Ranger Life, Economics, and other Questions....

[Gamwich]

Hello, I'm writing a fan fiction project and am currently doing some research. It is difficult however to find answers to certain questions, even with all the various online wikis. So I've come here hoping that others may have more information. At the very least, perhaps someone can point me in the right direction.

Here are my questions so far:

-What was daily life like, for the Rangers of the North? It seems they primarily roamed the wilderness; but how so? Did they stay in groups, or go alone? Where were the females? How primitive and temporary were their encampments?

-The rangers were a secretive lot, but why? Why didn't they mention Eriador/Arnor to hobbits, etc. Would they keep their role secret even if asked (by a hobbit)?

-How would one describe the economy of the Shire/Bree? It seems like a sort of market economy (with coin money), and maybe elements of a gift economy as well? Is that reasonable to say?

-I wanted to have a scene where the Rangers of the North, and the Rangers of Ithilien barter with each other, near Tharbad. This doesn't go against canon does it?


....I would greatly appreciate any and all information helping me answer these questions. In the meantime, I will continue digging on my own, though I fear I've nearly exhausted the wikis...

 

[jallan]

Tolkien never develops the Rangers in any published texts much beyond what you relate. So you are mostly free to invent.

I imagine them as subsisting by slash-and-burn agriculture, sometimes living in tents and sometime in longhouses, having a lifestyle similar to the legendary Irish Fenians.

There would be the fighting Rangers who had adventures and guarded the people while the older men and woman took care of the farming. Possibly some shieldmaidens like Éowyn existed, but as with Éowyn, they would be rare.

I don’t see that a temporary market near Tharbad goes against anything Tolkien says.

 

[Gamwich]

Thank you so much for the input, jallan. This is very helpful. I kind of suspected that there wouldn't be much information beyond what I'd found, but I want to be as accurate as possible. I really like the longhouse idea, too.

Any thoughts on the secrecy though? I'm still trying to understand why they act so mysterious, to the point of basically intimidating Bree-folk. Is there some sort of grand motivation or secret oath, or are they just anti-social like that?

 

[jallan]

Tolkien never says, so far as I am aware, why the Rangers are so secretive. I don’t see any necessary reason why they should keep it secret that their actions are protecting the Bree-men and Hobbits.

 

[Troll]

I think the secrecy is a consequence of the many and varied horrors still roaming the North in the wake of the fall of Angmar. The Witch-King's departure did not mean the end of all evil in the North.

Furthermore, Aragorn explained this policy himself - the Rangers kept themselves hidden so that simple men could sleep peacefully in their beds, never knowing the extent of the dangers they faced, or what was sacrificed to protect them. Ignorance is bliss~

 

[Gamwich]

Ah, that definitely makes sense. Like when Aragorn says "Are you frightened? ...Not nearly frightened enough - I know what hunts you!" They're kind of like an archaic Men in Black or something. haha

 

[Troll]

And, like the Men in Black, they would put themselves at great danger if they revealed to servants of the Enemy the location of their homes (and women and children).

If the Dunedain of the North lived openly in the society of Men, eventually an unpleasant person like Bill Ferny would find out and get word to some nasty creature that would do something about that enclave of pesky Rangers over the next hill...

 

[Ingolmin]

Characteristically elusive and enigmatic, the Rangers spent most of their lives in the wild, visiting towns and villages only on rare occasions. The Rangers were led by the Chieftain of the Dúnedain. This Chieftain was the heir of Isildur himself and his father Elendil. Though the Chieftain was the designated figure of authority for the Rangers and the rightful ruler of Arnor, the scattered people had no known official headquarters or capital after the disintegration of Arnor(after the death of King Arvedui in 1975) and possibly lived in temporary camps scattered about the wilderness. It is also possible that the Rangers of the North did have one or more permanent settlements, but if this is the case, the location and existence of these settlements was a fiercely guarded secret.
The Rangers were a secretive lot because they were the last remnant of the Dunedain of Numenor. Among them lived the Heir of Isildur so they couldn't mention there business to any person and especially a hobbit as they had many foes such as Ringwraiths. Any hobbit would have unecessarily spread the rumour that the Heir of Isildur still lived.

 

[Red Leaf]

I think the crux of it lies with how much day to day contact and support they get from Rivendell, and quite what societies and settlements there are littered about that Tolkien doesn't mention.

This is the boring stuff - how does a society with no established settlements grow wheat for bread or farm animals for meat, milk, wool and hides, how does it create -or buy - things like arrowheads, belt buckles, butchers knives, without which there are no surplus mean to go off to south to fight, and nothing for them to fight with...

When Aragorn and the Rangers meet in Rohan they are 30 strong - an agricultural society able to send 30 men off to war has got to be relatively large (and let's not beat around the bush, a small society that has been breeding amonst itself for a thousand years since the fall of the northern kingdoms is going to be pretty odd looking - Google the Hapsburgs for details...), personally I'd be surprised if the Dunedain are less than 200 adults strong, possibly with the same number of children.

There are three options that I see - firstly that effectively they live in Rivendells pockets are are dependent on them for food, ironmongery and pretty much everything else, secondly that they have a fairly independent settlement of reasonable size - possibly bigger than Bree - or that there are some/lots of settlements of men spread across Eriador that the Dunedain latch onto in small family groups. The Dunedain are then part of two societies: the farming/trading one they live amongst, and the cultural/political/military one they are part of and probably marry within.

Both are problematic, a 400 strong settlement that makes metal and farms the land is not going to stay secret for long, and a network of settlements is about as discreet at the Sun, and will doubtless have informers within them.

That said, if you take what Tolkien wrote as be all and end all gospel you have a bigger problem: societies like the Shire, the Dunedain and Bree would not be as Tolkien described them, but would be spectacularly inbred societies with no metal and little more than starvation to their names.

I take the view that Eriador has lots of small communities spread over it, places ranging from farmsteads to villages like Bree, and that a reasonable amount of coming and going is going to be taking places - villages are where the farmers bring their produce to market, where they get supplies like Iron, and where they meet others to arrange marriages.