Middle Earth Magic in New Zealand

I’ve never been one to obsess over actors, over sets, over costumes. I don’t care about who played the character or where the movie was filmed or how the magic happened. I like the characters, the plot, the story.

However, there is one film series that is a little bit different. I’m sure this surprises no one, but it’s The Lord of the Rings.

It’s one of the first movies I remember watching. The first film of the trilogy came out when I was two years old, and I don’t remember when my mom first showed it to me, but I feel like it was already my favorite movie series by the time I was eight.

And I knew, just like I knew that the tooth fairy wasn’t real (because the tooth fairy in my house was super forgetful–leave the money, forget the tooth kind of forgetful!) that The Lord of the Rings wasn’t a real story. It was fantasy.

But, I thought, the way kids do, that the whole thing was made up. That the scenery was as fake as the orcs. As fabricated.

I don’t remember how old I was when I realized that though the story wasn’t real and the characters weren’t real and the place–Middle Earth–wasn’t real, that many of the places where the scenes were filmed were actually real. And they were in New Zealand.

For that reason, there has always been something magical about New Zealand in my mind. Because it is home to mountains, to forests, to rivers that were, to my young mind, completely imaginary. And then… they came to life.

There are guide books to every film location in New Zealand from shots that last less than a second to iconic scenes. I’m not that committed or obsessed, but I did find a few magical locations where I could step into the fantasy. Feel a little bit of the magic. Revel in the impossibility of a story come to life.

The most iconic (and easy to access) of these places is, of course, Hobbiton. While commercial and guided and full of heaps of people, I managed to find some magic among the money.

Hobbiton

In the high season, Hobbiton runs tours of about 40 people every ten minutes from 8am to 6:30pm. You get to spend about 2.5 hours in the Hobbiton park carefully paced by an experienced tour guide. It sounds quite icky for someone who’d rather wander around alone and marvel.

My solution: I booked the last tour of the day at 6:30pm. In January, when I went, this also meant that I timed my visit to coincide with sunset, just to lend a little extra charm to the experience.

When the tour started, people thronged through the ambling streets of the Hobbit village and milled about in front of The Green Dragon. Any photos of more than just the space in front of me were peppered with tourists in brightly colored clothing. But as the tour progressed, I could fall back a bit and enjoy strolling. I could linger at the detailed homes, take in the roadside stalls stacked with honey jars or stand and observe the tiny Hobbit-sized socks swaying on the clothesline. Flowers bloomed, little round doors enchanted, and the sun shone golden. By the time we arrived at the lake and The Green Dragon, only a few people from the previous tour remained and the sun was coloring the sky, mirrored perfectly in the still lake.

The Shire was never my favorite Middle Earth location, but the detail, the charm, the quaint country life that the set captured both in look and feel was a powerful aura over the area. I didn’t spend my time imagining the actors gathering on the grass. I think it’s interesting that the set brewed their own beer for the actors to drink (1% alcohol content), but I’m not obsessed. I’m not hanging on every word.

It’s the feel of the place. The act of stepping into Hobbiton is to step out of the real world for a little while. To imagine what else is possible. To stoke the imagination.

For me, what’s most special about Hobbiton is that a fantasy world has been rendered important. Has been rendered real.

My guide told us that after The Lord of the Rings filming was over, the temporary Shire set was taken down and only a few holes in the hillside remained in the privately owned field. Yet, through endless rewatches of Shire scenes to match the distant mountains, early fans managed to find the private field and break in. Over the years, more than 20,000 fans visited the empty fields.

So, when The Hobbit movies were being planned, the farm owners worked with Peter Jackson to make the rebuilt set permanent. Now they receive an estimated 650,000 visitors a year. This, right here, is proof of the power of fantasy, of belief, of determination. Who says fantasy can’t be real? Lovers of fantasy made Hobbiton real. And that is a really beautiful kind of magic.

While Hobbiton captured my imagination with marvelous imaginings and reassurance that fantasy-appreciation is very much alive and well, the true magic, for me, remains in the wild spaces. Wild spaces where Lord of the Rings magic happened, but also places where so much more magic is possible. My story. Yours. A million possibilities in a single field, a single stretch of forest. Places with a magic of their own.

Mount Sunday

I wrote about Mount Sunday in a previous post, but it’s one of my favorite locations in New Zealand and an important filming location so it definitely deserves another mention! The area appeals because it was the film location for Edoras, capital of Rohan, and the Rohirrim are quite possibly my favorite Middle Earth kingdom–master horse riders with a strong sense of honor.

However, I think I love it more for what it is on it’s own: an incredibly wide valley rimmed by snow-capped mountains. Streams pick their way through the tussock grass, sometimes so slow that they perfectly reflect the sky. It feels like a completely different place from everyday life–so wild and free.

Tawhai Falls

Tawhai Falls is also called Gollum’s Pool because it was, you got it, where the producers filmed the scene where Gollum catches a fish while Frodo and Faramir watch. Of course, things can never be simple, so that scene is actually a mishmash of two different waterfalls: Tawhai Falls and Mangawhero Falls–both located in Tongariro National Park. I visited both, but Tawhai Falls felt more like the right place. This is probably because I could only view Mangawhero Falls (first photo) from a high lookout while I could quite close to Tawhai Falls–and even crouch beside it like Gollum!

Mount Ngauruhoe

Tongariro National Park doesn’t feel like Mordor. There’s very little magma or fire. There really aren’t that many giant obsidian boulders. And there are certainly no enormous gates hauled open by massive mountain trolls. Nor is there a spiky tower with a burning eye.

Really, without all the orange and red fire to compliment the black volcanic rock, Tongariro feels and looks nothing like Mordor.

But the mountain…

The volcano Mount Ngauruhoe is Mount Doom. It last erupted in 1977, but alas there is no magma now. Nor is there a super convenient tunnel and platform to access the inside of the volcano. But Ngauruhoe doesn’t need either of these things to have a very powerful presence. Just the shape of the mountain is enough to send a little thrill through my insides. Nothing gets that perfect cone-like shape through peaceful, innocent means. It’s a representation of the power beneath. The power that could emerge at any moment.

In fact, a bit of smoke shooting out of the top would be just as thrilling and frightening as a Nazgul erupting out of the mountains with a piercing cry.

There was a moment when I was climbing the scree field to reach the lookout for Upper Tama Lake that I pictured myself as Frodo and Sam scrambling up the edge of Mount Doom. Finally I’d found a few giant black rocks, charred like coal and scattered. Thankfully I was wearing shoes.

Kaitoke Regional Park

I was driving toward Napier when a road sign caught my fantasy-loving eye. Rivendell.

Rivendell?

But there it was again a few kilometers later. A brown sign with the word Rivendell. Frodo and the others didn’t have such a sign, though I imagine that if they had, they’d have slammed on the breaks, flicked the turn signal, and gone careening into a sharp left turn the same way I did.

It wasn’t the true Rivendell–gorgeous arches and halls, delicate as starlight. Sparkling waterfalls cascading into a narrow valley. Elves. I was most disappointed with the lack of elves.

In fact, I learned at the site, the forest shots of Rivendell were filmed here, but the waterfalls and sheer cliffs came from footage of Fiordland National Park. The site provides info boards mapping out specific trees and identifying them in certain shots, but I found that far too scientific. I just liked the feel of the place. The cool woodland, the narrow trees. The greenery filtering golden sunlight.

Years after filming, a smaller replica of the arch that the fellowship rides through upon departing Rivendell was placed in the park. It’s just enough whimsy to add an extra burst of magic to the area. But I challenge anyone who walks through on a hot afternoon not to feel a bit elven beneath the cool trees.