Right now, the northern plains are getting buffeted by a massive winter storm that the US media has nicknamed “Gandolf.” Which has led to a lot of speculation about certain gray wizards being involved with extreme weather events in North America. But we’re here to set the record straight. This is not a misspelling of the famous wizard’s name — it is in fact, as the Weather Channel explained last year, “A character in a 1896 fantasy novel in a pseudo-medieval countryside.” As BoingBoing’s Maggie Koerth-Baker put it succinctly:
Please note that this is Gandolf, not Gandalf. The former is a character in The Well at the World’s End, an 1896 fantasy novel. The latter is probably tied up in intellectual property restrictions.
Sad but probably true. Still, aren’t you glad you learned about a cool fantasy novel from the late nineteenth century?
