Given the level of extant technology, when say, an elf or hobbit, or Tom Bombadil wanted to take a dump in Lord of the Rings, did they just squat in the woods or were there bathrooms of some sort?
I am by no means a LOTR expert but I assume it would be your standard “grab a leaf and find a quiet spot in the trees” scenario. Which makes me think, what would happen if you crapped on an Ent?
He’d thank you for the meal?
I’m sure it would have followed real-world medieval amenities…woods, outhouses and privies for the solid, pretty much anywhere for the liquid (for the men, anyway).
That’s a trickier question that it first appears.
While Europe of the middle-ages may have not had adequate (or any) sanitation facilities certainly older civilizations did. The Cretan and Minoan cities had constant flow and varieties of flush toilets during BC times.
So I’d believe it was possible that such things existed in middle Earth. Certainly a town as crowded as Minas Tirith would almost require such a thing. Otherwise it’s begging for dysntery and cholera. Either of which would decimate the population in very short order.
The reality is that your question is nonsequitur.
Fantasy characters do not have sanitary needs like real people. It just does not happen. They do not defecate or excrete or micturate. Not even the fell races.
Unless, of course, the fantasy is written by Piers Anthony, in which case most characters have a sexual fetish, obsession, fear, or childhood trauma involving bodily waste. Among other things.
In the case of JRR Tolkein… A wizard did it.
As probably the most generally recognized JRRT geek here, I have to say that I have absolutely no idea about specific defecatory and septic practices of hobbits, elves, dwarves, ents, ringwraiths, trolls, orcs, etc.
Stone trolls, of course, shit bricks.
I think we can all guess about sanitation amongst the orcs. There isn’t any.
My guess: Sauron had agents scouring the countryside, collecting all the refuse and bringing it to Mordor, where he stockpiled it. Perhaps he thought he could convert it to fertilizer and sell it to the Southrons at a profit. My evidence: we do have Mordor described as a “vast wasteland.”
More evidence: Mordor is obviously a contraction of “more ordure.”
Didn’t someone, at some point, step in something and say “Trolls”?
Wish I could be more specific, but the memory is vague.
That was in Willow
Well, in “The Fellowship of the Ring” (book, not movie), when Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin got to the little house on the other side of the Brandywine River, Fatty Bolger had baths waiting for them. Hot baths, in fact. Pippin (I think) sings a song about a fountain leaping on high, or something like that, and splashes a lot of water out of his tub. So the hobbits were familiar with fountains, which indicates some method of funnelling water under pressure.
Given that, I think it’s fair to assume the hobbits had regular (if somewhat crude) bathroom facilities in the Shire. And if hobbits had them, I gotta believe some of the more citified and lordly folk had them, as well.
On the trail, of course, it was a-handful-of-leaves-squatting-behind-the-tree time.
Thanks, Incubus. You’ve convinced me that I need to see all four movies again.
In the movie, and I’m pretty sure the book, when Frodo stumbles into Shelob’s cave, he asks, “What’s that smell?”, to which Gollum replies, “Orcses’ filth.”
Isn’t filth a synonym for shit? In which case, we would know that Mordor orcs would risk near certain death for a bowel movement.
Qagdop, I’m disappointed. Saruman invented the fire of Orthanc, which blew a hole in the Deeping Wall: if we are to assume, in line with the movie, that this was gunpowder {“Then there was a crash and a flash of flame and smoke”}, it required potassium nitrate. In medieval times this was often derived from the caked residue of urine, scraped from pissed-on walls. Saruman being an organised sort of chap, I think we can assume that the pissing of the Orcs of the White Hand, at least when at home, was done on a production basis, with regular facilities provided.
Lembas is nothing more than elf scat. Being such a fair people, it tastes great to others.
I think of all that Hobbit dung piling up, and it gives new meaning to “The Scouring of the Shire.”
“We went there and back again, and you didn’t think to clean out the privvy one time??”