Æons ago, in the pre-pandemic year of 2019, I wrote about the Norwegian game Ringen, based on Lord of the Rings. I only knew about it from a vague reference in a list of Tolkien games which gave the game as being from 1979, written by “Hansen”, and later converted into a region of Genesis MUD (that later made it to VikingMUD). VikingMUD’s section is still mostly the same as the original, so I was able to play through and theorize about what the original Ringen was like.

Back in September, two articles dropped on the site spillhistorie.no (run by Joachim Froholt) about rescued Norwegian games, both written by Robert Robichaud. The first was on SVHA Adventure (which I’ve now played) and the second was about an authentic version of Ringen in Norwegian. The game originated in 1983, not 1979, and was originally by Halvor Nilsen, not “Hanson”. There’s quite a lot of detail to the article and I am going to give a shorter summary here; the important thing to point out right away is there’s actually four versions: the original on mainframe, a port made to C64 done direct from the mainframe source code by Pål-Kristian and Per Arne Engstad, another port to DOS, and finally the leap to the MUD systems. Enough survives of the mainframe version it may eventually be restored, the C64 version is lost, and the DOS version is the one I’m about to play.

One curiosity about the title screen above is that it refers to Lord of the Rings using the title of the second translation of Lord of the Rings into Norwegian (“Ringenes Herre”), which came out in 1984, after the first version of the game Ringen. In 1983 the only translation available was one by Nils Werenskiolds in the early 70s (“Krigen om Ringen”) which was written in an old-fashioned “riksmål” style and is considered inferior.

The University of Tromsø was the fourth university established in Norway (1968) after Bergen, Oslo, and Trondheim. All four obtained computer science programs. Of the four, Trondheim had more an engineering focus (with their MIT and Norsk Data links, see SVHA Adventure for more), Bergen emphasized numerical analysis, and Oslo included theoretical work on programming languages (with their first professor, Ole Johan Dahl, co-inventing the first object-oriented programming language). University of Tromsø was singular for, if nothing else, their location, still the farthest north on Earth of any university.

Their far-north position made them an optimal place to do astronomy and geophysical research (with phenomena like the Aurora Borealis); the Department of Physics is where their computing first started. Their computer science was hence of a pragmatic sort, working hand-in-hand with science, and through the 1970s leaning towards engineering. For example, they did work on the Tandberg line of terminals.

They were always small, and failed to break out as their own graduate college separate from math and science; according to a paper from History of Nordic Computing:

The department was the youngest and smallest of the four departments of the Faculty of Mathematical and Physical Sciences. As a result, it was constantly in the minority when the voting for lecturing capacity had taken place.

In the Fall 1983 term, a student named Halvor Nilsen decided to write an adventure based on Lord of the Rings, using Norwegian for the game rather than English.

It was mostly to test what I had learned during my studies on a “proper” project, partly because I was interested in both Tolkien and computer games.

The game was finished and popular by December; so popular that Nilsen added a time-limiting function in a January version.

Welcome text, via the mainframe Ringen source code.

Word of the game spread outside the school, and Pål-Kristian (age 15) and Per Arne Engstad (age 14) had heard about it. No story of stealth this time, they just asked for and got a login:

Getting into the University computer room was pretty easy. I just asked, and they gave me a username. Everything was fine as long as I behaved, was quiet, and let the students have their space if they needed it.

Having played it and wanting to have it on their home computer, they ported it to C64 (based on printed Pascal source code) and again later to DOS; they considered professional publication, but:

I was fifteen in the fall of 1985, and my brother was 16. At that time, the internet didn’t exist. There were no real game companies in Norway, I think. Who should we have turned to? In addition, it was never, at least as I remember it, the intention that we would make money from this. In any case, I was driven by the fact that it was incredibly exciting, both with the programming itself and also that it was possible to make games in a fairy tale world. We could have contacted Halvor to get something together, but we never did.

You can see the exact details on Rob’s post, including how it got ported to MUD systems. Regarding game companies in Norway, spillhistorie.no has a story about the Norwegian version of The Quill, but it is true they did not have a regular “gaming industry” making things easy like with the bedroom coders of England.

From spillhistorie.no, and we’ll return to this in 1984. The start of The Quill (English version) is coming soon to this blog.

The main difference between the mainframe and DOS versions is (allegedly) an exploration section cut at the start; the DOS version instead starts right in the action, as you’ll see in a moment.

To get into the DOS version the program asks for your name (and for it to be your real name, not something silly) and a date (which the game emphatically states must be a real one) in the format MM/DD-YY, with the “/” and “-” characters exactly. This might not seem like a challenge, but the Norwegian character set is needed to play (there’s a SETUP.BAT that will do that for you) which means the keys are changed. Shift-7 gave me a “/” and “/” gave me a “-“. I also found after some fiddling:

; gives ø or Ø ‘ gives æ or Æ [ gives å or Å

The game really does need the characters; you can type “på” (that is, “on”) to wear the One Ring if you have it, and “pa” does not work. If you are a Norwegian speaker, you may think “of course, pa is an entirely different thing, you wouldn’t treat that the same” but there are games like Skatte Jagt from this era that just ignore non-Latin characters. The spelling-substitute of “paa” doesn’t work either.

Letter blocks from Etsy including the three Danish/Norwegian characters.

The fortunate thing (from my perspective) is that the game contains a relatively complete verb-list in the instructions.

`Nord’,`Sør’,`Vest’, `Øst’,`Opp’,`Ned’: directions, first letters work so you can use “Ø” for east `Av’, `På’: Wear or take off the ring `Bruk’: Use (according to Rob’s article, this gets used generally for most objects) `Kast’: Drop `Se’: Look (get room description) `Si’: Say `Ta’: Take `Undersøk’: Examine

Unlike the game Ring Quest where the player was essentially every character at once, Ringen squarely identifies the player as Frodo. You’re with the Fellowship, about to pass the Misty Mountains, when you are attacked by trolls and separated from the group; you lose the One Ring in the process. The action picks up with troll soldiers in hot pursuit; your goal is to enter Moria, find the One Ring, and escape on the other side (I will assume with a Balrog encounter somewhere).

Du er fanget mellom trollsoldatene og den glatte, kalde fjellveggen! Trollsoldatene beveger seg veldig raskt opp fjellstien du brukte for å flykte. Trøst og bær hvis du ikke kan komme deg unna!!

You are trapped between troll soldiers and the slippery mountain wall! They are moving quickly up the path you used to escape. Say your prayers now if you can’t get away!

I was stuck here for a bit; the player has no inventory and none of the directions work. I needed to catch on to the fact that the game lets you examine things embedded in descriptions (rather than separated as “items”); in this case, you can examine the mountain wall (“fjellveggen”).

Still checking vocabulary with image searches. Source.

Doing this reveals a message: “Ennyn Durin Aran Moria: / pedo mellon a minno. / Im Narvi hain echant: / Celebrimbor o Eregion / theithant i thiw hin.” Translated in Norwegian:

Durins Dører, Herren over Moria: Tal, venn, og tred inn. Jeg Narvi gjorde dem: Celebrimbor av Eregion risset disse runene.

This is the famous “say friend and enter” door. Unlike the MUD’s door where I needed to say “mellon”, this one uses the word “venn” (friend in Norwegian).

>si venn Sakte deler fjellet seg foran deg, og en stor port glir utover. Innenfor kan du se ei mørk trapp. Plutselig skjer mye på en gang. Opp stien kommer trollsoldatene i stor fart rett mot deg ! Du rygger inn i porten, og i det samme smeller den igjen med stor kraft !! Du er fanget inne i fjellet !

Slowly the mountain splits before you, and a large gate slides open. Inside, you can see a dark staircase. Suddenly, everything happens at once. Up the path, the troll soldiers rush at you with great speed! You back into the gate, and it slams shut with great force! You are trapped in the mountain!

The game is fairly open from here, and I’m fairly slow at playing it (see: Norwegian, although it is close enough to Danish this isn’t as bad as I’d thought it would be). I’d like to share the first couple rooms just to get a sense of what the game is like.

Dette er et stort rundt rom. En stor, støvete gang går mot øst, mens en liten, ubetydelig gang går nordover. Det er mange sprekker i taket; noen er små, mens andre er store nok til å krype inn i. Hullene er dessverre alt for langt oppe for at du skal klare å nå dem.

This is a large round room. A large, dusty corridor goes east, while a small, insignificant corridor leads north. The ceiling has many cracks; some are small, others are large enough to crawl into. Unfortunately, the cracks are too high up to reach.

Heading east:

Steinkammeret. Det er steiner overalt her inne. Dette kammeret må en gang ha blitt brukt til vaktrom, til tross for at det nå bare ligger gråstein på bakken her. Det er bare en utgang; mot vest.

Du hører lyden av lette fottrinn, og i den ene øyenkroken ser du en utydelig skygge som beveger seg langsomt.

Stone Chamber. There are stones everywhere. This chamber must have once been used as a guard room, even though there is only grey stone on the ground. There is only one exit, to the west.

You hear the sound of footsteps, and in the corner of your eye you see a vague shadow move slowly.

I tried examining the shadow but was told everything I needed was in the text; it isn’t permanent so I’m not sure what’s going on here. Maybe examining the mountain to get the riddle was a one-shot thing.

Looking for “en utydelig skygge”. Source.

One more room for good measure; back to the start and then north:

Sørenden av et langt, lavt rom. Østveggen er overgrodd med fin, hvit mose, mens vestveggen er glatt og trist. Gulvet her er nydelig utskjert i berget, men taket er ruflete og svært fuktig. Det er noen hull i øst- og vestveggene, og på ei steintavle nedfelt i gulvet står det risset med noen dvergeruner: “Død over den som våger å røre Durins hellige øks!” Du ser: En liten vanndam. Ei lita stridsøks tilsmurt med blod !!

South End of Long, Low Room The east wall is overgrown with fine white moss, while the west wall is smooth and dull. The floor is beautifully carved into the rock, but the ceiling is ragged and quite damp. There are holes to the east and west walls, and on a stone tablet embedded in the floor there are written some dwarven runes: “Death to anyone who dares to touch Durin’s holy axe!” You see: A small pool of water. A small battle axe smeared with blood!

You might think taking the axe would be Bad somehow but taking it doesn’t seem to have any effect. (Yet? Or maybe this isn’t the axe the message is referring to.)

Lots of exploration next time, and likely a big map. I’m going to approach this from scratch first before I compare with my original Ringen map (which already is very different, given the MUD had a large outdoors section).