Kitbashing the Rohirrim, part one, gathering evidence

 

 

It’s a funny ol’ thing - life. One minute you are up, enjoying every moment, riding the crest of the wave and then…BOOM! you hit a rock and you are in deep water, trying to hold on to all that is precious. It’s been about twenty years since I hit a major rock and found myself as a single parent of two small, beautiful girls. Life became a struggle. Luckily, I had a supportive family and working in Emergency Care meant I could work the night shift which made child care easier and increased my earnings which made having one income easier to manage. Even more fortunately, I have a hobby that could help to fill those long lonely nights when I wasn’t working and the children were in bed.

Back then, there wasn’t the wide range of cheap plastic figures that there are now and GW were readily available and for some reason there seemed to be a glut of them because, used at least, they were really quite cheap. I laid out about £150 on three mixed lots of GW LotR figures from E bay and  I got a real bargain, mostly Uruk Hai but a fair scattering of all the other various figures in the range, including about two dozen mounted Rohirrim and another 30 or so on foot.

The Rohirrim were particularly nice, well proportioned, if rather small, with great poses and animation, sporting some Dark Age style armour and weapons and I had quite a lot of them. I sat each night I that I was not working, and painted away, following the PJ WETA colour theme with an eye to selling them on, grimly determined initially and then with increasing enjoyment.

My GW Rohirrim

They have since become veterans having served in many campaigns and with alternative paint schemes and some simple conversions they have become Fiefdoms troops, Haradrim and many other “generic” Dark Age types.

That was back then. Now, I am in a different position, happily married with grown up, independent children, retired and financially stable with a whole world of readily accessible, cheap plastic figures at my fingertips. Now when I look at my Riders of Rohan, the paint jobs seem very simple and quite dull and I think it’s time to revisit them and create the army I see in my mind when I read Lord of the Rings.

So having produced some Outriders (see blog of 22^nd March) it is now time to look at the Riders of Rohan, the bulk of the Rohirrim forces. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Javier Charro

 What did Tolkien imagine them to be? Their language is definitely of Anglo-Saxon origin as is evident in the place names. They use many Old English words related to horses; their name for themselves is Éotheod, horse-people, and the names of riders like Éomund, Éomer, and Éowyn begin with the word for "horse", eo Shippey, Tom. The Road to Middle-Earth.

The Ancestors, though, have Gothic themes. This is interesting as they were cultures that were worlds apart. The mostly agricultural, land taming Anglo Saxons renowned for their shield wall infantry tactics and the wild, nomadic, civilisation-destroying cavalry of the Vandals and the Huns. This suggests that a wild nomadic folk invaded and settled down, tilled the earth and built, and kept their horse herds. 

Dernhelm and Meriadoc

Rohan as a kingdom seems to reflect these two extremes and is described “as a land of pastures and lush tall grassland which is frequently windswept” The meadows contain "many hidden pools, and broad acres of sedge waving above wet and treacherous bogs"-the Two Towers. It’s a huge area, Karen Wynn Fonstad in Atlas of Middle Earth calculates it to be 52,763 square miles, slightly larger than England, with a population probably in the range of 400,000-600,000 people across Rohan. http://www.stephenwigmore.com/2012/08/populations-of-middle-earth-lord-of.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

Artist unknown

So, the Kingdom undoubtedly could provide enough in the way of fodder to support the huge horse herds and it sounds as if there is enough water for all those thirsty steeds.

Historically, hordes of mounted barbarians, Huns, Vandals, Mongols have had nomadic life styles as a necessity as they have to move on when all the available grazing has been used. Cossacks and Native Americans were similarly nomadic but benefitting from vast plains, grasslands with plentiful grazing, they were often less itinerant, tending to move around a large area rather than roaming indefinitely towards the next horizon. The idea of a cavalry-based army and an agricultural economy does not come together easily and I can’t think of any historical precedent.

Horses consume 1-2% of their body weight daily in grass/hay, and I guess, they must produce almost as much natural fertiliser! I imagine the Rohirrim would have to move their vast herds regularly and that a lot of the farming resource would be used to produce grain to supplement their diet. A muster of the whole force would soon denude any area of both grass and drinkable water so they would have to keep the horses in small herds scattered across the plains and thus would require considerable time to round them all up.

Rohan in art-any colour you like as long as it's green!

Its easy to imagine such a people adopting a cult of the horse. Rohan has no standing army apart from the Kings Riders and relies on the muster at times of war. When we meet them in the Two Towers , they are at a time of war but have not as yet had a full muster.

So horsey influences, Gothic ancestral roots and Anglo-Saxon names. What should they look like?

The book tells us more about what they were like as people than what they looked like. “They are proud and wilful, but they are true-hearted, generous in thought and deed; bold but not cruel; wise but unlearned, writing no books but singing many songs, after the manner of the children of Men before the Dark Years” The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

 

 

 

Bayeux Tapestry

We know it’s no good asking the Prof as he usually says something like “Its for the reader to imagine what they will, I do not describe artifact” but on this occasion he as given us a clue. “The Rohirrim were not "medieval", in our sense. The styles of the Bayeux Tapestry (made in England) fit them well enough, if one remembers that the kind of tennis-nets [the] soldiers seem to have on are only a clumsy conventional sign for chainmail of small ring” letters 211

It’s actually not such a difficult question to answer. Much as I am not a huge fan of the aesthetic of the movies, I think Peter Jackson actually did a fair job with these guys. They have unique armour and yet appear broadly Anglo Saxon in their look and gear. The symbolism is good and features the colour green and a white horse which is all we really get from the books.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eomer by Alan Lee

The Rohirrim have been depicted by many artists over the years and none of them seem to move far from the idea of mail clad mounted warriors dressed in green with round shields bearing a white horse.

Of the two most notable warriors Tolkien says of Theoden “his white hair was long and thick and fell in great braids from beneath a thin golden circlet set upon his brow. In the centre upon his forehead shone a single white diamond. His beard was laid like snow upon his knees”

And of Eomer "Then one rode forward, a tall man, taller than all the rest; from his helm as a crest a white horsetail flowed." 

 

 

 

 

Oddyseus Liakos

In the Two Towers in the chapter “the Riders of Rohan” Aragorn tells Legolas and Gimli that “they are tall and fair” Legolas states that “yellow is their hair and their leader is very tall”

Then Tolkien describes “a long line of mail clad men” whose” hair flaxen pale in long braids streams behind them”

So…they are a bit Anglo-Saxony, tall, with braided blonde hair and hairy helmets, they don’t wear tennis nets and they sing a lot! 

Next blog-the build!

 

 

 

 

 The charge of the Rohirrim from the Peter Jackson film