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Old Fandom :-) - Tolkien 2019
Aug. 19th, 2019 12:08 pmThe week before last was Tolkien 2019 - a six days conference/convention/celebration of 50 years of the Tolkien Society, held in Birmingham. As I've said elsewhere, it was a week of academia and silliness, good food and fellowship, and I can't think of a better celebration of the TS than that.
For the first time at a major TS event, I was able to go completely as an attendee, with no responsibilities apart from taking part in a Tolkien version of Pointless. :-) (We got into the final, which is better than I was expecting.) What I did instead was meet various people who'd not been to a TS event before, and take them under my wing - they all went away proclaiming what a wonderful time they'd had, and I like to think I contributed something to that.
Highlights included a performance of the Puppet Theatre Company's Leaf by Niggle, just as wonderful as when I saw it nearly 3 years ago at Oxonmoot, getting to meet and fangirl some of my favourite Tolkien artists, including Jenny Dolfen, and some wonderful talks, from Tom Shippey on the heirs of Tolkien, Troels Forchhammer on Tolkien and Scouting, Una McCormack on fanfiction, specifically Fourth Age stories and the final keynote from Dimitra Fimi - on foxes and folklore, "in which there may be singing". There was, and singing in Middle English with nearly 500 Tolkien fans was a great way to end an awesome week.
There's a taste here - a playlist of the filmed talks, including Tom and Dimitra's and if you have access to Facebook the official pictures are here
For the first time at a major TS event, I was able to go completely as an attendee, with no responsibilities apart from taking part in a Tolkien version of Pointless. :-) (We got into the final, which is better than I was expecting.) What I did instead was meet various people who'd not been to a TS event before, and take them under my wing - they all went away proclaiming what a wonderful time they'd had, and I like to think I contributed something to that.
Highlights included a performance of the Puppet Theatre Company's Leaf by Niggle, just as wonderful as when I saw it nearly 3 years ago at Oxonmoot, getting to meet and fangirl some of my favourite Tolkien artists, including Jenny Dolfen, and some wonderful talks, from Tom Shippey on the heirs of Tolkien, Troels Forchhammer on Tolkien and Scouting, Una McCormack on fanfiction, specifically Fourth Age stories and the final keynote from Dimitra Fimi - on foxes and folklore, "in which there may be singing". There was, and singing in Middle English with nearly 500 Tolkien fans was a great way to end an awesome week.
There's a taste here - a playlist of the filmed talks, including Tom and Dimitra's and if you have access to Facebook the official pictures are here
