In this episode, we follow the great river Anduin to the south and we explore Thinglad and Eorlsmead. We also briefly visit the town of Stangard and stumble upon an impressive statue!

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In this episode we explore Lothlórien, we visit Caras Caladhon and meet with Lady Galadriel and Lord Celeborn. We even discover Galadriel’s mirror and talk to Frodo and the rest of the Fellowship.

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In this episode we explore the mysterious Mirrormere and learn more about the ancient history of the dwarves. After that, we venture back into Moria in search of the Endless Stair.

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Meet us in Middle-earth on the Elendilmir server. The SQPN Kinship: Elenath Ephedyn

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We enter the Mines of Moria and we explore the depths of Khazad-dum.

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In this episode, we look at the night sky above the hills of Eregion, and we explore the origins of the moon, the sun and the stars.

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In episode 20 we leave the Trollshaws and explore Eregion. We talk about Eregion’s history, Ring Lore and Middle-earth cosmology.

The video for episode 19 discussing Bilbo’s trolls, Elrond’s sons and Resurrection.

In this episode, we explore the Trollshaws east of the Lone-lands, an area long ago inhabited by the Men of Rhûdaur.

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In this episode we travel to Michel Delving to meet with special guest Dr. Jason Jewell. He tells us all about the Inklings and about the three hobbits and the small rabbit in the Bird and Baby Inn.

Links:

• More about Punggo | Dr. Jason Jewell
• Article: Those Hobbits in the Bird and Baby

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In this episode, we travel from Buckland to the ‘Green Dragon’ in Bywater to talk with the Tolkien Professor about the importance of Hobbits in Tolkien’s Middle-earth.

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What can we learn from hobbit hospitality? What purpose do the numerous ruins we see have? Why did Gandalf refer too the poem “All that is gold does not glitter”?

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The dragons of Middle-earth were bred by Morgoth to use in his wars of the First Age, but they escaped the destruction of Angband and their descendants survived into the Third Age. By the end of the Third Age they were not as numerous as they once were, but they were still an enemy to be feared. The destruction of Smaug before the start of the War of the Rings was considered a crucial factor in the survival of the north against the assaults of Sauron.

Angmar
Tolkien tells us very little about the kingdom of Angmar, but it had a very important role in the history of Middle-earth in the Third Age. In about Third Age 1300 (which is 1700 years before Frodo sets out from Bag End), the Northern Dunedain Kindgom of Arnor was beginning to weaken and had split into the three realms of Arthedain, Rhudaur and Cardolan. Sauron took advantage of Arnor’s weakness by sending his lieutenant, the Lord of the Nazgul, to the north where he settled in Carn Dum and ruled over the land of Angmar.

Angmar was a vast country, extending over both sides of the Misty Mountains and it was peopled not only with orcs but with native hill-men who had gone over to Witch-King. Rhudaur and Cardolan both fell to Angmar very quickly, but Arthedain held out with help from the Elves for another 700 years, until the battle of Fornost. That battle was eventually won by an alliance of elves and men, and the Witch-King was expelled from the north. But in the process Arthedain was also destroyed and the Dunedain became a wandering people with no fixed dwelling place. By Frodo’s time they are only known as The Rangers and their origins have been forgotten by most people. The line of the Dunedain kings was preserved, however, and that is the line that produced Aragorn, who would eventually reestablish Arnor and rule as the king of both Gondor and Arnor.

Arnor was beset by trouble almost from the start. The great loss of life in the Disaster of Gladden Fields (Third Age 2) began the dwindling of Arnor’s population. A host of orcs attacked the men of Arnor as they travelled north from Gondor. Arnor’s king, Isuldir, was killed when the One Ring fell off his finger as he tried to escape the massacre, and he was revealed to the enemy. The Ring was lost in the River Anduin until Gollum found it over 2000 years afterwards.

Arnor was not just troubled by war with Sauron, but was also plagued by internal strife, splitting into three kingdoms by Third Age 841. The kingdoms were Cardolan in the south, Rhudaur in the east, and Arthedain in the north. Cardolan soon fell victim to a devastating plague, and Rhudaur turned evil, forming an alliance with the Witch-king who built up the stronghold of Angmar in the Northern Misty Mountains.

In Third Age 1974, the forces of Angmar and Rhudaur attacked and conquered Fornost, and the kingdom of Arthedain, last remnant of Arnor, was destroyed. The next year a great host of men came from Gondor, led by the prince Earnur, and along with elves from the Grey Havens and Rivendell, recaptured Fornost. It was during this battle that Glorfindel made his famous prediction about The Witch-king’s death. Earnur wanted to challenge the Witch-king, but his horse was overcome by fear and ran away and the Witch-King escaped. Gorfindel told Earnur not to follow him, saying “Do not pursue him! He will not return to this land. Far off yet is his doom, and not by the hand of man will he fall.” As we know, this prophesy was fulfilled when Eowyn, a woman, assisted by the hobbit Merry, kills the Witch-king at the battle of Pelennor Fields.

The kingdom of Arnor was not to rise again until Aragorn claimed the kingship of both Arnor and Gondor after the War of the Ring in Third Age 3019.

Esteldín

We meet the rangers of Esteldin and travel to the perilous ruins of Fornost.

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Evil of every sort is found in J.R.R. Tolkien’s world of Middle-earth. From the supreme evil of Morgoth and his servant Sauron, to the petty evil of Ted Sandyman, and everything in between, it’s all there. The presence of supreme evil creates the high drama that elevates the story to an epic tale, and the presence of petty evil enables us to recognize that the story takes place in a world that really isn’t very different from our own.

Musical discord

Where does evil come from in Middle-earth? The most elemental source of evil is the discord in the Music of the Ainur, which originally shaped Arda ( Arda is Tolkien’s name for the world that contains Middle-earth.  The story of Arda’s creaton is told in the Ainulindalae in The Silmarillion, which I encourage everyone to read.)

In the beginning, Eru Illuvatar (The One Father of All) created the angelic Ainur to help him create Arda. The Ainur sang the music Illuvatar gave them, and the song gave birth to all of creation. Morgoth, the mightiest of the Ainur, began to disrupt the music and dominate it out of pride. This was the original fall from grace, and precipitated the evil that exists in the world. Why would Ilúvatar permit this? Because he permitted free will, and the price is the choice that some of his creatures make to follow a path away from Him.

Original fall

But what is evil? Is the mosquito that bites you evil? Is the cancer that might end your life evil? Well, perhaps. Tolkien thought that these things were the result of the original fall, and the discord in the music of creation. Perhaps a better term for this kind of evil is disharmony. The fly that torments you, and the virus that gives you a cold, are in disharmony with the peace and health that would reign in an pristine, unfallen world.

Choices

Real evil can only come from a creature who can make a conscious choice. An animal cannot be really evil, because its purpose is not evil. It is only following its nature. Therefore, only a human being with the ability to make choices based on an inner purpose can be evil. And in Tolkien’s world, this is not only men, but elves, dwarves, hobbits, ents, dragons, and all the other fantastical creatures that have the power of rational thought.

Self-destruction

Evil is strong, but it is also self-destructive. Think of the squabbles of the orcs in Mordor, who kill each other at the slightest provocation. Evil has its own built-in weakness, that is, it tends to collapse under its own divisiveness. But the real power of evil is its ability to proliferate among even those with the best intentions. Evil can creep in where you least expect it. Tolkien especially believed that excessive pride led to this kind of evil. Consider Boromir’s temptation by the Ring; it was his pride that led him to think he was capable of using it, but he would have become just like Sauron, in the end, if he had succeeded in taking it from Frodo.

Morality

Tolkien is clear on his position against evil. He doesn’t shy away from presenting evil as a bad choice, and doesn’t excuse it. He is not fashionably vague, like many contemporary writers, about the morality of the choices his characters make. Perhaps that is why people get the idea that the Lord of the Rings is simple a tale of good guys vs. bad guys. But his characters are not either pure good, or pure evil, as some of his critics suggest. Gollum, for instance, while mostly an evil character, is capable of being good, at least for a little while. And Frodo is capable of both great goodness – volunteering to take the Ring on a hopeless quest; and great evil – claiming the ring for his own at the moment when the quest is about to be fulfilled.

In our world we have no Sauron, no Mordor, no outwardly-identifiable orcs. We might not have evil incarnate in our world, but we have evil nonetheless. It may be a bit harder to spot, but we can still make the choice to name it and fight against it. And in doing so we become the heroes of our own tales.

A very cool blog. The author is going through the Lord of the Rings chapter by chapter, and posting screenshots from the game to go with the book. It’s a traveler’s guide to the Fellowship of the Ring!

Peter Kreeft, Professor of Philosophy at Boston College, has written a book on Tolkien’s Philosophy in the Lord of the Rings. This is a recording of a lecture he gave on Evil in the Lord of the Rings. Thanks to Daniel Ross for the link:

Peter Kreeft – Insights into Evil

I think it’s very amusing to see how there seems to be a common image in modern global pop culture when it concerns elves. Had I asked this question one hundred years ago, answers would have been completely different. Back then, the general understanding was that elves are very small and they would have a mischievous character. Elves were known to prank people. Going further back into time, people would think elves would be of a normal size and their physical appearance would make it hard to distinguish them from humans. As you can see, elves’ physical appearance changed over time: sometimes there are small, sometimes they are normal-sized. They are always fair and youthful. Male elves never have facial hair.

People back then did not have the same interest in elves like they do now. The reason why elves are so popular now lies in the works of one man: J.R.R. Tolkien, writer of “The Hobbit”, “The Silmarillion” and “The Lord of the Rings”. I think the genius of this man lies not so much in telling fairy tales but in creating an almost parallel universe where these creatures live. It’s a very different world but very similar to ours as well. It fits people’s intuition when they read it for the first time because the story is new and old at the same time, which makes it very powerful.

J.R.R. Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon literature and knew a lot about history, folklore and mythology of the people of Northwest Europe. He loved the culture and folklore of Iceland. Tolkien was not a professional writer like the ones we know today. His goal was not to write books but to create a mythology for England. His first book, “The Hobbit”, is a children’s book that emerged from the tales he told his own children. In his work he combines age-old mythologies with modern storytelling to create a unique world. He gets his inspiration from the old mythologies, which means there’s no one on one comparison.

Back to elves. Elves are extremely popular nowadays, thanks to the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. And he used mythology to create them. So what inspired him? Where do elves come from?

If we want to know more about elves, we need to go back to Norse / Icelandic mythology. That’s the only place where they show up. There is one surviving work which deals with Norse mythology: The Edda. Actually, there are two Eddas: a book with a collection of poems (poetic Edda) and a book with prose (prose Edda).

The Edda is relatively young: most of what we have now was written down in the 12th-13th century, probably using 8th-9th century sources. It disappeared for a while only to turn up again in 1643 when the bishop of Skáholt, Brynjólfur Sveinsson, took possession of it. It’s not totally clear who recorded everything. One name, though is brought into connection with the book, was Saemundr the Learned, a 12th century Catholic priest from Iceland. The prose version is attributed to Snorri Sturlesson, a 12th century politician ‘lawspeaker’ from Iceland with great interest in the roots of Icelandic culture. Without these interested individuals, most stories of Norse mythology would probably be lost forever.

Before delving deeper into this, I need to give a very short explanation on the whole creation according to Norse mythology because it is important to understand where elves come from.

The first similarity is the existence of several ‘realms’ or worlds. The Norse gods form two tribes or families. I’m not sure if they come from one source or not. There are the Æsir who live in a place called Asgard and the Vanir who live in Vanaheimr. Sometimes these families fight each other, much like Olympians and Titans. And then there’s our realm, our world which is called “Midgard”. The prefix ‘mid’ means ‘middle’ and the suffix -gard refers to ‘place’ or ‘earth’. Our word ‘garden’ has the same root. So Midgard actually means “Middle-earth”. Readers familiar with the works of Tolkien recognise that name of course. In total there are nine worlds, there six more from the three I just mentioned. For our story on elves one other is of interest: Alfheim (English: Elphame). The suffix -heim means ‘home’ or ‘dwelling place / world’. The word home probably has the same root as ‘heim’. In German you call your home still ‘Heim’. The prefix ‘Alf’ means ‘Elf’. Which makes Alfheim or Alfrheim the place where elves dwell.

We now know where they live, but it’s still not clear what kind of creatures they really are. Norse mythology is a bit vague on their origins as well. What is clear is that they are a divine-like kind of creatures. They do have some powers and they dwell near the gods. The god Freya lives among them according to some sources. When reading the descriptions in Norse mythology, elves are quite similar to what we now refer to as angels: they are creatures made by the gods and share some godlike powers but are not as powerful as gods. They are usually benevolent except when they are treated in a bad way. When people anger elves all kinds of bad luck is crossing their paths.

One think is strikingly different from the elves you find in Tolkien’s books. In Tolkien’s world elves are like the pinnacle of creation: they are very wise, very civilised, their architecture is very elegant and they are the only race with interest in academics and the arts. That’s something Tolkien made up himself. Elves in Norse mythology are nothing like that their “culture” (if you can use that word in this context) is much more “primitive” . They also look different: At the beginning of this article I summed up how people see elves nowadays: they have pointy ears, are very beautiful, have almond shaped eyes and their eyebrows curve up to their temples. Their frame is very delicate. This would be the perfect description of a pixie, not of an elf. In Norse mythology, elves look exactly like humans, they are indeed very beautiful but there’s nothing in their appearance that gives away their true identity. Again: just like in Christianity angels look exactly like humans and the only thing that would give their true identity away is their beauty.

When we read a bit more in the prose Edda, we find that Sturlesson divides the race of elves into three groups. There’s the Light Elves, the Dark Elves and the Black Elves. The way Sturlesson writes about elves is utterly confusing. Sometimes it seems that Black Elves and Dark Elves are interchangeable and sometimes they seem to be separate groups.

The Light Elves are the elves we met so far: they are the benevolent creatures who live in Alfheim and who are friends with the god Freya. They are ‘good’ elves, so to say. Then there are those not so benevolent elves, the Svártalfr (Black Elves). It is interesting to note that dwarves (dverger) and goblins (kobold in German, kabouter in Dutch) are in fact black elves. They are of elven origin but evil. Dwarves in Norse and Germanic mythology are nothing like Gimli and his friends in “The Lord of the Rings”. It’s not clear how the relationship between dwarves en elves works, you can find a number of dwarves in Norse mythology with elven names, but it sure explains the animosity between Gimli and Legolas. It could be that there has been a war and part of the elves went to the “Dark Side”, thus becoming “Black Elves”. This would be similar to the clash between angels in the Bible which led to the emerge of demons in our world. The devil and his demonic minions are fallen angels.

In Tolkiens world the elves became divided by a historical sundering: there as a group called “Calaquendi” (Elves of Light who have seen the light of the two Trees of Valinor) and the Avari, who did not want to go to Valinor. There was also this inbetween group of the “Elves of Twilight”, the grey elves. To make things even more confusing, Tolkien calls Eöl “Dark elf”. Indeed, Eöl had close relations with the dwarves.

I think this comparison sums up nicely what the similarities between the appearance of elves in Norse mythology and Tolkien’s works are. In a new post I want to take a closer look at the subject by comparing both creation myths: How similar is the creation saga for Arda in Tolkien’s literature to the creation myth in Norse mythology? We’ve already seen there are some striking similarities in the cosmology between the two, so who knows.

Links for further reading:

• Wikipedia entry on elves.
• Encyclopedia of Arda: Index of Elves.
• Talking about Tolkien: Lore of Middle-earth.

This article appeared earlier on Inge’s blog over at http://www.taquoriaan.com.

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Part 2 of the uStream recording of Secrets of Middle-earth #10.

Part 1 of the uStream recording of Secrets of Middle-earth #10.

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The uStream recording of Secrets of Middle-earth #9.

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The uStream recording of Secrets of Middle-earth #8.

The uStream recording of Secrets of Middle-earth #7.

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The uStream recording of episode #6 of the Secrets of Middle Earth.

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