Greetings from Estonian Tolkien Society

Hi all,

Good to see that Lithuanians have organized to discuss the literary legacy and works of the good Professor.

I am the Vice President of Estonian Tolkien Society and hoping to establish contacts with other JRRT devotees in the Baltics.

What we do:

Seminars and panels – our society organizes public seminars and panels on monthly basis to discuss Tolkien and his works. We provide an opportunity for all interested parties to attend as either lecturers or active listeners.

Live Action Role Plays – we organize different role-plays in countryside to actually experience some of the historical settings and stories created by Tolkien.

Preparation for the Birmingham Tolkien 2005 Conference – as the Order of Middle-earth is one of the participating societies of the international conference to celebrate the 50-th anniversary of the publication of The Lord of the Rings we make considerable efforts to prepare as attractive content as possible to be presented and discussed.

http://www.tolkiensociety.org/2005/programme.html

Internet database – we are developing our website into a one-stop Estonian reference guide for all local Tolkien fans.

http://www.keskmaa.ee

Forum is located at (at the moment only in Estonian):

http://foorum.keskmaa.ee

If anybody of you is interested in exchanging thoughts, ideas and experiences please feel free to contact me via e-mail or post an answer to this thread.

Kind regards,

Azaghal
Estonian Tolkien Society
www.keskmaa.ee

Mae govannen, Azaghal!

I am very glad and, of course, surprised to see you here. As a founder of this community, I believe I need to welcome you to Tolkien Lietuva messageboards and remind you that there is a website as well, www.tolkien-tinkle.dar.lt It is not particularly sophisticated, currently we are working on its improvement, but so far it has been one of the leading lithuanian Tolkien pages in terms of articles and information provided.

We are not a legally established group, so to speak, still a freelance virtual (and real, of course) community. But, needless to say, we are all devotees of Tolkien and that is the most important thing, isn't it?

Personally, I have heard about the Estonian Tolkien Society from estonian fans participating in www.tolkienonline.com messageboards and I see that you are a truly serious organisation. Thank you for contacting us, we will undoubtedly keep in touch and maybe in a while we will come up with some international project!

Best wishes,

Starlin Elvea

Yes - the spirit and devotion is what counts.

There will be many technicalities after registering a legal entity icluding but no limited to negotiating with Tolkien Estate to obtain a copyright licence from them.

As to finding your forum - it is amazing what one can find with the good ol' Google.

Best of luck,

Mart

Hello, Azaghal II . I am from the sub-Forum Fangorn front (environment protection diskusion, actions and etc. ) and I would like to ask you some things . How many heads gather in Your role-plays in countryside? Do you cooperate with fantasts (in Lithuania there are so called fantasts , who organize and enjoy LARPs, but with Tolkien they had almost nothing in common ) or you separate from them and create an independent, if it could be called so, Tolkien Live Action Role Plays? Do you organize a peaceful marches to somewhere for something , for example, go to the Baltic sea, establish there a camp and play with guitars , flutes , sing , dance , read poems and etc. It would be very useful for us to know if it's good or it's no chance to organize something similar, because heads don’t want to go somewhere for something .

P.S. It will be natural if you don’t understand my massage because of my terrible English grammar .

Easy on them smilies

As to your questions:

Yes we do co-operate with other LARP organizations.

But we also organize our own internal Tolkienesque Role Plays.

Head count varies as much as 20 to 150.

Yes to camping, singing and elvish poems.

No to flutes and dance.

Nobody wants to go just somewhere for just something, but everybody wants to go somewhere special for something special.

Hope this helps.

But you are really good organized : 20-150 :shock: . Wow In Lithuania that number would be incredible – it’s a big scout summer camp :shock: . I think , that Lithuanian have a lack of sense of community - we are separated and hardly someone can unite us . It is sad . But despite that I am happy for Your luck 😉 . Keep that number and raise it up . We (Fangorn front) also will try to organize this August a Great March by our Anduin – Nemunas to the Baltic sea to destroy our Precious (simple things, but dear for us individually ), but until now there are only five daredevils :=D> , who are ready to go . 5 and 150 – oh God - this is Lithuania, but I enjoy it . Good luck in your preparation for the Birmingham Tolkien 2005 Conference 😉 and of course for Your journeys.

(Aldarionai, tikrai per daug vaipukų...)

Suilad, Azaghal! Nice to see you here
20-150 - that's pretty much. There aren't so many 'real' tolkienists in Lithuania, I suppose. We're trying to gather here as many tolkinists as possible, and our messageboard has been successful so far. There has been a few meetings (last time there were about 15 persons, I guess) and we've organized some events in Lithuanian fantasts' convention. However we're not so organized like you are. Maybe we will be, some day

The 150 number is with co-operation with others. Our own organization has ca. 50 members. We have relatively demanding admission rules to avoid stagnant crowd i.e. possible dead weight in future.

15 is a VERY good start.

And there definitely is 150+ Tolkienists in Lithuania. They just need a little nudge (quoting Gandalf) and they'll become active. Was the same in Estonia.......

And there definitely is 150+ Tolkienists in Lithuania. They just need a little nudge (quoting Gandalf) and they'll become active.

Well yes, I guess you're right. This messageboard was established about a year ago, and all the time the number of members has been growing. There are many people who are participating in english speaking messageboards so we just have to inform them that there is a Lithuanian one as well. Google does the job I, for one, have abandoned TORC (tolkienonline.com) after this messageboard started working...

I wonder what's going on in Latvia. Have they got any organization?

Not that I know of.

By the way, how do you like Estonian translation of the LotR? Because Lithuanian translation is very poor. Some of us are developing the main rules for the new one but unfortunately there are no professional translators among us and we can only hope that LotR will be re-translated some day properly

Greetings Azaghal

My greeting seems to be quite delayed compared to others', but no matter that, it is a great pleasure to know that even people from other countries give some attention to our attempts to create a Tolkien society, or, at least, community in Lithuania.
I also wonder how old your society is? How long is it since you just started having plans (or dreams) of an Estonian Tolkinite community, and how long did it take for you to make it grow to 50, as I understand, active members?

The problem is universal.

Tolkien was discovered in Eastern Europe early-to-mid-90's. That is approximately 30 years behind the rest of the Western world. There Tolkien is considered as adult literature. Here in the Baltics it is considered as children's literature.

The above results in a dramatic mood shift in the translations - towards fancy and lofty. Where it is supposed to be serious, it is funny, where it is supposed to be dramatic, it is ridiculous.

And then there is the famous "Name problem" i.e. translating the names.

I won´t elaborate on that, because I am sure you all are familiar with that anyway.

Bottom line - it is bad. It could be worse, but thats not comforting.

Unfortunately.

Silmarillion was far better, but that is thanks to agressive criticism from the reading public.

So you already have The Silmarillion translated to Estonian? Somehow I envy you. Although I do not wish for The Silmarillion to be translated to Lithuanian right now, because it would be as poor a translation as that of LotR, if not even worse.
But with time we will improve, hopefully, and one day have good translations of all Tolkien's works, at least of the most important ones. And with 'we' I mean all Eastern Europe, not only Lithuania, because I doubt that any Eastern European country has a decent translation of LotR or The Hobbit available.

Much obliged

I also wonder how old your society is?

Very young.

Community is maybe 3 years old.

Organization a year (even not that much).

How long is it since you just started having plans (or dreams) of an Estonian Tolkinite community, and how long did it take for you to make it grow to 50, as I understand, active members?

This calls for a longer answer.

I first had an idea to form a "Club" (where elderly english gentlemen read newspapers, smoke cigars and drink cognac PLUS discuss Tolkien) in 1997.

That fell through.

Naturally.

Then I joined a community in 2000, but withdrew in 2001 as the team was not cohesive enough to realize projects of larger scope.

After 2-year hibernation I was invited to join the soon-to-be Estonian Tolkien Society.

We have a strong team with different backgrounds - from managers and IT-specialists to students and housewives. Each contribute their project know-how and skills for the greater good of the Society.

Organizational growth has been explosive - partly due to the PR-plan we developed and partly due to the worldwide LOTR craze (hail to PJ!).

Anyway - in 8 months we have built from scratch a fully functional organization.

This is only a start though as we have set several benchmarks and strategic initiatives for the future.

Gotta plan big and far ......... to succeed........

First Tolkien comunity in Lithuania were established in 1995
http://www.qedata.se/dr/savitesni_klubai.htm
But they faded away. No contact or other information left.

Almost at the same time or maybe earlier were established other much less known club. Which somewhat alive even now.

This comunity were established in 2003 (I think). And it is growing, because of many young people, who had readed "Lord of the Rings" trilogy and seen film of the same name.

Yes, undoubtedly LotR movies are doing their job. There are several other lithuanian messageboards on the web, mostly film-oriented, and less active, as far as I know.

Just by chance, Azaghal, maybe you happen to know Aurelin, as she is known in the Estonian Society? I believe she's participating in LARPGs as well. It's from her (on TORC) that I first heard people translate such names as "Samwise Gamgee" As for Latvians, there's been at least one on TORC, but that was a big feast to us all when she appeared - strangely enough Latvians are more passive in tolkienism, at least online...

Oh, and fellow messageboard members: since there's been a nice reminder to us all of the upcoming jubillee celebrations, we will definitely have to organize a big meeting next year - we have an incentive now, I mean the publishing anniversary

Hello

Curunir greets you all. I`ll post something, that has a bigger point, tomorrow, but now I go to sleep.

Good night, folk!

Suilad, Curunir! Have a good night's sleep

hello!

After 12 tries I finally got in and in spite of terrible things that have happened with my name, will be able to post and debate in the future.

YESSSSS!

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This post is subject for deletion because it was manually moved to another thread (we have quite strict moderation here, for the sake of general order). Please reply to it there (Debaters' Lounge). I'll delete it when and if Tindoome writes another post Good luck ~Admin Starlin~ (my colour is indigo when I am in my admin mode, by the way)