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GreenhillFox
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Post Money in ME
on: January 22, 2018 01:43
A silly start here first… in real life, having renovated a place, we’re putting it up for rent these days.

At this occasion, I had sort of an afterthought about Butterbur renting his own places. Question, then and now: for how much, in currency units?

We can read how much coveted were gold, precious gems, silver, mithril … but not how these paid out in currency nor how JRRT imagined financial and economic interactions within states, at any time.

A vague impression of some kind of universal currency comes to mind in the following passage, when Frodo first met Strider:

’And what will that be, pray?’ said Frodo. He […] thought uncomfortably that he had brought only a little money with him. All of it would hardly satisfy a rogue, and he could not spare any of it.

I do not get far with that thought, though; where JRRT mentioned currency it looks as if he was getting it absurdly wrong:

In “Chapter 1 A Long-Expected Party”, we can read:

When the old man, helped by Bilbo and some dwarves, had finished unloading, Bilbo gave a few pennies away.

In “Chapter 11 A Knife In The Dark”, we can read:

Bill Ferny’s price was twelve silver pennies; and that was indeed at least three times the pony’s value in those parts. […] Mr. Butterbur paid for it himself, and offered Merry another eighteen pence as some compensation for the lost animals. He was an honest man, and well-off as things were reckoned in Bree; but thirty silver pennies was a sore blow to him.

So when Bilbo gives away “some pennies” to “hobbit-children” these appear to get the corresponding value of at least one quarter of a pony each which is absurd (when our neighbour children come and sing New-year we give some nice stuff too, but not a bunch of ponies!).

However, Bilbo returned with undefined “valuables” both from Erebor and from the Troll hoard allowing him an easy-going life in the Shire. Since that money (?) came from various places and times, it would logically indicate a currency that was accepted at all times in all ME places.

<sigh> Let’s maybe conclude that JRRT was not offering this aspect much of a place under his productive pen.

If anyone of you wished to pen more than him and me here, pls do! I will read you with the greatest pleasure.
'There’s something mighty queer behind this.'
lights
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on: January 22, 2018 10:44
Maybe it was the difference between the silver pennies and some other metal??? or perhaps Tolkien did not really think about it much.
Gandolorin
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on: January 25, 2018 12:15
Economics certainly did not play anything like a major part in JRRT’s writings – if you except hoards collected by mostly, but not solely, Dwarves. But due to the Dwarves, there must have been some kind of trade going on in M-e, as there is never any mention of Dwarves being involved in food production.

In Aman, one might envision some kind of paradise situation, with “wild” fruits, vegetables and grains providing all the food needed by the Elves (the Ainur would have no need of food, is my guess). There was the Jōmon culture in Japan, lasting for perhaps 13,000 years until perhaps 1,000 BC, which at some point had become (semi-) settled gatherer-hunters. It is from that culture that by far the oldest pottery has been found, something totally useless to nomadic gatherer-hunters without beasts of burden. Wild plants, as well as plentiful supplies of wildlife also nurtured by these wild plants, and probably more importantly fish to be had in streams and rivers, as well as animal protein sources along the endless miles of shoreline, allowed the Jōmon culture to dispense with nomadism without having developed agriculture or animal domestication.

Of course there is the bit about Oromë being called the Huntsman of the Valar – but hunting in Aman? I dunno. The Teleri, being seafarers, might have been into fishing, but them providing all of the animal protein for the Elves of Aman? Meh.

The early Elves (pre- Oromë) would probably have been gatherer-hunters, as would the early humans. Later Elves too, at times (the First Age Elven realms, later Thranduil’s realm, and what about Imladris and Lothlórien – I just don’t envision them being occupied with agriculture and stuff …)

The first appearance of money – at least in the form of metal coins – in Human history dates to about 2,500 years ago, originally in Anatolia (and possibly India and China). But even this form of money (China had an early go at paper money) was quite unevenly distributed, and payments ins produce (think peasants paying their feudal lords) and barter still stayed around for quite a while – possibly until today in isolated areas.

So anything resembling money – and mostly coins – is probably what we can imagine as existing in JRRT’s Middle-earth. And somehow the natural “early bankers” would have been the Dwarves. Though here too, I would imagine that they mostly bartered products – weapons, armor, perhaps tools – rather than using coins (or perhaps gems). I still wonder, though, what the Elves had to trade with the Dwarves, what could have interested the Dwarves (created a “demand” among them, in modern terms). I still can’t really envision any Elves as farmers – not the First Age Noldor (and Thingol’s realm), anyway. So until the Dwarves met up with (later) humans, who had had contact with the Entwives (!), they did a bit of hunting themselves, or received what gatherer-hunter Elves had left over? Gatherer-hunter “economies” and tradeable surpluses do not really fit together. Surpluses leading to parasitic cities with non-productive social castes such as nobility, clergy, bureaucrats, soldiers, and non-food-producers such as smiths and makers of garments, were only possible after agriculture and animal domestication evolved.

To “quote” a comment from one of my anthology-in-memoriam-of-JRRT books, it’s odd that JRRT described the environmental pollution involved in mining and metals production as something that occurred where Orcs were active (under superior intelligences), like in Isengard – and never mind Barad-dûr or Angband. Uh-huh. No mention of this inevitable poisonous garbage in Aman when the Noldor (and other Elves, too?) first made weapons – or anything else of metal. A bit of a tut-tut must here be directed against our revered John Ronald, apparently …
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GreenhillFox
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on: January 26, 2018 02:09
Thank you for sharing, Lights and Gandolorin!

I agree with both of you: JRRT did not have money issues on his mind. Trade must have been there though, unavoidably. Butterbur ran a business after all, etc.

Gandolorin mentioned Thranduil; here’s what we find e.g. in TH:

The wine, and other goods, were brought from far away, from their kinsfolk in the South, or from the vineyards of Men in distant lands.

If “far away” and “distant lands” hold, one could hardly make this work by an “I have an egg, you have an onion” exchange system.

But I am trying to cut a hair in two now, I’m sure; reflections like these won’t spoil the reading at all.
'There’s something mighty queer behind this.'
Gandolorin
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on: January 26, 2018 03:19
A point about Bilbo, and by extension the Shire Hobbits (and Bree): It was JRRT’s way of sneaking a “modern” (meaning Edwardian, i.e. just post-Victorian) character into a legendary-to-mythological world.

A thought just hit me: it wouldn’t work with our current “modern”, as the total absence of WLAN would render any 21st-century Bilbo into a cold-turkey-wracked wreck (think heroin addiction) from the total withdrawal of “smart”-phone functions! Image

Anyway, much of Bilbo and the Shire is highly anachronistic in their larger, “heroic” surroundings (and the post being delivered twice a day anachronistic in our time too). Silver pennies would mean one 240th of a bar of silver weighing one pound, a definition initiated by Charlemagne for his 9th-century empire (and if this sound familiar as twelve pence giving a shilling, and twenty shillings for a pound Sterling, you’re entirely correct). Below that was the farthing, one quarter of the silver penny and probably using copper, which may have been colloquially also called penny, and which would probably have been the pennies Bilbo gave away in Chapter 1 “A Long-Expected Party” of FoTR.

[Edited on 01/26/2018 by Gandolorin]
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GreenhillFox
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on: January 30, 2018 01:53
<sigh> I finally found the example I wanted to include into my original posting (but long failed to find it) as another example of long-distance trade in ME.

Not that it matters anymore - the reflections given by Lights and Gandolorin were well argued and gratefully received – but now that I did find it again, here it is.

TH confirms that Thranduil liked the wine of Dorwinion and that he had a sizable supply of that stuff. Moreover it transited through Esgaroth as an intermediary trading post.

Looking at the “Atlas of Middle-Earth” (Karen Wynn Fonstad) I would say we are talking about a distance of some 500 to 600 miles down the Running River and again back up. What the woodelves had to offer in return does not seem very clear to me though.

But indeed, long-distance trade was going in ME.
'There’s something mighty queer behind this.'
Gandolorin
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on: January 30, 2018 06:23
Now one place where money seems to be a necessity is anyplace where there are inns. Most travelers, especially long-distance ones (most of these to be found in the Prancing Pony in Bree) would hardly be lugging loads of produce with them in wagons (that would be traders – but to be useful for an inn, they would have to fairly regular traders), nor does an inn normally have large warehouses to store such trade goods. And besides the Prancing Pony – and the Forsaken Inn a day’s journey east of Bree – all inn names we know are in the Shire. Probably there were further inns in Esgaroth and (when populated) Dale, Minas Tirith and possibly Edoras in Rohan. Though perhaps in the latter, with its royal hall of Meduseld - actually the same name as that of King Hrothgar’s hall in “Boewulf” – not just festivities might have taken place in these “ersatz” inns. For the Elves (Thranduil’s realm, Rivendell, Lothlórien) I would guess the settings would generally have been “Beowulfian”. For the Dwarves in Moria and Erebor, one might imagine something like inns within the huge underground dwellings.
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