Fingolfin's Findings XXXVI: Rockall, not quite the 'Meneltarma of our times'

This is another naming oddity inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien's writings that has come to life something like fifty years ago and usually gets a mention when something silly happens on Rockall for a good cause (or seriously political, i.e., someone wants to make money off it or use it for military-strategic reasons.)

In fact, I only remembered it because fellow Tolkien afficionado Floss Gibson (Opens in a new window) mentioned it in a group post on Facebook. I somehow felt that I had heard it before and true enough, I found the first mention for me - in a book that I translated in 2008, the first edition of Henry Gee (Opens in a new window)'s seminal The Science of Middle-earth.

Now, Henry has a chapter in his book, titled Holes in the ground, stating that ... Tolkien was fascinated by the submerged and the subterranean.

[I will add a longer excerpt from this chapter at the end of this #FinFin so you can see Henry's reasoning - I do not agree with all he suggests but he is spot on with the statement that Tolkien did include 'geological' movement on a massive, a truly 'legendary' scale.]

And as you can see from the screenshot above someone was fascinated by J.R.R. Tolkien's works, in this particular case The Lord of the Rings.

Picture credit: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI); Produced by United Nations Geospatial. https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/gazetteer/ (Opens in a new window); photo of Rockall (2008) by Andy Strangeway (Opens in a new window), CC BY-SA 2.0.

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