Rhudaur entered into the deserted mounds and dwelt there.”

The Barrow-wights aren’t only dangerous to careless travellers. The Rangers appear to fight them quite continually: Aragorn at the Council of Elrond says, “ ‘Strider’ I am to one fat man who lives within a day’s march of foes that would freeze his heart [cold be hand and heart and bone], or lay his little town in ruin, if he were not guarded ceaselessly.” After many of the Rangers depart south with Halbarad to fight in defence of Minas Tirith, Butterbur observes “there’s dark shapes in the woods, dreadful things it makes the blood run cold to think of.” The downs are particularly dangerous at this moment, since (as noted in Unfinished Tales) the Witch-king visited the Barrow,-downs a few days previously, and “the Barrow-wights were roused, and all things of evil spirit, hostile to Elves and Men, were on the watch with malice”.

Given this context, it’s rather stunning how careless the hobbits are. They set out in the morning, and around noon they picnic around one of the of the standing stones (and rest their backs against the east side of the stone, though Tom has warned them “to pass barrows by on the west-side, if they chanced to stray near one”). They take an unintended nap there and wake surrounded by fog. After some slow journeying, Frodo passes between two great standing stones, and “darkness seems to fall around him”; when he looks back he suddenly cannot see the others. They all become lost searching for each other, night falls, and they are captured.

#today in tolkien #tolkien #the lord of the rings #gandalf #barrow-wights #barrow-downs #tom bombadil

“‘You won’t find your clothes again,’ said Tom, bounding down from the mound, and laughing as he saved round them in the sunlight. (...) ‘You’ve found yourselves again, out of the deep water. Clothes are but little loss, if you escape from drowning. Be glad, my merry friends, and let the warm sunlight heat now heart and limb! Cast off these cold rags! Run naked in the grass, while Tom goes a-hunting!’”

I think this scene is really interesting read from a queer perspective. Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin have just made it out alive from an attack by the Barrow Wights, having called Tom Bombadil to save them. After realizing they are not wearing their “hobbit clothes,” they look around in vain for them as if they are looking for the last shreds of their old lives. I think this danger they were in with the Barrow Wights after meeting Tom Bombadil is a turning point for the Hobbits, in which they are once again reminded to let go of their old lives and be free in the “real world” outside of the sort of bubble they are in in the Shire. They had a similar experience with meeting the wood elves, but the clothes are significant especially because they are important symbols of hobbit society, a very structured system in which social class, marriage, and producing an heir, matter quite a bit. They have just been told to leave this rigidity behind and run naked and free, being now able to truly express their queer identities.