The Rohirrim were a strange folk. Wild and unpredictable, loyal and brave, they were rather like the winds that roamed their land restlessly. Also like their land they were stable, and held to their alliances and promises firmly. So one could describe the people of Rohan as rather people of their homeland's elements, the earth and the air.
The Rohirrim preferred a battle of swords and spears to a battle of wit and tongue, as fire might without reason but strength. Never less the tales of Rohan seemed to spring out of the grass like reality when told at night by a flickering fire. Many battles of glory and gory, death and life, had been fought in Rohan - battles of Earth and the Sky, of Water and Fire, the opposing forces of Rohan. Eorl the young, the white horses that had beaten the wind at its own game of speed — they had faded into the earth, leaving nothing but proud memories and fireside tales.
The Rohirrim were hardy, like the earth. In hard times the women and children had learned that without a weapon they would not survive. They lived by the rules of the earth: battle for peace, and to be strong and quick of the mind. There had been hard times; luckily nowadays short peace had come.
It was always a matter of peace or battle with the people of Earth and Sky, the people of Water and Fire. The people had learned not to love deeply in the others' ways; they loved each other and depended each other as the Earth might depend on the Sky — never together, never apart. Death was greeted quietly; life was brief and bittersweet in passing. The Rohirrim could change their hearts at will. Thus they were like water.
Rohan had gone through jolts of bitter memories… Battles that never had been won, magnificent warriors who had been lost… Rohan felt the Earth move and the Wind cry with something different; something evil. The Rohirrim became suspicious, but they did not know. The Wild Men of Dunland had been silenced in the deep woods; the Rohirrim had nothing to worry about.
The Rohirrim became suspicious of others. Of the hobylta they had never seen or heard of for long ages, of Elves they mistrusted, of Dwarves they thought less of, of the Men of Gondor they now despised. Gondor had once been loved as a brother once. But as the two countries became more distanced by the dangers they faced now, and neither came into each other's aid as they were in danger, mistrust and fury grew between them. It was not as serious as if a war should go on between them — almost -- but the two countries did not love as they used to.
The times were growing dark in the South; it bloomed like a dark flower might. A dark, red flower, full of hatred and lust and blood.
If the country of Rohan was to be fire, of all its elements, then it was only a candle's flame.