Indeed, in particular Hammond & Scull’s essay debunks the commonly found false story that Tolkien wrote
The Lord of the Rings as a mythology for England, something repeated
ad nauseum.
Tolkien would certainly have known that the real pagan mythology of England told of Woden (the Norse Óðinn) and Donner (the Norse Thórr), not of his own inventions, Manwë and Tulkas. In his letters, in Letter 131 to Milton Waldman Tolkien writes:
But once upon a time (my crest has long since fallen) I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story-the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths – which I could dedicate simply to: to England; to my country.
This refers to Tolkien’s
The Book of Lost Tales which later metamorphized away from any connection with England on its way to becoming the
Silmarillion. Tolkien only mentions here that he wished to
dedicate these tales to England, not mentioning that the mythology in its earliest form was more closely connected to England than it subsequently became.