Returns
Being a report of Ring*Con 2007, in which the pirates invade Middle-earth, in which Manwë is a Berliner, and in which I win the Art Contest, twice.
Following the wise words of Goethe that you have to do something mad* on occasion in order to be able to put up with normal life, this weekend was spent in Fulda to celebrate the sixth Ring*Con. After all the hassle of the past week concerning the cancellations of Craig Parker and Karl Urban and the invitation of two actors from Pirates of the Caribbean (gasp! shock!) and the general whining about how fandom is not what it used to be and how the whole Lord of the Rings thing is a little worn out now (… is it?), I admit that I was a little worried about how this Con would be.
It was certainly different than past cons, for various reasons, but by no means less enjoyable.
This year’s main theme in decoration was the Elves, resulting in an Evenstar-tribal logo, a lantern-march of Elf mannequins on the foyer bridge, a Galadriel’s mirror scene in the hallway, and a swan-ship (fireproof) plus something that was probably supposed to be some kind of Elven pavilion but really rather looked like a cave design by Giger on the main hall stage. As in the past years, the different “fractions” from the Green Hell² forums (such as the Gondorians, the Haradrim or the Hobbits) had prepared camps to represent their "people"; unlike in past years, there wasn’t overly much going on in them. I didn’t catch a single Elf at the Elven pavilion all weekend, and even the Rohirric camp lay deserted frequently. This doesn’t necessarily prove the point about fandom not being what it used to be, however, as the schedule for the weekend was absolutely packed and it is perfectly possible that most people were just too busy to take repose in their lovingly prepared camps.
Since I had noticed at Ring*Con 2005 that it is so much more fun to contribute to the program rather than just sitting at panels and looking at the merchandising, I signed up for a number of workshops again. Thus I only caught very few panels (John Noble, who is warm-hearted, brilliant and just generally wonderful), Andy Serkis (likewise brilliant) and Kiran Shah (who gave quite a different perspective, no pun intended), plus the comedy quiz show Mark Ferguson, Lori Dungey, Thomas Robbins and Jed Brophy put up). Those that I did see were surprisingly empty considering the relative importance (role-wise) of some of those guys. There were also less questions; in past years, there were often long queues behind the microphones, whereas now I never saw more than two people waiting at once. In that respect, people indeed seem to have lost their original zest. On the other hand, the "intellectual" lectures seemed to receive (on the whole) far more attention than in past years, occasionally to the point of the rooms being to small - which didn’t keep people from attending, leaning against walls and sitting on the floor. Since I am a bit of an intellectual snob, this development quite delights me, even if it especially benefited a certain lecturer who is, in my not so humble opinion, rather embarrassingly over-rated…
The lectures I visited were all very good, though. There was a hilarious satire by Martin Sternberg dealing with what might happen if the German intellectual elite (normally prone to Tolkien-bashing) discovered Tolkien’s works after all and started to re-interpret them in their own way, called "Tolkien in Bayreuth³ oder Die Schrecken des Establishments". Dr. Rainer Nagel gave an introduction to place-names in the Shire, explaining such names as Nobottle (meaning "new building(s)", not "no bottle"), Standelf (which has nothing to do with standing Elves but signifies a quarry), Pincup (which has apparently been discussed for decades, and only recently someone discovered pinnecop in the Middle English poem The Owl and the Nightingale (I actually read that for university!), thus suggesting that it has nothing to do with pins, cups, hills or heads but instead means a finch’s nest, or Dwaling, the most mysterious of Hobbit places, which might either denote a place that got onto the map by mistake or be a sneaky self-insert linguist joke****. The entire thing is delivered in typically snarky hell-vulture***** style, and the auditorium is highly amused by real-world English place-names like Theretheoxlaydead or the mental image of Tolkien sitting over his work, snickering evilly, "Ooooh, they’re never going to guess that!"
He also gives a talk on the dialects used in the movies, which is fascinating as well. And then there’s Daniel Falconer, gamer geek from WETA! I only catch one of his lectures, “Iconic Design in Middle-earth”, but that one is excellent, showing a lot of the work and effort gone into giving all the different cultures depicted in the movies a unique and recognisable look.
Unfortunately I missed Tinuvielas’ discussion with my favourite over-rated lecturer on whether Harry Potter really is as bad as many LotR fans like to think, or iskandra’s and Helleheafoc’s "Ring Ling Thing", a show full of linguistic Tolkien jokes and references (or so I assume) - and iskandra’s lecture on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, thanks to some stupid re-scheduling of the choir practice times.
Fortunately the lecture I missed was just the general introduction to the plot of the poem, which I know, and not the main practice session for the Sir Gawain In Ten Minutes act we did at the closing ceremony. That one (the practice session, that is) took place on Saturday and went a lot better than the actual presentation, alas, in which we were all a bit too nervous and almost everyone kept hiding at the back of the stage. The audience laughed at the right places, though, so I assume not all of them found it boring…
The choir workshop was worth the missed lectures, too. By now most of us return to the choir for the third to fifth time, so we know each other really well, and for people like me who’re too cowardly to join a real choir it’s a wonderful opportunity to get some singing done. This year we practiced Lothlórien and In Dreams and Hoist the Colours, plus, in a smaller group, an a-capella version of Concerning Hobbits. The latter we presented twice as a flash mob, gathering in the lobby and singing (and swinging!) randomly before disappearing again. The other songs were kept for the closing ceremony again. Hoist the Colours was supposed to get all those pirate fans off their seats, but as far as I could see from the stage, that didn’t quite work. Then again you can’t see much against the spotlights, so perhaps they actually did get up and sang along and we just couldn’t see it. Eh well. At any rate the choir workshop, especially the final practice, was possibly the best thing about an already excellent convention.
We - that is, ladyelleth, our youth hostel roommates Enlothien and Athelas, and yours truly - also had a lot of fun at the Tengwar workshop taught by Wedumir, who was dressed up as Manwë and spoke with a Berlin accent. As he focused mainly on the use of Tengwar for the transcription of the German language, the workshop was extremely useful, because so far I’ve always been a bit stumped by that.
The other workshops included archery, stunt fighting, swordsmanship and Renaissance dancing; except for the archery workshop, they too present their results at the closing. Usually I tend to find stunt or swordfight presentations a tad boring (mainly because the choreographies tend to be obvious, and because I’ve seen it all before and usually better done, even with the more experienced stunt groups and more so with the laymen workshops), but this time they kept it short and entertaining. Strangely I never tire of seeing Renaissance dancing presentations --- not so, I lie; actually I do tire at some point because I want to jump in and dance, too - no matter how often I’ve seen Concussion Circussium Circle and the like.
There was a really boring presentation by Atari of some kind of new role-playing adventure called "The Witcher"****** (aside from the fact that nothing of the great news they told us about sounded really new to me, and I’m not much of a gaming geek, the presenter was just plain embarrassing, saying stuff like “Oh, and there’s women characters in the game too, I see there are a lot of women in the audience…”. Yes, there were a lot of women in the audience, but I doubt many of them think that the protagonist’s bedbunny, a flaily whiny red-haired creature with rather a lot of cleavage for her slender build, is a good woman character. Also most of us probably don’t like kitschy cardboard dialogues or, alternatively, dialogues that make no sense at all.); the presenter’s enthusiasm was pretty much revertedly proportional to the audience’s. There was also a really interesting presentation by a group of UK film fans who’re doing a sort of prequel about Arathorn, Gilraen and the Dúnedain of the north; so far they’re still in the process of casting and location scouting, but what they had so far looked really well-done.
The costume contests had the usual mixture of really excellent costumes and presentations and some less exciting ones. The moderation was decidedly unexciting, though. Instead of having Marcel or Mark (both of whom know English very well) present the contestants, they had two "official" moderators whose English was... let's say unidiomatic (and their moderations uninspired). Ah well.
My favourite participants were a bunch of Nazgûl, Orcs and the MoS searching for a theme song, something completely different - namely a somewhat wooden but heartfelt presentation of That Scene between Faramir and Éowyn in the Houses of Healing, which had the stupid people in the row before me in stitches ;_; - and a “Pöbel-Elb” with very unelvish dress (an “Eldardas” sports suit), “Morgul light” cigarettes, “Sternburg” beer (brewed after Eärendil’s own recipe!) and an Arda market shopping bag, speaking or rather bickering with a Saxonian accent (she’s from Eastern Lórien). The jokes were probably lost on the non-German speaking audience, but we who got them had a LOT of fun. I heard a complaint about how her clothing had nothing to do with a costume contest, but I rather suspect the girl just didn’t get the Eldardas or Arda market joke (after all, you would have to have read the Silmarillion for that, gasp!).
Speaking of the Silm though: I submitted my handwritten pseudo-medieval Silmarillion WIP and the Elves on the rocks for the art contest. Now with the former I was somewhat dreading suspecting that I might win, as the competition in the handicraft category wasn't all that much, and thus when the closing ceremony came, it wasn't really much of a surprise.
The surprise came while I was on stage: Turned out I'd won in the "painting: book-inspired" category, too. *boggles* That was very baffling indeed; there were a lot of awesome pictures in that category and at least two I'd considered far superior to mine, and mine had the disadvantage of displaying a scene not necessarily understandable to most Con visitors (the art contest is an audience award, not a jury award, so you need enough random people who see the exhibition to vote for your art). I overheard two people talking about it, one explaining to the others what the heck was going on in that scene.
Speaking of overhearing: I quite enjoy looking at the art show repeatedly and secretly listening in on what other people say about the exhibits, especially mine. What I don't enjoy is being pushed forward in a "Yes, that's her, that's the one who painted that!" way. That's just plain embarrassing (also it reminds me of a scene from the Kleines Arschloch comics, "This is OUR son! OUR son wrote that!" - *shit goes wrong* - "Are YOU the parents of the author?!" - "NOT ANYMORE!") and unnecessary. I know it's a little contradictory to take part in a contest if you're afraid of being recognised as the artist or, worse yet, actually winning, but honestly I'm a terribly contradictory person, so in a way it makes sense.
I think.
Anyway, I won a Bilbo action figure (no idea what I'm supposed to do with that, I hope one of my cousins has use for that kind of thing) and Karen Wynn Fonstad's Atlas of Middle-earth (now that's something I'm happy with!). I still wonder about all the people who voted for that painting, though.
As the Ring*Con ticket is expensive enough, ladyelleth and I decided to give the youth hostel a try although that meant we wouldn’t be able to march to the Con hotel on foot (the youth hostel being rather out of town). However, even with the current gasoline prices it was a lot cheaper to stay at the hostel and drive to the Esperanto every day than to take rooms in town or at the (very expensive) Esperanto itself. We didn’t rue our decision; our roommates were lovely people (plus, for one night, a lovely hedgehog), breakfast was early but good, and the only bad thing were the showers (either some sad dripping or a power-shower; similarly, either only tepid water or boiling hot water). Enlothien provided me with Inkdeath, and by chance I found out that she knew macalla_ well - it’s a small world after all!
What scares me a little is that I've had, before the Con and even more afterwards, a strange urge to prepare essays or presentations. When all the "Oh nooo! No pirates at the con!" whining in the Green Hell began and people complained how the pirates had nothing whatsoever to do with Middle-earth, I was tempted to write something on the parallels between Eärendil and Davy Jones. Memories of my first Tolkien Day quiz brought the desire to do a lecture series on animals in Tolkien's work, starting with cats. After the John Noble panel something in me wanted to talk about Shakespeare and Tolkien and parallels and archetypes and intransigences. And when Eestima and I shared our regrets that, while there is a lot of work about Rohan, there is very little on the at least equally fascinating Gondorian culture, I really wanted to look into that. Or still do really. I, who used to hate doing presentations! I, who always gets swamped with ideas during research and fails to actually reach some kind of conclusion! Perhaps I really should switch over to the lecturing side at university. Except for that I'd have to finish my papers first. And perhaps my degree. >_>
- - -
*The original word Goethe uses is toll, which in its modern use means “great” but originally meant “strange” or “mad”, a meaning now only preserved in compounds like Tollhaus (“asylum”) or tollkühn (“reckless”), the latter also being, of course, the origin of the name Tolkien, which just goes to show Goethe’s amazing visionary qualities. The Hungarian equivalent of the German Tollkühn or English Tolkien is, by the way --- but I digress.
²The forums of the German fansite Herr-der-Ringe-Film.de are lovingly nicknamed the “Green Hell” for their design in different shades of green and their somewhat cluttered organisation.
³Bayreuth being the location of the most acclaimed intellectual elite event of the year, the Festspiele at which Wagner plays are staged in various stages of post-modern deconstruction or reconstruction or whatever they call it nowadays.
****This must be explained. There has been a lot of meditation on how to translate Dwaling, suggestions ranging from “some place founded by Dwalin” (which is unlikely) or “some place founded by dwarves” (possible, but still unlikely) or some archaic form of “dwelling” (nope) or “poisonous place” (Old English dwalen or somesuch). Lately there have been two new suggestions, one being that it is derived from Old English [dwale], “error, mistake”: the mark on the map may have come there by mistake, and Tolkien in his charming geeky manner marked it thus in Old English; alternatively, and this is the complicated linguist joke, it is fairly well-known that Tolkien was quite fond of the Gothic language and translated (among other things) his name. One result of this was Dwalikûnes (or something similar; I didn't see it written). The dwali part is a predecessor of the toll mentioned in footnote 1 (and, amusingly enough, of Modern English “dull”, too). Thus far we move in the realm of fact, now beginneth speculation: Tolkien just might have placed a settlement for himself on that map, up in the north of the Shire…
Since we’ve entered the field of linguist in-jokes anyways, though, I may as well finish the digression begun in footnote 1. The Hungarian equivalent of German Tollkühn or English Tolkien is --- Tulkas. Make of that what you will. >:D
*****Nagel insists that the Fell Beasts on which the Nazgûl ride are called Höllengeier, “hell-vulture”; hence his forum nickname of helleheafoc, Old English for “hell-hawk” (they didn’t have vultures back then). Because Tolkien isn’t the only one who does linguist in-jokes.
******A rather unfortunate name, as I’m not the only one who immediately had to think of Der Wixxer (“the wanker”), a movie parody inspired by the old Edgar Wallace movie Der Hexer (“the witcher”), which really brings the whole thing full circle, doesn't it.
Photos will follow later.
Following the wise words of Goethe that you have to do something mad* on occasion in order to be able to put up with normal life, this weekend was spent in Fulda to celebrate the sixth Ring*Con. After all the hassle of the past week concerning the cancellations of Craig Parker and Karl Urban and the invitation of two actors from Pirates of the Caribbean (gasp! shock!) and the general whining about how fandom is not what it used to be and how the whole Lord of the Rings thing is a little worn out now (… is it?), I admit that I was a little worried about how this Con would be.
It was certainly different than past cons, for various reasons, but by no means less enjoyable.
This year’s main theme in decoration was the Elves, resulting in an Evenstar-tribal logo, a lantern-march of Elf mannequins on the foyer bridge, a Galadriel’s mirror scene in the hallway, and a swan-ship (fireproof) plus something that was probably supposed to be some kind of Elven pavilion but really rather looked like a cave design by Giger on the main hall stage. As in the past years, the different “fractions” from the Green Hell² forums (such as the Gondorians, the Haradrim or the Hobbits) had prepared camps to represent their "people"; unlike in past years, there wasn’t overly much going on in them. I didn’t catch a single Elf at the Elven pavilion all weekend, and even the Rohirric camp lay deserted frequently. This doesn’t necessarily prove the point about fandom not being what it used to be, however, as the schedule for the weekend was absolutely packed and it is perfectly possible that most people were just too busy to take repose in their lovingly prepared camps.
Since I had noticed at Ring*Con 2005 that it is so much more fun to contribute to the program rather than just sitting at panels and looking at the merchandising, I signed up for a number of workshops again. Thus I only caught very few panels (John Noble, who is warm-hearted, brilliant and just generally wonderful), Andy Serkis (likewise brilliant) and Kiran Shah (who gave quite a different perspective, no pun intended), plus the comedy quiz show Mark Ferguson, Lori Dungey, Thomas Robbins and Jed Brophy put up). Those that I did see were surprisingly empty considering the relative importance (role-wise) of some of those guys. There were also less questions; in past years, there were often long queues behind the microphones, whereas now I never saw more than two people waiting at once. In that respect, people indeed seem to have lost their original zest. On the other hand, the "intellectual" lectures seemed to receive (on the whole) far more attention than in past years, occasionally to the point of the rooms being to small - which didn’t keep people from attending, leaning against walls and sitting on the floor. Since I am a bit of an intellectual snob, this development quite delights me, even if it especially benefited a certain lecturer who is, in my not so humble opinion, rather embarrassingly over-rated…
The lectures I visited were all very good, though. There was a hilarious satire by Martin Sternberg dealing with what might happen if the German intellectual elite (normally prone to Tolkien-bashing) discovered Tolkien’s works after all and started to re-interpret them in their own way, called "Tolkien in Bayreuth³ oder Die Schrecken des Establishments". Dr. Rainer Nagel gave an introduction to place-names in the Shire, explaining such names as Nobottle (meaning "new building(s)", not "no bottle"), Standelf (which has nothing to do with standing Elves but signifies a quarry), Pincup (which has apparently been discussed for decades, and only recently someone discovered pinnecop in the Middle English poem The Owl and the Nightingale (I actually read that for university!), thus suggesting that it has nothing to do with pins, cups, hills or heads but instead means a finch’s nest, or Dwaling, the most mysterious of Hobbit places, which might either denote a place that got onto the map by mistake or be a sneaky self-insert linguist joke****. The entire thing is delivered in typically snarky hell-vulture***** style, and the auditorium is highly amused by real-world English place-names like Theretheoxlaydead or the mental image of Tolkien sitting over his work, snickering evilly, "Ooooh, they’re never going to guess that!"
He also gives a talk on the dialects used in the movies, which is fascinating as well. And then there’s Daniel Falconer, gamer geek from WETA! I only catch one of his lectures, “Iconic Design in Middle-earth”, but that one is excellent, showing a lot of the work and effort gone into giving all the different cultures depicted in the movies a unique and recognisable look.
Unfortunately I missed Tinuvielas’ discussion with my favourite over-rated lecturer on whether Harry Potter really is as bad as many LotR fans like to think, or iskandra’s and Helleheafoc’s "Ring Ling Thing", a show full of linguistic Tolkien jokes and references (or so I assume) - and iskandra’s lecture on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, thanks to some stupid re-scheduling of the choir practice times.
Fortunately the lecture I missed was just the general introduction to the plot of the poem, which I know, and not the main practice session for the Sir Gawain In Ten Minutes act we did at the closing ceremony. That one (the practice session, that is) took place on Saturday and went a lot better than the actual presentation, alas, in which we were all a bit too nervous and almost everyone kept hiding at the back of the stage. The audience laughed at the right places, though, so I assume not all of them found it boring…
The choir workshop was worth the missed lectures, too. By now most of us return to the choir for the third to fifth time, so we know each other really well, and for people like me who’re too cowardly to join a real choir it’s a wonderful opportunity to get some singing done. This year we practiced Lothlórien and In Dreams and Hoist the Colours, plus, in a smaller group, an a-capella version of Concerning Hobbits. The latter we presented twice as a flash mob, gathering in the lobby and singing (and swinging!) randomly before disappearing again. The other songs were kept for the closing ceremony again. Hoist the Colours was supposed to get all those pirate fans off their seats, but as far as I could see from the stage, that didn’t quite work. Then again you can’t see much against the spotlights, so perhaps they actually did get up and sang along and we just couldn’t see it. Eh well. At any rate the choir workshop, especially the final practice, was possibly the best thing about an already excellent convention.
We - that is, ladyelleth, our youth hostel roommates Enlothien and Athelas, and yours truly - also had a lot of fun at the Tengwar workshop taught by Wedumir, who was dressed up as Manwë and spoke with a Berlin accent. As he focused mainly on the use of Tengwar for the transcription of the German language, the workshop was extremely useful, because so far I’ve always been a bit stumped by that.
The other workshops included archery, stunt fighting, swordsmanship and Renaissance dancing; except for the archery workshop, they too present their results at the closing. Usually I tend to find stunt or swordfight presentations a tad boring (mainly because the choreographies tend to be obvious, and because I’ve seen it all before and usually better done, even with the more experienced stunt groups and more so with the laymen workshops), but this time they kept it short and entertaining. Strangely I never tire of seeing Renaissance dancing presentations --- not so, I lie; actually I do tire at some point because I want to jump in and dance, too - no matter how often I’ve seen Concussion Circussium Circle and the like.
There was a really boring presentation by Atari of some kind of new role-playing adventure called "The Witcher"****** (aside from the fact that nothing of the great news they told us about sounded really new to me, and I’m not much of a gaming geek, the presenter was just plain embarrassing, saying stuff like “Oh, and there’s women characters in the game too, I see there are a lot of women in the audience…”. Yes, there were a lot of women in the audience, but I doubt many of them think that the protagonist’s bedbunny, a flaily whiny red-haired creature with rather a lot of cleavage for her slender build, is a good woman character. Also most of us probably don’t like kitschy cardboard dialogues or, alternatively, dialogues that make no sense at all.); the presenter’s enthusiasm was pretty much revertedly proportional to the audience’s. There was also a really interesting presentation by a group of UK film fans who’re doing a sort of prequel about Arathorn, Gilraen and the Dúnedain of the north; so far they’re still in the process of casting and location scouting, but what they had so far looked really well-done.
The costume contests had the usual mixture of really excellent costumes and presentations and some less exciting ones. The moderation was decidedly unexciting, though. Instead of having Marcel or Mark (both of whom know English very well) present the contestants, they had two "official" moderators whose English was... let's say unidiomatic (and their moderations uninspired). Ah well.
My favourite participants were a bunch of Nazgûl, Orcs and the MoS searching for a theme song, something completely different - namely a somewhat wooden but heartfelt presentation of That Scene between Faramir and Éowyn in the Houses of Healing, which had the stupid people in the row before me in stitches ;_; - and a “Pöbel-Elb” with very unelvish dress (an “Eldardas” sports suit), “Morgul light” cigarettes, “Sternburg” beer (brewed after Eärendil’s own recipe!) and an Arda market shopping bag, speaking or rather bickering with a Saxonian accent (she’s from Eastern Lórien). The jokes were probably lost on the non-German speaking audience, but we who got them had a LOT of fun. I heard a complaint about how her clothing had nothing to do with a costume contest, but I rather suspect the girl just didn’t get the Eldardas or Arda market joke (after all, you would have to have read the Silmarillion for that, gasp!).
Speaking of the Silm though: I submitted my handwritten pseudo-medieval Silmarillion WIP and the Elves on the rocks for the art contest. Now with the former I was somewhat dreading suspecting that I might win, as the competition in the handicraft category wasn't all that much, and thus when the closing ceremony came, it wasn't really much of a surprise.
The surprise came while I was on stage: Turned out I'd won in the "painting: book-inspired" category, too. *boggles* That was very baffling indeed; there were a lot of awesome pictures in that category and at least two I'd considered far superior to mine, and mine had the disadvantage of displaying a scene not necessarily understandable to most Con visitors (the art contest is an audience award, not a jury award, so you need enough random people who see the exhibition to vote for your art). I overheard two people talking about it, one explaining to the others what the heck was going on in that scene.
Speaking of overhearing: I quite enjoy looking at the art show repeatedly and secretly listening in on what other people say about the exhibits, especially mine. What I don't enjoy is being pushed forward in a "Yes, that's her, that's the one who painted that!" way. That's just plain embarrassing (also it reminds me of a scene from the Kleines Arschloch comics, "This is OUR son! OUR son wrote that!" - *shit goes wrong* - "Are YOU the parents of the author?!" - "NOT ANYMORE!") and unnecessary. I know it's a little contradictory to take part in a contest if you're afraid of being recognised as the artist or, worse yet, actually winning, but honestly I'm a terribly contradictory person, so in a way it makes sense.
I think.
Anyway, I won a Bilbo action figure (no idea what I'm supposed to do with that, I hope one of my cousins has use for that kind of thing) and Karen Wynn Fonstad's Atlas of Middle-earth (now that's something I'm happy with!). I still wonder about all the people who voted for that painting, though.
As the Ring*Con ticket is expensive enough, ladyelleth and I decided to give the youth hostel a try although that meant we wouldn’t be able to march to the Con hotel on foot (the youth hostel being rather out of town). However, even with the current gasoline prices it was a lot cheaper to stay at the hostel and drive to the Esperanto every day than to take rooms in town or at the (very expensive) Esperanto itself. We didn’t rue our decision; our roommates were lovely people (plus, for one night, a lovely hedgehog), breakfast was early but good, and the only bad thing were the showers (either some sad dripping or a power-shower; similarly, either only tepid water or boiling hot water). Enlothien provided me with Inkdeath, and by chance I found out that she knew macalla_ well - it’s a small world after all!
What scares me a little is that I've had, before the Con and even more afterwards, a strange urge to prepare essays or presentations. When all the "Oh nooo! No pirates at the con!" whining in the Green Hell began and people complained how the pirates had nothing whatsoever to do with Middle-earth, I was tempted to write something on the parallels between Eärendil and Davy Jones. Memories of my first Tolkien Day quiz brought the desire to do a lecture series on animals in Tolkien's work, starting with cats. After the John Noble panel something in me wanted to talk about Shakespeare and Tolkien and parallels and archetypes and intransigences. And when Eestima and I shared our regrets that, while there is a lot of work about Rohan, there is very little on the at least equally fascinating Gondorian culture, I really wanted to look into that. Or still do really. I, who used to hate doing presentations! I, who always gets swamped with ideas during research and fails to actually reach some kind of conclusion! Perhaps I really should switch over to the lecturing side at university. Except for that I'd have to finish my papers first. And perhaps my degree. >_>
- - -
*The original word Goethe uses is toll, which in its modern use means “great” but originally meant “strange” or “mad”, a meaning now only preserved in compounds like Tollhaus (“asylum”) or tollkühn (“reckless”), the latter also being, of course, the origin of the name Tolkien, which just goes to show Goethe’s amazing visionary qualities. The Hungarian equivalent of the German Tollkühn or English Tolkien is, by the way --- but I digress.
²The forums of the German fansite Herr-der-Ringe-Film.de are lovingly nicknamed the “Green Hell” for their design in different shades of green and their somewhat cluttered organisation.
³Bayreuth being the location of the most acclaimed intellectual elite event of the year, the Festspiele at which Wagner plays are staged in various stages of post-modern deconstruction or reconstruction or whatever they call it nowadays.
****This must be explained. There has been a lot of meditation on how to translate Dwaling, suggestions ranging from “some place founded by Dwalin” (which is unlikely) or “some place founded by dwarves” (possible, but still unlikely) or some archaic form of “dwelling” (nope) or “poisonous place” (Old English dwalen or somesuch). Lately there have been two new suggestions, one being that it is derived from Old English [dwale], “error, mistake”: the mark on the map may have come there by mistake, and Tolkien in his charming geeky manner marked it thus in Old English; alternatively, and this is the complicated linguist joke, it is fairly well-known that Tolkien was quite fond of the Gothic language and translated (among other things) his name. One result of this was Dwalikûnes (or something similar; I didn't see it written). The dwali part is a predecessor of the toll mentioned in footnote 1 (and, amusingly enough, of Modern English “dull”, too). Thus far we move in the realm of fact, now beginneth speculation: Tolkien just might have placed a settlement for himself on that map, up in the north of the Shire…
Since we’ve entered the field of linguist in-jokes anyways, though, I may as well finish the digression begun in footnote 1. The Hungarian equivalent of German Tollkühn or English Tolkien is --- Tulkas. Make of that what you will. >:D
*****Nagel insists that the Fell Beasts on which the Nazgûl ride are called Höllengeier, “hell-vulture”; hence his forum nickname of helleheafoc, Old English for “hell-hawk” (they didn’t have vultures back then). Because Tolkien isn’t the only one who does linguist in-jokes.
******A rather unfortunate name, as I’m not the only one who immediately had to think of Der Wixxer (“the wanker”), a movie parody inspired by the old Edgar Wallace movie Der Hexer (“the witcher”), which really brings the whole thing full circle, doesn't it.
Photos will follow later.