[Rumil]

Oooh, interesting thread...

First, to indulge in some ritual apple chucking [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] , nice thoughts on castles, swords etc from Bill. However, I do have the odd point....

Isn't the medieval sword in your illustration a panzertetcher, as used by German knights in the Baltic Crusades? I believe it was prized for its armour penetration qualities. (I still think the elven panzertetcher/katana things 'feel' wrong, after all Glamdring, Narsil and Sting are supposed to be elven blades, and I don't like their banded armour either, though I guess if PJ put everyone in chainmail it might be confusing.)

On fortifications, I think you may be underestimating the number of 'Anglo-Saxon' strongholds. I seem to remember that one of the English kings (beginning, I think, with E or A [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] ), perhaps Athelstan?? had a program of building 'forts' around England. Certainly there was one at Warwick, where the foundations were later used to build the Medieval castle (That JRRT thought of as Kor-Tirion).

On the battle of the fords of Isen, there were fortifications guarding the fords, but they had been allowed to decay over the years. I'd guess they now resembled simple earthworks. Presumably Rohan had decided that with Saruman at Isengard, the forts weren't worth the upkeep, then when Saruman turned nasty Wormtongue persuaded Theoden not to bother renovating them. I'm interested to hear why you think this battle resembles WWI Bill? For me, the closest parallel is with colonial battles such as Ulundi, where at the end of the conflict the Rohirrim form square, then break out. I've also noticed that this battle was an uncharacteristic defeat for the cavalry of Rohan which performed very poorly, perhaps due to being charged before they had deployed from column of march.

Anyway, as for images from the films, the Shire was generally good but looked as though it needed a few hundred years to 'bed in' to look authentically ancient. As many have said, Rivendell and Lothlorien were too 'dark' or perhaps 'grey', perfect for after LoTR, but I'd have thought them far lighter, livelier places at this time. Edoras was so downmarket, I think someone took Saruman's insult as the truth!