The Real Middle Earth: Exploring the Magic and Mystery of the Middle Ages, J.R.R. Tolkien, and "The Lord of the Rings" (Hardcover)

by Brian Bates (Author) "The gods and goddesses lived in the bright spaces of the Upperworld, along with the light elves..." (more)
Key Phrases: spider spell, spirit skin, spider creature, World Tree, Snorri Sturluson, West Stow (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"This is the only book that I have ever read that manages literally to evoke the magic of Anglo-Saxon England, rooting the medieval texts firmly in a landscape, a people and a sense of experience. It situates the English in one corner of a vast enchanted world.” -Ronald Hutton, Professor of History at the University of Bristol and author of The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles
-- Review

Review

"This is the only book that I have ever read that manages literally to evoke the magic of Anglo-Saxon England, rooting the medieval texts firmly in a landscape, a people and a sense of experience. It situates the English in one corner of a vast enchanted world.” -Ronald Hutton, Professor of History at the University of Bristol and author of The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; 1st edition (November 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1403963193
• ISBN-13: 978-1403963192
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,244,004 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I wish there were more books like this..., August 21, 2004

By	Marilyn (Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews

As someone who is a practicing Germanic Heathen Witch, this book is far more informative than most New-Agey titles out there today. It helps to reconstruct the spiritual ways of our pre-Christian European ancestors, before Christianity assimilated or eliminated them, as well as give a better understanding of what Germanic Heathens and Celts believed. They were very deeply spiritual people who were quite connected to the Otherworld. The Divine, including magic, was an essential part of everyday life.
I have LOVED Tolkien since I was a child, not only because he was such a magnificent writer, but because of the REAL Pagan/Heathen beliefs he incorporated into his works. For instance, it is amazing how much Gandalf is like the god Woden/Odin. ("Gandalf" means "magic wand/staff elf" in Old Norse, by the way.)
This book reveals much about what these people believed and has much excellent information contained within. A gem!!!!

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Real Middle Earth, July 9, 2004

By	Cwn_Annwn (Copenhagen, Denmark) - See all my reviews

First of all this book talks relativly little about Tolkien or any of his books. What it does is try to capture the "magic" of the places and time periods that Tolkien drew inspiration from for his work, namely post Roman to pre Norman Great Britain, and to a slightly lesser extent Scandinavian and Icelandic society and culture from the same time periods using historical sources, so called "myth", namely the pagan beliefs of the Celts, Norse and Anglo-Saxons and other assorted folk beliefs and tales.

From what I can gather from reading this book the author seems like he has a similar belief that I have always had that Tolkien on one level was conciously trying to help to write a missing part of our (assuming you are of anglo-celtic-norse ancestry) heritage due to our own ancestors poor job of writng down and recording their own history, and in part to the fact that much of what is known of our pre christian history was written by outsiders to the culture, or people with a biased political agenda, and above all Christian church hierarchy who were more or less under orders to discredit our whole culture as of being of the Jewish satan and to force this demonic alien Jew Yahweh/Jesus god upon our people. Even though Tolkien himself was a devout Catholic, I believe he was conciously trying to "fill in the blanks" in a sense, even though the inspiration and the imagination of the Hobbit/LOTR came from his subconcious ancestral memory as well as the written sources of the time that we have.

So enough of my pschoanalyzing, on to the book itself. Bates goes into most everything that was "magic" about those times and is very entertaining in doing so talking about the warrior culture, the concept of wyrd and destiny, shapeshifting, the pre christian gods and how the people related to them, how people related to nature, animals, the forest, the land, the use of spells and magic, dwarves and elves, whether you take these things as real or imaginary superstitions they were 100% real to the people of those times.

This is a great book for anybody who wants to look into the "magic" of those times or for anybody who wants to get a better understanding of where Tolkien got his ideas, both on the concious and subconcious levels.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars cashing in on Tolkien's popularity, January 3, 2004

By A Customer

My sense on reading this book was that the author already had a manuscript in preparation on the Dark Ages, and included references to Tolkien in order to help sell it. After reading several pages, one comes across the occasional, out-of-place paragraph with a loose connection to Tolkien's work, as though it was dropped in after the manuscript was already completed. Many of his references to Tolkien are actually somewhat forced and occasionally off the mark.

Bates is a psychologist, and I found his overview of history rather general, to say nothing of his familiarity with Tolkien. Moreover, he suppresses certain terminology (such as the Norse term "Midgard" which he replaces with "Middle-Earth") in order to drive the point home. This might be forgiveable if his point was academic, but the reader begins to suspect a marketing strategy instead.

While some of his insights are informative, I felt this book suffers from trying to accomplish something that may not have been the author's original intention.