Going back to the Dark Ages
The Real Middle Earth by Brian Bates, The Anglo-Saxons by Marc Morris, Beowulf: A New Translation by Seamus Heaney, and Forests: The Shadow of Civilization by Robert Harrison
I read J. R. R. Tolkien’s epic trilogy of The Lord of the Rings the previous summer. At the time, I was curious about what locations near me he was influenced by in creating Middle-Earth, and thought it would be a fun landscape photography project. When I came across Brian Bates' The Real Middle Earth, it discusses the historical sources that Tolkien drew from and his ideas for his fictional natural landscapes, such as Mirkwood, Lothlorien, and Fanghorn, which were inspired by ancient forests like the great Andredesweald that were seen as sacred groves and the homes of potent spirits by the people who lived there. This led me to want to understand more about that time, so I found The Anglo-Saxons by Marc Morris.
Morris paints a brutal picture of the land that eventually became England, after the fall of the Roman Empire, and the gradual taking over of the land by Anglo-Saxon colonists, often by force. In this lawless time, the strongest and often meanest clans became local, then regional powers, eventually leading to the first kingdoms. It was around this time that the epic old English poem Beowulf was written, and is used by Morris as one of his more accurate depictions of Anglo-Saxon life, despite it also containing fictional monsters.
As a Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, Tolkien also studied Beowulf, and I was intrigued by what this story said about nature. Although the story links the habitats of the monsters with the wild, and that they are beast-like creatures that eat people, the story itself appears more about the struggle of power, suggesting the beast within man. The linking of nature to danger and evil, suggests a Christian influence, but it may also be a reflection of the mindset of those who lived in perilous times.
“In the history of Western civilization, forests represent an outlying realm of opacity which has allowed that civilization to estrange itself, enchant itself, terrify itself, ironize itself, in short to project into the forest's shadows its secret and innermost anxieties. In this respect the loss of forests entails more than merely the loss of ecosystems.”
Forests: The Shadow of Civilization, Robert Harrison (preface; University of Chicago Press, 1992)
I’ve only scratched the surface of this book by Harrison, but it appears he was interested in something similar to what I wanted to find out, why had the forest been depicted as a scary place so many times in different cultures? Especially when my own experiences of them had been calming, even therapeutic, and places of beauty. Further discoveries in research and practice led me to deeper thought on this matter, and how it could be reframed.
