Fans bring drawings and other works to Tolkien's grave in Oxford – it has turned into a place of pilgrimage for fans

The resting place of the man who created Middle-earth looks surprisingly modest for someone whose influence on fantasy culture is hard to overstate.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and his wife Edith are buried at Wolvercote Cemetery in Oxford, and their grave has long been a pilgrimage site for fans around the world.

Recent photos taken by one visitor showed the site looking unusually dry, with scorched yellow grass surrounding the headstone. Fans, meanwhile, keep leaving new tributes at the grave.

People who visit the site regularly say the ground here is usually either frosty or lush green thanks to constant rain. The heat wave sweeping across Europe this summer reached Oxford too, turning the normally damp English landscape into something resembling a semi-desert.

Commenters debated which country the scene now resembled, throwing out Mexico, Spain, and Portugal as guesses.

Another mystery in the photos was an inscription on the headstone written in an unfamiliar language. It turns out the lines come from the Kalevala, the national epic of Finland that Tolkien admired and that heavily influenced his own mythology.

A rough translation reads something like this:

Then why should the song not grow weary, why should gentle verses not come to an end, after the evening's long rejoicings, after the songs of sunset?

The biggest debate centered on the items fans leave at the grave, including a 3D-printed sign reading "The Lord of the Rings" with the tower of Barad-dur looming over Bag End.

Some found this openly inappropriate, arguing that the Eye of Sauron and the Ring inscription represent evil in Tolkien mythology, and that calling him the "lord of the rings" borders on sacrilege.

Others pushed back with the well-known story about a fan who mailed Tolkien a cup engraved with the Ring verse, one he pointedly refused to drink from and instead used as an ashtray.

Some commenters saw something touching in the homemade sign instead. It looks like a kid made it without fully grasping the symbolism, and in that case, the intent matters more than the execution.