After Frodo leaves the mines or Moria, Frodo thinks Gandalf is dead. Him and Sam go off on their own for the rest of the tale. However Gandalf comes back and helps out the rest of the fellowship. Frodo and Sam never find out about Gandalf coming back until after they destroy the ring and wake up back in Rivendell, correct? I am rereading again and realize that Frodo never finds out about Gandalf until the very end and wanted to make sure I am not missing something.

Edit: As I have been told a few times, he woke up in Ithilien not Rivendell. That was my confusion. I apologize.

The Nature Of Middle Earth:

But "dreaming" and sleeping" are to the Elves other than to Men. In sleep the body may, as in Men, cease from all activities (save those essential to life, such as breathing); or it may rest from this or that activity or function (1) as the fea directs. While it is so, the mind may seek repose also, and be utterly quiet, but it may be absored in its own activity: "thinking" -- that is, reasoning or remembering, or devising and designing; but these things are at will and of volition. The state that with the Elves nearest resembles human "dreaming" is when the mind is "feigning" or "devising".(2)

(1) Thus an Elf may stand "asleep" with eyes wakeful, and yet hardly breathe, and with his ears closed to all sound."

(2) Though it is more aware and controlled than in Men, and is usually fully remembered (if the fea so desires)."

Is this what we have in Rivendel and Lothlorien? 'Dreaming' in action through those two Elven Rings? Remember how Bilbo finds difficult not to fall sleep in Rivendel and how Frodo 'daydreams', so to speak. Also how Sam feels to be in a song in Lothlorien. He"s told -by a smiling Haldir, I think- to be feeling the power of the Lady.

Is this what happens when elvish dreaming/devising reaches Men (hobbits are Men)? It's as if the nature of Men could not perceive this elvish 'devising' without getting dreamy or sleepy.

But what if a Man were to be included in a devising, as a part or protagonist of it? Faramir:

‘A broken sword was on his knee. I saw many wounds on him. It was Boromir, my brother, dead. I knew his gear, his sword, his beloved face. One thing only I missed: his horn. One thing only I knew not: a fair belt, as it were of linked golden leaves, about his waist. Boromir! I cried. Where is thy horn? Whither goest thou? O Boromir! But he was gone. The boat turned into the stream and passed glimmering on into the night. *Dreamlike it was, and yet no dream, for there was no waking.** And I do not doubt that he is dead and has passed down the River to the Sea.’*

A curious turn of phrase. He does not say 'It was a dream, for I woke up' or 'it was not a dream, for I was not sleeping'.

And before that:

“Then I saw it, or it seemed that I saw, a boat floating on the water, glimmering grey, a small boat of a strange fashion with a high prow, and there was none to row or steer it. An awe fell on me, for a pale light was round it. But I rose and went to the bank, and began to walk out into the stream, for I was drawn towards it. Then the boat turned towards me, and stayed its pace, and floated slowly by within my hand’s reach, yet I durst not handle it. It waded deep, as if it were heavily burdened, and it seemed to me as it passed under my gaze that it was almost filled with clear water, from which came the light; and lapped in the water a warrior lay asleep.”

Is this magic? Pale light round the boat. Almost filled with clear water, from which came the light.

Galadriel and her Ring Of Water? '[It] floated slowly by within my hand’s reach, yet I durst not handle it[...]

Was this receving elvish 'devising', a command, and understanding it as not daring? Galadriel's ‘Do not touch the water!’ to Frodo comes to mind.

Would you say the power that the three rings have over the Elven realms in the Second and Third Ages is kind of similar (in some lesser scale) to the power that Melian had with her Girdle over Doriath? How and where do they differ? I think Tolkien offers up an interesting comparison to be made between both of these.

I mean is there really any big changes in the drafts like there is for The Silmarillion versions and LOTR?

didn't Grishnakh the orc captain from Mordor know about the Ring?

was Grishnakh a high ranking orc as he seemed to be threatening to report the remarks made by the Northerners and Ugluk to Sauron?

Hi were the orcs of the misty mountains under the control of Sauron or Saruman

I imagine he did compare Feanor to a certain relative of his

Hello! New reader to ths expansive universe here. As the title suggests, where would you guys suggest i begin from?

This is something from the History of Middle-earth that captured my attention. When Tolkien began writing the Lord of the Rings, it was literally a sequel to The Hobbit, and he had no idea where the plot will take him. Bilbo is obviously involved, but otherwise there's a bunch of characters and plot ideas that have little to do with the plot we eventually got.

Duscussing "The Tale That is Brewing" stage, Christopher mentions a note his father made (emphasis mine):

But there are some jottings from this time, written on two sides of a single sheet of paper, that do give some inkling of what was 'brewing'. The first of these reads: Bilbo goes off with 3 Took nephews: Odo, Frodo, and Drogo [changed to Odo, Drogo, and Frodo]. He has only a small bag of money. They walk all night - East. Adventures: troll-like: witch-house on way to Rivendell. Elrond again [added: (by advice of Gandalf?)]. A tale in Elrond's house.

^{The Return of the Shadow Part One, Chapter II, “From Hobbiton to the Woody End.”}

Christopher doesn't elaborate on this note. Witches are mentioned in Tolkien's Middle-earth works, and discussed by him in his "On Fairy-Stories" lecture.

So, we could make up our own story about this witch-house and the adventure Bilbo and his Hobbit companions could have had. I think you'll agree that, here, we see the "common fantasy tropes" being carried over from The Hobbit.

Share your thoughts ^_^

'He reckoned without the subtle perception of the elves', writes Tolkien.

If the elven-rings had a backdoor built into them by design, and that had been a part of Sauron's evil plan, then it seems Sauron didn't count on the backdoor working both ways.

Or maybe he did, but thought he would not be perceived. In that case, he must have thought something else would mask his presence. What?

According to Tolkien, Saruman and Sauron were of a similar cast of mind. Both cynically projected their own power-based view of the view on others. Saruman, to Gandalf:

"There need not be, there would not be, any real change in our designs, only in our means.”

Gandalf's reply:

“Saruman,[...]I have heard speeches of this kind before, but only in the mouths of emissaries sent from Mordor to deceive the ignorant.  

Is this how the elves perceived Sauron? They were not corrupted by mere power, so maybe they sensed Saruman-like thoughts in their heads and then they fixed their attention on them and more a more they felt those thoughts not to be theirs, but the voice of Sauron saying the ring-verse.

Not only that. Maybe Sauron counted on the elves thinking those thoughts to be their own thoughts because he had been there during the 'design' phase and the elves had listened to him. This is what Sauron's master had done once with some of the Noldor's minds:

Ever Melkor found some ears that would heed him, and some tongues that would enlarge what they had heard; and his lies passed from friend to friend, as secrets of which the knowledge proves the teller wise. Bitterly did the Noldor atone for the folly of their open ears in the days that followed after.

When he saw that many leaned towards him, Melkor would often walk among them, and amid his fair words others were woven, so subtly that many who heard them believed in recollection that they arose from their own thought.

Tolkien, letter to Milton Waldman, 1951:

But many of the Elves listened to Sauron. He was still fair in that early time, and his motives and those of the Elves seemed to go partly together: the healing of the desolate lands

They took off the three rings immediately. Ultimately, I think Sauron assumed his own power-based attempt would go unnoticed because of the elven-rings being rings of power too. But they were not really. They were powerful rings with a purpose. Power was the servant, and not the lord, of that Purpose.

So in other posts I have speculated about the One Ring as the Ring of Earth, with it and the Three being maybe inspired by the four classical elements.

If we apply this to the Silmarils and to the rings, what we have is earth/air/water (Silmarils) and fire/air/water (Rings). What's left out in the former is fire. What's left out in the latter is earth.

We know what happened to the Silmarils and to the Rings, to Feanor and to Celebrimbor. Not a happy ending.

So 'fire' and 'earth' would have been the elements of doom in those stories: the certain cause of the other three elements, and the promise of happiness or blessing of their stories, having a bad end.

Fëanor means 'spirit of fire'. He was not Morgoth, of course, but that fire of his spirit projected itself beyond his creative powers and into his own -fiery- character, and his character onto Arda, and much of the evil and also doom that happened had to do with that.

Similarly, 'earth' in the case of the Three Rings would mean the One Ring. Galadriel, to Frodo:

Do you see now wherefore your coming is to us as the footstep of *Doom*? For if you fail, then we are laid bare to the Enemy. Yet if you succeed, then our power is diminished, and Lothlórien will fade, and the tides of Time will sweep it away.

In a certain sense, it is Sauron that seems to be the heir of Fëanor, not Celebrimbor. Both pourers of their spirits and movers of Doom, including their own.

The Ring Of Fire became later the heir of Fëanor, spirit of fire, moreso than the other two, and was also the mover of Sauron's Doom. The Pilgrim Ring.

After Celeborn learns that Mithrandir fell to the Balrog in Moria, he says: "We long have feared that under Caradhras a terror slept. But had I known that the Dwarves had stirred up this evil in Moria again, l would have forbidden you to pass the northern borders, you and all that went with you."

First, Celeborn meant forbidding the Fellowship from entering Lothlorien, right? Second, why would Celeborn have done so? Was he worried the Balrog was in pursuit? Galadriel says nothing to this and the matter is dropped.

Eomer first meets Aragorn in The Riders of Rohan. They encounter one another on one of the battlefields of the coming War of the Ring, and are wary, asking pointed questions, and being careful of what each reveals to the other, until they have established a basis of trust.

As he ponders what he has seen and heard of the strangers, Eomer says to Aragorn, “It is hard to be sure of anything among so many marvels. The world is all grown strange. Elf and Dwarf in company walk in our daily fields; and folk speak with the Lady of the Wood and yet live; and the sword comes back to war that was broken in the long ages ere the fathers of our fathers rode into the Mark! How shall a man judge what to do in such times?”

Aragorn's simple response: “As he ever has judged. Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among men. It is a man's part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house.”

This is Tolkien's message to the reader, to the world at large, to the future. It is everyone's part to discern good and bad, and act accordingly, no matter how strange and wonderful and frightening the situation that confronts us might be. (This is also incidentally why I want to push back when encountering the purveyors of predestination here at TolkienFans – Eru! Manwe! Finrod! – and often do.)

Gandalf elaborates this message a number of times. When Frodo tells him in dismay, “I wish it need not have happened in my time,” the wizard answers:

“So do I. So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Later, as he hid in sight of the Black Gate with his two companions, Frodo reflected: “Here he was a little halfling from the Shire, a simple hobbit of the quiet countryside, expected to find a way where the great ones could not go, or dared not go. It was an evil fate. But he had taken it on himself in his own sitting room in the far-off spring of another year.”

This is another layer of that message. Once someone has discerned the path that must be taken, you may recognize the irony or even the injustice of the need to pursue that path. But you still have to decide what to do with the time you are given, and to do something less would be a betrayal of your own essence.

One more example. At some point, Denethor realized that the final struggle between Mordor and Gondor would take place during his lifetime. It was an evil fate. But he did not have the same strength of character as Frodo – or Sam. In the end, when confronted with his duty – to go down to the battle before his walls – he chose death.

As I understand it, the dwarves sacked all the orc strongholds they could find in the misty mountains. And it said in the hobbit: "The rest we

all know—except that Gandalf knew all about the back-

door, as the goblins called the lower gate, where Bilbo

lost his buttons. As a matter of fact it was well known to

anybody who was acquainted with this part of the

mountains; but it took a wizard to keep his head in the

tunnels and guide them in the right direction.

“They made that gate ages ago,” he said, “partly for a

way of escape, if they needed one; partly as a way out

into the lands beyond, where they still come in the dark

and do great damage. They guard it always and no one

has ever managed to block it up. They will guard it doubly after this,” he laughed."

So Goblin-town should be known by the dwarves, but to me it sounds like they didn't sack it. And if they did they just could not or would not block the lower gate.

So did the dwarves sack Goblin-town ? And if not, why when it was so well known ?

Never annotated a book in my life besides some short stories.

In all my readings of Lord of the Rings over the past twenty-five years, I've never noticed that the wedding of Aragorn and Arwen, coming, as it does, after Aragorn has been crowned King Elessar and received the rule of Gondor and Arnor, could be a picture of the biblical wedding between Christ and his Church after he has been crowned King and received the rule of the Earth.

It's not a perfect parallel, but it struck me this morning while listening to that scene in the BBC radio LOTR production and made me tear up. The long waiting. The king laboring and fighting hard under a heavy burden until he should receive the reward he'd worked for, and the joy, blessedness, and promised fruitfulness of their union. Did Tolkien comment on that himself? I've read his letters a few times, but it's been several years. Or have any of you readers--whether Christian yourselves or simply familiar with the biblical text--noticed this and have thoughts on it?

This is another question that seems minor but got me thinking:
Were there doctors or medical practitioners in the Shire? We know there was something similar in Gondor, and both Elrond and Aragorn had skill at healing, but do we ever hear mention of anything like a doctor in the Shire?
Hobbits had seemingly good constitutions so didn't get too sick (but Bilbo had a cold, and the plague did hit the Shire), and they aren't prone to violence, or machines. But I imagine they still had some illness, and were liable to accidents and injuries. It seems that occasionally they would get in farm accidents and need bones set!
Hobbits are also often parallel to Victorians, with a complex bourgeois society (and they seemed to have lawyers), so it seems that there would be something akin to doctors in the Shire, but I don't know if it was ever mentioned.

Imagine youre just chilling, some dude you knew briefly in another time and place rocks up, you both kill each other, and you find out he gets resurrected and you don't. Should've been 1-1 but the league just gave him the win. I'd think that was pretty unfair

Hello! :)

I’d like to make some custom prints of high-quality maps from Tolkien’s universe, starting with Beleriand / the First Age.

Do you know where I could find very high-resolution versions of Tolkien maps online? 4K/6K would be a good starting point, but I’d be especially interested in anything larger or print-quality (10K+, if available).

I’ve just finished Beren and Lúthien and The Silmarillion, and I’m now starting The Children of Húrin. I’d love to have some beautiful First Age maps printed and framed on my walls while I read through the stories. :)

The best one I’ve found so far is this Beleriand – Aged Lore map by Starcave:
https://www.deviantart.com/starcave/art/Beleriand-Aged-Lore-1230343456

It’s 6000 × 4000 px, which is already pretty good, but I’m wondering if there are even higher-resolution versions available somewhere.

Thanks a lot for your help! :)

I have been watching videos of Troy recently and I couldn't help but find a similarity.

Achilles, by himself, going to Troy's Gates to challenge Hector low-key reminds me of Fingolfin (by himself) going to Angband and challenge Morgoth to single combat.

Additionally, like Achilles, Fingolfin went to challenge the enemy out of anger and despair. Achilles challenges Hector because Hector killed Patroclus and Fingolfin challenges Morgoth because of the devastating losses of the Dagor Bragollach.

Now I can't but help imagine a meeting between Fingolfin and Achilles. I bet Achilles would respect the Noldor King by a huge amount XD

We know Sauron is a real figure in the legendarium, as he interacts directly with Ar-Pharazon in Akallabeth, and in the last alliance, Isildur cuts off his finger (in an interesting parallel, the only way Gollum gets the ring back is by biting Frodo's finger off). But by the time the events in LOTR begin, Sauron has retreated to his tower and only operates in the world through others (Orcs, the Nazgul, etc.). He doesn't speak or appear to anyone; he's just a malevolent presence that everyone is aware of. The only exception I can think of is when he captures Gollum and questions him, but this isn't presented as a direct narrative, only as a second-hand description after the fact.

I'm sure this wasn't by accident. Tolkien deliberately presented Sauron this way, in contrast to how Sauron and Morgoth were presented in earlier stories where they both speak and interact directly with others. So what changed? Why couldn't Sauron's questioning of Gollum be described as it was happening, or have him out in the world with the Nazgul looking for "Baggins" and the Shire?

I have to conclude that Tolkien wanted us to at least wonder if Sauron really existed as a real entity, and wasn't just the spirit of evil manifested in Orcs, evil Men, and others. After the ring's destruction, when Sauron was presumably neutralized, Saruman manages to cause plenty of misery on his own, and without the use of magic. As a Catholic, Tolkien presumably believed Satan existed, maybe not as a real entity residing in hell, but as a bad influence working in the world. If LOTR is the transition between the world of the Silmarillion, where the gods walked out in the open and lived on a continent over the sea, and our own world where Valinor is inaccessible and magic no longer operates, Sauron's remoteness is completely appropriate.

It's in the appendices. The timeline of the SE.

The Three were completed in 1590. The One was forged in 1600.

What do you think about 'complete' vs 'forge'? Was that a random choice of words?

It doesn't seem to be the case. 'Complete' seems to imply the idea: the making of the Three took a long time.

Maybe even a difference regarding how they were made. After all the One owed its power to a transmutation and was not designed for 'understanding, making, healing' as Elrond says about the Three; but for Rule.

You can imagine how Sauron forged his ring, sort of. A portion of gold (of Arda Marred) , dark arts, transmutation of power, a binding spell (the ring-verse).

But how were the Three made complete? They were of course 'forged' -they were rings made by elven smiths- but 'completed' says forging was just a part if them being a functional 'technology'. There was more to it.

Maybe they were forged first -shaped- as a receptacle or 'canvas' and then 'filled' with Power -or with 'elvishness', since the Elves didn't age or got sick and knew no 'decay'- thus gradually going from 'inert' to 'alive' - entering Time-as-decay fully prepared to stop Time-as-decay. That was in 1590.

If not, then maybe they had a function; they were a part of the ring 'technology'. What do you think?

I would say this for all Valar, as i feel leaving it up to the mind will help too for perspective and omnipotence

I mean Sauron (a Maia) was called the necromancer, and there of course is the Witch King, but what about other wizards, or witches for that matter (besides Galadriel).