Tolkien Gleanings #276

* News of a forthcoming TV documentary. John Garth reveals “one to look out for”, this being… “a 2026 documentary by YLE, the Finnish national broadcaster. The whole programme is about Tolkien’s inspirations from Finland”.

* Tom Shippey’s Uppsala Books launches their new translation of Waltharius, with a short Tom Shippey YouTube interview on… “Waltharius, Beowulf, Tolkien, and Viking humour”.

* A short five-week online course on Tolkien and Universal History, starting 24th February 2025. The course will be…

“examining the Legendarium as an attempt at a work of Universal History, one which uses both ancient and modern storytelling genres to reconcile conflicting visions of English, European, and Western identity.”

* A new Road to Emmaus podcast Explaining Tolkien’s Liturgical Imagination, with Dr. Ben Reinhard, discussing… “how J.R.R. Tolkien’s works differ from C.S. Lewis in how they teach and influence their readers.” See also the new review of the book The Songs of the Spheres: Lewis, Tolkien and the Overlapping Realms of their Imaginations (2024).

* On the same theme, Hillsdale College has the new blog post “Of Sorcerers and Scientists: Middle-earth and The Space Trilogy”, briefly noting the similarities between Tolkien’s villains and those of C.S. Lewis.

* Idiosophy uses a computer program for “Measuring alliterative structure in a text”. Specifically applying it to “Mounds of Mundberg” and Gimli’s chant-song in the dark halls of Moria.

* And finally, Country Life magazine reports that the UK’s special shaggy breed of Exmoor moorland ponies has been introduced to New Zealand, where a pure-bred stallion and mares are now thriving and breeding. The tough and versatile breed is well suited to the varied New Zealand upland terrain, but apparently they haven’t had such beasts before. Imagine visiting the ‘Lord of the Rings’ movie filming locations, while sitting on the back of a pony very similar to ‘Bill’ the pony or ‘Stybba’ the hill-pony.