Dunlendings - 01/20/04 07:14 PM
Note: This question and discussion originally appeared on another message-board, and prompted a friend to suggest that it may be of interest to people here.
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In the film "The Two Towers", we see a village in the Westfold of Rohan being attacked by men in league with Saruman. These are men of Dunland, who live in the forests and hills in the Eastern part of Enedwaith.
The back story is that when the plains of Rohan were colonised by the Rohirrim, the previous occupants were displaced to the margins in the north and west. They maintained a hatred and resentment of the Rohirrim, whom they regarded as trespassers, hence their willingness to ally with Saruman against them.
The Dunland was a part of the realm of Gondor at its height, but we are told that it was of little concern to the Kings, and certainly the people were never assimilated.
The Rohirrim and their culture are portrayed in the book and films as something straight out of Beowulf - they are clearly a Germanic tribe similar to the Danes or the Saxons. They originally came from up the Great River, between the Gladden and the Carrock. Their language, like that of the other Northmen such as the Beornings and the men of Dale, is related to that of the men of the West, and hence to the Westron or Common Speech, which is represented as English in the book and films. The language of Rohan is clearly a North Germanic language - in fact the word "hobbit" originates from Rohan "holbytla", which would be recognisable to a speaker of a modern Scandinavian language as meaning "hole-builder".
Westron originated as a trading creole in the Numenorean colonies on the west coast, and its basic structure is that of Adunaic, the language of Numenor. The relationship with the languages of the Northmen therefore dates from before the exile, nearly 6500 years before the events of Lord of the Rings. Yet the relationship remains evident, suggesting a rate of divergence much slower than that in the real-world Germanic languages.
The language of the Dunlendings is described as alien, unrelated or only distantly related to that of Rohan or Gondor. The only word of their language recorded is "forgoil", their word for the people of Rohan, which Tolkien helpfully(?) glosses as "strawheads".
Now "forgoil" is immediately suggestive of the Irish/Scottish "fir gil" (= bright men) or "fir gall" (=foreign men). This raises the suspicion that the Dunlending raiders on the Westfold of Rohan are analogous to Celtic tribesmen displaced by Saxon migration to Britain from the 6th century. The name "Dunland" is not related to the Sindarin "Dunn" meaning west, but comes from the swarthy appearance of the inhabitants, just as the Welsh appeared swarthy to the English.
I did some searching on the web for strings "Dunlendings Celts" and "Dunlendings Celtic" and found a number of websites that tended to support the idea. In addition, some of them pointed out that the names of the villages Bree (Ir., Sc.: brí, bré - steep hillside), Combe (W.: cwm - valley), and Archet/Chetwood (W.: coed - forest) are Celtic. The relevance is that the race of hobbits known as Stoors lived for a time in Dunland, speaking the local language, before settling in Breeland and the eastern part of the Shire and adopting the Common Speech.
And a later correction: it was the men of Bree who originated in Dunland, and were the source of these Celtic names. The hobbits of Breeland lived in the village of Staddle, which is the only village of Breeland with an English name.
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In the film "The Two Towers", we see a village in the Westfold of Rohan being attacked by men in league with Saruman. These are men of Dunland, who live in the forests and hills in the Eastern part of Enedwaith.
The back story is that when the plains of Rohan were colonised by the Rohirrim, the previous occupants were displaced to the margins in the north and west. They maintained a hatred and resentment of the Rohirrim, whom they regarded as trespassers, hence their willingness to ally with Saruman against them.
The Dunland was a part of the realm of Gondor at its height, but we are told that it was of little concern to the Kings, and certainly the people were never assimilated.
The Rohirrim and their culture are portrayed in the book and films as something straight out of Beowulf - they are clearly a Germanic tribe similar to the Danes or the Saxons. They originally came from up the Great River, between the Gladden and the Carrock. Their language, like that of the other Northmen such as the Beornings and the men of Dale, is related to that of the men of the West, and hence to the Westron or Common Speech, which is represented as English in the book and films. The language of Rohan is clearly a North Germanic language - in fact the word "hobbit" originates from Rohan "holbytla", which would be recognisable to a speaker of a modern Scandinavian language as meaning "hole-builder".
Westron originated as a trading creole in the Numenorean colonies on the west coast, and its basic structure is that of Adunaic, the language of Numenor. The relationship with the languages of the Northmen therefore dates from before the exile, nearly 6500 years before the events of Lord of the Rings. Yet the relationship remains evident, suggesting a rate of divergence much slower than that in the real-world Germanic languages.
The language of the Dunlendings is described as alien, unrelated or only distantly related to that of Rohan or Gondor. The only word of their language recorded is "forgoil", their word for the people of Rohan, which Tolkien helpfully(?) glosses as "strawheads".
Now "forgoil" is immediately suggestive of the Irish/Scottish "fir gil" (= bright men) or "fir gall" (=foreign men). This raises the suspicion that the Dunlending raiders on the Westfold of Rohan are analogous to Celtic tribesmen displaced by Saxon migration to Britain from the 6th century. The name "Dunland" is not related to the Sindarin "Dunn" meaning west, but comes from the swarthy appearance of the inhabitants, just as the Welsh appeared swarthy to the English.
I did some searching on the web for strings "Dunlendings Celts" and "Dunlendings Celtic" and found a number of websites that tended to support the idea. In addition, some of them pointed out that the names of the villages Bree (Ir., Sc.: brí, bré - steep hillside), Combe (W.: cwm - valley), and Archet/Chetwood (W.: coed - forest) are Celtic. The relevance is that the race of hobbits known as Stoors lived for a time in Dunland, speaking the local language, before settling in Breeland and the eastern part of the Shire and adopting the Common Speech.
And a later correction: it was the men of Bree who originated in Dunland, and were the source of these Celtic names. The hobbits of Breeland lived in the village of Staddle, which is the only village of Breeland with an English name.
