[Osse]

At this point I'd have to agree with Gwaihir. The Silmarillion, LOTR, UT and The Hobbit were not written as invented mythologies for Britain, nor were his races directly based or themed upon those of Dark Age Europe. I believe that Tolkien created the Men of Numenor from scratch, and though he may have drawn upon other civilisations for ideas, the Men of Gondor are not based upon any Dark Age race (if anything they are a hybrid of all the races of men). The same goes for hobbits. They may have been somewhat modern Anglo-Saxon in appearance, but so are all the races of Middle Earth. The Haradrim and men from Khand are not however. And as for the elves being based upon the Celts… [img]smilies/rolleyes.gif[/img]

Gwaihir, one point where I do not agree with you is that the Rohirrim are based upon the Anglo-Saxons. The people that were later to be known as Anglo-Saxons were horse breeders as far back as before the decline of the Roman Empire. However these races were not Anglo-Saxons. They were Angles, Saxons and Jutes etc.-racially, genetically and governmentally different from one another. None of these people raised horses to the great scale that the people of Rohan do, nor did any of them have the depth of civilisation that the Men of Rohan have, it was hard to develop any when there were lots of odd bald men running around trying to spray water all over you and reading to you in weird languages. If you are referring to the stature and appearance of the Rohirrim, then it is likely that they were intended to be somewhat similar in appearance to the Anglo-Saxons. If you were referring to the structure of the Rohirrim’s government, or their architecture, weapon etc, then it could be said that they resemble many if not all Germanic tribes. The Rohirrim and their culture have been drawn from many civilisations and cultures of the Dark, and Middle Ages-Scandinavian, Germanic, Frankish (to a very, very SMALL extent, bloody French [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]) Celtic, Scottish and Britannic. Because most of these cultures share the same genetic roots, it could be said that the Rohirrim were drawn from the deep well of European history-they are a piece of everything and everyone.