“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit” (J.R.R Tolkien). The Lord of the Rings fandom is an expansive group from online to real life meetups and gaming. It covers many topics of wide varieties and is one of the most interesting fandoms you will see. Tolkien as stated by David Doughan of the Tolkien society “John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) was a major scholar of the English language, specializing in Old and Middle English. Twice Professor of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) at the University of Oxford, he also wrote a number of stories, including most famously The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955), which are set in a pre-historic era in an invented version of our world which he called by the Middle English name of Middle-earth” (2021). Tolkien was a scholar of language and would write the Lord of the Rings trilogy that would become extremely popular. The book sales for Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit, the prequel to the trilogy of books, would be as wradmin compiled “The LOTR trilogy has sold over 150 million copies. The Hobbit has sold over 100 million copies” (2021) The books draw a massive fan base and cover 38 languages officially it is a massive franchise and has millions of fans around the globe. The movies would draw in new generations (see video 1) of a actor who met Tolkien reading the one ring poem. The fandom can be broken down into two major categories, the online community and the in-person community.
The Fandom
The fandom online is broken into many subsets of different groups however the easiest way to identify them is as the commentators and loreist, artists, musicians, and gamers. Many of these online groups are founded and based on mostly Youtube and Twitter. These four groups are part of the fandom that cover the widest area while showing the variety of the fandom. First and the largest is the youtube community of commentators.
Youtube Commentary
Youtube is an extremely large collection of videos and communities and the LOTR fandom is one of millions. A few names of many are channels like Men of the West, Nerd of the Rings, Nerdrotic, Sîdh Aníron (see Video 2 above) and many many more. These channels of fans tell stories, theorize, celebrate the movies and shows, and talk and interact with fans of Tolkien. These online youtube communities talk on Tolkien's work and build this network of a community to continue their love and/or interest in Tolkien’s work. These videos also discuss theories and how events play out differently. Both Men of the west and Nerd of the Rings do these theory videos on the books and what if. People who do not wish to make videos can contribute to all the commentary community through the comments, forums and other methods bringing discussions in almost all comment sections of youtube videos. Another section on youtube is the music community of Tolkien's work.
Youtube/Spotify Music
The fandom of the music community is massive and the channels who love and respect Tolkien's work remaster the songs of the movies or make new songs from Tolkien’s work and poems. Channels like Clamavi De Profundis make songs on and about Tolkien’s work with millions of listeners. The way to show the love of Tolkein is not in one way and music brings out some of the poems within the books which brings different aspects of Tolkien's work to the fandom. The final youtube dominated group is the fans of Tolkien who express that through different types of games.
Gaming Section
Tolkien’s works have been remastered in many different forums for gaming on consoles but also things like wargaming. The Tolkien game community revolves around games like Lego LOTR, LOTR battle for middle earth, the RTS LOTR games, as well as a few other games here and there. Fans go through these games talking about lore and Tolkien's work while enjoying a video game. While other gaming subsections of wargaming paints minifigures and recreates maps of middle earth to fight out battles that may or may not have happened and experience LOTR specifically in different ways. The wargaming subsection also includes modelers who recreate Minas Tirith for a massive wargaming battle on a channel called Zorpazorp. This community is smaller than that of the music, commentary/loreist, and gaming communities but still shares in the fandom and creates content on LOTR and other books from Tolkien. Finally, the online space that fills dozens of websites things like twitter, youtube, pinterest, and dozens of art websites is the artist community.
Artist Community
(Image 1 from art station by Alexander Sorokin) hand-crafting, create dioramas of scenes and stories to show their appreciation for the work. Some of my favorite art is the concept arts done by the community around Lord of the rings. It is reimagining and changing the characters in a new and creative way. How does all of this tie together?
Tolkein Scholars
The Tolkien fandom is quite unique as they have a large part of their loreist, the people who focus solely on compiling lore who dedicate their lives to this work and are scholars. These fans of Tolkien's work study it, in some cases write 7 books over 300 pages on Tolkien and his work and compile the lore to their best ability. The scholars also host the yearly convention on lord of the rings and compile lore from the written works, letters, additions works, and over 300 page appendixes to the main story in the languages of the book he wrote. A massive community especially in places like the Tolkien Society where events and articles are organized from tolkien scholars. From their main page you can find numerous articles about Tolkien's work and this is another outlet for fans of the work. The society which is a nonprofit first chaired by Tolkien has fostered growth to over 3500 members from the current statistics of the chairman. The scholars are a decent part of the organizers of events for the Tolkien society but the largest community is the cosplayers.
Cosplay
Cosplayers are in every fandom but the lord of the rings fans are especially more dominant now than ever. The cosplayers for Tolkien go to events like the Scholar events, or the larger nerd events like comic con, anime expo, and other conventions. Even people who dress up to go to the shire in New Zealand the cosplayers travel and show their love of Tolkien through the design and displaying of their costumes. The fandoms are expansive and the ways to learn, watch and participate are far and wide. My story however is not as long. I mainly was interested and part of the fandom online in spaces like twitter and watching videos. I have read the books and they are fantastic but I do not proactively go out for things like conventions mainly because they are mostly either in Britain or the west coast.
The End
All the online stuff ties together in the chat rooms, forums and on social media. The fans from casuals to die hards have different ways to express their enjoyment, interest or even love of professor Tolkien’s work there is no one way or one type of fan because of how big and successful Tolkien’s work is and in part with support from six great movies and a old animated movie it has built up a good will and strong fandom passing down from old generation into a new one. The fandom online has blobbed into groups you have the Fellowship, The one ring, and the scholars but at the end of the day they are all fans, they respect and enjoy at the very least professor Tolkien’s work. The in person space maintains the balance of joy and reverence for the works through the society and the fans who go to conventions and do cosplay, who play board games and people who enjoy the work of Tolkien. References
Doughan, D. (2021, May 19). Biography. The Tolkien Society. Retrieved December 2, 2022, from https://www.tolkiensociety.org/author/biography/
Gunner, S. (2022, August 28). News. The Tolkien Society. Retrieved December 2, 2022, from https://www.tolkiensociety.org/contributor/shaun-gunner/
Leo. (2018, September 28). Gandalf: Character Design, character art, character modeling. Pinterest. Retrieved December 2, 2022, from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/151152131229619759/
Sorokin, A. (2015). Artstation - Minas Tirith. Artstation. Retrieved December 2, 2022, from https://www.artstation.com/artwork/qJQmL
The Lord of the Rings Wiki. (n.d.). The One wiki to rule them all. Fandom. Retrieved November 21, 2022, from https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page
TheOneRing.net. Lord of the Rings Rings of Power on Amazon Prime News, JRR Tolkien, The Hobbit and more | TheOneRing.net | Forged by and for fans of J.R.R. Tolkien. (1999). Retrieved November 21, 2022, from https://www.theonering.net/
Wradmin. (2022, October 3). Wradmin. WordsRated. Retrieved December 2, 2022, from https://wordsrated.com/lord-of-the-rings-stats/
YouTube. (2013). The Ring Poem read by Christopher Lee. YouTube. Retrieved December 2, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdhpA2yPu1w.
YouTube. (2021). Tolkien narrates the Ride of the Rohirrim. YouTube. Retrieved December 2, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWxnHuVEwUg.
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