The Soviet "Hobbit"

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

That's exactly what it was meant to be, I think. I read many Russian children's books, and most of them had very similar illustrations. I mean, the style of the illustrations. The reason for the orcs to look like vikings is probably because in TH they are called "goblins", and no real description is provided. I guess the artist just had to draw them like he imagined goblins. Considering there are about a thousand different opinions on how goblins look, its not really his/her fault.

Definitely, actually I would like to know what word exactly was used for the translation of "goblin". Because that might have a lot to do with that. I could imagine (just based on general judging of Russian being a language similar to my own mothertongue) that the word for goblins is something between "imp/small evil sprite/small evil man/evil gnome"... and there might have been many other reasons which drove the artist to depict them like that; aside from his own poetic license, there are the possible interpretations of the story (even like "I should perhaps draw this the way the British people imagine Goblins - so how is it? Or should I give it a bit more of a Western feeling so that people know the writer is from that environment - so somebody said the author was inspired by germanic mythology, if I recall correctly? He was British, who was "evil" in the early medieval British mythology? Does it mean Vikings?") and lots of other possibilities...

The children's book style is actually rather nice. I know that the original version in Czech (from something like 70's too, I believe?) has also more like children-story-like pictures (I could possibly link those too) which look in a way rather similar, only the later version published in the 90's has Tolkien's own illustrations.

As for this one, the Gollum looking here a bit serpent-like is quite interesting. I must say, these different depictions are rather interesting in the way that they challenge your personal interpretation and make it more.. well, more interesting. (For that matter, it'd be great to see some, say, Chinese or Mid-Eastern depiction of that, if anything like that exists).

As for what Pitch said about the hairy feet/legs, I cannot think about it from the top of my head, but I am rather more convinced that there is a different word for feet and legs in Russian. But it just might be confused in some way... or whatever.