Our theme for the month of October is “This Day in History.”

On the evening of October 6 of the three-thousand and eighteenth year of the Third Age of Middle-earth, a camp was attacked, a Morgul-wound was inflicted, and a cry of O Elbereth! Gilthoniel! echoed across Eriador.

On October 7, the damage was assessed: the injury was mortal, beyond the restorative powers of the healing plant athelas. The Ring-bearer and his companions made their dreadful way south, across the watched Road and into the grey thickets beyond. It was still a fortnight’s journey to safety in Rivendell.

All the written record tells of October 8 is this: “Four days passed, without the ground or the scene changing much, except that behind them Weathertop slowly sank, and before them the distant mountains loomed a little nearer.” 

Later historians have calculated the company’s pace during this four-day stretch: eleven hours of walking each day, covering about nineteen miles in that time. No doubt a historical trigonometrist could measure the percentage of Weathertop that fell below the horizon each hour, though that study has yet to be published.

We know that on the second of these unmarked days, help was dispatched: the elf Glorfindel left Rivendell on October 9, and on the 11th he left a sign that the Ring-bearer’s company would later find. 

But beyond these few clues, we don’t know what it felt like to live October 8: what patterns the anxious travelers saw in the clouds, what songs they sang to warm their hearts, what roots they stumbled over while letting their attention wander. We know Frodo’s pain from his wound was growing, but we don’t know whether it was sharp or dull, whether conversation was a distraction or an irritant, whether it flared up when his pony stepped to the left or to the right.

Historical narratives (of both the fictional and nonfictional types) often feature these swaths of unmarked days: a critical event happens, then life goes on, then another event strikes, then more life. Even historians who revel in documenting the textures of daily life (and boy could you include Tolkien in this category) cannot include everything—some days are judged less important, less worth remembering, or simply less capable of being remembered. This isn’t a fault in our stories, but it is a sign of their persistent incompleteness.

The next year, T.A. 3019, October 8 was again unremarkable. The Ring had been destroyed in March, and after a busy summer of weddings, coronations, and funerals (you know how it goes), Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin, and Gandalf had returned to Rivendell. They left heading westward on October 5, which means October 8, though unmentioned in the log books, found them not far from where they’d been the previous year: in the desolate land between Weathertop and the Ford of Bruinen. Two days earlier, on the 6th, Frodo had started to feel pain in his shoulder again—the world had been saved, but all had not been healed, least of all him.

What was it like to cover that same ground, dread replaced with melancholy? Did dark shapes haunt the corners of their vision, even though they knew the Ringwraiths had been destroyed? Did they trip over any of the same roots, or had their footing strengthened with experience?

The next October, Frodo fell ill again. On October 6, to be specific, which means he likely spent October 8 once again in the unremembered haze of sickness, or at least of boredom.

That was the last October 8 Frodo would spend on Middle-earth. The following September, he sailed from the Grey Havens to Valinor, and the Third Age ended.

There are always more stories after: the Shire without Frodo, Gondor with a new king, the patterns made by lava cooling on the broken face of Mount Doom.

But there are also always more stories within: there are October 8s, in the Third Age and today in the Seventh, that resurface when we walk familiar ground, narrate our past adventures, or pick at the scars on our shoulders. Remembered or not, these stories of monotony or drudgery—or even of comfortable, day-to-day contentment—stay with us.

Sources

Karen Wynn Fonstad, “Pathways,” in The Atlas of Middle-earth
J. R. R. Tolkien, Appendix B: The Tale of Years, in The Return of the King
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Photo of the filming site for the Weathertop sequence by Flickr user Robert Engberg (CC BY 2.0 DEED)

Josh Parks

Josh Parks graduated from Calvin in 2018 with majors in English and music, and he is currently a PhD student in religious studies at the University of Virginia. When not writing, he can be found learning the alto recorder, watching obscure Disney movies, and making excruciating puns.