Coffee in Middle-earth
Experiencing the Fantastic in the Mundane
Greetings Tolkien Poppers!
I hope that this post finds you well and caffeinated! Today, we will be talking about coffee in Middle-earth. Yes, even Hobbits and Dwarves require a bit of bean water to get through their days. Before diving into the details of coffee in Tolkien’s legendarium, I wanted to give a shoutout to a sponsor of Tolkien Pop!, Comics on Coffee! They’re an amazing specialty coffee company that is family owned and aims to deliver premium coffee at an affordable price to people who love comics, heroes, and The Lord of the Rings. They also work directly with farmers and emphasize ethical fair trade practices so others in the coffee trade will do the same. Their coffees range from light roasts to dark roasts to flavored coffees, so they really do have something for everyone. Comics on Coffee also has licensed coffees from DC Comics and The Lord of the Rings from New Line Cinema. I particularly love their The Lord of the Rings: The Baggins Blend, which is a blend of Brazilian and Nicaraguan coffees. You can use my link to get yourself some amazing and geeky coffee: https://comicsoncoffees.com/tolkienpop
Now onto our favorite Bagginses’ brews!
Coffee is only mentioned twice in Tolkien’s legendarium and they are both referenced in The Hobbit only. While the Dwarves unexpectedly drop into Bilbo’s home, some of them demand different delicacies, food, and coffee! So much so that Bilbo has to put a jug on the hearth to accommodate the number of requests. Now, this reality of Bilbo having coffee in his stores is surprising; partly because Tolkien’s legendarium is a sort of pre-history set primarily in Europe and coffee wasn’t popular in Europe until the 17th century. The other surprising aspect is that Tolkien tried to make his works as compatible with history as possible. Now, Tolkien wrote The Hobbit before he had decided to truly connect it with his already existing legendarium and did not know that he would write the sequel until his publishers asked him for one.
After Tolkien published The Lord of the Rings, he attempted to rewrite his epic legends, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings so that they would further align with one another. In The History of The Hobbit, John D. Rateliff gives us the rewritten version of The Hobbit, where Tolkien attempted to replace references to non-native items such as tomatoes with local foods like pickles. Tolkien did replace the word coffee with cider, but ultimately decided to let coffee stay in future editions of The Hobbit. Why? Walter S. Judd and Graham A. Judd give an interesting answer in their book Flora of Middle-earth: Plants of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Legendarium:
“...[Tolkien] considered the presence of coffee in Middle-earth as representing an independent, and earlier, introduction from the mountains of northeastern Africa–a plant brought into lands controlled by Gondor as a result of its trade with Haradwaith and Khand. Transport from the Americas, as would have been necessary in the case of tomatoes the imaginative landscape of the Third Age. Additionally, he may have thought that coffee (in contrast to the tomato) was more in keeping with the essentially English culture of the Shire.”
Tolkien talks about the Shire as representing a rural Victorian England, a sort of anachronistic connection between the reader and his legendarium. The mundane and modern domestic pleasures are not just out-of-place literary devices, but bridges that provide us an entryway into the realm of Faerie. We can escape to Middle-earth and find familiar comforts that help us appreciate these comforts more fully when we return from our secondary world adventure. This sense of recovering a more complete vision of the world for the purpose of better cooperating with Creation has a literal impact on my senses. Every time I smell a cup of coffee, I am reminded of Bag End and how every part of life is precious and that to truly live life to the fullest, we must enter into the beauty of our lives and fight for the future of its survival in the real world. Every time I take a sip of that wonderful potion that keeps me warm and caffeinated, I am moved to face the day like Aragorn, Bilbo, and Gandalf. These feelings of inspiration are not limited to coffee by any means. Think of the woods, a cup of wine or ale, or the wonderful experience of smoking pipes with your best friends. All these things can bring us closer to the world and together. Coffee is just the superior sensory portal into Tolkien’s fantastic world ;)
Thanks for reading today’s post! Don’t forget that I’ll also be at Theology Beer Camp in Denver, CO on October 17-19 and you can get $25 off your ticket when you checkout with the promo code TOLKIENRING. Hope to see you there!
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/theology-camp-the-return-of-the-god-pods-tickets-824208298207
