Tolkien makes use of forests across Middle-earth, from the Trollshaws and Mirkwood in The Hobbit, reappearing in The Lord of the Rings, to the Old Forest, Lothlórien, and Fangorn which feature in chapters of The Lord of the Rings, and the great forests of Beleriand and Valinor mentioned in The Silmarillion. Indeed, while Middle-earth was still in a twilight under the stars, the oldest living things had arisen: ... on earth, the shadows of great trees. For Tolkien critic Tom Shippey, the mention of Mirkwood is an echo of the Norse mythology of the Elder Edda, with the pathless forests of the North over the Misty Mountains mentioned in one of the poems in the Edda, the Skirnismal.