Tolkien's war: Webley Mk VI pistol.

During the dark days of the First World War, 2nd Lieutenant JRR Tolkien kept his revolver close to him at all times as he fought to survive the front-line trenches.

Tolkien served on the frontline as a signals officer for the Lancashire Fusiliers from June to October 1916, when he contracted trench fever and was sent to a hospital in Birmingham. There he began writing stories which became The Silmarillion, the legendary history of Middle-earth which underlies The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Debate still continues regarding the extent to which Tolkien's war experiences influenced his literary work, however the impact of the battle remained with him for the rest of his life and fans say its influence can clearly be seen in his writing. Effects of World War I Tolkien’s experiences on the Western Front shaped his later books, with episodes such as Frodo Baggins’ experience in the dead marshes in The Lord of the Rings, where he sees dead warriors in pools amid a desolate landscape, a reminder of the realities of the Somme and Ypres. The writer also said that Sam Gamgee, Frodo’s dependable and heroic servant in The Lord of the Rings, was ‘a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognised as so far superior to myself’

Few kilometers from Tolkien, in German trenches, a young Adolf Hitler was wounded in the left thigh when a shell exploded at the entrance to the dispatch runners' dugout. He begged not to be evacuated,[20] but was sent for almost two months to the Red Cross hospital at Beelitz.

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Axe with intact shaft uncovered at Rødbyhavn, Denmark. Dates to the Stone Age, about 5,500 years ago.

Only eight complete Stone Age axes with the full wooden handle preserved have been found in Denmark before now. All of those were discovered in peat bogs. This is the first example discovered on the site of a former fjord lagoon. Jammed into the dense clay of the seabed, the axe was covered in layers of sand and soil that kept oxygen away and waterlogged the organic material, keeping it moist and intact.

Museum Lolland-Falster archaeologists discovered the axe stuck vertically 30 centimeters (just under a foot) below the sea floor east of the harbour town of Rødbyhavn. It was not the only artifact found jammed into what was then the seashore in a vertical position. There were numerous wooden candlesticks, two oars, two bows, eight spears and 14 axe shafts. There were also deposits of ceramic objects and animals. In one grouping they found 60 jaws from different animals and two axes made from red deer antlers with fragments of the wooden hilts in the shaft holes. This was the only complete axe with both head and hilt in perfect condition.

Axes were important tools for Stone Age people, but particularly so around the time when agriculture was introduced to the region. In order to begin planting things, people had to clear the virgin forests that covered the country. The establishment of stationary agricultural communities engendered new social hierarchies and religious rituals. Wetlands were a consistent locus for cultic practices, and burials and sacrificial offerings testify to how important these liminal grounds between water and land were to the people who lived near them.

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