Great thread which allows me to write one of my over-long posts. If you have the time, enjoy reading it.
As someone hailing from a mountainous country but living in the eastern flat portion of said land, I tend to associate my surroundings with the mountains of Middle-earth. Two summits in particular make me think of Mindolluin, the
Schneeberg and the
Ötscher.
The Schneeberg, which translates to "snow mountain", is the easternmost mountain in the Alps to exceed two-thousand meters, or 6,560 feet. It provides the drinking water for Vienna and on a clear day the mountain can actually be seen from this former imperial city; albeit it has to be said that Schneeberg is 40 miles away from Vienna, which does not really compare with Minas Tirith and Mindolluin.
The Schneeberg is the tall vague summit in the center-back.Standing at 6,211 feet, the Ötscher is slightly smaller than the Schneeberg and lies twenty-eight miles to the northwest. It still belongs to the tallest easternmost summits of the Alps. One of my grandmothers grew up in a town below the prominent peak of the Ötscher. I associate this mountain with Middle-earth for several reasons: The Danube, Europe's longest river (excluding the Volga), and arguably an important model for the Anduin, lies only twenty-miles north of the summit. If you travel down the Danube by boat, you can clearly see the Ötscher rising to your south.
The Ötscher seen from Ybbs on the Danube
The Ötscher seen from my grandmother's hometown. Another aspect about the Ötscher is his name. Most mountains have a male article in German and for this summit it surely makes sense: Anyone familiar with a Slavic language might have recognized the word "father" in the name of the mountain (for example оте́ц in Russian or otec in Czech). When the Slavs began to settle this area in the late sixth century, they named the summit
otьčanъ which can be translated as "godfather". These alpine Slavs probably believed that the god of thunder and rain resided upon the mountain. Two centuries later, Bavarians from the west started to settle in the area, which, among many other things, led to the modern German name of the summit. The multilingual history of the area is reflected by small town Loich which lies just twelve miles northeast of the Ötscher. The name is of Celtic origin and can be translated as "white". I am not sure how familiar people on this forum are with Celtic history but before the Roman conquests of the late republic and the early empire, the Celtic world stretched as far east as modern Budapest. Personally I think Tolkien would have liked the complex linguistic history of this region, bringing together the Celtic, Roman, Slavic and German(ic) world.
As a child, my father gave me a historical novel to read which was called "Life on the River". It has long gone out of print and if you google the author, it will take a long time to find her. That said, the book tells the story of a fictional Romano-Celtic family living under the slopes of the Ötscher in the middle of the fifth century. It captures some aspects of these tumultuous times: the slow breakdown of Roman institutions, the uneasy relationship between the Roman provincial population and Germanic warrior-settlers, and the actions of Christian holy men. The book ends with the youngest main character deciding to abandon the area and accompanying Odoacer on his way to Italy. In 476, Odoacer deposed the last Roman Emperor in the West, thereby ending the separate Western Roman Empire. In my opinion, while much smaller in scope, touches open several aspects which are central in Tolkien's writings too and most certainly is set in a time which greatly influenced Middle-earth.
Whereas the Schneeberg and the Ötscher remind me of Mindolluin, the Untersberg in some ways resembles the Lonely Mountain. You might recognize it from the "Sound of Music". While the Untersberg is not as lonely as Erebor, it still stands right next to the Salzburg Basin and the Salzach Valley. My parents are both from Salzburg and whenever I visit(ed) my grandparents and looked out of a window, I could see the prominent peak of the Untersberg. Its name, which could be mistranslated by a contemporary German speaker as "Under-mountain" actually means "Noon mountain". As such it shares a similarity with Erebor, as the Sun also bears an important role for the Lonely Mountain. In the early and late Middle Ages, the wealth of Salzburg was not in gold...or jewels (alas, no mithril either) but salt. The name of the city literally means "Salt Castle" (compare to Hornburg). As such both Salzburg and the Lonely Mountain traced their wealth to local mineral resources. What makes the Untersberg even more interesting is that several legends surround the mountain. According to one of them, Charlemagne rests inside the mountain. During his sleep, dwarf-like creatures take care of the Emperor. Every hundred years he awakes. If the ravens still fly around the mountain, he goes back to sleep. But if the ravens have left the mountain, the Emperor leaves the mountain and the Final Battle commences. So there is literally a legend about a King under the mountain and his ravens surrounding Untersberg.
View of Hohenwerfen Castle and the Untersberg
Charlesmagne and his ravenOne final area which I like to mention are the Dolomites in South Tyrol, Italy. The mountains which I mentioned before all lie at the outskirts of the Alps and hardly or barely exceed 6560 feet. And while Tolkien's Misty Mountains were explicitly modeled after the tall summits of the Western Alps, which lie in France, Italy, and Switzerland, the Dolomites of the Eastern Alps also reach heights of up to 10,960 feet. Several years ago, still as a teenager, I traveled there for a week with my parents in the summer. On one of our trips, my brother and I got up early and went for a day-long hike. It certainly had a fellowship feeling to it.
Picture of the trail which we took together.
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