How Eöl Could Hate the Noldor Yet Be a Friend of the Dwarves Eöl the Dark Elf presents one of the stranger cultural contradictions of the First Age. He despises the Noldor so deeply that when speaking to his son Maeglin, he describes them as slayers of his kin, invaders, and usurpers. Yet this same … Read more
When Dáin Ironfoot finally appears before the Lonely Mountain, he does not arrive as a mediator. Five hundred Dwarves march out of the Iron Hills armed and equipped for battle. Before them stand the forces of Bard and the Elvenking. Behind the newly built wall at Erebor is Thorin Oakenshield, surrounded by treasure and refusing … Read more
When Frodo meets Gildor Inglorion and his wandering Elves in the Shire, he greets them in Quenya: “Elen síla lúmenn’ omentielvo.” A star shines on the hour of our meeting. The reaction is revealing. Frodo has not merely spoken an Elvish language. He has used the High-elven tongue, a speech carrying memories far older than … Read more
The Bucklebury Ferry looks like one of the smallest pieces of infrastructure in The Lord of the Rings: a flat ferry-boat, wooden landing-stages, lanterns beside the Brandywine, and a crossing used by ordinary hobbits going between the Marish and Buckland. Yet on the night Frodo Baggins crosses the river, that humble ferry does something the … Read more
The High Hay looks, at first, like an unusually ambitious piece of hobbit gardening. It was anything but. More than twenty miles of thick, carefully tended hedge curved from the Brandywine Bridge southward to Haysend, separating the inhabited lands of Buckland from the Old Forest. By the time Frodo came to Crickhollow, the barrier had … Read more
Faramir cannot give Frodo and Sam an army. He cannot accompany them into Mordor. He cannot persuade them to abandon their road without destroying the very purpose that has brought them so far. So, at the edge of the Shadow, he gives them walking-staves. It is one of the quietest gifts in The Lord of … Read more
When Aragorn’s desperate road through southern Gondor reached Linhir, the war was already waiting at the river. Men of Lamedon were fighting at the fords of the Gilrain against enemies from Umbar and Harad who had come inland by water. Beyond them lay Lebennin, Pelargir, the Corsair fleet, and ultimately the road to Minas Tirith. … Read more
When the Fellowship enters Lothlórien, the strangest thing about the Golden Wood is not simply that it is beautiful. It feels preserved. Frodo senses that he has crossed into a place where the ordinary movement of the world has somehow been restrained. The grass, trees, light, and silence seem to belong to an older order … Read more
Bilbo Baggins did not tell the truth about how he acquired the Ring. That fact creates one of the strangest problems in Middle-earth. The account of his encounter with Gollum exists in more than one form. Yet the later tradition does not simply throw Bilbo’s false version away and replace it with an authoritative correction. … Read more
At Amon Hen, the Fellowship does not break cleanly. It shatters. Frodo disappears. Boromir returns alone and shaken. Merry and Pippin rush into the woods. Sam vanishes in another direction. Legolas and Gimli begin searching. Then Orcs descend upon the scattered Company. In the middle of that chaos, Aragorn does something that can seem strange … Read more