A week has now passed since the final day of Tolkien 2019 in Birmingham. Alan and I are both back home, and it’s taken a few days to get over my jet lag and reconnect with real life in the States; which means it’s a good time to look back and write about the experience. But how? How does one encapsulate the almost indescribable experience of five days of Tolkien fandom and fellowship into a single 1500-word blog post?
At first, I thought I might list out one or two highlights from each day, but even that proved to be a daunting task. There were so many highlights that narrowing down the list to a few favorites would feel like a disservice to all the other great things that happened every day but didn’t rise to the top tier. The schedule of events was full to overflowing; while walking the halls of the Burlington Hotel the comment most commonly heard from conference attendees was that there were too many hard choices — we frequently had to skip one great discussion or event to attend another. There were about a half-dozen different ways to spend every hour of every day, from panels and talks to book signings and the coveted random-drawing spots on “koffee klatches” with special guests like Alan Lee. And if by some unlikely happenstance there was nothing going on in a particular time slot that struck your fancy, you could always walk upstairs to the dealers’ rooms to buy a new book or artwork for your collection.
And that’s to say nothing of the evening programming. From the opening of the art exhibition on Tuesday night, to the Puppet State Theatre performance by Richard Medrington of the one-man Leaf By Niggle on Wednesday, all the way through until the masquerade and the phenomenal party on Saturday night (with the four corners of the ballroom decorated in homage to Lothlórien, the Doors of Durin, Meduseld and Bag End) the evening entertainments brought heart to the event, balancing the cerebral proceedings of each day with a welcome dose of frivolity, laughter, and friendship.
It would be impossible to choose a favorite talk of the conference, and I won’t try; but I really enjoyed the plenary sessions from some former guests of the Prancing Pony Podcast. Tom Shippey’s opening talk on the “Heirs of Tolkien” and John Garth’s discussion of “The Two Towers of Birmingham” the next day were both brilliant and entertaining, as always. Dimitra Fimi’s closing talk on “Tolkien, Folklore, and Foxes” was a journey that must be experienced. (Note: many of these sessions were recorded, and are available at the Tolkien Society’s YouTube channel here.)
The Prancing Pony Podcast took the stage three times. Our live recording sessions were on Thursday and Saturday, and we welcomed three conference guests to join us on stage for each of the two sessions. We ended up welcoming a few former guests of the podcast and several first-timers, and while I don’t want to give away the name of every guest you’ll hear when we release that episode at the beginning of Season 4, I will say that Brian Sibley shot a good-natured zinger at Alan that brought the house down, and that a miscommunication on our part forced us to reschedule Ted Nasmith… but he was very gracious about our oversight, and it ended up working out for the best. And yes, now you know two of the names.
And I’m incredibly pleased to say that we have a lot more on the horizon as a result of some conversations we had at Tolkien 2019. We talked to lots of other scholars, artists, and others in the Tolkien community who said they’d love to join us on the show. We can’t say more just yet, but stay tuned. You won’t be disappointed!
I’ve done three conferences now,
and what I’ve seen is that the community of Tolkien fans really is a fellowship.
Our third appearance on stage (well, chronologically the second) was at Thursday night’s open mic, when Alan and I debuted an expanded version of our classic GPS bit with some new character voices. It was tough work getting the bit to a place where we were comfortable with it, but we did our best and took a chance… and it seems to have gone over well. (There is video of the appearance, taken by a friend of the show; it may yet see the light of day.)
We also got a few quick video interviews during the event, which you can see on our Facebook page or on our YouTube channel here. After Dimitra Fimi’s presentation closed the conference, we sat down with her A Secret Vice co-editor Andrew Higgins — who was not only (along with Fimi) one of the first guests we ever had on the show, but is also a listener and patron of the Prancing Pony Podcast — to talk to us for a few minutes about the week he’d had. That was a special treat for me, particularly. Dr. Higgins has been a tremendous supporter of the podcast since the beginning, and it was wonderful to catch up with him as a Tolkien fan and friend.
In fact, that fandom and friendship was a common theme at Tolkien 2019, and my biggest takeaway from the event. There’s a word we use in our community a lot: fellowship. We often use it slightly tongue-in-cheek (like precious), but it really does characterize the Tolkien community in a very important way. I’ve done three conferences of various sizes now, and what I’ve seen at all of them is that our community of Tolkien fans really is a fellowship. All of us — from the shyest newbie struggling through Unfinished Tales, to guests of honor whose books are required reading for serious Tolkienites — are Tolkien fans, first and foremost, and that makes us fellows. My experience has been that everyone is welcomed, and that the hierarchies that separate the “experts” from the “fans” in other fandoms and disciplines just don’t separate us all that much in the Tolkien community. I know a few people who came away from Tolkien 2019 with stories about having pints at the pub with prominent Tolkien scholars (I may have bought a beer for one of my favorite artists). On Sunday afternoon I went on an excursion to Sarehole Mill with a small group of travelers. Among them were people who’ve published important research, or won awards from the Tolkien Society; it was easy to feel like a simple hobbit in the company of wizards. But on that day we were all just fans, geeking out on some Tolkien-related tourist spots.
I wonder if — subconsciously, on some level — that’s why Tolkien fans prefer the word moot as opposed to conference for these events. Obviously, on the surface it’s another Tolkienish word to use in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, what with the Entmoot and all that. And it would certainly make the Professor happy to hear us use it, since it’s a native Germanic word from Old English mōt, unlike the Latin-via-French-derived conference. Like many Germanic words, moot seems (to this native English speaker, anyway) to have a great deal more warmth and life than the slightly sterile and businesslike conference, and that warmth and life is certainly a characteristic of Tolkien moots.
But as I often do, I’m also looking at the etymology of each word, and finding some relevance there as well. The Latin word comes from con-fero, con-ferre, “to bring together”, a word which (unless I’m overthinking it) implies action by some outside force, some invisible authority or hierarchy that has brought the group in question together, almost as if they’d been carried there by eagles. Moot, however, with its relationship to the common verb meet, implies just that: a meeting — either by intention, like a club meeting, or by accident, like a chance meeting by the road. A meeting, of people without regard to position or status or purpose. A meeting, of people of like mind (or unlike mind) who have come together to meet each other.
Yeah, I’m probably overthinking it. But I find it rather poetic.
I’d like to once again thank all of our listeners, whose engagement and feedback makes the Prancing Pony Podcast the best Tolkien podcast this side of Bree. I’d especially like to thank our Fellowship of the Podcast on Patreon, and everyone who bought one of our fundraising T-shirts, whose support made our trip to Birmingham possible in the most literal way. And of course, thanks to The Tolkien Society for hosting Tolkien 2019, and making it an incredibly wonderful and memorable event.
As I mentioned earlier, many of the talks from the conference moot are available on the Tolkien Society YouTube channel here. The Prancing Pony Podcast video interviews are available on our Facebook page, and are also now up on our YouTube channel. Our live-recorded sessions from Birmingham will be released on September 15 as Episode 136, kicking off Season 4.
Until then, you can write to us at Barliman’s Bag anytime, or find us on Facebook or Twitter. We’ll be posting more on Instagram soon, too. So stay tuned… we’ll be back again very soon!
The Tolkienguide.com has a page with all the available videos from Tolkien 2019, which I am updating, including a video not included in this excellent post, https://www.tolkienguide.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=22667#forumpost22667
As a friend of the show, hopefully, the GPS video from the event could be made available at some point, it is very exclusive so probably should be just for exclusive members 🙂
We’re working on a plan, Trotter… thanks for capturing that moment for posterity. 😉
And thank you for the link to the page on Tolkienguide.com! We’ll put a link to that in our show notes for Episode 136 when it comes out.
It’s been a delight to finally meet up with you people and I promise, I will get past episode 29 and catch up with you gents – one day!
Keep the good times rollin’ – and see you at the next amazing Tolkien event!
We look forward to when you catch up to us, Marcel! It was a pleasure meeting with you, and I’ll definitely see you soon.
And of course while conference implies being brought together by an outside force, and moot implies a meeting by chance, we must remember to add the qualifier “as those who dwell in Middle-Earth would call it.”
An excellent point!
Delightful–so good you are pondering again, Shawn! This statement particularly grabbed me: “Like many Germanic words, moot seems (to this native English speaker, anyway) to have a great deal more warmth and life than the slightly sterile and businesslike conference.” The way you went on to describe Tolkien 2019 reminds me of what C.S. Lewis wrote in The Four Loves on friendship, where he obviously was thinking about Tolkien and the other Inklings: “In a circle of true Friends…no one cares…about anyone else’s family, profession, class, income, race, or previous history. Of course you will get to know about most of these in the end. But casually. They will come out bit by bit, to furnish an illustration or an analogy…never for their own sake. That is the kingliness of Friendship. We meet like sovereign princes of independent states, abroad, on neutral ground, freed from our contexts…. Each member of the circle feels, in his secret heart, humbled before all the rest. Sometimes he wonders what he is doing there among his betters. He is [blessed] beyond desert to be in such company. Especially when the whole group is together, each bringing out all that is best, wisest, or funniest in all the others. Those are the golden sessions…an Affection mellowed by the years enfolds us. Life—natural life—has no better gift to give. Who could have deserved it?”
Thank you, Allacin! That’s very well said by C.S. Lewis, and quite appropriate to the feeling of being at one of these events.
Glad you got to see Sarehole Mill after the confer… I mean moot. And thanks for the word-nerdery on “moot”.
It was a lot of fun! And it was great meeting you at the moot. 🙂
A minor point, I wonder on selecting “conference” as the alternative to “moot”. I may be wrong, being non-native English speaker, but it seems to me that the preferred term for fan gatherings is “convention”. While this is also of Latin origin, I think it doesn’t have this implied meaning of someone actively bringing people together.
Also, fun meeting you there. And a great event in general. Probably first heard of it on this podcast, and if not for the podcast I probably would have missed it.
It was great meeting you, Yariv! That’s true, fan gatherings tend to be referred to as “conventions”, though for some reason it seems to me that Tolkien events are more often referred to as “conferences” in mixed company (i.e., among people who wouldn’t know what a “moot” is), and that may be due to the proportion of academic presentations at them. But you’re right, the other type of “con” (convention) implies simply “coming together” (from con-venire) without my harebrained idea of an outside force. 🙂