This concurrent thread about the historic money of England got me wondering. What were prices like in the Middle Ages, and were they accurately portrayed in The Lord Of The Rings?
I ask this because I recall that in the novel, when the hobbits were in Bree and had to buy a pony, the standard going rate for a pony was four “silver pennies”. Even allowing that a silver penny was probably a fairly big coin, like the old pre-decimalization copper pennies, that still seems absurdly cheap. IRL in medieval England, could you actually buy a small horse for so little? If such a major purchase as a pony would set you back only three silver pence, what on earth did people use to buy a loaf of bread?
Granted, we’re talking about a HUGE stretch of time when we say “the Middle Ages,” but do remember that there was, until the time the Europeans sacked the Americas for all of their gold and silver, a medium-desperate coinage crisis throughout Europe (not enough precious metal in circulation, period).
Here’s a link on trade with silver pfennigs along the Danube, c. 1000 AD:
How much would three coins made entirely of silver, each of which was the size of an American penny, be worth today? How about if they were each the size of an American fifty-cent piece? There’s no reason to think that these “silver pennies” are the lowest valued coins. There are presumably copper or brass or whatever coins of lower value.
The Lord of the Rings is not, of course, set in our Middle Ages. It’s not even clear that Tolkien meant it to be technologically equivalent to the Middle Ages. It looks to me like it’s set in the equivalent of about 1800 in our world but with somewhat less science and, of course, a functional magical system.
I google randomly and found the following reference :
In 1295, a horse is bougt in paris for " 3 livres, 10 sols" (3 pounds, 10 shillings…of course a livre wasn’t worth exactly a pound, but it gives a rough idea).
Given that the basic silver coin was the denier, that a livre was worth 240 deniers, and a sol 12 deniers, this horse was worth 840 silver coins (and it was an ordinary horse, used to pull a cart by a cathedral’s builders). However, by this time, the denier was already a small coin (it used to be much more valuable in earlier times), and there were silver coins worth much more “deniers”.
Checking a book, I notice such a coin, from the same period, weighting around 4 grams and worth 12 deniers. So, the horse was worth something like 70 silver coins weighting a total of 280 grams. Let’s say more than half a pound (weight, not currency unit) of silver alloy.
Of course, it’s one example, dating from a specific period, while the middle-ages lasted for 1000 years. But it would nevertheless let me suspect that ponys were fairly cheap in the middle earth as compared to late medieval Europe. Though as mentionned above, a silver coin was more valuable earlier. So, it’s difficult to tell for sure.
I don’t think that Tolkien concerned himself to any extent with economic realities in his books. I suspect he mentioned that kind of price in order to conform to the impression we have that things cost much less in the distant past than they do now. (Of course, this in itself is not true in real terms, but largely an artifact of creeping inflation over centuries).
Likewise Tolkien doesn’t give any real idea of where elves, dwarves, or most orcs obtained their food from - none of them seem to engage in agriculture on any scale, or to engage in sufficient trade (or in the case of orcs, plunder) for food they would need to support their populations.
Except for Ted Sandyman’s improvements at the mill, toward the end, it’s clearly pre-industrial, and in many regions a strong feudal system seems to be in place. IMO it’s clearly more like medieval Europe than anything else.
Very roughly speaking, pre-1965 U.S. silver coins are worth about five times face value, but the real value of silver has been declining somewhat over the years. So your 3 U.S. silver cents’d be worth maybe a couple of dollars if that.
For centuries, a 'silver penny" (called by many names, like “denarius”)- which is a hammered silver coin about the size of a dime- was the standard “coin of the realm”. The Anglo-saxons & the Vikings also used them, not to mention the “EnglisH” until after the time of ElizibethI, and JRR undoubtedly was conversant with them.
I’d say that 4 of these is a mighty cheap price for a pony. I am guessing that the purchasing price of those LotR 'silver pennies" was about that of a coin containing a whole oz of silver (like the “piece of eight” or the dollar).
4 silver pennies wasn’t the going rate for a pony, it was the fair price for that pony – a “bony, underfed, and dispirited” animal. Butterbur gave Merry 18 silver pennies (also called pence in the book) as “some” compensation for his five lost ponies. So that’s a little less than 4 pennies each as only partial compensation.
But yeah, it seems low. And yeah, Tolkien spent almost no time on the economy of middle earth. Saruman engaged in a lot of trade with the Shire, but no one in the Shire seemed to be a merchant. Dwarves mined Mithril and the elves used it, but what did they trade for it – the Dwarves were the only ones mining anything. As noted, everyone managed to eat but the Shire was the only place which seemed to have any farmland.
> Except for Ted Sandyman’s improvements at the mill, toward the end, it’s clearly
> pre-industrial, and in many regions a strong feudal system seems to be in
> place. IMO it’s clearly more like medieval Europe than anything else.
Look at some of the things mentioned in the book: fireworks, umbrellas, musical crackers (like Christmas crackers except with small musical instruments in them), handkerchiefs, shears for trimming hedges, bathtubs, windows with glass, and books as a common item. And these are not rarities only available to royalty, but things common enough to be available to “gentry,” if not to every peasant. They are apparently made by skilled craftsmen, not in factories. This isn’t what was available to people in Europe in the year 1000. It’s not even what was available in the year 1500. It’s at least the equivalent of the year 1700, and I think it’s more like 1800. Yes, it’s like an 1800 without a consistent industrialization (although it’s implied that Sauron and Saruman are forcing levels of technology that imply industrializatin on their subjects), but it’s not really the equivalent of the Middle Ages. Of course, all this may only mean that Tolkien wasn’t able to create a consistent level of technology for Middle-earth, but clearly some of the things available are post-medieval technology.
Ah, the old “things we can’t imagine doing without” syndrome. A common feature of fantasy stories that draw the line at guns or steam engines but provide anything else conceivably available to (rich) post-Renaissance people, or provide magical substitutes. People seem to forget that there was a time when the spinning wheel, or steel, or even domesticated animals were the epitome of high-tech.
I believe Bilbo had a pocket watch (in The Hobbit, at least, it may not have been mentioned in LotR). While some people (royalty and high nobility mostly) may have had handkerchiefs and bathtubs in the 15th century, no one had a watch until the 18th century. And they weren’t common items until the mid-19th century.
This was something that really struck me as a weakness in the LOTR movies (it’s been too many years since I’ve read the books to comment). Nobody seems to be involved in agriculture - in an agricultural era - except some Hobbits.
Minas Tirith seemed especially odd; a giabt castle supported by a huge lawn instead of farmland… how did anyone eat…?
How did anyone eat? there was the salted pork that marry and pipin where eating after the batter with the ents. seem to remeber frodo and sam complaing about the bread they where eatting. i mean i give it to ya that he did not write about much of how they got the food but it was not a big part of the story. i mean this man wrote a whole languge and a religon when would he of had time to write about all that. not to add that there where huge eagles large enough to ride. a lot of magic so who so not thinking he was going with making this book based on truth of how the middle ages where. i am not even sure that it was supose to be the middle ages. i was the third age of middle earth…not this earth
The books, at least, described parts of Gondor as having many fertile farms. (In the movies the areas around Minas Tirith had to be open in order to accomodate the battle scenes.) But nobody but men, hobbits, (and Entwives), really seems to do any farming.
This anomoly stands out particularly because Tolkien was so painstaking in crafting many other aspects of his world, including a detailed history going back thousands of years, several different elaborate languages, and an entire mythos. But economics and the more quotidian aspects of Middle Earth were not of much interest to him, so he didn’t work them out in any consistent fashion.
Dwarves could have traded the precious metals they mined and crafted for food, but they mostly lived in remote mountains with few if any humans living nearby (except in the case of the Lonely Mountain and Dale). Who were they trading with? Likewise orcs might have lived on plunder, but who were they plundering? And the idea of an elf behind a plow seems absurd.