People , from where according to the Tolkien scholar
Tom Shippey the
emblem of the House of Éorl – a "white horse upon green" – is derived. The Rohirrim are distantly related to the
Dúnedain of
Gondor, having descended from the same place. Unlike the inhabitants of Gondor, who are portrayed as enlightened and highly civilized, the Rohirrim are shown as being at a lower level of enlightenment. The names and many details of Rohirric culture are derived from Germanic cultures, particularly that of the
Anglo-Saxons and their Old English language, towards which Tolkien felt a strong affinity. Anglo-Saxon England was defeated by the cavalry of the Normans at the
Battle of Hastings, and some Tolkien scholars have suggested that the Rohirrim are Tolkien's wishful version of an Anglo-Saxon society that retained a "rider culture", and would have been able to resist such an invasion. The Tolkien scholar
Tom Shippey notes that Tolkien derived the
emblem of the House of Éorl, a "white horse upon green", from the
Uffington White Horse carved into the grass of the
chalk downs in England. Tolkien saw this as
a parallel with the real-world relationship between Old English and
Gothic. In response to a query about clothing styles in
Middle-earth, Tolkien wrote:
Horses and warfare armour The armies of Rohan were largely horsemen. The basic tactical unit was the
éored, Old English for "a unit of cavalry, a troop", which at the time of the
War of the Ring had a nominal strength of 120 riders. In time of war, every able man was obliged to join the Muster of Rohan. Rohan was bound by the Oath of Éorl to help
Gondor in times of peril, and the latter asked for their aid through the giving of the
Red Arrow. This has a historical antecedent in the Old English poem
Elene, in which
Constantine the Great summoned an army of mounted
Visigoths to his aid against the
Huns by sending an arrow as a "token of war". Gondor could also call the Rohirrim in need by lighting the
warning beacons of Gondor, seven signal fires along the White Mountains from
Minas Tirith to the Rohan border:
Amon Dîn,
Eilenach,
Nardol,
Erelas,
Min-Rimmon,
Calenhad and
Halifirien. like those between Gondor and Rohan were once used in England, as at
Beacon Hill, Leicestershire. At the start of the
War of the Ring a Full Muster would have been over 12,000 riders. Among the horses of the Rohirrim were the famed
mearas, the noblest and fastest horses that ever roamed
Arda. It was because of the close affiliation with horses, both in war and peace, that they received their name.
Language Tolkien generally called the language simply "the language of Rohan" or "of the Rohirrim". The adjectival form "Rohirric" is common; Tolkien once also used "Rohanese". The Rohirrim called their homeland the
Riddermark, a modernization by Tolkien of Old English
Riddena-mearc, meaning, according to the Index to
The Lord of the Rings, "the border country of the knights"; also
Éo-marc, the
Horse-mark, or simply the
Mark. They call themselves the
Éorlingas, the Sons of Éorl. Tolkien rendered the language of the Riders of Rohan,
Rohirric, as the
Mercian dialect of Old English. Even words and phrases that were printed in
modern English showed a strong Old English influence. This solution occurred to Tolkien when he was searching for an explanation of the
Eddaic names of the dwarves already published in
The Hobbit. Tolkien, a
philologist, with a special interest in
Germanic languages,
pretended that the names and phrases of Old English were translated from Rohirric, just as the English used in
The Shire was supposedly translated from Middle-earth's
Westron or Common Speech. The Riders' names for the cunningly-built tower of Isengard, Orthanc, and for the Ents, the tree-giants of Fangorn forest, are similarly Old English, both being found in the phrase
orþanc enta geweorc, "cunning work of giants" in the poem
The Ruin, though Shippey suggests that Tolkien may have chosen to read the phrase also as "Orthanc, the Ent's fortress". In
The Two Towers, chapter 6, the Riders of Rohan are introduced before they are seen, by
Aragorn, who chants in the language of the Rohirrim words "in a slow tongue unknown to the
Elf and the
Dwarf", a
lai that
Legolas senses "is laden with the sadness of Mortal
Men". The song is called the
Lament of the Rohirrim. To achieve a resonant sense of the lost past, the now-legendary time of a peaceful alliance of the Horse-lords with the realm of
Gondor, Tolkien adapted the short
Ubi sunt ("Where are they?") passage of the Old English poem
The Wanderer. "Thus spoke a forgotten poet long ago in Rohan, recalling how tall and fair was Eorl the Young, who rode down out of the North," Aragorn explains, after singing the
Lament. == History ==