Coffee!

[lindil]

The Dwarf-trading theory has more going for it than the Gondor one.

There was no trade between Gondor and Eriador at the time of the Hobbit.

Barely any trade within Eriador and anywhere, only the Dwarves of the Blue Mntns and the varied inhabitants of Rivendell had regular interaction outside of their immediate regions any longer [ I think some details are forht comeing in UT or HoME12] anyway, in 'Of Dwarves and Men' we read about the majority of the Dwarves anscestral mansions being much farther away East, essentially off of the map.

So they I think would have been in the best position to trade something like coffee mansion to mansion and have it thus make it's way to to the wealthy Baggins.

[Eruantalon]

No offence to anyone but I think your missing the point here.


The hobbit was supposed to be the only work in middel earth when it was realsed.If I am not wrong.But after it popularity the book publisher wanted more from him.


So what I think is that he was just making somthing that had some famliar things in it.He was trying to take you from a transition from one world that we live in to a vary far one.Hence the party.Notice the narritve aspect in the book that wasn't found in any of The Lord of the Rings saga.

It was one of the many things he was trying to do to slowly bring the reader into this world he created.How do you explain a world no one has ever seen.How do you bring people there.He did this vary well,don't you think?

Well just look at the entire book.Its almost like a diffent mind set than the LotR.There is the seeds of ancient things.The fading shadows of them too.But still there not at all the same book.


He was trying to creat some thing for childre.The coffee is unimportent or where it came from.


Where did they get Tobbaco?

Where did they get coffee?

How was it that the shire didn't have winter even though they where so far north?

Why didn't Frodo or Bilbo ever get married,they where old enogh wheren't they.?

If Hobbits eat so much and where so portly why wheren't there ever any hart attacts there?

These are all forms of reality questioning the story.So they don't have anything to do with it.Since its not there place.

But in the 30s or 40s Egyptolagist found traces of cocain in some mummys.Could Tolkien have know about this.Maybe he thought that is wasn't too ridiculs to have Bilbo give his guest coffee.

Maybe what we think of as coffee today was not the coffee that the Dwarfs where talking about?

Maybe its a small detial Tolkien forgot to explain or explained it and we never found out about it.

There are tons of notes and written things no one has ever seen that he has written.It could go on and on like this.

[bombur]

”Where did they get Tobbaco?”
You are kidding I hope? I really suggest you read the books.

”Where did they get coffee?”
As we were discussing...

”How was it that the shire didn't have winter even though they where so far north?”
It had several... Just like every other place in ME (there are too many references to count or quote) but not during the summers...

”Why didn't Frodo or Bilbo ever get married,they where old enogh wheren't they.?”
Because not everyone does. And especially back in the times of old, some people chose a lifestyle that was considered impossible to combine with marrying and rising a family. Theese folks include most of our worlds famous explorers (like Magalhaes, Pizarro, Cortez etc) and knights errant (Like Lancelot) for example. Today marriage is considered to be a form of entertainment in most of the world and one may make such question as you did. As late as in the 1600-1700 the anwser to your query would have been baffeled stare. People who went missing for years to travel, who obsessed over poems and became social freaks simply DID NOT MARRY. Many academics did not marry. Hence the degree "Bachelor".

”If Hobbits eat so much and where so portly why wheren't there ever any hart attacts there?”

In LOTR, silmarillion and hobbit we are told the manner of death of exactly two hobbits (excluding the conflict of the cleansing of shire.) The manner of the death of theese two is told because they were Frodos mom and dad and their deaths led to Frodo being adopted by Bilbo. They did not have heart attacks because they had a boating accident first. They may have had indigestion though.

”But in the 30s or 40s Egyptolagist found traces of cocain in some mummys.”

Doubtful. Koka- plant does not grow on the old continent.

[Eruantalon]

Wait a minute? Why are you answering the questions. There supposed to be silly things that have nothing to do with books. Did you read what I had to say.

I wasn't posing a question. I was making a statment. Oh well if you don't get it I am not explaining.

[doug*platypus]

Ah, there's the rub. Eruantalon, you are slowly learning that there is no such thing as a rhetorical question in the Barrow-Downs forum. And fair enough, too.

The Lord of the Rings, and also post-publication alterations to The Hobbit, served to tie The Hobbit (which I only grudgingly refer to as a 'children's book') in with The Silmarillion, and at the same time providing the Hobbit sequel that the public (at large, not just kids) was clamouring for. If Tolkien had desired to remove coffee and make the story more realistic, he could have easily done so. He changed an entire chapter ("Riddles in the Dark", see Letters of Tolkien) after all, and a single word would hardly have been of consequence.

I can only surmise that coffee was intended to be left as it was. And that therefore, since JRRT was such an immaculate perfectionist, there is a plausible explanation out there somewhere for how hobbits (or at least the well-off Bilbo) came by coffee.

[doug*platypus]

The following was boldly swiped from another site during a dawn raid. Many bothans died to get you this information.

Q: Suilad, you guys are doing a great job! In LOTR I hear a mention of tea and I think sugar. Well I know that tea requires warm climates; for I belong to the Indian subcontinent. The realms of Middle-earth were based on the temperatures that prevailed in Europe – or England to be more precise (as Tolkien had planned). So where would our dear hobbits get their tea from? Did they trade with the south (it is mentioned that it is hot there) or were there other means by which they procured tea?

–Beleg Cuthlaion from Pakistan

A: Well, I don’t think this question stops with just tea. Tolkien wrote of some plants and foods that were meant to be distinctly English, giving Middle-earth the impression of "the familiar world" while we find other produce that was incongruous with this same world. What about corn, apples, and tobacco? The issue of agriculture in Middle-earth gets a bit tangled, I’m afraid. The matter is further confused by the FOTR film where we see Pippin and Merry cooking tomatoes up on Weathertop ("That’s nice! Ash in my tomatoes!") – when Tolkien himself never once mentioned tomatoes in the story. So did they exist in Middle-earth? Did regular tea and tobacco, even, exist in this Northern European-based fictional world or did the author just stick them in there? There is a discussion of "cold chicken and pickles" in The Annotated Hobbit where Douglas Anderson talks about Gandalf’s request. The wizard originally asked for tomatoes but Tolkien later changed it to pickles:

This revision brings up the question as to why it should matter whether Bilbo’s larder was stocked with tomatoes or pickles. Tom Shippey, in The Road to Middle-earth, suggests that as Tolkien wrote the sequel to The Hobbit, and as he came to perceive the hobbits and their land as characteristically English in nature, he recognized tomatoes as foreign in origin and in name. They were imports from America, like potatoes and tobacco, which were quickly adopted in England. Though Tolkien does use the word tobacco in The Hobbit a handful of times, it is strictly avoided in The Lord of the Rings, where pipeweed is used. There, as well, potatoes are given the more rustic name taters. Tomatoes were thus out of place in the Shire as Tolkien came to perceive it.
That settles that. No tomatoes. Now what about tea? I think the answer lies in Tolkien’s fictionalization of tobacco, where the author created a proxy for the plant. It seems there was no actual tobacco per se, just his Middle-earth version of tobacco. The plant that came from Númenor was galenas; as Tolkien decided it should be "imported" to Middle-earth and grown in Gondor. It grew in the south of Gondor easily enough but up in the Shire it was carefully handled to survive the climate. Though I have no mind for farming, I would venture a guess that tea had a similar back-history. It probably originated elsewhere (maybe Gondor or further beyond) and was brought up the Greenway. If the clever hobbit farmers of the Shire grew any tea plants similar to the tea of our modern world, lucky them. It seems a rather tricky thing for Tolkien to balance: keeping familiar, English elements associated the hobbits and having to explain at great length (in the case of pipeweed) how these items came to be in the fictional world of Middle-earth.

–Quickbeam

From Green Books, the One Ring.

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

This was one of the first threads I ever lurked on....perhaps the very first. It was waaaaay back in the day when I had a different screenname even! Reading through and posting on Kuru's interesting thread on possible trade between Dwarves and Elves in the First Age reminded me of it.

I love coffee, and I love Tolkien-related conundrums so it seemed time to resurrect this thread and to pose the question anew to a fresh generation of Downers:

1) Did the hobbits really have coffee, as we understand it (as opposed to some other form of drink which the narrator has simply called "coffee"), and if so

2) Where the heck did they get it?

For me, it makes most sense that they would have traded with the Dwarves for it, and that the Dwarves obtained it in trade with Men from the south...but this is where it gets tricky: Gondor was not southerly enough to grow coffee, so either the men of Gondor were trading with the Southrons in some way, or the Dwarves were trading with the Southrons....

And while we're at it: what about tea and sugar? Also crops that only grow in the tropics, so where the heck did that come from?

[Lalwendë]

There's not that much mystery to it really. Coffee doesn't have to be made from arabica, it can be made from all kinds of stuff, including chicory, which would in fact have been extremely common in Tolkien's day - its only lately with fancy city types wanting fresh-ground-hand-made £200 a cup coffee that us Brits have got all 'sophisticated' about the brown stuff. Maybe Tolkien would even have Camp Coffee (we all remember that stuff is we're over a certain age). If it wasn't made with chicory it could be brewed with acrons and other nuts.

Sugar? Sugar beet. Grows everywhere.

Tea? Dunno about that growing in different climes. But again tea does not have to be made from the usual leaf. However here, I think Tolkien as a Brit would have sniffed at the very thought of namby-pamby 'herbal teas'.

And the tobacco thing was cleared up because the plant even grows in the arctic and you can easily grow your own (and legally too) in an English garden.

[Bêthberry]

You know, I tried to find this thread just the other day, but for some reason I kept thinking it was started by Maril rather than BW and forgot the name. Great thread!

Fordim, I've always felt the Grey Havens was under represented in the LotR story. I mean, why maintain an important sailing harbour, manned by one of the oldest and wisest of elves, if it is going to be used only for one-way, one-time only, excursion trips to the West?

My bet would be that there was substantial trading going on via the Grey Havens, accessible to dwarves from the Blue Mountains and Hobbits and run by elves. The Bay of Belfalas offers several ports which fed into Gondor. I bet we could even imagine some kind of pirate RPG game out of this.

Pirates of the Haradrium.

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Lal m'dear,

There's not that much mystery to it really. Coffee doesn't have to be made from arabica, it can be made from all kinds of stuff, including chicory, which would in fact have been extremely common in Tolkien's day

So called replacement "coffees" were only invented in WWII when the real thing became scarce -- so when Tolkien wrote The Hobbit in the 30s, coffee meant, well, coffee.

Sugar? Sugar beet. Grows everywhere.

Sorry again luv, but sugar beets weren't actually used for sugar until 1838 when the first commercial sugar beet mill was opened in the US. Sugar from beets wasn't even imported to the UK until much later. This means that the hobbits either had technology well beyond everyone else in Middle-Earth (including the steam engine, compressors capable of creating a vacuum, and boilers) or they were using sugar from a sugar cane, which is tropical. (What's more, sugar beets were a better source of sugar than other root veggies, but not hugely so -- they were hybridized and cultivated in later 18th Century to gain a higher sucrose level...got to love Wikipedia).

Tea? Dunno about that growing in different climes. But again tea does not have to be made from the usual leaf. However here, I think Tolkien as a Brit would have sniffed at the very thought of namby-pamby 'herbal teas'.

I think for Tolkien and hobbits alike, "herbal tea" is an oxymoron. So is anyone who drinks it.

And the tobacco thing was cleared up because the plant even grows in the arctic and you can easily grow your own (and legally too) in an English garden.

And who said anything about tobacco? My theory is that this is what the hobbits traded in return for coffee, tea and sugar.

Beebs: you're on!

[Folwren]

I have no comments, just wanted to pop in and say how relieved I am to see this thread. I didn't know if coffee was actually in M-E and without thinking about it, I stuck it into the Golden Perch thread. Only after I had placed the post did I wonder, "Wait a moment...was there even coffee there? And would the Hobbits have had it?"

At least I know now that there was coffee in ME...at least, from the little I've read on this thread, some people think here is...but I'm still not possitive about the hobbit question.

-- Folwren

[Lalwendë]

Ah, but Fordim, there's no time frame to consider in relation to the Real World. If there is, then which one are we going to go for? Medieval? Dark Ages? Tudor? Tolkien jumbles up elements from all periods of history (even post-industrial) to create Middle-earth, so there need be no restrictions on whether certain produce had been 'discovered' or 'developed'. They also had umbrellas, waistcoats and pipes, none of which were around before at least the Tudor period.

The only consideration regarding foodstuffs is whether certain crops would grow in certain climes.

I mean, they also have potatoes and tomatoes in Middle-earth but there's certainly no America in Tolkien's creation. Now if there were levitating potatoes or maybe dancing coffee beans this would be a problem, but the time-frame of 'discoveries' in our world aren't that important, especially when discussing Hobbits and The Shire.

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Indeed so. It seems to me that this is what Tolkien meant when he said that Middle-earth is our world at "...at a different stage of imagination", rather than an earlier stage in its history. In an historical novel coffee would be a ridiculous and unforgivable anachronism, and one which Tolkien could have avoided easily. As it is, it exists in a deliberately anomalous society, which owes most of its more anachronistic features to the device used in The Hobbit of pitting an Edwardian country gentleman against figures of legend. I think that's one of the most overlooked themes in Tolkien: that in his first novel, modern values and approaches save situations that would become disasters if left to the mythic heroic code of conduct. This approach only works because the Shire is a place in which coffee, tomatoes and potatoes, not to mention mechanical clocks and pipe-smoking, can exist.

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

True.

But with the advent of LotR and its much more consciously historically 'realistic' approach to events (that is, it is supposed to 'seem' real and reasonable at every turn) isn't that stance more difficult to maintain? The meticulous attention to detail in the creation (subcreation) of this secondary world means that it all MUST make sense (to Tolkien's way of thinking).

So the Barrow Wight's excellent question still stands: where did the coffee come from? Because even though there is no mention of coffee in LotR, the Shire still exists unchanged from The Hobbit with all of its clocks and umbrellas. Those sorts of manufactured goods are relatively easy to work out -- hobbits and Dwarves are clever and able to make these things. But coffee, sugar and tea can only be made from crops not found in the climate Tolkien describes for the Shire.

Given the assumption left us by the work itself -- that it is internally realistic, logical and subject to the same physical laws as we find in our own world -- and in the absence of any explanation by the author/narrator, what theories can we come up with for the source of these exotic goods.

Saying simply "that's the way he wrote it" is such a cop out. I certainly wouldn't accept that answer to a question like, say, "Why did Gollum fall into the Crack of Doom?" or "Why wasn't Boromir able to resist the Ring?" Why would the very fabric of M-E's physical reality be any less worthy of investigation than the moral questions?

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Well, I could be flippant and say that Hobbits of the Shire probably bought their coffee in a shop like any normal person, but that wouldn't address the question of how it got there. In the absence of any information about that, other than that coffee could be bought in the Shire, I'd guess that it was grown somewhere with a climate similar to that of the modern-day coffee-producing countries. Since coffee is grown in Kenya and other African countries, and since Harad is the furthest country to the south that appears on maps of Middle-earth, I'd nominate somewhere in unmapped Far Harad as a point of origin for Shire coffee.

Unfortunately that falls down when we consider trade routes. We need one that allows the coffee to get to the Shire, but avoids those places where they don't appear to have discovered it. By sea to Mithlond does that, but it seems a fairly unlikely trading port. The likely route to somewhere like Pelargir requires some neutral party not mentioned in the books who could act as carrier, and also requires the presence of reasonably serviceable roads into Eriador that Tolkien also neglects to mention. Once the coffee has found its way into the western lands it's easier to imagine it being passed from hand to hand until it reached the Shire, as goods often were in pre-industrial times, but that doesn't work because the Hobbits seem so insular and merchants seem a rare sight in their country.

Since getting hold of coffee by trade seems problematic, and since the hobbits seem somehow to have developed a late-Victorian or Edwardian society, perhaps they grew it in hothouses. That would only require that they somehow discovered the bean and laid their hands on its seeds, which requires only very sporadic and unpredictable contact with far-away and relatively hostile peoples. Some Hobbits were in the habit of disappearing into the blue, so maybe one of those travellers began to cultivate coffee beans, but that is to build tenuous speculation on tenuous speculation founded on more tenuous speculation, and argument cannot live by logic alone. I suppose at least I've offered a possibility.

[Lalwendë]

Hothouses? Could work.

Well Hobbits must have a certain knack with growing things and discovering innovative uses for plants, or they would not have come up with the ingenious idea of drying and curing tobacco and smoking it. There are no Native Americans to demonstrate the arts of smoking, so a Hobbit must have discovered it in some strange and peculiar way. If they have such greenfingers and ingenious minds it s no big leap of the imagination for them to grow coffee in hothouses - note they also had tomatoes which do not do very well out of doors in the English climate (assuming The Shire is anything like the English climate which it seems we are doing). Likewise such people could easily have come up with other plants to produce 'coffee' and could easily have discovered how to make sugar from non-cane sources.

[MatthewM]

COFFEE?! Mmmmmm.

[JennyHallu]

Originally Posted by Fordim

So called replacement "coffees" were only invented in WWII when the real thing became scarce -- so when Tolkien wrote The Hobbit in the 30s, coffee meant, well, coffee.

I'm sorry dear, but I'm afraid that isn't true. Chicory has been used as a replacement for coffee since the Middle Ages (see quote below). It was commonly used on the American prairie, and my great-grandparents drank it during the depression.

Root chicory (Chicorium intybus var. sativum) has been grown since the [color=#0000ff]Middle Ages[/color] as a [color=#0000ff]coffee substitute[/color]. Around 1970 it was found that the root contains up to 20% [color=#0000ff]inulin[/color]. Since then, new strains have been created, giving root chicory an inulin content comparable to that of sugar beet (around 600 dt/ha). Inulin is mainly present in the plant family [color=#0000ff]Asteraceae[/color] as a storage carbohydrate (for example [color=#0000ff]Jerusalem artichoke[/color], [color=#0000ff]dahlia[/color], etc.). It is used as a sweetener in the food industry (with a sweetening power 30% higher than that of sucrose). Inulin can be converted to fructose and glucose through [color=#0000ff]hydrolysis[/color].

As for tea, I do not understand the general disdain for alternative teas. Chamomile, Sassafras, any of a million plants produce delightful teas, and I don't see that hobbits would be so far above availing themselves of them.

And lastly, to sugar. I agree that cane sugar would be an extremely difficult thing for hobbits to procure, short of Bethberry's trade scenario. But Tolkien was a philologist, not a horticulturalist. Sugar beets had been developed in Europe a hundred years and more before our hero's birth: they would have been a source of sugar Tolkien would have been familiar and comfortable with. I don't think its reasonable to assume that hobbits could not have grown them.

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Chickory cofee, sassafras tea, and beet-sugar??

No wonder Bilbo took off with the Dwarves!

[JennyHallu]

My apologies once again, Fordim, but sarsparilla (that heavenly plant) is not used to make tea. It's used to make root beer.

[Hilde Bracegirdle]

Jumping in feet first here, I apologize.

Some how I can't see the insular hobbits finding out about foreign coffee. But I did a bit of Googling and found that New South Wales, Australia is a coffee growing area. Now New South Wales has a highest maximum temperature of 50.0C (122.0F), Wilcannia, 11 January 1939 and lowest minimum temperature of -23.0C (-9.4F), Charlotte Pass, 29 June 1994. It would seem that if they could grow the stuff there, the Shire might also have a bit of it as well, perhaps as delicacy growing in a sheltered spot and defended against frost and snow with fire pots and tarps. In anycase, I imagine that it would have to be replanted frequently.

Roasting the stuff would not be an amazing discovery, as many spices are roasted to facilitate grinding them. And then again, did Tolkien actually mention that the concoction produced was as good as the stuff we have from now warmer climes? It might have and entirely different character. Or different base. Besides chicory, toasted beets, acorns, rye, field peas and okra seed have all been used as coffee substitutes.

[JennyHallu]

Climate is as much a matter of humidity and precipitation as it is temperature, Hilde, and the fact remains that the Shire is fairly clearly painted as a temperate zone. While a greenhouse would be adequate, I simply do not see any way for coffee to be grown out of doors.

[Bêthberry]

I think a question we all need to consider at this point is what need would the Hobbits have for coffee? I mean, if The Shire is an idyllic community, if things are peaceable, if everyone is happy with his place and all's right with the world, why would they need a caffeine jolt?

Was Tolkien suggesting something to us about this idyllic community?

[Aiwendil]

If I'm not very much mistaken, both sassafrass and sarsaparilla are used in root beer. Now if only the Hobbits had discovered that, the Shire might be the perfect place to live.

Regarding the New World anachronisms found in the Shire: while these anachronisms undeniably still exist in LotR and the third edition of The Hobbit, there is some evidence that Tolkien was troubled by them. There has been much talk of tomatoes on this thread, but if I'm not mistaken, the only instance of the word in either work is from the first edition of The Hobbit:

And just bring out the cold chicken and tomatoes.

But in the revision Tolkien changed this to:

And just bring out the cold chicken and pickles.

It seems quite probable that his reason for making the change was that tomatoes would indeed be an anachronism in ancient Europe. At any rate, I can't think of much other reason to change tomatoes to pickles, unless his ideas about Gandalf's appetite had changed.

It's also worth noting that, whereas he uses the word "tobacco" throughout the Hobbit, he uses the term "pipe-weed" almost exclusively in LotR. "Tobacco" is only used once in that work, and it is used by the narrator, not by any of the characters. "Potato" is also rarely used in LotR, "tater" being the preferred term. So it certainly seems to me that as the world of The Hobbit was drawn into the larger Legendarium, Tolkien made an effort to reduce the instances and obtrusiveness of the Shire's anachronisms. The terms "pipe-weed" and "taters" are at least good English words, unlike the obviously Native American-derived "potato" and "tobacco".

The later terms also allow a little bit of room for the speculation that the articles found in LotR are not actually to be equated with the tobacco and potatoes of the New World. As others have suggested, the Hobbits' pipe-weed need not have been of the Nicotiana genus from which modern tobacco is derived. "Taters", we may suppose, could have been some variety of tuberous root native to ancient Europe - and perhaps now extinct. The Hobbits' coffee may also have been a different kind of seed from that which is called coffee today. We might also suppose that the use of the words "coffee", "potato", and "tobacco" simply represent the modern translator's attempt to render the names of unfamiliar plants from the original Westron, the translations being based on their apparent function.

If, contrary to the above, we are to suppose that the Hobbits' coffee was indeed something very much like our own and that it derived from somewhere in Far Harad, we might explain its presence in the Shire by supposing that only Hobbits had at that time developed a taste for it. It's conceivable that it was traded through Gondor, but that it was in low demand there, and was thus obtained only as a commodity to be exchanged in the north. I admit that this seems unlikely. Another possibility is that coffee was in fact used in Gondor - we have no explicit evidence against this. Perhaps it was used but not as a drink - it might have been used as a spice in food, for instance. A third possibility is that which has already been mentioned - that it did in fact originate far away, but that once discovered by the Hobbits it was grown locally.

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

I think a question we all need to consider at this point is what need would the Hobbits have for coffee? I mean, if The Shire is an idyllic community, if things are peaceable, if everyone is happy with his place and all's right with the world, why would they need a caffeine jolt?

Because they had mornings.

Thanks Aiwendil for the intelligent summation of the problem and three possible solutions. What I find interesting about this debate is that a reader's response to which of your three scenarios seems to depend more on their sense of what the Shire is like -- or how they want it to be -- than anything in the text.

I, for example, see the Shire as a little pocket of the 'real' world smack in the centre of Middle-Earth: so for me, coffee, tea and sugar are the same there as here. When Bilbo consumes any of these products he is doing so just as I would, bringing us into close, almost visceral contact.

Jenny, on the other hand, you seem to see the Shire as a bit more removed from our world than do I. That is, when Bilbo or the other hobbits go about their daily lives in the Shire it doesn't seem to break the enchantment for you if you have to perform a bit of imaginative sleight of hand, quickly and silently substituting something like SASSAFRAS tea for 'real' tea when you read it.

Squatter and Hilde, you both offer yet another interesting variation of readers' response in that you would appear to want, like me, to close the gap between the Shire and the 'real' world -- when Bilbo drinks coffee, he drinks coffee -- but you are a bit more willing, like Jenny, to contemplate a Shire that is not exactly like our world (I don't care how good the hothouse or how dedicated the gardener, you ain't gonna get real coffee to grow in the Shire!). Wheras Jenny performs sleight of hand, you both seem to prefer elegant gymnastics.

I'm not suggesting that any one approach is right or better than the others -- only observing that as is so often the case, when we try to figure out this story we end up revealing a lot more about ourselves!

[JennyHallu]

Originally Posted by Fordim

Jenny, on the other hand, you seem to see the Shire as a bit more removed from our world than do I. That is, when Bilbo or the other hobbits go about their daily lives in the Shire it doesn't seem to break the enchantment for you if you have to perform a bit of imaginative sleight of hand, quickly and silently substituting something like SASSAFRAS tea for 'real' tea when you read it.

Ah, Fordim, I find your elegant summation of my stance delightful, and yet I would like to take a moment to elaborate.

To me, when Tolkien described hobbits as essentially English, that means that an Englishman, one of Tolkien's fellows, could walk into Hobbiton and feel a sense of homieness, of comfort and recognition. Little people, with little goals and near horizons, who live a life essentially alike to that of every man, worried about his own family and lands, with little regard to the larger things that happen around him as long as his comfort is secure.

Therefore, the little everyday habits which mark the life of our traveler have their mirrored correlaries in the lives of the hobbits. He smokes a pipe; so do they. The esoteric question of whether his tobacco and theirs are quite identical genetically is mostly moot: that isn't the point. The point is that our traveler, seeing Bilbo contentedly smoking outside his door, can immediately sense and understand the thoughts, emotions, lifestyle, economic state...everything worth knowing about Bilbo can be observed or inferred from his attitude outside his door, idle on a sunny morning, blowing smoke-rings. And the only reason our traveler understands this is because he has the same habit.

That said:

I am the sort of person who never finishes a story. In fact, rarely do I even get to the all-important step of beginning the actual narrative. Those who play in RPs with me (especially if you've completed a joint post with me) know that I have an annoying habit of writing long narrative posts, beginning to end, in a few minutes, so the ability to write in narrative isn't the problem. When the story is my own entirely, I get so bogged down in details that I can never get around to starting the story. I am fascinated by the how of the worlds I create. I care less about what happens to my characters than how their peers make their living, what rituals and holidays inspire and motivate them, when they celebrate and why...

I once derailed a science fiction story with an elaborate plot because my calculus wasn't up to the task of defining the orbit of the planet the tale was to be set on. Why was this so terribly important? Because without that I couldn't understand the turn of seasons, and without that the cycle of agriculture, and in the end the entire economic system of this planet rested on one fact I didn't have the knowledge to create.

By this long tangent I mean to say only that I am obsessed with details. It's fine with me if sugar doesn't mean sugar as I know it, or if pipe-weed or tea aren't the same plants as I'm familiar with, but I have a pathological need to know what they are...

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Originally Posted by JennyHallu

It's fine with me if sugar doesn't mean sugar as I know it, or if pipe-weed or tea aren't the same plants as I'm familiar with

Well that's all I'm saying -- you're a "close enough" kind of reader for the Shire. Me, close only counts in horse shoes and hand-grenades. If I read the Bilbo is have a smoke and drinking a coffee, by gar that's what he's doing!

[Lalwendë]

"Arrrwwwrrraaaaughhhhhhhh!"

That's the sound of a torturous explanation. Or possibly Bilbo as he spits out a mouthful of foul acorn coffee outside the new Hobbiton branch of Starbucks and vows never to go there again (good taste...).

Seriously, surely the only consideration is whether something could conceivably be grown in The Shire, considering its latitude and climate. Comparing time frames to our own world doesn't really work, as LotR isn't set in a time we could possibly compare to anyway. If it was set in Medieval times then the Fourth to Sixth ages must have been ruddy short. And anyway, doesn't Tolkien say they could all be measured in thousands of years? So, LotR is set when? Some six thousand years ago minimum? Well if it is then just about everything (steel swords, armour, horsemanship, etc) would be an anachronism, surely?

[Hilde Bracegirdle]

A few more thoughts.

Coffee could conceivably been brought up to Bree, the Shire hobbits obtaining it through that market.

Or a traveler, addicted to coffee, could have visited north and made his/her own substitution for the drink, dubbing that ‘coffee’. Neither readers, narrators nor hobbits would be the wiser.

[JennyHallu]

*quietly climbs off soapbox* Sorry.


I do disagree with Lal though...I think there are other considerations here than she's looking at.

[Thinlómien]

What if it is this simple: in Tolkien's Middle-Earth coffee grew in colder climate than in our world? Wouldn't be the only difference between the two worlds.

I mean, if a book has elves, hobbits, dwarves and orcs etc prancing around (not to mention balrogs and such) is it really any wonder that in such a world coffee may grow in a different climate than in our world?

[Hilde Bracegirdle]

Yes, perhaps a strain of coffee plant that has since died out. A precurser of Coffea robusta that went the way of Australopithecus robustus.

[Lalwendë]

Well yes! It is after all fantasy, and it does have many odder things than coffee that grows in strange climates.

The Shire could indeed (going right back to the need for scientific explanation of course) have micro-climates. Would anyone here believe that palm trees not only grow but bear fruit on Scotland's west coast? Well that's due to the gulf stream. Even odder, I live at high altitude in a city that's already at high altitude, on the lee of the Pennines in Northern England and I can grow tropical plants in my garden.

There is also the possibility of a changed climate. Did Mount Doom and Sauron's industry contribute to global warming? It would certainly explain the extreme weather Middle-earth could get, the harsh winters they'd had (which brought down Wolves from the North), and maybe uncommonly hot summers, seasonal shifts which might vary wildly from region to region.