The Land Of “The Long White Cloud”
New Zealand is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island and the South Island and over 700 smaller islands. New Zealand’s capital city is Wellington, and its most populous city is Auckland.
The Māori name for New Zealand is Aotearoa; often translated as ‘land of the long white cloud’. It is unknown whether the Māori had a name for the whole country before the arrival of the Europeans; Aotearoa originally referred to just the North Island. Mapmakers began to use “North” and “South” on their maps to distinguish the two largest islands, and by 1907, this was the accepted norm.
Due to the extremely suggestive variety of landscapes and terrain, New Zealand has been used to shoot films that needed epic background locations. When Peter Jackson began to look for suitable locations for The Lord of the Rings film series, he first saw the Alexander Farm during an aerial search in 1998 and concluded that the area was “like a slice of ancient England”. Set Decorator Alan Lee commented that the location’s hills “looked as though Hobbits had already begun excavations”. Part of the site has a lake with a long arm that could double as a river.
After suitable negotiations with the owners, work commenced in transforming part of the farm into sets for Hobbiton and other parts of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Shire in March 1999. The New Zealand Army brought in heavy equipment to make 1.5 kilometres of road into the site from the nearest local road and initial ground works. Further work included building the facades for 37 hobbit holes and associated gardens and hedges, a mill and a bridge, and erecting a 29-ton oak above Bag End (Bilbo’s house). Generators were installed and water and sewage also had to be considered. Catering was made available for up to 400 cast, crew and visitors per day.
Jackson wrote: “I knew Hobbiton needed to be warm, comfortable and feel lived in. By letting the weeds grow through the cracks and establishing hedges and little gardens a year before filming, we ended up with an incredibly real place, not just a film set”. Lee commented that “it was satisfying to see that it had taken on something of the look of the Devonshire countryside I’d lived in for the past twenty-five years”.
Guided tours of the 5.5 hectares movie set site commenced in 2002 and continue to be provided daily. The two-hour excursion is very popular. There are now 44 Hobbit holes on view although it is only possible to enter a few of them, all of which have small, unfinished, earth-walled interiors.
Glossary:
a landmass: una massa continentale;
a mapmaker: un cartografo;
the norm: la normalità;
suggestive: suggestivo
the terrain: il territorio
aerial: aereo
a slice: una fetta, una parte, una sezione;
as though…: come se…
The Shire: La Contea (nome tratto dal libro di J.R.R. Tolkien – la patria degli hobbit);
heavy equipment: macchinari pesanti;
a facade: una facciata;
a hedge: una siepe;
a mill: un mulino;
an oak: una quercia
a sewage (system): un sistema fogniario;
the catering: la ristorazione, il catering;
to feel lived in: che si senta abitata;
a weed: un’erbaccia;
Devonshire: la contea del Devon
unfinished: incompleto, non rifinito;
an earth-walled interior: un interno con pareti di terra.
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