A walk on the Barrow-Downs

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Mithadan

Thank you for sharing both the pictures as well as the narrative.

Tolkien, of course, embarked upon the creation of the early versions of his Legendarium as a mythology for England. While his writings later diverged from his early goal, there is no doubt that the English countryside inspired many of his descriptions of Middle Earth's lands. Your photos seem to confirm this.

Oh, absolutely! And I can't blame him: there's some really striking landscape out there.

One thing I missed mentioning is that the white horse is also on the banner of Rohan. It seems unconnected, what with Uffington being a Neolithic Stone Age site... until you realise that in the early 20th century, it was thought to have been carved by Saxons. Which makes it /very/ relevant to Rohan.

hS

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

Oh, absolutely! And I can't blame him: there's some really striking landscape out there.

One thing I missed mentioning is that the white horse is also on the banner of Rohan. It seems unconnected, what with Uffington being a Neolithic Stone Age site... until you realise that in the early 20th century, it was thought to have been carved by Saxons. Which makes it /very/ relevant to Rohan.

Uffington is late Bronze/early Iron Age, and has been believed to be such since before Tolkien ever went up to Oxford (confirmed in the 1990s). Even Saxon and early Norman writings refer to it as "the work of ancient men." Much older than the Anglo-Saxons, but not remotely Neolithic.

However, it can't possibly be a coincidence that the banner of Rohan is "a white horse running on a field of green"