Fathoming the Mathom-house: Museums and Material Heritage in Tolkien’s Legendarium

As a renowned author and philologist, J.R.R. Tolkien has long been associated with the processes of literary transmission performed by libraries and archives. His engagement with the comparable cultural institution of the museum is less evident. By charting the gradual integration of the Michel Delving Mathom-house into Middle-Earth, this paper considers Tolkien’s fictional interpretation of a contemporary museum and how it served to enrich his legendarium. It first traces the textual history of this collecting institution from its marginal addition in the drafts of The Hobbit to its considered treatment in The Lord of the Rings. A pivotal development in this process was the linguistic transition from ‘museum’ to ‘mathom-house’, an expression of Tolkien’s deep affinity with Germanic languages and his unwavering pursuit of internal consistency. The significance of the humble mathom and its institutional home was reinforced by their centrality to the philological underpinnings and translation conceit of Tolkien’s frame narrative. The expository role of the Mathom-house culminated in its position as a unique marker of Hobbit society, showcasing its comparative modernity and cultural proximity. Tolkien thereby harnessed the familiarity of museums to make Hobbits relatable to a contemporary audience, as a means of better acclimatizing readers to the more archaic aspects of his secondary world. This paper ultimately demonstrates that even a modest narrative device like the Mathom-house could make a significant contribution to the realization of Middle-earth.