I think that Tolkien, like most people, had many interests. The Icelandic sagas, Norse Mythology and good old fashioned Englishness were quite forefront in the many cultures of Middle Earth. The Culture of Numenor, while having Atlantian qualities, did, I think, have some allusions to the Icelandic sagas. Likewise, The Shire, while one of its main functions was, no doubt, to satisfy Tolkien's amusement with quintessential Englishness, had some of the Icelandic traits as well. One must always keep in mind that Tolkien had to create a new world and new cultures and all he had to work with was his imagination and cultures that already exsist, past or present. A completely new culture that is not base, even loosely, on another is an incredibly difficult thing to do, if not nigh on impossible. One must always be considering what has gone before, the good parts, the bad parts and all the parts in between.
The Shire, with its Icelandic housing and such Tolkein had studied in his time is mixed with the quirky English traits that he had observed his whole life. There are new things, of course, Hobbits themselves are not English people, nor are they Norsemen. They are, sorry to point out the obvious, Hobbits. Their creator may have had certain ideas about English folk and Icelandic houses as well as a whole host of other things, but they themselves are a peculiar race. I always imagined that the Hobbits (especially Bilbo in The Hobbit) were rather like Arthur Dent in The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Unexpected travelers in a far flung land of wonder and magnificence, and yet retaining those odd little personalities from their homeland that makes them stick out like a set of grossly disproportionate infected and possibly contagious sore thumbs.
As with any of Tolkien's cultures in Middle Earth, one must not always look too deeply at things. I do often wonder how many of the connections and similarities he was aware of. If I may speak from experience, it is only when another person reads something I have written that they say, "Ho-ho! This is inspired by X" or "Ah! A little like the thing that happened when so and so did the other thing..."
At least, that's how this struck me...
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