[…] though there was still some store of weapons in the Shire, these were used mostly as trophies, hanging above hearths or on walls, or gathered into the Museum at Michel Delving. The Mathom-house it was called; for anything that Hobbits had no immediate use for, but were unwilling to throw away, they called a mathom. Their dwellings were apt to become rather crowded with mathoms, and many of the presents that passed from hand to hand were of that sort. […] It was a tendency of hobbit-holes to get cluttered up: for which the custom of giving so many birthday presents was largely responsible [i.e., the Hobbit custom of a person giving as opposed to receiving presents on their birthday]. Not, of course, that the birthday-presents were always new; there were one or two old mathoms of forgotten uses that had circulated all around the district […] – J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (Unwin, 1954; HarperCollins, 2007, pp. 7, 49)
The Only Museum in Middle-earth…
In Tolkien’s Middle-earth, the Shire stands out as the most unusual culture in a fantasy world largely influenced by Anglo-Saxon and generally ‘Northern’ myth, legend, and epic. A version of the reader’s ‘modern’ world, the Shire has many fascinating characteristics, but none is more unusual or more thought-provoking than the Mathom-house, Middle-earth’s only museum.
The Aspirations and Failures of the Modern Museum
There are few human institutions that are more troubled in their histories, intentions, goals and effects than the museum. As I wrote in a 2019 article on Tolkien’s marvelous objects, “on the one hand, the museum has two laudable goals: to collect culturally significant global objects, preserving them from destructive forces and the depredations of time; and to display these objects, thus fostering broadly humanist and educational values (Hoberman 7–17). Deriving from the Latin museum [library or study], and the Greek mousa [muse] and mouseion [the seat of the Muses], the word’s very etymology connects it with wonder, creativity, and learning. On the other hand, as many commentators have pointed out, the museum preserves precisely by removing objects from the original contexts in which they were created and circulated, arguably resulting in the cultural death and even deliberate murder of such objects (Hoberman 17–22). Replacing these contexts with those of museum culture, its disciplinary apparatus, and often alien discourses about art, the museum is a place of death and entombment, frequently an extension of the colonial domination of these artifacts’ original creators and users (Hoberman 1–6, 17–18).” From the British modernist poet Ezra Pound to the Cowichan/Syilx First Nations artist Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, critics have often equated the museum with the cemetery, the abattoir, the mausoleum, and the morgue (Marinetti 42; Paul 70; Yuxweluptun). From this perspective, the museum is “full of dead or frozen things,” and “the institution encourages visitors to fetishize, commodify, and exoticize the objects and cultures of the Other (Hoberman 24, 41–42); in turn, visitors are as likely to reify and dehumanize the objects’ creators as they are to experience empathy or understanding (Hoberman 29)” (Loughlin 21).
The Shire Museum at Michel Delving and the Mathom-house
A philologist at heart, Tolkien adds yet another layer of meaning, since the objects in the museum at Michel Delving are mathoms, “a Hobbit word that means ‘an object of uncertain value and use, apparently one step away from the trash heap,’ which he derives from the Old English mathum, meaning ‘treasure,’ especially ‘a treasure in the context of ritual gift exchange’ (Gilliver et al. 161–62)” (Loughlin 23). This etymological joke suggests, of course, that a mathom is not simply “rubbish,” but has a value that Hobbits themselves remain unsure of.
The Mathom-house Museum: A Class Public Research Project
Our public research project is to produce a digital exhibit of ‘fictional’ objects that we might expect to find in Middle-earth’s only museum. Based on Tolkien’s descriptions of this museum throughout his works, which are (admittedly) few in number and sketchy in detail, but highly suggestive for what they say about the Shire’s attitudes towards created objects, each member of the class will begin by imagining a specific object or adopting an object that appears in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, and then realizing that object (as a drawing, photograph, sketch, diagram, archaeological fragment, etc.), labelling that object (with its ‘vital statistics’: creator, culture, date, name, function, provenance, ownership, meaning, etc.), and then writing a brief interpretive essay on that object, explaining it to your imagined museum visitor.
Although each student must produce an imagined object, its visual and/or physical realization, and its museum label, your object can be brainstormed in a group of your choosing as one of a set of objects; your group may then produce a single collaborative essay. In other words, the project submission can be done completely individually or in a small group (of no more than 4 students). There are, however, special stipulations for group projects, in addition to those outlined above, so please consult me before you get started.
Some Things to Think About
Before you even begin to imagine your Middle-earth museum object or adopt one from Tolkien’s works, you must think about and read about the cultures that Tolkien imagines in his novels.
If there are certain objects that fall into the category of things “that Hobbits had no immediate use for, but were unwilling to throw away” (e.g., weapons), then what might fit into the category of “mathoms of forgotten uses”? What has the Shire forgotten? What changes can have occurred in Hobbit culture generally that would render an object so alien and mysterious?
Works Cited
- Hoberman, Ruth. Museum Trouble: Edwardian Fiction and the Emergence of Modernism. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2011.
- Loughlin, Marie H. “Tolkien’s Treasures: Marvellous Objects in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.” Tolkien Studies, Volume 16, 2019, pp. 21-58.
- Marinetti, F. T. “The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism.” 1909. Selected Writings. Ed. and trans. R. W. Flint and Arthur A. Coppotelli. New York: Farrar, 1972. 39–44.
- Paul, Catherine E. Poetry in the Museums of Modernism: Yeats, Pound, Moore, Stein. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2002.