Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

I know why you are here. You want me to tell you what the film Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring teaches you, the audience, about the medieval world. That should not be too difficult. In fact, not bombarding you with information is going to be my challenge. This film, and all of the films that follow, are based off of .R.R. Tolkien’s book series Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit which he started writing in the 1930s! Since their publication, the influence of that story has submerged itself deep into pop culture. Even if you have never read the books or seen the movies, you have come into contact with Lord of the Rings. The story has even influenced Led Zeppelin! That’s right, a number of Led Zeppelin’s songs have Lord of the Rings references. That was enough history. I’m already going heavy with Lord of the Rings information.

     Now, as I was beginning to say, there is a huge amount one can learn about medieval culture from the film. In fact, even though some things are exaggerated, this movie was my first introduction to the medieval world. Once you get over the idea of strange creatures like dragons and giants and the ever present influence of magic and wizards shown in the film, almost the whole film is a lesson or a window into medieval life. That is not to say that the idea of mystical creatures and magic was dismissed back then, because it was not! In fact, it was a huge part of that culture, it is just all of those things are “real” in the film’s universe and this post is not meant to debate the existence of dragons and magic.

     Anyway, right from the opening scene of the film, one can see a strong example of how most people lived back then through the Shire. The Shire is the home of the hobbits and the hobbits are a species of “people” in the film. Now, your average person in medieval times or a hobbit lived in a home made of wood and there was a lot of land for farming purposes. In this opening scene of the Shire, the audience quickly sees what life and the diet was like in this time period. Most people farmed from sun up to sun down in attempt to grow food or raise live stock to eat or sell. The diet back then, like the one shown in the movie, consisted of whatever one could grow like wheat, corn, carrots, cabbage, and any livestock like pigs. Although, the poorer people did not really have meat.  You also can’t miss the amount of alcohol consumed by the hobbits and other characters in the film. This too was accurate in the medieval times. More often than not, alcohol was safer to drink than water. It was also used for celebration or morning. Again, just like meat, the wealthier one’s status is the better one’s drink was. In fact, the movie just barley hints at this, but back in medieval times, most people who were poor farmers were serfs, bound in debt to the owner of the land and farming helped pay their debt. Now, the hobbits were not serfs, but the main characters do pass through villages that could just be villages of serfs.  

        

     That brings us to the idea of the cast system which is nothing short of obvious, not only in the medieval time period but also in the film. The cast system is a system that pretty much means that your social status of your birth determines where you are going to be in life. If you are born into wealth you will be wealthy, if your parents are peasants, you will most likely end up a peasant. That goes back to the idea of the serfs I mentioned previously. Another things that can be found in the cast system and this film are kings, queens, knights and everything that they control and protect. Things like castles, territory, wealth, and treasure.

     Now, the movie is based around the plot of an evil power wanting to reclaim his territory, power, and prized ring with a special power. In medieval times, there was constantly a battle of power, wealth, prized possessions and territory between kings. They would have huge armies that would march on foot and horse into battle to fight in hand to hand combat and that is exactly what this evil power does, he starts a war in hopes of reclaiming all he lost. While the wars are beginning to start, this evil power sends his version of knights to locate the ring and the main character, Frodo the Hobbit, acts as a knight. He is given the quest, which were real things in medieval times, by the powerful wizard, Gandalf the Grey, to take the ring to Mount Doom and destroy it by throwing the ring into the fires that created it.

     The tactics of war in Lord of the Rings is also true to the medieval time period in the way of war being personal. Kingdoms would donate all they had to equip and help their army. Blacksmiths would make weapons and chain mail armor. Messengers would take paper notes to army officers by horse back, and excess materials were used to help strengthen the kingdom’s defenses. Villagers would unite to defend their home and the male populace of the kingdom were often recruited to fight in times of need. When it came to weapons, there were no guns. The weapons of that day and in the movie were swords, shields, spears, and bow and arrows.

     The only thing that I found present in the medieval times but not present in the film was the strong influence of religion, more specifically, Catholicism. Although, there was a religion in the movie, the worship of Melkor and the worship of Eru Ilúvatar, but these are faiths pertaining to the film’s world and were not real religions in medieval times. I am pointing this out because the medieval way of life was almost dominated by Catholic beliefs. In the film, religion does not seem to be the biggest influence. Although, I am sure one could argue that there are strong signs of religion if you look deeper into the context of the story, which I am not. That could be another discussion and I am sure if you searched it you could find a few already on the internet.

     Like I mentioned in the beginning of this post, there is so much information about Lord of the Rings that it is easy to get into lengthy discussions on a variety of topics this film and book series touches base on that it is actually overwhelming. I feel that this post at least sums up what I believe are the biggest examples and teachings of medieval culture in Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Hopefully, these comparisons do not go in vein and you learned a little about medieval culture. At the least, I hope this post influences you to watch this film if you have not seen it, or if you have, I hope it has made you want to see this film and experience that medieval world again! 

Disclaimer: I do not claim to own these pictures. I got these pictures from Google.