Happy National Day to Switzerland (1 August). The Swiss landscape inspired Michael Sibley, a modern British artist, whose oil painting of the snow falling on the village of Lauterbrunnen currently resides in the collection at Falmouth University.

But he’s not the first person to be inspired by the area. In 1911 J. R. R. Tolkien hiked from Interlaken to the Lauterbrunnen Valley and it’s said that the landscape later provided the concept and pictorial model for his sketches and watercolours of the fictitious valley of Rivendell, the dwelling place of Elrond Half-elven and his people.

Landscapes will surely go on inspiring writers and artists into the future.