Wildfire Riders

uthas wrote:The Tolkien Chair at Oxford is actually a linguistics position. An old prof of mine held it for a while

Who held it?

I remember a prof back at the UofW saying that one of Tolkien's first writing-related jobs was working for Oxford English dictionary. Something about fulfilling the section for the letter "W", and being "very proud" of his definition of a Walrus.

Narokor wrote:I remember a prof back at the UofW saying that one of Tolkien's first writing-related jobs was working for Oxford English dictionary. Something about fulfilling the section for the letter "W", and being "very proud" of his definition of a Walrus.

From the Wikipedia article: "Tolkien's first civilian job after World War I was at the Oxford English Dictionary, where he worked mainly on the history and etymology of words of Germanic origin beginning with the letter W."

Also, if anyone is interested, I'm pretty sure I've got a soundfile of Tolkien himself reading Namarie, the poem (in Quenya) that Galadriel sings for Gandalf. It's pretty cool to hear it in the Professor's own voice.

Anna: Do very want.

Bricu wrote:

uthas wrote:The Tolkien Chair at Oxford is actually a linguistics position. An old prof of mine held it for a while

Who held it?

Lisa.

Anyone who wants the Namarie file, shoot me an email (toomanyannas@gmail) and I'll pass it along - I have a good few recordings of Tolkien apparently, though I can't find the one I would most like to still have, which is Tolkien reading aloud the riddling scene between Bilbo and Gollum in The Hobbit.

JRR Tolkien reading from The Hobbit: Riddles in the Dark - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VOdv2RE4jg

Valaquenta

Summary: This part of the book essentially just goes over all the valar, maiar and melkor's forces and talks about what they do.

There are fourteen valar, seven men and seven women. The female valar are called the valier, and most of them are in pairs.

The first married couple are Manwë and Varda. I've gone over Manwë before, but Varda is his wife and is known as Elbereth by the Eldar elves. We'll be learning more about those folks soon. The two of them live on Taniquetil, the tallest mountain on Arda.

Then there's Yavanna, who's married to Aulë (Ulmo is single). She's called Yavanna Kementári by the Eldar. As you can tell this is sort of where things start to get confusing, because Tolkien starts telling us the different names of everyone that honestly don't end up popping up all that much in the narrative Anyway, she likes plants.

Then there's Námos and Irmo, who I believe throughout the rest of the narrative are for some reason called by the names of the places they live, Mandos and Lórien. Anyway, Námos is the keeper of the dead who never forgets anything, and is married to Vairë the Weaver. She decorates his place with webs containing all things that have ever been. Another valier that hangs out in the Halls of Mandos is Nienna, whose taken on the job of grieving for anything that Melkor ever does to Arda, as well as counseling the dead.

Irmo is the keeper of dreams and visions, and he lives in Lórien with his wife Estë, who is a healer.

Then there are Tulkas and Nessa. Tulkas is a big warrior dude, who is incredibly cheerful and has golden hair and a beard. He's so fast that he doesn't need a steed, this guy can outrun everything. The only other one who approaches his speed is his wife Nessa, who loves hanging out with deer and racing them and dancing and stuff. She's a party girl.

Oromë is an angry, angry valar who spends his time hunting Melkor's creatures and talking about how awesome trees are. He has a horse named Nahar who shines silver at night. He has a glow-in-the-dark horse. He's also married to a valier named Vána, who is a Disney Princess. Well not really, but everywhere she goes she causes flowers she passes to spring up, and birds start singing.

The guys who help the valar and valier in all their deeds are spirits known as maiar. They don't say much about them so really, just look at what I say about them in the Character section of the first post.

The section closes by talking about Melkor, how his name has been forbidden and rather the Noldor (who we will meet later) came to calling him Morgoth, Dark Enemy of the World. He managed to get a number of maiar over to his side, the greatest of which was Sauron, the most fearsome of which were the Balrogs. For those who might not recall, a balrog is this:



My Thoughts: There's really not much to say about this chapter. It's less of a story format and more of a catalogue of information, making sure you know what's what before we get into the story proper. And indeed, the next part of the book will be the actual Chapter 1.

I do think Tolkien got a little overenthusiastic with all the naming, and I'm pretty sure this is part of what turns people off to this book. We have all these names being introduced by groups of people we haven't really learned about yet, and some of these names are as far as I can remember never used or brought up again. That's not to say I can't understand why he included this though. I would love to babble endlessly to people about the world I'm creating, all the names and locations and events even if some of them aren't entirely relevant.

Anyway, I look forward to the upcoming parts. It will really demonstrate how awesome Tolkien elves are, and how some of them could just be complete bastards. It's why I object to people calling elves like high elves "Tolkien elves". Tolkien elves were never really prissy, they were never really focused heavily on magic. They were strong, they were rugged, they were often even barbaric. One of the most notoriously brutal creatures in Middle Earth, orcs, -came- from elves. It probably comes from the beginning portions of the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, where all we really see of elves are a merry bunch of folk singing and laughing. The greater part of their history though, is filled with anything but.

Well, it's as said before. People read Lord of the Rings and categorized elves into two selections that later become all-encompassing and ironclad: Legolas (woodsy archer types) and Galadriel/Elrond (magicky but sorta standoffish types). All else, all subtleties and nuances, were pretty much dropped.

The fact is, when you look upon the rest of Tolkien's elves, they weren't often like that. They were...somethin' else. It's really hard to sum it up easily. The best of them were heroic and noble beyond what seems possible. The worst of them...well, I heard it put like this: Men are prone to falling to sin. All seven-deadly of 'em. Elves, however, are only partially so: they aren't as susceptible to the more "base" sins such as lust, sloth, and gluttony. They're more vulnerable to the others: envy, pride, avarice, and rage. And they make up for their lackings in the other three. Many times over. Many, many, many times over.

I kind of see justification for their "good" qualities in this. Elves as written there are painfully capable of being very, very bad people, so the heroic types who overcome that don't seem as much like flat generic-superpowered-good-guy cardboard cutouts. It's why characters like the aforementioned Galadriel and Elrond are actually interesting despite seeming like they should be this way, and it lends credibility to why they keep themselves detached from most "mortal" affairs. Just like if the Valar got to fighting Morgoth directly it'd unmake the world, elves who got caught up in smaller conflicts and disputes would end up wrecking shit beyond recognition (and if I recall correctly, that actually happens repeatedly in the Silmarillion, much to the dismay of everyone remotely involved).

Chapter 1
Of the Beginning of Days

Summary: The chapter begins with mention of the first war with Melkor, when Tulkas came to Arda and drove Melkor away from it. After this Aulë made two massive lamps to light all of Arda. One was called Illuin, and it lit the north. The other was called Ormal, and it lit the south. Because of the lamps the world saw an endless day. Plants and animals began to appear, and the Valar lived in a great lake on an island called Almaren.

Eventually because of all the work he'd been helping with, Tulkas goes to sleep. It was apparently quite a deep sleep, because Melkor felt safe enough to return to Arda. He went to the part of Arda called Middle-Earth, and built a fortress deep below the northern part of it, calling that fortress Utumno. He began to spread his influence, corrupting a number of things, and before the Valar could find and stop him he destroyed the lamps that they had build to light Arda, their destruction causing huge fires. He then hid in Utumno because he's a chicken.

The Valar get depressed, and move out of Middle Earth to a land in the west called Aman, on the edge of the world (Arda aka Earth, was flat back then). They built a barrier on the east of Aman consisting of the highest mountains in the world, the tallest of which I've mentioned before, Taniquetil, was where Manwë made his throne. They named the land the mountains guarded Valinor, and built their capital city of Valmar there.

It was in this city that Yavanna sang, and her song grew two trees. One tree was called Telperion, dark green with silver light. The other was called Laurelin, light green with glittering gold. The two trees continually waxed and waned, their light taking turns lighting all of Arda. This was the first time Arda had a night/day cycle.

It's around this time that Ilúvatar, thinking in the void beyond the world, comes up with a plan for elves and humans.

Elves, who he calls Quendi, get to be beautiful and will be able to take great joy in the world. They'll be bound to Arda, and will never die until it does. The only two ways they can die prematurely are to be killed or to allow themselves to waste away due to grief. Even if that happens all they do is wait in the Halls of Mandos for a certain amount of time until they'll be able to return to Valinor.

Humans, who he calls Atani, will NOT be able to find true joy in the world. They will always possess a longing for what lies beyond it. In exchange their lives aren't bound to the Music of the Ainur, which means their fates are not foretold by it. They are entirely in control of their own lives, able to shape it themselves. When they die they go to a place the elves will have no knowledge of, and when Arda is gone they will take part in the Second Music of the Ainur.

My Thoughts: I had forgotten about what exactly the Gift of Man entailed. I'd wondered what exactly is so peachy about mortality, but with this being the case it sounds like they might actually get a better deal than the elves. Their lives aren't determined beforehand unlike the elves', and I know fate is a concept that bothers a hell of a lot of humans in real life. They'll also be able to take part in what sounds like creating a second world. Though this second music could really entail anything, so who knows what they'll be helping with.

I find it interesting that the Valar seem to have favored a lasting daytime. Stars are something that hold great significance to many elves later on in Arda's history, and I myself think that the night is beautiful. At least when you're not in a city with tons of light pollution. Maybe Arda doesn't actually -have- stars in its night sky yet. I think this might be the case, but I can't recall. I suppose we'll see, I know the stars are referenced later.

Anyway, the Valar are still waiting eagerly for the awakening of the Firstborn of the Children of Illuvatar. In the next chapter we'll learn a bit about the denizens of Middle-Earth that were not counted among his children. The dwarves.