Meet the Makers: The First Anniversary of the #TolkienTribe on Instagram
When J.R.R. Tolkien’s 125th birthday was about to be celebrated – in 2017 – a bunch of Tolkienists from all over the world came together on Instagram to do just that: share in their mutual interest in Tolkien’s stories. Very quickly sixteen of us gathered around an Instagram chat started on Jan 1st, 2017, which was soon called “TolkienTribe” and this became our hashtag.
Now, one year later we are celebrating more than 5,000 posts with this hashtag, we celebrated the “Bilbo Baggins Birthday Bash” with an international giveaway supported by such wonderful people as the German Tolkien publishers Hobbitpresse and Weta Workshop and many other events and we have gone from strength to strength. Now, as of today, we are starting the official Tolkien Tribe Instagram account to further interest in the life and works of Professor J.R.R. Tolkien and the people he inspired – and we are going to get just better 🙂
Members of the #TolkienTribe (in alphabetical order)
No longer active: @aliterarypotion
No longer active: @sarahlostbutfound
No longer active: @tomdruil
No longer active: @the.bibliofiles
No longer active: @thetelltaleheart_
No longer active: @thatwhichtheydefend
No longer active: @will_falder
How the group came into being
What basically happened was that one of us – aka Justin – decided to open up a chat for all of us to join in, very late on January 1st, 2017. 🙂
I joined the chat the next day, early in the morning, together with most of the rest of us.
One of our earliest members who left the group as she worked on other projects – Darth Claudia – suggested using #TolkienTribe – and so our common hashtag was born.
History of the Hashtag – some background
We as a group weren’t the first to use this hashtag (we didn’t know back then and never really thought about it.) The first ever usage of the hashtag happened with this charming instagrammer – according to the IG search – on Nov 25, 2014. [The post is no longer accessible].
Another IG user wrote down #TolkienTribe on Nov 21, 2015.
On April 19, 2016 this Instagrammer took up the flag.
Only one more Instagrammer used the hashtag before our “very own first” entry. [The original entry of Dec 4, 2016, is no longer available but @the.memory.of.trees joined us a month later in our festivities and made that her first entry on her IG.]
Our very own Sarah (@sarahlostbutfound) was the first to post using our ‘new’ hashtag and since then many others have taken it up. [The post is no longer available].
Our friends and supporters
We have been incredibly lucky to have found many friends and supporters who are helping us out in our ventures – true Tolkien fellowship style; unfortunately, they are too many to mention of all of them here. However, please do know that we appreciate all of your time and effort in sharing the fun and inspiration we all derive from reading Tolkien’s stories and the work inspired by them!
Update January 21, 2024 The world has changed and Instagram has lost much of its charm years ago. The Internet Archive captured this page first on January 10, 2017, but only in parts. We also decided to change our name to #TolkienFolk for our fifth anniversary, so to speak; however, I am keeping the original post title for posterity’s sake.
