Are There Castles in Middle-earth?

Q: Are There Castles in Middle-earth?

ANSWER: Technically, yes, there are many castles in Middle-earth. However, J.R.R. Tolkien used the word “castle” very sparingly, removing it from most of the texts where he originally used it. For example, in early drafts of The Lord of the Rings there are a few mentions of castles, but the word was eventually replaced with Elvish words such as barad and minas. The word “castles” is found one time in the published Hobbit, in the chapter where Thorin and Company pass through the evil words near Rivendell (in the region that was later named “The Angle” and “Rhudaur” in The Lord of the Rings). These castles were the fortresses built by the evil men who seized control over Rhudaur, or by the Numenorean lords before them.

Christopher Tolkien describes Thu’s island fortress (named Minas Tirith in The Silmarillion) as a castle in several annotative passages in The Lays of Beleriand and The Shaping of Middle-earth. It is clear that both Christopher and his father understood the various fortresses of Middle-earth to be “castles”, but perhaps out of a desire to seem less “medieval” (and more “elvish”) Tolkien avoided using the word very much. That is not to say that Tolkien was trying to avoid the medieval imagery with which many readers are familiar — rather, he was trying to make the castles seem more general in nature, less like artifacts of Medieval European civilization and more like artifacts of an ancient, forgotten civilization.

Medieval castles, for the most part, were based on relatively simple designs that grew in complexity over the centuries. But the word “castle” is traced back to the Latin word castellum, meaning “fortified village”. In the ancient world among both the great Mediterranean civilizations and the older, more barbaric cultures (including many cultures from the 2nd and 3rd Millennia BCE) there are many archaeological examples of fortified villages and towns, as well as purely military fortresses. Their designs varied but their functions were similar to those of medieval castles.

In time of invasion the local people would evacuate to the nearest fortification regardless of whether that was a walled town (or city) or a fortress on a hill. Architectural styles for castles and fortified towns diverged all across Europe and other parts of the world. They used wood, stone, dirt, trenches, square walls, curved walls, square towers, round towers, etc. Tolkien’s Elvish and Numenorean architectures followed many of these designs, although he certainly incorporated elements of fantastic design as well (such as the immense black walls of Orthanc and Minas Tirith that seemed like they had been carved by giants out of mountains).

Sauron’s fortress of Barad-dur may be thought of as the largest and most complex of the fortresses in Middle-earth (Angband and Utumno were underground fortresses using mountains for defensive works). Barad-dur is only briefly described and it sounds very much like a massive walled city. It would be difficult to argue that Tolkien meant for the reader to think of Barad-dur as “a castle”.

But the fact that he used the word “barad” to refer to much smaller fortresses, and the word “minas” to refer to both fortified cities and smaller fortresses, may suggest that Tolkien concluded the word “castle” was simply inadequate to convey the Elvish sense of a fortified location that could be either a walled city or a military installation. In truth, the distinction between the two types of communities seems to have been lost. Orthanc was clearly intended to be a military fortress from its foundation, but it was capable of supporting a large civilian population within its walls and was in fact used as a civilian community on more than one occasion.

There are other words, such as (g)obel, which could also be translated as “castle” even though they are clearly associated with smaller communities (villages in the case of (g)obel). The various words ((g)obel, barad, and minas) appear to reflect disparate linguistic traditions, even though they are all “Sindarin” words. Though barad is often translated as “tower” it clearly refers to something more than simply a tall spiring building (what we normally think of as a “tower”). Barad Eithel, the great fortress guarding the passage between Hithlum and Anfauglith, was certainly not a mere building reaching up into the sky.

While there is plenty of room for speculation and extrapolation regarding the evolution of Elvish words across the ages and the many cultures that adapted them, I think it’s clear that the reader is justified in identifying many of the castle-like fortresses with “castles” and in accepting that many of the fortified towns and villages are modeled on real historical fortifications that may have grown into towns and cities.

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