Elenmir, a long-time member of the SF-Fandom forums, recently started a discussion about Tolkien’s use of the term “shieldmaiden” in this Tolkien forum discussion.
Despite a slow start the discussion has picked up (admittedly because I was feeling well enough to comment after a few days). One of the central ideas mentioned is who would have been likely to be a shieldmaiden in Rohan. Could any woman take on that role or would it be limited to women of noble birth?
There isn’t really much insight to be had from either real history or Norse/Germanic stories. Women have risen up to take arms on numerous occasions for any variety of reasons. Some whole societies (such as the ancient Illyrians and Sauromatae/Sarmatians) encouraged young women to go to war. Some societies only gave rise to occasional warrior queens and princesses (including the Egyptians and Macedonians).
There is undoubtedly a strong correlation between noble families and historical leaders or heroes because the leading families had the resources to nurture leaders to provide them with the means to go adventuring or to make the right connections to help adventurers put together bands of warriors or small armies.
The occasional farmer rises to legendary status through a combination of circumstance great need and worthy deeds.
In Tolkien’s fiction (for Middle-earth) all the examples I was able to cite were women from noble or aristocratic families. Middle-earth’s history really is about the leading families and not about the common people. Whereas in Norse/Icelandic sagas many local farmers and heroes are celebrated Tolkien’s stories focus on the princely families of Elves Dwarves Men and Hobbits (if one accepts the upper-class of Shire Hobbitry as “princely” in a figurative sense).
This is more reflective of Greek drama which also focused on the princely houses (mostly the descendants of Zeus and a few other gods in the mythological stories). The common man is not really celebrated in the Greek tradition. Scandinavians seemed to be more egalitarian in their literary views: they acknowledged that there were kings and princes but men could be (and should be) recognized for their great deeds.
Medieval literature sometimes looked at the common man (such as Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” or the Robin Hood ballads) and sometimes focused on the nobility.
Story telling must have been practiced historically at all levels of society just as it is today. When you get together with your friends at a party or visit with family on special occasions numerous stories are bound to be shared about people you know knew or have heard about time and again. Hunting stories amusing stories stories about travels around the world etc. To us these are the fabric of our social lives but to a writer they are grist for the mill.
The great writers of ancient history focused on famous people (kings and princess) and people who achieved significant renown because their readers would not have been interested in who hid behind the bushes at Uncle Antipater’s wedding.
In fiction Tolkien limited the amount of parochial story-telling as a means of biasing the reader’s perspective. We see occasional gossip among hobbits but virtually no gossip among the Dunedain Dwarves and Elves. Faramir shares a little bit of personal experience with Frodo and Sam and Pippin learns something about Beregond’s family from his son Bergil. The only other exposure we have to Gondor’s social life is through the rambling anecdotes of Ioreth the healing woman.
Hobbits are very social people among themselves but they don’t trust outsiders. We only learn about the social lives of other cultures through the connections hobbits make on their journeys. What do we know about the Rohirrim except that they stare out their doors and windows at passing Riders? Even the scenes with Gamling the Old reveal hardly anything about the daily life of the Rohirrim because there were no hobbits present to become friends with Gamling or otherwise note his occasional personal anecdotes.
The small stories of social experience are a powerful window through which we become intimately familiar with Shire folk but we remain distant and cut off from Elrond’s household Legolas’ people the Elves of Lothlorien and the valiant men of Rohan and Gondor. We know they had to sit down to eat but don’t know what jokes they told what they did for amusement or how they figured out which field to plant in the spring.
It is because Tolkien cut the reader off from the common folk in most of Middle-earth that we only hear about the queens and princesses among their far-flung cultures. He structured his remoteness in a deliberate fashion to ensure that the reader identified most closely with the hobbits — whose tale it was to tell. The history of the War of the Ring should read very differently were it told by a man from Gondor.
That is I think a stumbling point for many modern fantasy writers. They are too willing to give the reader insight into the common folk of any society a protagonist encounters. We are not hobbits on adventure with the protagonists of dragon-filled worlds who learn the names of every gnome the histories of all the Dwarf clans or see the playful banter between two lovers who have little to do with the main storyline.
Tolkien was more interested in stimulating the reader’s curiosity than in satisfying it and that is probably why we keep asking so many questions about so many things in Middle-earth.