In The Father Christmas Letters, which Tolkien wrote for his children, Red Gnomes are helpful creatures who come from Norway to the North Pole to assist Father Christmas and his Elves in fighting the wicked Goblins.

He wrote, in Letter 131 of The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, " I dislike Allegory.

Tolkien wrote that myths held " fundamental things ".

As Tolkien wrote, "... The episode of the theft arose naturally ( and almost inevitably ) from the circumstances.

Tolkien wrote the later story in much less humorous tones and infused it with more complex moral and philosophical themes.

Many of the thematic and stylistic differences arose because Tolkien wrote The Hobbit as a story for children, and The Lord of the Rings for the same audience, who had subsequently grown up since its publication.

Tolkien wrote in his essay " On Fairy Stories " that the terms " fantasy " and " enchantment " are connected to not only "... the satisfaction of certain primordial human desires ..." but also "... the origin of language and of the mind.

Tolkien wrote, many years later: " it was like discovering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before.

Humphrey Carpenter in his 1977 biography relates that Tolkien owned a postcard entitled Der Berggeist (), and on the paper cover in which he kept it, he wrote " the origin of Gandalf ".

" Tolkien wrote to W. H. Auden that The Marvellous Land of Snergs " was probably an unconscious source-book for the Hobbits " and he told an interviewer that the word hobbit " might have been associated with Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt " ( like hobbits, George Babbitt enjoys the comforts of his home ).

Frodo becomes in some ways the symbolic representation of the conscience of Hobbits, a point made explicitly in the story " Leaf by Niggle " which Tolkien wrote at the same time as the first nine chapters of The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien once wrote that he " did not intend the steed of the Witch-king to be what is now called a ' pterodactyl '", while acknowledging that it was " obviously ... pterodactylic and owes much " to the " new ... mythology of the ' Prehistoric '", and might even be " a last survivor of older geological eras.

( Tolkien wrote of Boromir's journey that " the courage and hardihood required is not fully recognized in the narrative ".

Tolkien describes Boromir's appearance as reflecting his Númenórean descent: tall ( Tolkien wrote he was 6 ' 4 " or 193 cm ), fair, dark-haired, and grey-eyed.

In a 1951 letter, Tolkien himself wrote about " the Byzantine City of Minas Tirith.

Tolkien wrote in a private letter:

Tolkien wrote that he gave up his mission as one of the Wizards by becoming too obsessed with animals and plants.

Sometime before 1969 Tolkien wrote the essay Of Dwarves and Men, in which detailed consideration was given to the Dwarves ' use of language, that the names given in the stories were of Northern Mannish origin, and Khuzdûl being their own secret tongue and the naming of the Seven Houses of the Dwarves.

In response to a query about clothing styles in Middle-earth, Tolkien wrote:

In 1914 when he was studying at King Edward's School, Birmingham, Tolkien wrote a poem The Voyage of Earendel the Evening Star which was inspired by the " Crist " poem of Cynewulf.

Eldamar is " Elvenhome ", the " coastal region of Aman, settled by the Elves ", wrote Tolkien.

Tolkien wrote at least four versions of the oath itself, as found in The History of Middle-earth.

In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien wrote that Mithril is found only in Khazad-dûm ( Moria ) in Middle-earth, where it is mined by the Dwarves.

" Another joke puts a question concerning the definition of blunderbuss to " the four wise clerks of Oxenford " ( a reference to Chaucer's Clerk ; Tolkien had worked for Henry Bradley, one of the four main editors of the Oxford English Dictionary ):

Tolkien, however, is not simply skimming historical sources for effect: linguistic styles, especially the relationship between the modern and ancient, has been seen to be one of the major themes explored by the story.

" Because we grew up on comic books and the Tolkien trilogy, one of the things we're interested in is bringing serial fiction to cinema ," Lana has said.

J. R. R. Tolkien is one of many scholars who have studied and promoted the Mercian dialect of Old English, and introduced various Mercian terms into his legendarium – especially in relation to the Kingdom of Rohan, otherwise known as the Mark ( a name cognate with Mercia ).

* Naffarin was the first language Tolkien constructed by himself during his adolescence ; only one sentence remains which shows a Spanish affinity.

" This theft of a cup, Smaug's knowledge of every item in the hoard, and the dragon's ensuing rampage all echo the story of Beowulf, on which Tolkien was a noted expert and which he described as one of his " most valued sources " for The Hobbit.

It has three gates, including the one Tolkien described and two which cannot be closed, to allow those playing as invading forces to easily enter the stronghold.

Tolkien describes them as " fell beasts ", though Tolkien applies the adjective fell (" fierce, cruel ") to a variety of other creatures throughout The Lord of the Rings — even at one point to Gandalf.

The work was accompanied by two essays, also by Tolkien, one before and one after the main work.

Tolkien replied that he was unaware of having heard the word before, and that the root Ond went back to an account he had read as a child mentioning ond (" stone ") as one of only two words known of the pre-Celtic languages of Britain.

As he later recalled, Tolkien thought about " adventures " that the Company would meet on their way to Mordor and considered employing " Stone-Men " as one of them ; other preserved notes mention a " city of stone and civilized men ", its siege and a " Land of Ond ".

Tolkien called Sam the " chief hero " of the saga in one of his letters: he places special emphasis on Sam's " rustic love " for Rosie, a union that serves to establish a family in which allusions to Elvish wonders ( embodied in Sam's daughter Elanor ) are combined with the best qualities of traditional Shire-life.

Tolkien claimed to be genuinely surprised when, in March 1956, he received a letter from one Sam Gamgee, who had heard that his name was in The Lord of the Rings but had not read the book.

The Vala Yavanna forced the wizard Saruman to accept Radagast as a companion, which, Tolkien says, may have been one of the reasons Saruman was contemptuous of him, to the point of scornfully calling him " simple " and " a fool ".

Tolkien names only one female, Dís.

She is one of a few instances, along with Tom Bombadil and the Cats of Queen Berúthiel, where Tolkien does not provide a clear background for an element of his fiction.

Tolkien was also aware of the name's Germanic cognates ( Old Norse Aurvandill, Lombardic Auriwandalo ), and the question why the Anglo-Saxon one rather than the Lombardic or Proto-Germanic form should be taken up in the mythology is alluded to in The Notion Club Papers.

The similarity to Atlantis has led some to conclude that Akallabêth is one very long setup for what Tolkien would have considered a delightful pun, but Tolkien described it as merely a happy coincidence.

However, Tolkien frequently disliked the idea that his works were allegorical, saying in the foreword to the 2nd edition of The Lord of the Rings, " But I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations ..." and " I think that many confuse ' applicability ' with ' allegory '; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.

Further, Tolkien calls a fire-breathing dragon in the non-Middle-earth story Farmer Giles of Ham a " hot " one.