Barrow-Wight Nights

Gary the Tolkien Geek has got his latest installment up: FOTR, Book One, Chpt. 8 - Fog on the Barrow Downs.

The episdode of the Barrow and the Wight is is, of course, the first real test of Frodo's courage alone and unaided. The fact that he resisted the temptation to simply put on the Ring and vanish is a testament to his native character and strength. It is also the first direct encounter the hobbits have with the forces shaping the history of the West of Middle Earth, instead of just being told about them by Gandalf. Also, as Gary notes, their arming of themselves with Numenorian blades at this point becomes critical to the plot down the road.

Although we don't find out much about the Barrow Downs at this point (the story still being told mostly from the hobbits' limited point of view), there is a goodish bit of information about their history in the Appendices. As Gary notes, they represent the last crumbling remains of the North Kingdom of Arnor, which split into three over issues of succession. Eventually, the Numenorians so weakened themselves through in-fighting that they were more easily overcome by the Witch King of Angmar. The Wights later appeared to occupy the Barrows and, in fact, I recall that Tolkien even gives a possible identity to the one who trapped Frodo and his companions, although I cannot recall who it was.

On another subject, in my own rereading of LOTR, I have now reached Merry and Pippin's encounter with Treebeard in Fangorn Forest. Gary mentioned in his previous post about the Old Forest that Peter Jackson had, er, transplanted Old Man Willow to Fangorn in the extended version. I suppose this is on the assumption that Old Man Willow was something akin to Fangorn's Huorns. But in the book, Merry and Pippin mention the Old Forest in comparison to the darker parts of Fangorn and Treebeard suggests that they are "something like" but that there is a difference between the two - the darkness of Fangorn being very much older and of a different origin. This makes me wonder whether Old Man Willow might not have been "possessed" by an evil spirit or spirits coming out of Angmar, thereby making him rather more akin to the Barrow-Wights than to the Huorns.

It might be a fairly meaningless distinction, but I find it rather interesting. Hey, we don't call this Tolkien geekery for nothing.