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Middle-Earth Tours
Tour 2: The Places of Middle-Earth
The Dead Marshes
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image from a Decipher card |
On either side and in front wide fens and mires now lay, stretching away southward and eastward into the dim half-light. Mists curled and smoked from dark and noisome pools. The reek of them hung stifling in the still air. Far away, now almost due south, the mountain-walls of Mordor loomed, like a black bar of rugged clouds floating above a dangerous fog-bound sea. --TTT, "The Passage of the Marshes" |
Hurrying forward again, Sam tripped, catching his foot in some old root or tussock. He fell and came heavily on his hands, which sank deep into sticky ooze, so that his face was brought close to the surface of the dark mere. There was a faint hiss, a noisome smell went up, the lights flickered and danced and swirled. For a moment the water below him looked like some window, glazed with grimy glass, through which he was peering. Wrenching his hands out of the bog, he sprang back with a cry. 'There are dead things, dead faces in the water,' he said with horror. 'Dead faces!'
Gollum laughed. 'The Dead Marshes, yes, yes: that is their name,' he cackled. 'You should not look in when the candles are lit.' --TTT, "The Passage of the Marshes"
The Dead Marshes, by Paul Monteagle |
The Dead Marshes, by Alan Lee |
Apparitions, by Ted Nasmith |
It must be pretty hard to paint the Dead Marshes and not have them look like something out of the Haunted House ride at Disney World. 
Through the Marshes, by Ted Nasmith
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The Dead Marshes, by Inger Edelfeldt |
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This is one of the few places I prefer Nasmith's interpretation of a scene over Lee's. |
Presently it grew altogether dark: the air itself seemed black and heavy to breathe. When lights appeard Sam rubbed his eyes: he thought his head was going queer. He first saw one with the corner of his left eye, a wisp of pale sheen that faded away; but others appeared soon after: some like dimly shining smoke, and some like misty flames flickering slowly above unseen candles; here and there they twisted like ghostly sheets unfurled by hidden hands. --TTT, "The Passage of the Marshes"
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detail from a poster on the official movie site |
image from Herr der Ringe |
image from a TTT commercial |
Who are they? What are they?' asked Sam shuddering, turning to Frodo, who was now behind him.
'I don't know,' said Frodo in a dreamlike voice. 'But I have seen them too. In the pools when the candles were lit. They lie in all the pools, pale faces, deep under the dark water. 'I saw them: grim faces and evil, and noble faces and sad. Many faces proud and fair, and weeds in their silver hair. But all foul, all rotting, all dead. A fell light is in them." --TTT, "The Passage of the Marshes" |
Full-size versions of these pictures are on display at Rolozo Tolkien and the official LotR movie site.
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