Losing sight of the basics......

[Bill Ferny]

“I also luxuriated in the presence of museums and libraries which held a richness my own country could not hope to equal.”

You didn’t look hard enough! Well, I don’t know about Texas, but I do know that from Boston, Philly, Baltimore, to D.C. you will not only find as many museums and galleries than in all of England, but most of them, if not equal in antiquity, are at least equal or better in quality. England has some great institutes of higher learning, and, of course, Oxford is probably one of the best in the world, but there are at least a half dozen or so equal or better universities and colleges in the US, each with libraries the size of some mid-western towns. An interesting little tidbit is that the best graduate program for European Medieval Studies is in Canada, not Europe. I will never understand the mentality that characterizes America as barbaric, a continent filled with the culturally and educationally inept, in comparison with Western European nations. That mentality is simply not supported by the facts. If anything American culture, for good or bad, is a continuation of European cultural.

Anyway, 7th, I think you answered your own question. We’ve established that Tolkien was moved to fill in England’s mythological history, and that the Norman conquest, and subsequent historical developments, nearly obliterated the Anglo/Saxon mythological history. As you stated Tolkien used all those mythological sources that you listed in order to fill that gap. Because he was so steeped in mythological lore, and places so much of that in his work, there’s no doubt that topics such as “Ancient Civilisations… Babaloynia?” and “Idril like Thetis” are going to show up in Tolkien discussions. I think that at the back of everyone’s mind is the distinctive English quality of Tolkien’s fictional mythology, and discussing the Finnish influence on his work doesn’t negate that distinctive English quality.

As far as PJ is concerned I have to agree with Cazoz et al. I think that PJ did a great service to Tolkien's vision by filming in New Zealand, rather than having to stage the majority of movie by attempting to film it in England.