JRRT was pretty meticulous in his details, whether included in the trilogy or as background material elsewhere. So, I have to assume that he had figured out just how long it would take for The Fellowship to get to Mordor.
They all walked a good part of the way, took water craft and horses when they could, but still had quite a lot of detours too. So, does his journal of the journey match up in time spent vs territory covered and events occurring?
And anything else some may want to hijack about in re LOTR or JRRT in general.
Thanks in advance to all the LOTR regulars and anyone else replying.
There is a very detailed chronology at the end of The Return of the King. Frodo left Bag End on 23 September, and reached Mt. Doom on 25 March of the following year. The total distance covered by Frodo was roughly 1500-1600 miles, or an average of a bit over 8 miles a day.
In addition, JRRT was quite compulsive about making his calendar work out right. He spent a lot of time figuring out what phase the moon should be on a given day per his calendar, along with correct times for its rising and setting.
While I don’t get obsessive over such details as phases of the moon, the fact that the world of Middle Earth is so fully realized is one reason I enjoy it so much and it has become a classic. I did not realize how important this was until I tried to read fantasy fiction where the author did not bother.
The Atlas of Middle Earth includes maps that show the progress of the entire Fellowship day-to-day from start to finish. Everything synchs up perfectly. The travel times between each location are consistent with the scale of the map and how the various characters are travelling (on foot, by boat, by eagle). Furthermore, once the Fellowship splits up they still stay coordinated. For example, Frodo and Sam’s arrival at Mount Doom matches up exactly with Aragorn’s arrival at the Gates of Mordor. It’s clear that Tolkien must have worked out all the travel times in advance and factored that into the story.
There IS a mismatch between the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Bilbo and the dwarves take much longer to cover the same route as Frodo and other hobbits do. And Frodo finds the Troll statues 3-4 days too soon. But internally the Lord of the Rings is remarkable consistent.
You can actually walk the route of the Fellowship for exercise! This site gives a day-by-day breakdown of the miles covered so you can use it to motivate you while walking or running.
I visited Marquette University (home of the originalLOTR and many supplimental materials) and some of the things the librarian showed us were moon phase calculations, travel time estimations, and a synoptic(?) calendar.
I’m not sure that is the word - but anyhow it had columns for the various groups (Fodo+Sam, Merry + Pippin, the 3 hunters, etc) and rows for each day.
The moon phase and travel time documents were written on the back of Oxford lunch menus!
Christopher Tolkein’s exhaustive, and exhausting, examinations of subsequent drafts of LOTR compare JRRT’s evolving chronologies and maps in excruciating detail.
I swither between admiration of Prof. Tolkien’s attention to detail and frustration that he fiddled around so much that the Silmarillion was never completed. Don’t get me wrong, I adore what Christopher was able to pull together, but the glimpses of what might have been in Unfinished Tales and some of the HoME series is heartbreaking.
If only the tale of Tuor, the Narn i Hin Hurin and the Lays of Beleriand had been finished, dammit!
I wish he wouldn’t have mucked around so much with Galadriel and Celeborn too. I hated that he seemed to be trying to make a saint out of our bad girl!
> I swither between admiration of Prof. Tolkien’s attention to detail and
> frustration that he fiddled around so much that the Silmarillion was never
> completed.
This is one of those cases where you have to take the good with the bad. Only a person as obsessively attentive to detail could ever have turned out The Lord of the Rings as we know it. Such a person could never in an ordinary lifetime finish fiddling with The Silmarillion and publish it.