The First Word: Queen of the Rings

Talented artist Ingahild Grathmer, who just happened to have been the Queen of Denmark, had a remarkable connection to JRR Tolkein.

The Sightgeist by Glen Le Lievre.

In the early 1970s one of JRR Tolkien’s biggest fans, Danish illustrator Ingahild Grathmer, sent the author her illustrations inspired by The Lord of the Rings — woodcut-style battles between the dark wizards, pint-sized hobbits, nightmarish Nazgul and ephemeral elves.

Grathmer was born in Copenhagen on April 16, 1940, a week after the Nazi invasion of Denmark, into a world not wholly dissimilar to the war between good and evil depicted on the pages of the series. Her letter expressed “how much pleasure I have derived” from the book she had recently discovered. “It is no exaggeration to say that I have been reading it ever since.”

The hard-to-impress Tolkien was struck by how similar her minimalist black-and-white works were to his. Grathmer’s art was redrawn by British artist Eric Fraser and appeared in the 1977 Danish edition of The Lord of the Rings.

But by this time she was preoccupied with another job – Queen of Denmark. Ingahild Grathmer is the pseudonym (and partial anagram) of Queen Margrethe II, christened Margrethe Alexandrine Thorhildur Ingrid Oldenburg; a Nordic name worthy of a character from Middle Earth! But Australians probably know her best as the mother-in-law of Crown Princess Mary (formerly Mary Donaldson of Hobart).

Pictured just before their wedding, Mary Donaldson and Danish Crown Prince Frederik prepare to dine with the soon-to-be Princess Mary and her future mother-in-law, Queen Maregrethe, in January, 2004. Picture: AP

Despite no formal visual arts training — she studied political science, archaeology and finance — Queen Margrethe is an accomplished painter who has exhibited in many mediums across the world.

Margrethe wasn’t born an heir to the throne. It was only after a 1953 amendment to the Danish constitution allowing women to ascend in the absence of men that she was crowned in January 1972 after her father, King Frederik IX, passed away. She was the first female monarch of Denmark in 500 years.

The story goes that she sent her drawings to Tolkien when she was still a crown princess. But she also helped with the Danish translation of the LOTR series and gave her drawings to a CD made by the band The Tolkien Ensemble. Rayner Unwin (son of Sir Stanley Unwin, co-founder of George Allen & Unwin books) told the English Tolkien Society in 1998: “Would you believe it, when we met with Her Majesty to have the designs for the book approved, she exclaimed: ‘But why did you turn one of my drawings upside down?’ I have never been so embarrassed.”

She’s a fascinating figure. An intellectual style icon who has designed costumes for the Royal Danish Ballet, is the most popular monarch in Europe and runs the second-happiest country (the 2019 worldwide poll put Denmark behind Finland). It’s been said that if she had not been crowned monarch she would have easily been elected president.

Queen M turns 80 on April 16 but still occasionally exhibits work at major galleries, now under her own name. In 2012, ahead of The Essence of Colour, she told Reuters her favourite genre is landscape and she’s inspired by Golden Age painters. “I started off with imaginary landscapes in blue and green, and they had sort of secrets in them … You might fall into them, fall right through them,” she said.

The queen said she had never been tempted to put people in her paintings.

“Painting is not what my life is about, but it is very important to me … I hope I will be able to paint as long as I live … Of course one never knows how long I will be able to paint, but the position I have today is (it is) what I was supposed to do for the rest of my life.”

She’s still a few years off throwing a Bilbo Baggins-themed 111th farewell party.

Your move, Queen Elizabeth.