Tolkiencon 2026

martina3683
Jan 27
3 min read

Between 22 and 25 January 2026 I attended the Prague Tolkiencon, presenting there my book Cardinal Vices in Middle-earth.

The following pictures were taken by Metaflora from the Hungarian society, all the rest were taken by me.

As is the case with such conferences, there were many interesting events awaiting the visitors. You can see the program here.

On Friday, I attended the program in the gym room - the opening of the con and concerts of bands Poetické hudební společenstvo and Mluvíci šutr.

The first one(s) entertained us with Middle-earth inspired songs, while the other one(s) with a mix of folk and country songs from various anglophone countries. Those boys have some flow! Better than Eminem.

On Saturday, I attended several of the lectures taking place in the gym room, where I also had my book presentation.

The first lecture was by Lukáš Asník titled Nesmrtelnost ve světě J. R. R. Tolkiena (immortality in Tolkien’s world), followed by Barbora Smolková’s presentation of her research of unofficial translations — samizdaty of Tolkien’s work in former Czechoslovakia, titled „Prsten socialismus nezničí" aneb Tolkien v českém samizdatu. She even brought along a recent acquisition of one samizdat in Czech language.

For explanation, samizdat is a fan made translation and/or publication of a work that couldn’t be officially and legally published in a country, either due to political reasons — the author or the work being banned, or simply due to inaccessibility of publishing rights or worries of the publishers that the book wouldn’t sell well, or due to difficulties finding suitable translators and having enough economical and technical resources to tackle the task. So where the big publishing houses failed at the time, enthusiastic fans who did have access to the originals, translated them by themselves, often even illustrated and shared the work with their friends to spread their love of the work.

In the afternoon, I also attended Františka Vrbenská’s lecture on all sorts of legendary bandits, titled Zbojníci -- od Túrina po Nikolu Šuhaje.

In the free time in between the lectures, I shopped around in the artist corner, featuring painters and illustrators Matej Čadil, Lída Gnóme Holubová, Kathrin Heierli, Chechula Cupová, a Suwi.

Besides them, there were crafters, such as jewelry makers Monica Otmili and Ruthrinwen , Mharbu — a leather crafter, and Halaman Habitat — a floral terrarium maker.

This is what it looked like:

And here is my art haul:

Visitors could even contribute to a common poster by drawing whatever they felt like, or play various table top games in the game room.

The peak of the event was the theatrical performance of Falešné Společenstvo — a group that turns Tolkien’s stories into drama plays. This time, they tackled the War of Wrath. The recording will surely be shortly available at their youtube channel, along with the recording of all past performances.

For now, here is at least my photo-documentation:

Aftre the con, I also visited Prague castle, and one thing interested me the most there: the collection of armory, mainly helmets, some of which reminded me of the armory used in the Lord of the Rings films: