Held for the fifty-third year in 2026 from September 3rd through September 6th, Oxonmoot is the annual conference of the Tolkien Society. The event is traditionally held in Oxford at St. Anne’s College and since 2020 (I believe this was the first year) has offered an online program featuring exclusive and hybrid sessions given the time zone challenges.
I am fortunate to have attended each of the last seven events online and presented a talk at each of the last six. I never would have deemed myself worthy of giving a talk to this audience, had it not been for my friends at the 2nd Breakfast Smial of Pennsylvania, who upon learning of my Turin project to pull all the versions together into a single story, encouraged me to do so.
The audience attending Oxonmoot has grown substantially with the online component. It was announced that this year’s event had sold out on-site at around 325-350 attendees, and the total was over 600 people representing more than 30 countries.
Who are these people? I’ve learned there is no single definition. One member, Jessica Yates, gave a remembrance of the history of the event. She was one of a small group that started the event as some friends getting together and paying homage to the stories and author they loved. The group came to Oxford, met with family members, did it year after year, formed an event and the Society.
All are fans, but with varied backgrounds and interests. Purely by observation, the presenters this year were largely the ‘big names’ one expects – Verlyn Fliegler and Brian Sibley, along with Michael Drout, Dmitri Fimi, Jay Johnstone, and many more who have published and are often keynotes at events. There were many academics who presented talks related to PhD thesis, more than I recall in past years, which speaks to the growing field of Tolkien Studies in academia.
And then there was me. Out of the roughly thirty-three to thirty-five talks/panels I participated in, nine folk were close to myself in background – those I couldn’t clearly identify as being an Academic or published Author/Illustrator/Artist.
I consider myself a well-read fan of Tolkien’s work. I’m fifty-five and first read the Hobbit when I was twelve. The Silmarillion around fifteen soon followed by Unfinished Tales and the Books of Lost Tales (HoME I and II). The list goes on and has expanded to biographies and works about Tolkien’s work. I keep a list of one’s to buy and added more to that list this weekend.
It was unofficially brought to my attention that this year there were more than twice the number of submissions to talk than there were slots available. Again, this shows how much interest there is in Tolkien’s work from a more academic or intellectual perspective.
What do I mean intellectual? Well, better than ‘why didn’t the eagles just fly the ring to Mount Doom and drop it in,’ or “why not put the Ring on a string, place it around a chicken’s neck and walk it to Mordor?’. Yes, these are common online in the vast number of groups and discussions related to Tolkien.
Oxonmoot’s talks are at a more intellectual level. They present serious academic study, unique perspective, and speculate on source material be it written or real places and events. They offer history lessons on the development of the works, the adaptations, and the translations and adoption of the works to various countries and cultures. They address how the works are impacted and address genealogy, the environment, industry, language, music, and medicine.
In short, these talks encourage what Nils Ivar Agoy so eloquently stated in the conclusion of his talk on how the works of Tolkien can help us to remain to be deep reading, critical thinkers in a time when concentration, democracy, and freedom of expression is under threat by new technologies and authoritarian trends (and I paraphrase):
His works allow us to not escape, but to:
- Rediscover fundamental truths about the human condition,
- Continually adopt and maintain a critical attitude,
- Recognize the absolute ethical norms that exist,
- Remind us that there are no easy answers to moral questions, and
- There is no hiding in crowds.
I hope through this introduction, if you were unable to attend or unaware of the event, you can begin to see it is more than a Con, though yes there are in world celebrities, a Masquerade, an Ent (entertainment), food, and beverages, it is diverse people with differing views offering fresh perspectives supported by academic study and empirical evidence open to discussing all of it.
In upcoming posts I’m going to address specific sessions and topics I found of particular interest.
My most sincere thanks to the Society and volunteers for putting on this event, accepting my talk, and providing a forum of this type. Each year it is both humbling and awe inspiring.
