All the Fantasy Books are just Europe and it's not Tolkien's Fault

All the Fantasy Books are just Europe (and it’s not Tolkien’s Fault)

When a fantasy author sits down to invent an entire world (where they can choose any world with any rules and magic they can dream up), they almost always just kind of invent a version of medieval Europe: Stuff like castles, knights, monarchs tend to show up, along with a “fantasy map” that looks suspiciously like a map of Europe.

I think one of the usual arguments for why this is the case is to say it’s Tolkien’s fault.

But that’s not really true, because:

J.R.R. Tolkien did not, in fact, invent European fantasy. Elves, dwarves, dragons, and Norse god types were already a part of European mythology and lore before Tolkien was even born, so he didn’t even create it to begin with, AND
Tolkien’s approach was to BUILD his own world, inspired by lost mythology (and the Kalevala)… so the copycats that followed Tolkien weren’t even following his template of building a world based on a lost one, they were just copying his homework.

Tolkien believed England didn’t have a mythology of its own anymore; their Anglo-Saxon and Celtic material had been worn away by centuries of invasion, and he wanted England to have one of its own, and did so by trying to build a world inspired by his own country’s lost mythology. He even built the two Elvish languages based on existing European languages (the high Elvish language Quenya is based on Finnish, and the other major Elvish language Sindarin is based on Welsh), and his entire Legendarium was inspired by the Kalevala (a book and epic poem, and the national epic of Finland, based on Finnish and Karelian folklore in the 19th century), which had a massive influence on Tolkien.

Important correction: around the 17 second mark, this video identifies Giesele Schierhorst as the writer of “J.R.R. Tolkien and the Kalevala” (2019) but the actual writer is Dan Hunt, who was Ms. Schierhorst’s music library intern at the time. She kindly reached out to make sure he received credit.

In fact, here’s a side by side of Tolkien vs the original Kalevala (here’s the source)

In Tolkien, “The sorcerer Sauron makes battle with the Elf king Finrod Felagund in a singing contest. Their music becomes magic spells and is so legendary that the event itself is immortalized in a song.”
In Finnish myths, “The boastful Joukahainen challenges the wizard bard Vainamoinen to a song battle. Though Joukahainen is powerful, Vainamoinen is the superior musician and defeats Joukahainen with a song that roots him to the ground.”

So if fantasy authors wanted to copy Tolkien, they should have followed his approach. The trouble is, fantasy books that followed did NOT follow his approach, and instead, copied his homework—literally. They copied his setting, vibe, aesthetic, world, etc over and over again.

Even the MAPS. Good lord the maps.

The castles, the English-ish countryside, the hierarchies, the whole aesthetic… it became what fantasy IS, and his world spawned thousands of fantasy books, games, and worlds that rely on the template he created as shorthand for fantasy itself:

Narnia
Dungeons and Dragons
Elder Scrolls Online (ily)
Harry Potter (arguably)
ACOTAR series (arguably)

People are copying from his world rather than his methodology, which is: go home, build from your lost mythologies and stories, and create a world from that.

It’s like people just copied his answer instead of figuring out their own answer.

Now I’m not putting myself in league with Tolkien but I will proudly tell you I that when I built the world of The River’s Daughter, I didn’t start from castles / Europe / Middle-earth. I went back to my roots and half-remembered mythology: I built my story inspired by the legend of Mirza Sahiba. My book’s world, the world of Jaraan, is a place inspired by the land of five rivers; and it’s not for the sake of diversifying my writing. Arguably it’s the same move Tolkien made, of pulling from your people’s mythology.

Tolkien had to reconstruct his world from old almost-lost stories (and the Kalevala), he had to research his way into figuring out that world. I’ve been lucky because the mythology I pulled from hasn’t even been buried, but passed down through oral tradition, and for that I’m so fortunate.

If you’re a reader of Tolkien and also a writer of fantasy, I’d suggest honoring him by building your own world based on your own inherited mythologies… and not just copying his setting.

Then we’ll have more stories that aren’t all… Europe.

Fun extra credit reading: