An impressive first edition – the Omentië Nolwë conference in Zurich, Switzerland

I had the great pleasure and honour to be welcomed to the first ever conference organised by the Schweizerische Tolkienfördergesellschaft (Swiss Tolkien Friends’ Association) and the local smial of the German Tolkien Society, Esgaroth, in cooperation with the Universities of Zurich, Lausanne, and Jena, and supported by Tolkien specialist publishers Walking Tree: Omentië Nolwë. This is my short report on this event. Well, not that short!

Some of you may remember my report of the amazing fan event and screening of War of the Rohirrim at Lucerne? I have to admit, I have fallen in love a little with both the city of Lucerne and the amazing volunteer work that is being done in Switzerland right now. So when I heard that their first ever academic conference was happening there could be no doubt about me wanting to go there!

It quickly became clear to me that this very first edition of this academic conference had a truly impressive basis to start from. Now, I have participated in many conferences over the years and I have seen a few “firsts” so I do have a few experiences to compare it with. And to have three universities from two countries, a friends’ association and a regulars’ table of a literary society join forces as well as the support of one of the leading specialist publishers on Middle-earth, Walking Tree, is absolutely amazing.

I was invited to come along – informally – and do some live reporting via my social media channels and thanks to the hospitality of Lukas Ritzel in Luzern and the support of Thomas Honegger this was made possible. So a huge thank you goes out to those two and Switzerland in general! (I’ll thank many more people in the course of this!)

Some of you may have heard that I am fairly well-known for documenting my train travels (for those of you who speak German – the hashtag is #BahnfahrtLive , i.e. #LiveTrainTravelling with my Instagram account) and particularly long distance ones. You may imagine that going from Jena in Thuringia to Luzern in Switzerland does take its time (a bit over seven hours to be exact) but as both the Swiss and the Italians involved seem to be always on time and German Railways is too embarrassed letting the rest of the world know that only about 60-65% of its highspeed trains are on time they seem to be making an extra effort when getting me to Suisse.

So, nothing disastrous happened and thanks to the support of friends and the fact that I have a discount card for first class tickets and international tickets are often way cheaper than national ones I could afford to splash out on a first class return ticket! And because I have been spending more than 2500€ in the last three years ever year – long distance relationship, remember? – I also got a limited number of free drinks. Yaaay!

Now, if you should ever meet Lukas you’ll find out after about 17 seconds that he loves music and he particularly loves going to concerts. So there was no discussion for me when we drove off to Zurich after having dropped off my stuff at ‘my’ apartment for a concert of God is an Astronaut with Jo Quail as supporting act at the Dynamo Kulturhaus. My God, I ❤️ the cello!

And my first ever taste of Zurich which was quite the culture shock after Lucerne. You know, largest city in the country with the arrogance to boot and such… Anyway, the first evening was an absolute blast but I was truly happy to get some hard-earned sleep and when Friday came around I could get some work done.

But I also visited a store that made me truly happy as a born and raised Colognian!

I know, I know, I shouldn’t be talking about largest city arrogance when I am guilty myself of biggest carnival in the world arrogance. It always gladdens my heart to see when other places are doing carnival but in comparison to Cologne… pish posh! I would have bought any Smaug costume or Stoneblade, Shmarthur’s Sword from a… stone… but they did not have that kind of fantasy stuff. Absolutely fun visit, though.

So, the work I got done I did at the Central City Library of Lucerne, thanks to the kind intervention of Lukas. Now, the library is amazing and I am sure all other libraries that are part of this local network are just as amazing but the annual cost to have a library card was prohibitive the first time I visited Lucerne. Lukas made a call, explained the event and who I was, … et voilà! I had a personalised “The Tolkienist” library card!

See, I don’t need Ferraris (I don’t want one, really!) or expensive jewelry or a house or holidays… you can make me happy with library cards.

[I WILL have to write that post on all the library cards I have collected in my life!]

Anyway, it was an absolute joy because the central library is part of the Bourbaki Panorama, one of the absolute must see things in Lucerne. I had the pleasure of visiting it when I first came to Lucerne and the companionship of Lukas and Thomas made that day very special, indeed.

You may have realised by now that I have fallen in love – at least a little – with Lucerne and the amazing work that is being done by the volunteers of Esgaroth [Instagram]

And we have not even reached the day of the conference!

---

So, let’s jump to Saturday, March 15th, 2025. The day of Omentië Nolwë.

An early start was involved. I think I must have gotten up at 6 am as we needed to drive to Zurich and be there for the preparations to happen. Lukas had stuffed tons of flyers, roll-ups, things for display etc. into his car the evening before and we were soon off – on time, I hasten to add! After a quick breakfast in one of those lovely Swiss motorway services we drove into the city proper. I was overwhelmed by the amount of concrete Switzerland had poured into its largest city – the Autobahns were massive but soon the landscape changed to the beauty of inner city architecture.

And trust me, if you ever wanted to participate in a conference in a BEAUTIFUL building – you need to come to Zurich. The conference took place at Rämisstrasse 59, at the home of the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies. It used to be the Alte Kantonsschule, built by Gustav Albert Wegmann, as an hommage to the Bauakademie. So if you have ever been to Berlin you might be reminded of architectural similarities (have a look at Wikimedia Commons for some more lovely images.)

And the auditorium. They call it an auditorium! (silly film Gimli impression!)

What I am trying to get across here is that any decent university will have a decent auditorium, amenities to make such events happen and so on. However, there are some places that are simply more blessed than others. I mean, if you ever listen to a talk at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford you will most certainly realise that the space where such a conference is happening is often even more important than you think. And it will put you in a much better mood!

Added to this – if this a conference with hefty nerdy tendencies you can expect some creative ideas. Like some signs at the front door.

Lukas and I were the first to arrive and soon after everyone else trundled in, led then by Prof. Christine Lötscher, who opened the gates to the building so we could set up camp. The excitement was palpable, even in the early morning cold!

We already knew that the ~100 seat auditorium was fully booked and another ~40-50 people would join us online and that is absolutely excellent. Participation was free and the conference conceived from the beginning as a hybrid option to give everyone the opportunity to join in.

We started on time at 9.45 a.m (have a look at the timeline) and the room was buzzing about this very first edition with the topic Environmentalism in Tolkien’s World: Ecocritical perspectives on Middle-earth (see this link for the abstracts and more info on the speakers.)

Now, I am not going to make this even longer with reviews of every single talk given. From my point of view I can only tell you that every single one of them was good and some exceptionally so. Patrick Curry’s keynote Tree by Tolkien alone would have been reason enough to participate. What also struck me as excellent was the opportunity awarded to young scholars to present their work as the most excellent Prof. Rachel Falconer did with her student Sarah Heinzelmann and Christine Lötscher with Hanna Sophia Schmitt. (Rachel Falconer is the University of Lausanne part of the organisational equation.)

And then you have someone like Prof. Thomas Honegger from the University of Jena (third university time pays for all!) who does wear many a hat, including being responsible for the already mentioned Walking Tree Publishers who came up to the microphone at the end of the conference – with his colleague Peter Buchs – stating clearly, “well, we’ll have to make a book of this, then!” [my paraphase]

Which will give you another hint how good the conference has been. Publishers don’t usually take on a first time conference just because it happened…

Add to this the intentional decision to support an Ukrainian academic like Dr Alexandra Filonenko and to invite (and pay for her flight from the States) Amber Lehning, PhD, with her research from The Map of Wilderland: Ecocritical Reflections on Tolkien’s Myth of Wilderness.

At the end of the day everyone was of one mind: We should do this again! And I can already promise you that the corresponding applications at the universities mentioned above have already been made for Omentië Nolwë II. Now, this might happen in Lausanne instead of Zurich but that will be up to the organisational committee. I can only tell you that if you think Zurich is beautiful – I have been told that Lausanne isn’t really ugly, either!

I mean, we could have a cup of coffee beside Lake Geneva. Not too bad.

My thanks very much go out to the Schweizerische Tolkienförderungsgesellschaft (Swiss Tolkien Friends’ Association) and the local smial Esgaroth (Zurich) for coming up with this event as well as Lukas and May for their generous hospitality!

[Should I have forgotten anyone – please let me know!]

I will leave you with an eclectic gallery of photos I have taken in either Zurich or Lucerne and can promise – if I can make it to ON-II, I will be there!

Further Reading

Official website of Omentie Nolwe.

The Schweizerische Tolkienfördergesellschaft (Swiss Tolkien Friends’ Association)

The GTS smial Esgaroth.

Official website of Walking Tree Publishers.

Jason Fisher. Esgaroth — what’s in a name?

The fan screening of War of the Rohirrim in Lucerne.