Ancient Web: Flying Moose Made Middle-earth Scholars Laugh at Themselves

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

Tolkien fandom is capable of conducting an incredibly serious argument about an invented king's ancestry. The Tolkien Sarcasm Page was built to remind everybody involved that it was also possible to laugh.

Visit the Tolkien Sarcasm Page.

It lives within Flying Moose of Nargothrond, a site that opens with an extended complaint about people wasting their lives surfing the internet—followed by the admission that the web hosting has already been paid for, so the author might as well put something up.

That opening sets the tone. The main project parodies fan scholarship while drawing on remarkably detailed knowledge of The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and Tolkien's other works.

Everything is footnoted, including the nonsense

The Saruman's Diary is introduced as an allegedly recovered manuscript. The diary then records the would-be ruler of Isengard complaining about subordinates, faulty provisions, furniture, smoking, and the failure of his brilliant plans. Its elaborate invented discovery story and clickable footnotes imitate the scholarly apparatus of Tolkien's published writings.

Other diversions include a supposed Shakespearean Tragedie of Frodo Baggins, a collection of Tolkien Crackpot Theories, Sherlock Holmes mysteries transplanted into Middle-earth, and a helpful synopsis for students who cannot be bothered to read the books. There is also an impossibly difficult board game and a purported complete movie download.

These are humor pieces, not genuine newly discovered Tolkien manuscripts or reliable literary research. Part of the joke is that the introductory claims resemble the way real scholars document obscure textual evidence.

A separate index organizes the collection into little rooms with hand-made labels. Even the page's closing disclaimer insists that Tolkien's books are much more worthwhile than the website itself. That is a refreshingly low-pressure form of self-promotion.

The wider Flying Moose homepage adds personal essays, stories about stagehand work, and comparisons involving Rocky and Bullwinkle and He-Man. The Tolkien pages are the major attraction, but they sit inside a recognizably individual, older-style homepage.

No audience figures are established by the surviving pages, so there is no need to claim the project changed global fandom. It preserves a particular pleasure of the early web: a whole archive built around one lovingly maintained running joke.

Explore the fake scholarship and Saruman's Diary.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.