I'm neither Lombard, Hun or Goth or any of that eastern crowd We're Anglo-Saxon to the core although we fight on horses proud
Hee! I've read essays claiming that since the Rohirrim were a horse culture, they couldn't be modeled on the Anglo-Saxons. My theory is that Tolkien put the Rohirrim on horses because he himself had trained with a cavalry unit (King Edward's Horse) while an undergrad at Oxford. His understanding of non-mechanized warfare (this was a few years before WW1) was probably influenced by his experiences as a cavalryman. Also, he is supposed to have had a natural affinity for horses, and that is easy to believe based on how he wrote about them.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-03-20 03:05 am (UTC)We're Anglo-Saxon to the core although we fight on horses proud
Hee! I've read essays claiming that since the Rohirrim were a horse culture, they couldn't be modeled on the Anglo-Saxons. My theory is that Tolkien put the Rohirrim on horses because he himself had trained with a cavalry unit (King Edward's Horse) while an undergrad at Oxford. His understanding of non-mechanized warfare (this was a few years before WW1) was probably influenced by his experiences as a cavalryman. Also, he is supposed to have had a natural affinity for horses, and that is easy to believe based on how he wrote about them.