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allthingsfinnish:

To Christopher Bretherton 16 July 1964 76 Sandfield Road, Headington, Oxford

Dear Bretherton,
….I made the acquaintance of languages not usually studied by the modern English, each with a powerfully individual phonetic aesthetic: Welsh, Finnish, and the remnants of fourth-century Gothic. Finnish also provided a glimpse of an entirely different mythological world. The germ of my attempt to write legends of my own to fit my private languages was the tragic tale of the hapless Kullervo in the Finnish Kalevala. It remains a major matter in the legends of the First Age (which I hope to publish as The Silmarillion), though as ‘The Children of Húrin’ it is entirely changed except in the tragic ending…

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Letters of J.R.R.Tolkien.  A selection edited by Humphrey Carpenter with the assistance of Christopher Tolkien. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

heartofoshun:

Art work – Earendil and Elwing approach Valinor by Donato Giancola

IgnobleBard sent me a link to an  interesting article from The Guardian:
Birth of a new world: the Tolkien poem that marks the genesis of Middle-earth by John Garth

He begins with:

“On this day in September 1914, as war broke out, Tolkien created the mythical land that led him to The Lord of the Rings. Here’s the story of the poem that changed his life.”

But the punch line is, “That seminal opening line ‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit’ is usually seen as Tolkien’s breakthrough moment. The real honour should go to ‘Éarendel sprang up from the Ocean’s cup’.” Definitely worth reading.

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