{"id":35029,"date":"2018-02-19T06:30:31","date_gmt":"2018-02-18T17:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=35029"},"modified":"2018-01-25T22:20:59","modified_gmt":"2018-01-25T09:20:59","slug":"out-of-middle-earth-aka-living-in-new-zealand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2018\/02\/19\/out-of-middle-earth-aka-living-in-new-zealand\/","title":{"rendered":"Out Of Middle Earth (AKA Living In New Zealand)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>For any fan of epic fantasy, Tolkien\u2019s Middle Earth has to be one of the definitive fantastic worlds—and since Sir Peter Jackson made the three The Lord of the Rings<\/em> (LoTR) films here in New Zealand (and followed up with The Hobbit<\/em> project) I often get comments to the effect that being a fantasy author must be synonymous with living in New Zealand. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Yet as\u00a0a fan of epic fantasy growing up in this country, I always conceived Middle Earth—especially the Shire, but also regions such as Rohan—as very much rural England. A far cry from New Zealand\u2019s alpine South Island and a North Island that ranges from the arid central desert to the semi-tropical north—<\/em>-or so I thought! Whereas now <\/em>there are very few parts of the country that cannot lay a claim to being \u201cMiddle Earth,\u201d from Hobbiton to the Westfold of Rohan, to the Gates of Argonath.<\/p>\n

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credit: B Miller<\/p><\/div>\n

Although it is not the only landscape—or more correctly, series of landscapes—that has influenced my own Fantasy world of Haarth, New Zealand has undoubtedly been a major influencer on my worldbuilding.<\/p>\n

For example, not long after The Heir Of Night<\/em> <\/a>was first published, a friend said (something like):\u00a0 \u201cYou know that part in Heir, where Malian and Kalan cross the river into Jaransor and there\u2019s rose briars and thorn scrub on the hillside, and thyme growing wild beneath their horses hooves? I couldn\u2019t help thinking, \u2018that does seem a lot like Central Otago.\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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Central Otago aka the “Westfold of Rohan<\/p><\/div>\n

And, of course, it is\u2014although not the part that filmgoers will immediately recognize as the Westfold of Rohan from the early sequences in The Two Towers<\/em> (LoTR2). But fairly<\/em> close by, all the same. So\u2014my friend then demanded\u2014does this mean that all of the Jaransor landscape is pretty much Central Otago?<\/p>\n

To which I had to say \u201cno.\u201d There were several other real-world landscapes that influenced my concept of Jaransor. For example:<\/p>\n

\u201cShe walked on alone to the edge of the trees, staring out over wild terrain to the west and the steep, bush-clad heights bathed in evening amber, and was struck again by the immensity of the land, and a sky that held nothing except the falcon\u2019s hovering speck.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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Upper Moutere area<\/p><\/div>\n

In this scene, what Malian sees is very close to the view from the heights of Australia\u2019s Great Dividing Range\u2014a very long way from Central Otago! I’ve spoken before, too, about how the canals of Ij, in The Gathering Of The Lost<\/em><\/a>, were influenced by the khlongs of Bangkok, while the Tenneward and the Argent Vale in Emer were shaped by the area around Nelson, back in New Zealand again, particularly the Waimea Plain and areas such as Upper Moutere.<\/p>\n

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Still Otago, but tussock, not thyme…<\/p><\/div>\n

I say “shaped” and “influenced” deliberately, though, because all world building in my fantasy writing is an amalgam: of real places that I have<\/em> seen; of places I have not seen but can imagine from descriptions \/ photo \/ film; and other places from history that I can only visualize as they may once have been.<\/p>\n

In these latter cases the worldbuilding imagination may be inspired by an account, but more often it is sparked by the idea<\/em> of what that place once was.<\/p>\n

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Hill Tower, Jaransor; art by Peter Fitzpatrick<\/p><\/div>\n

Ultimately, too, there is the purely fantastic\u2014the leap of imagination that can springboard from the wild thyme of Central Otago, to the vistas seen from the Great Dividing Range, to ruined towers which have shadow structures that exist out of time, in a chain of hills that may themselves be sentient and drive the unwary mad \u2026<\/p>\n

I suspect that Tolkien\u2019s Middle Earth evolved from a similar amalgam of the real through to the purely imaginary.<\/p>\n

But it is undoubtedly very special, as a writer of fantasy fiction\u2014and epic fantasy, what\u2019s more, in the case of The Wall of Night <\/em><\/a>series\u2014to live and write within the landscapes in which the film versions of The Lord of the Rings<\/em> were so vividly imagined—even if they are not<\/em> the English landscapes that I visualised when first reading the series. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

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Gates of Argonath country…<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For any fan of epic fantasy, Tolkien\u2019s Middle Earth has to be one of the definitive fantastic worlds—and since Sir Peter Jackson made the three The Lord of the Rings (LoTR) films here in New Zealand (and followed up with The Hobbit project) I often get comments to the effect that being a fantasy author […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,19,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-my-books","category-funstuff","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35029"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35044,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35029\/revisions\/35044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}