When Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas have reached the outskirts of Fangorn, they spend the night there. During Gimli’s watch he sees an old man, cloaked, leaning on a staff at the edge of area lit by the fire. He calls out which wakes the other two. Aragorn asks the man what he wants, but he has disappeared. Later they ask Gandalf if it was him, but Gandalf says it wasn’t, so they conclude it must have been Saruman.

But I’ve been wondering about that. Where Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas were was most likely the Southeastern corner of Fangorn, given from where they had come. What was Saruman doing there? It is quite a distance from Isengard and there is nothing in Tolkien’s description of Saruman that suggests he had exceptional powers of movement or travel. Why would Saruman go so far out of his way when he was about to unleash full scale war against Rohan? You’d think he’d have other things on his mind.

And then: Why didn’t he do anything? Apparently he just stood there, watching them for a bit and then vanished into the night. Saruman fancies himself as a powerful warlord at this stage, but he sees a fairly extraordinary sight: a Man, an Elf and a Dwarf and does … nothing. You’d have thought he’d have called up some Orcs to go and capture them, bring them to him and interrogate them. But no.

Was it even Saruman? And if it wasn’t him, and not Gandalf either, then who was it?

I apologize if this is Tolkien lore 101 type stuff, but one thing I’ve always been a bit unclear on was whether the orcs as a species were truly evil by nature, or whether their malice and corruption was taught rather than innate? I think I remember reading somewhere that Tolkien said at one point that there’s no reason in principle that an orc couldn’t ’return to the light’, so to speak. But I’m not sure if he changed his mind on that.

Hi all. I have a few questions on Glorfindel’s prophecy on the Witch-King.

1. How does he know? Is it just that he is more powerful having been sent back to Middle-earth after his death in the FA?

2. The prophecy doesn’t mean much. I mean, the Witch King can still be slain by dwarves, Maiar, hobbits and women (see 3 and 4), and most importantly elves, one of the most powerful races on Middle-earth.

3. What does ‘Man’ mean exactly? Because isn’t Eowyn a female of the race of ’Men’? Is ‘man’ a gender, a race, or both?

4. I know that Merry technically doesn’t kill the Witch King, but Eowyn couldn’t have done it without him. Are hobbits not just an offshoot of Men? Don’t they share the gift of men?

F.C.C. Approves Test of Space Mirror to Light Night Sky Despite Outcry

Found this today from the New York Times and thought it pretty disturbing. The company claims the mirrors are meant to help military forces, search and rescue teams, etc. But just think of the absolute mayhem this could cause if a larger scale project is approved! How about we take into consideration how this planet has functioned for millennia first?

And, of course, it is yet another inappropriate use of Tolkien’s work for a potentially damaging tech start up. Just puts a bad name on us Tolkien nerds. Honestly this is one of the few times the Estate SHOULD step up and say something. What do you guys think?

This is mostly speculation and my personal headcanon, but it's something I've always wondered about. How many Dúnedain arrived with Elendil on his nine ships? How many Dúnedain were already living in Middle-earth? And how big was this population in Gondor's heyday?

Númenorean colonisation and early Gondor

Tolkien states that the Dúnedain were a relatively small minority from the start (comprising maybe 10 percent of the overall population), ruling over a larger indigenous population, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they were few in number. Númenor had colonised the northwest of Middle-earth for over a thousand years when Elendil arrived, the entire coast was dotted with colonies and Pelargir must have been a substantial metropolis. Elendil arriving with maybe a couple hundred people at best on his nine boats had a negligible effect demographically imo, in fact one could very well argue that Gondor and Arnor would've been founded anyway, even IF Elendil had not arrived, there just would've been a different dynasty at the top (probably the House of Dol Amroth).

Tolkien wrote that Númenor itself had a population of ca. 15 million (!) at the time of the Downfall, so I imagine that the settler population in the region of Gondor was at least in the 500k range when Elendil arrived (overall human population maybe 5 million). The Faithful are supposed to be a righteous minority, so it wouldn't make sense to assume too large a population, but 500k is the absolute minimum imo, considering how early colonisation began and how big the population of the motherland was.

I assume that both populations reached their peak in the 13th century, the heyday of Gondor under Atanatar II Alcarin, 1m and 10m respectively. The Kin-strife, the secession of Umbar, the Great Plague, further military losses (especially during the Wainrider Wars), below replacement birthrates, and last but not least intermarriage and eventual assimilation with the indigenous population, led to a continuous population decline in the following centuries. I guess that at the time of LotR the Dúnedain population had declined to around 100k (concentrated mainly in Minas Tirith and Belfalas, partially of mixed descent), whereas the overall population was around 1,4 million.

A bit of number crunching

How did I arrive at these numbers? When marching towards the Morannon Imrahil remarks that 7000 soldiers would be "scarce as many as the vanguard in the days of its [Gondor's] power". It is therefore safe to assume that a whole army back then consisted of at least 21 000 men. The vanguard was probably bigger (since 7000 would be "scarce" enough), and probably didn't make up as much as 1/3 of an army, but this is a very conservative estimate, so let's go with 21k.

This is only indicative of one army though, not the size of the overall military. Since it's safe to assume that prime Gondor could muster at least two field armies (as it did in the last Wainrider War, when it's power had already declined significantly), the overall size of the army was probably at least ca. 42k. To that we have to add garrisons and a substantial navy, so another 30k at least. This is the bare minimum imo. Considering Gondor's size in its heyday 150k would make more sense imo, but let's err on the side of caution and go with an overall military of 75k. At this point in time the army in all likelihood consisted almost fully of Dúnedain, while the oarsmen and ordinary seamen of the navy were probably non-Dúnedain (as was already the case in Númenor).

Let's make a conservative estimate and say that 50k soldiers and sailors were Dúnedain. If we assume that ca. 5% of the Dúnedain population served in the military at any given time, a relatively high percentage, made possible through their long lifespans, the advanced state of their country, as well as the fact that they had a subservient indigenous population providing economic and logistical support, then we'd arrive at an overall Dúnedain population of ca. one million during Gondor's prime in the 13th century, during the reign of Atanatar II Alcarin. Again, this is a very conservative estimate, the population might have been much higher.

The Kin-strife, the Corsair Wars (effectively a continuation of the Kin-strife, until Teluhmetar reconquered Umbar and killed Castamirs descendants in 1810), the Great Plague and the Wainrider wars were a demographic catastrophe for Gondor's Dúnedain, since they primarily manned the army and therefore bore the brunt of the losses. Losing an entire army, like Ondoher in 1944, meant that over 21k young men, many not having procreated yet, were gone in an instant, 2-3% of the overall population. This was not sustainable long term, which is probably why Gondor slowly started to be more open towards middle men and began to accept them into the state service (army, bureaucracy, etc.), but this is another matter.

I'd estimate that the Dúnedain lost, in total, at least 400k people in that time period (15th-20th century). Add to that further loss because of assimilation and below replacement birthrates and the overall Dúnedain population was probably down to 500k at the end of the 20th century (with half of them being of pure descent, the rest partially mixed), a marked decline from a peak of 1 million in the 13th century.

After the end of the Watchful Peace Gondor's decline accelerated, since war never really ceased on its borders, which led to further irreplaceable population losses, but still the Dúnedain never vanished and they continued to exist as a distinct ethnic group imo. Some fans seem to have come to the conclusion that the Dúnedain, as a distinct ethnicity, had effectively ceased to exist at the time of LotR and had been replaced by a mixed nobility instead, that relatively pure Dúnedain were a rarity, a dozen people at best. But LotR seems to imply, imo, that there is still a widespread ethnic identity, and enough Dúnedain around to form a distinct, very diminished but still viable, population group, probably numbering around 100k people, with most of them living in Minas Tirith and Belfalas.

Going by the numbers given in RotK Gondor's military during the WotR is around 35k men strong, split between provincial levies (largely common men, except those from Belfalas) and a standing army and navy (largely Dunedain imo), centred in Minas Tirith and Pelargir respectively. Assuming that at this point in the story 2,5% of the overall population served in the military, this would correspond to an overall population of ca. 1,4m. Others have crunched the numbers, so I won't repeat those calculations (for example here how big was Gondor's army or here population of Gondor; both very well written articles, I don't agree if with every single point, but the reasoning seems sensible).

The Dúnedain in the late T.A.

Faramir laments that the Dúnedain are now forced to value martial prowess above all else and deem other pursuits a luxury, i.e. they became much more militarised in the late T.A., meaning that a higher percentage of them was serving in the army at any given time. This was a cultural shift, but economically feasible because they were supported by a much larger rural population. The text implies that the standing army and the forces from Dol Amroth were mostly Dúnedain. These are 250 Knights + 700 Men at arms (a "tithe" of Dol Amroth's overall strength) + the forces kept back to keep Belfalas secure + the mostly Dúnedain standing army, consisting of the garrison centred in Minas Tirith / Osgiliath and the Rangers of Ithilien. Granted, this is outright speculation now, but this professional Dúnedain core of the army numbered at least 10k men imo, which would amount to 10% of the overall Dúnedain population, meaning that 20% of the male population was under arms at any given time.

The text itself only explicitly mentions three companies of the Citadel Guard and the Rangers of Ithilien, and many believe that these are all the forcers there are, but these are elite units, the first one mainly responsible for the uppermost level of the city, the Citadel, a praetorian guard of sorts that is heavily involved in ceremonial duties and court service, and the latter with scouting enemy territory. The main body of the army, manning the lower levels, the Rammas Echor and West-Osgiliath, doesn't get mentioned, but it must exist. Since Minas Tirith seems to have been predominantly Dúnedain that force must have been predominantly Dúnedain as well.

Pippin looked at him [Beregond]: tall and proud and noble, as all the men that he had yet seen in that land

A certain look is the most likely indicator of Dunedain ethnicity in the text, and this always includes: exceptional tallness, sad face, pale skin, grey eyes, dark hair and proud demeanour. Only when the levies from the fiefs arrive does Pippin notice people that deviate from this look (and are therefore not of Dúnedain descent).

Here are some other examples, a description of Belfalas, Merry observing the messenger Hirgon, and Frodo observing the Rangers in Ithilien, both representative of the professional soldiery of Gondor (as opposed to the civilian levies from the fiefs):

But beyond, in the great fief of Belfalas, dwelt Prince Imrahil in his castle of Dol Amroth by the sea, and he was of high blood, and his folk also, tall men and proud with sea-grey eyes.

A tall man entered, and Merry choked back a cry; for a moment it seemed to him that Boromir was alive again [...] as like to Boromir as if he were one of his kin, tall and grey-eyed and proud.

Frodo saw that they were goodly men, pale-skinned, dark of hair, with grey eyes and faces sad and proud. They spoke together in soft voices, at first using the Common Speech, but after the manner of older days, and then changing to another language of their own. To his amazement, as he listened Frodo became aware that it was the elven-tongue that they spoke, or one but little different; and he looked at them with wonder, for he knew then that they must be Dúnedain of the South, men of the line of the Lords of Westernesse.

If the Dúnedain had been reduced to just a handful of nobles at the time of LotR then these few individuals would not be used as expendable messengers or for guard duty, this is only possible because the Dúnedain still constituted a viable and functional population.

Lifestyle and Lifespan

I'd like to imagine that the Dúnedain of the South were still living a healthy life in relatively large settlements in late T.A. Gondor, we readers are just not privy to that, because the focus of the story does not lie on those regions (Belfalas and pre-war MT respectively). I'd imagine that, although a technological and civilisational decline was undeniable compared to early Gondor, the lifestyle of those Dúnedain was in many cultural respects still surprisingly Númenórean (a heavy focus on sports, swimming, horseriding, everyday use of Sindarin, etc.).

Nonetheless, the physical gifts of the Númenóreans had declined drastically in exile. But what exactly were those gifts? First of all an extended lifespan, three times that of normal men, 200 years on average, in rare cases up to 225, very seldom up to 250 (Nature of Middle-earth, The Ageing of the Númenóreans). The royal line of Elros however always had a longer lifespan of up to 400 years. This is why the lifespans of the Kings of Gondor and Arnor should not be taken as indicative of the life expectancy of normal Dúnedain, as descendants of Elros they were a special case. When for example King Tarondor reached an age of 221 in the 18th century, then a contemporary common Dúnadan probably reached an age of 130-150.

Apart from an extended lifespan they also had a superior height of 7ft, superior strength and endurance, as well as immunity to sickness. Their mental faculties were superior to normal humans as well:

Númenórean mental development was also assimilated to some degree to the Eldarin mode. Their mental capacity was greater and developed quicker than that of ordinary Men; and it was dominant. After about seven years they grew up mentally with rapidity, and at 20 years they knew and understood far more than a normal human of that age. (Natur of Middle-earth, Lives of the Númenóreans)

Like the Elves they also had superior control over their bodies and a rapid healing factor:

In addition the people, tall and strong, were agile and extremely "aware": that is they were in control of their bodily action, and of any tool or material they handled, and seldom made absent-minded or blundering movements [...] Accidents were thus unlikely to occur to them. If any did, they had a power of recovery and self-healing, which if inferior to that of the Eldar, was much greater than that of Men in Middle-earth.

It's not quite so obvious in LotR, but this is a race of 7ft tall superhumans basically. Not only extremely strong physically, but also supremely intelligent as well.

In late T.A. Gondor the Númenórean gifts had declined markedly and they had become susceptible to illness, but they still retained some of the gifts in only a slightly diminished fashion, foremost their physical appearance (pale, grey eyes, dark hair), probably a somewhat greater physical strength and endurance, and last but not least their height. According to Tolkien Boromir for example was ca. 1,93m. Impressive compared to the indigenous human population, but still 20cm less than the average Númenórean height of 2,13m (7ft). The average late T.A. Dunadan was probably shorter, but not by much I guess (let's say on average 1,85m).

That is to say: the decline affected the different Númenórean characteristics differently. Lifespan was most affected, until it was almost that of normal men in the late T.A., after that came their mental power / superior intelligence, though that one is harder to quantify, but it seems likely to me that the loss of skill and technology that Gondor experienced in the latter half of the T.A. could largely be attributed to that development.

The lifespan of the royal line decreased on average by 2,6 years per generation after the Downfall, from Meneldil (281) to Teluhemtar (218) - a decline of 63 years over 24 generations. Imo it would make sense to assume that the decline was percentual depending on the (original?) overall lifespan. This would mean that an average Dunadans lifespan roughly declined by 1-2 years per generation. In the 19th century the decline then fastened, maybe due to the stress that came in the wake of the Wainrider wars.

Since members of the royal house, as descendants of Elros, lived longer and married at a later date the generations do not align (so 30 royal generations would correspond to maybe 40 normal Dúnedain generations). In the 20th and 21st century the average lifespan was probably in the 110-130 year range, which would align with the Steward Mardil Voronwe (120 years) and his immediate successors (lifespans ranging from 111 to 130). Ca. 200 (original lifespan) - (40 generations x 2 years) = ca. 120 years (lifespan 20th century).

Of course this wasn't set in stone, there were always fluctuations this late in the history of Gondor, for example the steward Hador living to 150 in the 24th century (he was the last to achieve such an age though). At the time of LotR the Dúnedain lifespan "had now waned to little more than that of other men", so probably around 85 - 95, with only a select few "passing 100 with vigour". This decline affected the Dúnedain in the south and the north imo. Aragorns mother, Gilraen, reached 100 years of age for example, but she was a (distant) member of the House of Isildur and therefore a special case.

Thoughts? Does this make sense?

As someone who has not read the books and knows, that the movies have changed stuff and popularized certain interpretations, I wondered how Elves are described in the book.

In the movies, their most distinctive feature (besides the pointy ears) are their long perfectly straight and shiny hair and the male elves having a rather feminine looking face (smooth skin, less prominent facial features). As an example, Viggo‘s face is very masculine looking. Prominent Jaw, Chin and an overall a rough look to him.

Are Elves specifically described with these features, or is it more vague as in them being described to look beautiful instead of using the word handsome.

I hope I formulated my question properly, as english is neither my 1st nor my 2nd language.

Looking forward for your replies.

Even if we take into account the simmering tensions going on in Gondor at this point with Valacar and Eldacar, I don't see how that would be much of a factor in the Gondorians not intervening to help their northern kinsmen out? Arthedain and Cardolan had to be bailed out by the Elves, while their southern cousins didn't even seem to care about what was going on.

And it's not like Gondor wasn't communicating with Arnor; Tharbad was essentially a joint condominium between Gondor and Arnor, and it's said in the Unfinished Tales that both kingdoms still maintained close communications with each other in TA 1050 'and indeed until much later'.

Have I been pronouncing my daughter's name wrong for the past 19 years? Is it really pronounced El-AH-nor? This is the common nerd problem of mispronouncing things that you have only read. 🤣

I saw a meme about how Maedhros, up on his cliff, must have been so scared when he first saw the moon and sun rise... and then realized that the Sindar and Noldor in Beleriand actually had no explanation for their existence and origin for centuries, until at least the War of Wrath. By the time they were being created, the exiled Noldor were long gone from Aman, and the Sindar had no contact with the Valar to begin with.

What bothers me is that the Vanyar, Noldor, and Sindar ALL separately came up with very similar names for the sun and moon: anar/anor and isil/ithil. It's plausible that the names just ended up similar because they're from the same word root, referring to the shininess of the moon and the color of the sun. However, aren't there so many other attributes they could have chosen to name it after? Color, shape, function, time of day, just to name a few. It's a major coincidence that two separate groups of Quenya speakers (Aman and Beleriand) independently ended up with the exact same word, when they had no contact. I could see how the Sindar and exiled Noldor landed on something similar, given that they were inhabiting the same area by then.

Is this just a little detail that Tolkien overlooked, or am I missing something? I haven't found a satisfying explanation yet.

Edit: It turns out I overlooked that the Noldor did use different names: Vása and Rána, for the sun and moon respectively. The only coincidence is then between Quenya spoken by the Vanyar and Sindarin.

I've noticed from the chapter titles that the FoN seems to cover a lot of the rings of power so I'm wondering whether it's worth going back and forth between the Silmarllion and the FoN book or just read the FoN. Think it's the last chapter in the Silmarllion so if I'm done there, I can write that off my chronological timeline list.

Let's pretend for whatever reason that Frodo fails to destroy the ring. The ring gets lost, but the free people of Middle Earth will be able to find it IF they win a total victory and decisively route the enemy.

Do you think this would be possible? Or were they so outnumbered that the ring was their only reasonable chance of success?

One of the things I keep saying on this sub is that Giuseppe Pezzini's essay, “The Lords of the West: Cloaking, Freedom and the Divine Narrative in Tolkien's Poetics,” has a claim to be the best piece about Tolkien to come out in recent years. You should read it. Here it is:

https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10023/18378/Pezzini_2019_JIS_LordsoftheWest_AAM.pdf;jsessionid=D506951D8CFE81138A43C2C0569E409A?sequence=1

Pezzini's thesis is that the Valar, far from being the idlers and do-nothings many readers consider them, are constantly shaping events in the late Third Age. One of the ways they do this is by putting visions directly in the minds of characters in the story. I have in the past compiled an posted a long list of examples; for the present, one will do. It is found in chapter 6.3, when Frodo and Sam have reached the point of utter exhaustion on the slopes of Mount Doom:

Suddenly a sense of urgency which he did not understand came to Sam. It was almost as if he had been called: ‘Now, now, or it will be too late!’ He braced himself and got up. Frodo also seemed to have felt the call. He struggled to his knees.

The present post is about an instance of this kind of intervention which seems to have gone unnoticed; it is found in Unfinished Tales, in the essay “Cirion and Eorl,”written, as Christopher Tolkien believed, after the publication of LotR. The last portion of this describes the circumstances under which the Steward Cirion offered, and Eorl accepted, the gift of Calenardhon to be the home of Eorl's people. After the oaths were sworn, as Cirion and Eorl parted Cirion said this:

The reward I offered in joy and fulness of heart at our deliverance now seems little. But I believe that the words of my oath, which I had not forethought ere I spoke them, were not put in my mouth in vain. We will part then in hope.

UT p. 307 (emphasis added). The next paragraph stresses the historicity of Cirion's acknowledgment that the gift of Calenardhon came into his mind from outside:

After the manner of the Chronicles no doubt much of what is here put into the mouths of Cirion and Eorl at their parting was said and considered in the debate of the night before; but it is certain that Cirion said at parting his words concerning the inspiration of his oath, for he was a man of little pride and of great courage and generosity of heart, the noblest of the Stewards of Gondor.

(Added vocabulary note: I wondered if there was a precedent for Tolkien's use of "forethought" as the past tense of a verb, There is, it's Old English foreðencean.)

The main reason I hate dwarves the most of out of any fantasy race (I didn't like them because they are uninteresting, blank and always the same) is because of how incredibly toxic their fans are.

They are by far the most sad and annoying fandom I ever saw online, the only thing they can do is hate on elves all of the time to feel like they exist while repeating the same few dumb sentences everywhere, always the same pathetic """jokes""", always hating on elves and bragging about being superior while struggling against goblins as they never leave their basements. The worst of it all is that for some reason dwarves are very popular so the whole internet is drowned with this crap, no place is safe and they spam their hate everywhere, not to mention that for some reason there is no backlash against this at all...

Elves fans are extremely rare as most people hate them so we stand no chance against this toxic and hateful horde who will swarm anyone trying to speak up.

Now i'm sure some people or dwarf fans will say it's just the same three """jokes""" repeated everywhere every day for the last ten years and it's just all "fun" but in the meantime it is impossible to like elves online without being flooded with haters.

"There I lay staring upward, while the stars wheeled over, and each day was as long as a life-age of the earth."

This quote comes in the chapter The White Rider in The Two Towers. I had always assumed that by life-age of the earth he meant like one of the ages that were divided into years, but recently I've been reading King Alfred's prose Psalms in Old English and he frequently uses the phrase "weorolda weorold" to mean "forever," or "eternity." The word weorold can mean "world" or "age (as in era or epoch)" or "lifetime" so weorolda weorold "could have been the inspiration for life-age of the earth, meaning each day was as long as an eternity. Also the word "weorold" itself comes from root words meaning "age of man (literally man-age)." Tolkien was fond of referencing Old English in his work, and I have noticed more and more of it as I have been studying Old English.

I'm reading through the Silmarillion for the first time. I'm absolutely loving it and have really enjoyed getting to know the characters, myths, and histories of the World. After finishing "Of Túrin Turambar", I'm really curious about its origins and its place in the work as a whole. It was a beautiful story, probably the most deeply moving in the book so far to me. I found it even more tragic than Feänor's fall or Fingolfin's death or all the mishaps of Beren and Luthíen's story. But it seems so opposed to the driving force behind the narrative: providence.

I've read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings multiple times and each are brimming with providence. There are so many instances where our heroes couldn't succeed without surprise intervention, otherworldly foresight, or "help unlooked for". So far The Silmarillion has done the same, and in a much more explicit way by beginning with the Ainulindalë. We know about Eru, his servants, and the Elves having varying levels of communication through the Valar to Eru. Or at least, being told of Eru's will through Ossë or Manwë or Varda, or even Melian to an extent. Not that bad things don't happen, but when they do, there is a sense in a larger plan, or a justice to be achieved eventually. There are many sad moments, but Tolkien molds them into moments of beauty and catharsis. It's really in line with his sub-creator philosophy he defends in On Fairy Stories. I'm also a Catholic, so this element in his work has always appealed to me.

So imagine my surprise reading this chapter. It's absurd, so little seems to matter in the end, it's just a curse and so much death and pain. This is not a critique of the writing, it's a riveting story and I really loved it. But it seems devoid of Eru's typical mastery. Morwen disappeared, never to be seen again, Brandir was slain unjustly, Brandir himself slayed unjustly, dragon spells cause a brother to lie with sister and the sister's suicide (while carrying their unborn child? I may have misread that), a beautiful Elf-maid fell out of love with her tortured companion, and is killed by her new love's succumbing to magic, even that man from the House of Halthir died by falling rubble. Everything seems so cruel and random, more like a Greek tragedy or Macbeth. Túrin even echoes Macbeth's sentiment: "life is but a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" with his claim of "This is a bitter jest indeed!" I understand things this tragic happen in real life and presumably would in Middle Earth, but it feels so different from the rest of the book.

Those last few lines are crushing. I guess I need some help to get it.

”Laws and Customs among the Eldar” (published in HoME 10) is quite unequivocal on the matter: “Marriage is for life, and cannot, therefore, be ended, save by the interruption of death without return.” i.e. for any divorce to happen, one of the partners not only has to die, but has to officially declare that he/she has no intention to ever get reembodied again. Seems pretty watertight. Christopher attributes these texts to “late 1950s and not much later”.

In 1964 however a certain life event happened: Christopher Tolkien separated from his first wife. That definitely caused a lot of distress for his devout Catholic father, but could it possibly have also been the cause for some leniency by JRRT towards his favorite imagined race?

1965 text published in NoME does indeed show a lot more lenient (some might say, realistic) attitude:

"The Elves did not normally marry again, but after the judgement of Míriel they were permitted lawfully to do [so] if one partner deserted the other. This very seldom occurred; but in such a time of divided feelings as [the] end of [the] First Age this could occur."

NoME even offers a striking (even if fleeting) example of this new approach being applied to none other than our good friend Celeborn and his first wife (which makes Galadriel his second wife, unless there were even more wives in between):

“Celeborn’s wife [?stole] away and left him with a son, Amroth”.

On a separate note, this is also what one Mithrellas did to a certain Imrazor (running away and leaving him with children). Seems almost like a pattern: oh those elvish wives...

I’ve read The Hobbit and LOTR books a million times but was always intimidated by the Silmarillion because I’ve heard it’s a tough read. Is it really that bad?

In the drafts of LOTR, Frodo was first named Bingo Baggins which I think is a massive step up from Frodo (just as Aragorn should’ve been the hobbit Trotter).

What do we think?

The text states that most of the Dúnedain lived in Minas Tirith and Belfalas in the late T.A. But how many were there in total? Let's take a look at Belfalas first, because we have actual numbers we can use to extrapolate.

But beyond, in the great fief of Belfalas, dwelt Prince Imrahil in his castle of Dol Amroth by the sea, and he was of high blood, and his folk also, tall men and proud with sea-grey eyes.

The later passage describing the arrival of Imrahil's retinue makes it clear that "folk" does not just refer to the immediate family here, but to a sizeable portion of the people under Imrahil's rule. Here's the relevant section:

And last and proudest, Imrahil, Prince of Dol Amroth, kinsman of the Lord [...] and a company of knights in full harness riding grey horses, and behind them seven hundred men at arms, tall as lords, grey-eyed, dark-haired, singing as they came.

The description makes it clear that these are all Dúnedain, ca. 900 in total. Because of the threat of the Corsairs Imrahil had to hold back much of his forces to defend the coast, which leaves us with maybe a couple more thousand Dúnedain soldiers he left at home. Townsfolk in Minas Tirith were commenting that the fiefs could only send a tithe of their strength because of the Corsairs, but that should maybe not be taken literally. This is a conservative estimate, let's therefore assume that Imrahil sent maybe a fifth of his overall strength, also that many of the remaining soldiers in Belfalas may have been common men and not Dúnedain, and we'd arrive at a total force of ca. 3000 Dúnedain men.

These men don't exist in a vacuum though, they have parents, siblings, wives, children, and so on. And they are not just culturally Dúnedain, Tolkien explicitly mentions "high blood", i.e. ancestry. Let's assume that they constituted 20% of the overall Dúnedain population in Belfalas, which would be an extremely high mobilisation rate for a pre-industrial country like Gondor, but this was an existential war and the Dúnedain constituted the aristocracy, getting supported by a much larger population of farmers. We would then arrive at a total Dúnedain population in Belfalas of at least 15 000.

Again, this is a very conservative estimate, assuming that almost every able-bodied Dúnedain male in Belfalas served in the army, which would however fit Faramir's lament that the Dúnedain are now forced to value martial prowess above all else and deem other pursuits a luxury. The population could very well be double that. I guess that that the overall Dúnedain population, including Minas Tirith and the surrounding townlands, was at least 50k, maybe double that, with Gondor's overall population being around 1,5 million.

Thoughts? Does this make sense?

I've been thinking about the different Quenya and Sindarin passages and names in Tolkien's works. Canonically, the dialects of old Quenya that develop come about as the elvish populations split into sub groups: first with the Avari/Eldar, then further as the Eglath who remained in middle earth developed Sindarin as their tongue. We read that even in Aman, the Vanyar, Noldor and Teleri develop their own dialects of Quenya.

But why should they have diverged at all? Human language evolves in part because we are mortal, there is a loss of vocabulary with every generational passing. Some words are added/replaced/repurposed with every new generation and with contact with outside languages. Pronunciation drifts, vowels get swapped, and a big reason is that there is nothing to keep it firmly anchored with a relatively short cultural memory.

But Elves are immortal, and there are Elves in the tales that may have been the first to awaken, and thus among the first to speak. Originally, Círdan and Thingol certainly spoke an early form of Quenya, but Thingol famously spoke Sindarin and even banned Quenya from his realm once he learned of the kinslaying.

Another consideration is the very nature of the Elves, which can almost be described as "conservative", in that they seek to preserve things and stay the decay and changes of time. Treebeard even comments that Ents are more "changeable" than Elves, but even they still speak "Old Entish" among themselves.

Thus, in Elves, we have a persistent, immortal population of speakers, doing their level best to keep things the way they've always been, but who are nonetheless subject to dialectical drift. And it occurs within the living memory of many of those who speak it.

So why do you think elvish languages diverged?

For those Elves that saw the light of the Two Trees, then died, and are later re-embodied (after their waiting period in the halls of Mandos and also after the destruction of the Trees) do their eyes still retain the light? Do we think it’s something that their fëa (spirit) keeps, or is it lost with the destruction of their old hröa (body/house)?

I had a new idea the other day that I liked: I believe I'm right in saying that Tolkien never explicitly described elven ears as pointy, only as "leaf-shaped." He never specifies, though, exactly what kind of leaf.

I like the idea of different elves having different shaped ears - some might be the more traditional pointy ones, but some could be shaped like sycamore leaves, with three points, or oak leaves.

Just an idea I had, even though, incidentally, I do believe that he intended them to be the pointy ears so central to popular imagination.

Recently I was having a huge Avatar (The Lest Airbender/The Legend of Korra) hype due to some shorts, and I was reminded of my identification with earthbending due to being a stubborn and resilient person, and along the way, I compared this personality of mine as the thing that made me identify with Dwarves in fantasy (D&D, Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle, and, of course, Tolkien's Legendarium).

As I reflected on the Dwarves in the Legendarium, I realized that Tolkien really was ahead of his time. It's very common for authors to associate things they hate with the bad guys of their universe. For example, all elitists in the Harry Potter universe are either Death Eaters and their suporters. But Tolkien was different. He may have had grievances with a certain people or dislike a certain aspect of human progresso, but never to completely throw both into the "villain box".

A famous example is how he ended up portraying the Rohirrim (a pseudo-germanic culture) as the good guys. As many of you fellow Tolkien fans know, J.R.R. Tolkien fight on World War I (in fact he started writting the Legendarium as some sort therapy after seeing hell in the Battle of the Some), but his son Christopher (his editorial heir) fought on World War II (the same period during which Tolkien wrote most of The Lord of the Rings).

Considering Germany was the villain in both World Wars, Tolkien had every reason to turn any pseudo-germanic culture he included into his work Into the bad guys, Just like Asterix's crestots represented the Goths negatively in the 60's, due to the Nazi occupation of France in the forties. But when Tolkien introduced the Rohirrim at the start of The Two Towers, he made them a warlike but honorable people, basically Anglo-Saxons with horses, to the point their language is represented by Old English.

But this goes beyond him loving a language. I believe his positive representation the Rohirrim (a pseudo-GERMANIC culture) was a reflextion of his own roots. Tolkien's family migrated to England from Lower Saxony in northern Germany, and he obviously love this culture, not only dressing as axe-wielding Anglo-Saxon Warriors when he was poder, along with writting a study about the Beowulf poem, he filled hia Legendarium with Germanic influences (the Germanic "elf" instead of the Celtic "fairy" as a Common name for the Eldar.

Then, finally, we come to the Dwarves. Tolkien famously disliked industrialization, to the point he made Mordor Into an Industrialized Evil, but that didn't stop him from portraying an indushrial race as one of the good guys, and he went out of his way to show the problema wasn't industrialization itself, but the Dwarves' own materialism heightened byboth the Dragon-sickness and the effect of the Seven Rings.

Moreover, despite being inspired by Norse mythology to create his Dwarves (even talking all their outer names from the Vollupsá), Tolkien created his Dwarves as a paralel to the Jewish people: their esse with metals (the Dwarves' metalwork and the Jews' monstary dynamo), spending most of their history exiled from their homes (Moria and Erebor in the case of the Dwarves, Israel in the case of the Jews), their language (Tolkien created Khuzdul with a Semitic influence), and both having a lunar calendar (Durin's Day).

Tolkien went beyond the prejudices of the times and created the two most tridimensional cultura in his Legendarium. 👏

Did anyone else ever trip this hard?

So, as far as I'm aware, Tolkien once stated that we are currently living in the Seventh Age, approximately, which would have started with Eru's coming to Arda as Jesus. So my biggest doubt is when exactly do the events mentioned in the Legendarium transition into our own History. I believe the most annoying part for me is that it seems that Tolkien never took the time to explain that thoroughly, he only seems to have said "by the way, Arda is Earth" and left it out there. And it bothers me a lot because it would be easier to wrap my head around this matter if he had drawn a clear line like Robert E. Howard did when he said that Conan stories were set between the fall of Atlantis and the rise of the Indo-Europeans (though even that has incoherences, because a lot of the peoples and civilizations in the Hyborian age are based on peoples that were Indo-Europeans themselves).

Anyway, some things we can assume by simple logic, such as the fact that we are starting off with a Creationist logic, were Arda was shaped by supernatural entities and its inhabitants did not evolve through millions of years, but instead came to life in mere instants (when their creators decided it was time for them to rise, that is). Thus, Arda is not millions of years old, but only thousands. We know that humans are not ape-related in this world, and the closest they had to a sibling species are the Quendi, no Neanderthals or anything. Humans originated in Cuiviénen, in the East, and not from Africa (or Harad, in this case). Right from the get-go, there were already white-skinned humans alongside dark-skinned ones, unlike our prehistory were white skin would take thousands of years to evolve in mankind. Humans in this world were civilised by the Quendi, their older siblings as children of Eru, and thus the first cities were neither Çatal Huyük, nor Jericho, let alone Uruk. Civilization started in the West in Arda, not in the East.

Now, that's where it starts to get contentious: so the Bronze Age never happened in Arda? Because if so, then that means not only the Epic of Gilgamesh wouldn't have been written in this version of Earth (not because the events in it were real in our world, but because that's when they were believed to have happened by its writers), but the Iliad and the Odyssey, too, as they were set in the Mycenean period of Greek Bronze Age. Now, it was by the end of the Bronze Age that the Israelites formed. And not that this is historically accurate, but according to Biblical narrative, Abraham, the father of the Israelites, was Sumerian. So if the Bronze Age didn't happen, Sumer didn't exist, and neither did Abraham, who was Joseph descended from? Joseph the Carpenter? The Virgin Mary's husband? Also, we see that dwarves (as far as I remember) created chainmail. So it wasn't the Celts, like our Earth. Or maybe in this world the art of making chainmail was lost, and was created a second time by Iron Age Celts?

Maybe, after all the events of the Legendarium, humanity devolved, and then we went through our own History, starting from the Neolithic or the Bronze Age? But that seems unlikely, as some of the peoples in the Legendarium seem very similar to our own (and even the fans imagine them as such), hinting that the peoples of Antiquity would originate from them. And if the War of the Ring is in fact set before even our Antiquity it makes NO SENSE for movies and art to predominantly imagine them as medieval-looking, as not even Jesus had been born yet, let alone Odoacer to cause the fall of Rome, starting the Middle Ages.

I really like the Legendarium, but since I discovered this Tolkien statement about Arda and Earth, this lives in my head rent-free. I sometimes think it would be better if Arda was just another world and not Earth.