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Post by Stormrider on May 21, 2011 9:48:18 GMT -6
Absolutely! LOL, I'm looking forward to seeing 13 dwarves and a hobbit on pony back, especially after reading Gimli's complaints about taking a mount when they meet Eomer in Rohan:
" 'It may be well enough for this lord of the race of Gondor, as he claims,' [Eothain] said, 'but who has heard of a horse of the Mark being given to a Dwarf?'
" 'No one,' said Gimli. 'And do not trouble: no one will ever hear of it. I would sooner walk than sit on the back of any beast so great, free or begrudged.' " From Gimli's comments, we may be able to actually assume (correctly) that Dwarves will not be very good on horseback, therefore, a very good reason for taking their time to get from The Shire to Rivendell! Come to think of it, there was Dwarf training going on before PJ started shooting movie footage and I believe the actors were learning to ride horses. It may have been better to just let the actors ride without any practice so that they would be more believeable as a non-equine familiar race of people! Now I am sure some of the actors may have ridden in Real Life and could have some riding skills, but how many out of 13 would have ridden?
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Post by Vanye on May 30, 2011 22:56:00 GMT -6
Well-it would seem that I have dropped the ball!
32 days into the adventure-
29 May, S.R. 1341/K.R. 2941,T.A. Bilbo & Co. have made it across the Last Bridge in a steady cold rain but then one of the ponies runs off & loses his load (mostly food), they are forced to camp under some dripping trees. It is then that things get even worse & they end up captives of the trolls. Adventure has become more uncomfortable than Bilbo predicted it would be! 8^)
edited by poster
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Post by Andorinha on Jun 3, 2011 10:41:37 GMT -6
Ah, Thanks for giving the ball another bounce, Vanye!
This is an important date, as I think it allows one more point/ place of direct comparison between Bilbo's journey and Frodo's.
I'll be back a bit later on this...
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Post by Andorinha on Jun 6, 2011 8:34:07 GMT -6
The (Rapid) Story Thus Far...
I am not sure why, but after many readings of The Hobbit, over many years, my focus today regards just how short, and swiftly paced the work seems to be. The narrative is rich, detailed, full of image-provoking paragraphs, and lots of nuanced incidents -- and that's just the first 25-odd pages of the text that brings us from the Hobbiton "Party" to the point of the company's encounter with the trolls. In fact, all the detail we've been discussing here over the last month, the trek-notes themselves, take only four pages to traverse the distance between the first "jogging off" and the great conflict with the trolls (pp 42- 46). I'd have sworn that many more pages were involved in taking the story this far, so detailed is my mind's interpretation of the tale. Strange that I never noticed this phenomenon before -- Tolkien's apparent ability to pack so much detail into so few pages -- perhaps it is just a quirk of my mind today, and others may have had quite different experiences with the text, perhaps finding it to be boringly slow?
I am also concurrently reading Charles Brockden Brown's Edgar Huntly, Or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker, whose title alone is greatly longer than Tolkien's, and the full work is similarly lengthy and languid in its pace. Brown's book was first sold in 1799, when fewer books were about, and the readers, the gentlemanly elite, were accustomed to take their time as they went through a narrative. Maybe Tolkien's jam-packed brevity is a product of his own era, the 1930s, reflecting already the streamlining rush of industrialization? At any rate, Brown's book has a long sequence of trekking through the wilderness, an adventure with muddy roads, deep forests, deeper caves, rushing streams, and jutting boulders -- all reminiscent of the rugged landscape of Bilbo's Wilderness. But Tolkien uses his four pages to move us through almost a month of time to the Hobbit's first significant encounter, the meeting of the trolls; while Brown moves his antagonist (on a mere two day scramble) through the Wild (with a break back at home for one night's rest) that consumes his fourteen pages before the narrator/ protagonist can finally make his first "encounter" with the enigmatic Clithero, a somnambulist and suspected murderer.
But, for some reason, Tolkien's four pages seem to count with my brain as (at least!) equaling the amount of memorable detail and bright imagery that I get from Brown's fourteen... Less is more?
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May 28/ 29, finds Bilbo at the "Last Bridge" area, though the actual text of The Hobbit mentions only a river crossing, and a pony who "took fright at nothing and bolted. He got into the river before they could catch him..." (The Hobbit, p. 44, pbk ver). So, no bridge yet in 2941 Third Age, apparently we have to wait for LotR (3018 TA) before JRRT decided to add the bridge. There is also an interesting detail on p. 44, something I never remarked upon before:
"They decided in the end that they would have to camp where they were. So far they had not camped before on this journey, and though they knew that they soon would have to camp regularly, when they were among the Misty Mountains and far from the lands of respectable people, it seemed a bad wet evening to begin [camping] on." (p. 44)
So, from May 5 to 28/ 29, where were the Dwarves and Bilbo spending their nights? Apparently there were far more Inns and/ or friendly farmers with barn-space along Bilbo's route in 2941/ 42 Third Age, than we find at the time of Frodo's adventure where we have only the Last Inn, and a Forsaken/ abandoned one at that, just a day's travel beyond Bree. This suggests a catastrophic loss of "respectable" population in the 77 years intervening between our two hobbit treks. Maybe, Frodo's journey, bending north of the road after they left Bree, and then south of it after Weathertop, allowed them to pass by, unseen, many houses that might lie directly on the road east of Bree? Somehow, given Tolkien's use of pessimism, his concepts of "fading" and decline, I get the feeling that even had Frodo and company stayed on the road, they would have found no "respectable and settled" people east of Bree before they reached Rivendell. The "Wild" had grown considerably by Frodo's time...
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Post by Stormrider on Jun 7, 2011 5:59:30 GMT -6
Andorinha:
It seems strange that Middle Earth areas along Bilbo's and Frodo's routes would have gotten wilder instead of more civilized before Frodo came through. Over many years, places should build up and grow, shouldn't they? Or you would think.
However, The Roman Empire faded out in time and that was huge!
The reach of Sauron was growing stronger after Bilbo's passing and the small towns with the inns Bilbo's company stopped in had difficult times with many evil peoples and creatures passing through and/or corrupting the towns like Sharky's people at the end of ROTK. Or it could be evil-seeming strangers were snooping around in search of clues to finding The One Ring. (later looking for "Baggins" but this was much closer to the time frame that Frodo actually left The Shire so would not have been cause for desertion of towns.
But don't you think there would have been some remains of towns and buildings in the 77 year interim? Frodo was trying to stick closer to the woods and fields and off the main roads so he would not necessarily have even passed by these towns.
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Post by Andorinha on Jun 8, 2011 8:46:38 GMT -6
RE Stormrider's: "It seems strange that Middle Earth areas along Bilbo's and Frodo's routes would have gotten wilder instead of more civilized before Frodo came through. Over many years, places should build up and grow, shouldn't they? Or you would think." (my emphasis) Yeah, it is counter-intuitive, most of our real-life historical situations are taken from our post-industrialized world, say 1700 AD onward, where "progress," development, and exponential population growth are the norms. In one sense, Tolkien seems to understand this pattern, his view of the Shire under Saruman's management is a small scale example of wild industrialization (though JRRT does not have a concurrent population explosion with it). So I think JRRT, and his "fading" concept forecasts the eventual creation of our own crowded, dirty, mechanized world as taking over from the Third Age pattern -- but, just what pattern was he following for the actual history of the Third Age? Stormrider: "The Roman Empire faded out in time and that was huge!" I think this "Roman" system may indeed be his pattern. Today, we have been used to almost 300 years of "continual growth," but there have been episodes of "decline and collapse" in our deeper history. There is a post-Roman flavour to much of Middle-earth, a medievalism that often comes across best in the commercial art produced to illustrate Tolkiens narratives -- and the real-life medieval period has often been represented as a series of collapses, depopulations by Great Plagues, and great wars, vast areas of the countryside being largely abandoned, filled with ruins and graves. From the appendices of LotR, we are told about several waves of endemic disease, several great invasions from the East, droughts, floods, the Great Winter. Even in the settled south, there was an episode of internal strife in Gondor that drove the rightful king off his throne (Eldacar, I think it was), and left the chief city, Osgiliath, a depopulated ruin. There was some sort of depopulation going on in Anor that caused the abandonment of Annuminas as early as the 800s of TA, and the civil war in Arnor resulted in three warring sub-states that would eventually be gobbled up by the Chief Nazgul of Angmar and his armies in the 1970s TA. I'm getting a picture of a very precarious "western-based" civilization by the time of Bilbo's trek, and this picture of collapse only intensifies when we come to Frodo, just 77 years later. I think JRRT is trying to show us how very close to full collapse things were for the Elven-based societies in the closing period of the Third Age, so Aragorn will have a lot to "restore" and "renew" if his side can win. That said, there should have been more ruins along the way, even with Frodo and company going "off-track," and one population center where they could have found refuge, should be the Rangers' Home Base settlement. Where did the Rangers live? We know that the 30 who met Aragorn in Rohan were just a fraction of the Arnor Dunedain, those who could be quickly gathered, but where did they stash their women folk and kids? Were they a permanent part of the Rivendell establishment? There is a note, supposedly found in the Marquette University papers, that may have been JRRT's attempt to address this issue, and it gives the Dunedain their own "town," or "fastness" in Eriador: "In January of 2000, David Salo shared the following information on the Internet: There is a short but hardly legible note which Tolkien wrote for insertion into the story of Aragorn and Arwen (and which was not in the event used); it includes information about the location of the Dunedain. Because of the difficulty of the note, the information is not entirely clear, but it suggests that the Dunedain lived in woodlands between the Mitheithel and Bruinen. Source: microfilms at Marquette University, Series 3, Box 9, Folder 3." So, according to the map on pages 80-81 of Fonstad's Atlas, there should have been a town or at least a fortified "Fastness" south of the Last Bridge, where at least a hundred and maybe two hundred Dunedain (men, women, and children) would live. It would be nice to have an exact date for the above note, but if it were to be included in the "Tale of Aragorn and Arwen," I bet it comes fairly late and certainly after the publication of LotR, when Tolkien was trying to work out some of the "kinks" left in his story. You also make a good point, that Sauron "officially" declared his own "renewal" just in the same year as Bilbo's journey east and the finding of the One Ring. But I agree that, far off in the northwest, the Shire/ Bree area out to Rivendell probably came under no renewed assaults til after Frodo went east, but still, there seems to have been a surge in "depopulations" during the 77 years between Bilbo's and Frodo's travels... LOL, I wonder, if Tolkien had lived long enough, would he have painted in a few more ruins along the road, told us a bit more about why all the Inns that the Dwarves and Bilbo used were gone by Frodo's time?
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Post by Stormrider on Jun 11, 2011 4:47:03 GMT -6
This is interesting info that was found in the Marquette Archives.
I thought the Dunadain were closer to The Shire than to Rivendell because they were keeping their eye on the hobbits to protect them. Were is my Fonstadt map book! I'm going to search her maps!
I pictured the Dunadain as living in the woods and somewhere were they would not have real structures for buildings. They needed to be able to move and relocate a lot, didn't they? So I pictured structures that could be taken down, moved easily enough, and put back up.
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Post by Fredeghar Wayfarer on Jun 11, 2011 10:49:08 GMT -6
This is interesting info that was found in the Marquette Archives. I thought the Dunadain were closer to The Shire than to Rivendell because they were keeping their eye on the hobbits to protect them. Were is my Fonstadt map book! I'm going to search her maps! I pictured the Dunadain as living in the woods and somewhere were they would not have real structures for buildings. They needed to be able to move and relocate a lot, didn't they? So I pictured structures that could be taken down, moved easily enough, and put back up. That is indeed interesting. I hadn't pictured the Dunedain in that area at all. Aragorn and his people are referred to as Rangers of the North. I always imagined them living far to the north of Middle-earth, near Lake Evendim where the ruins of the Arnorian capital of Annuminas are located. That's where the Lord of the Rings Online game places them. I suppose, technically, everything north of Gondor is considered "the North." The former lands of Arnor included not just Evendim and the North Downs/Fornost area but also the Shire, Bree-land, the Weathertop area, and part of the Trollshaws. So, theoretically, there could be pockets of Rangers all over those lands, watching the roads and protecting the inhabitants. That makes more sense to me than them just being in the Trollshaws near Rivendell. It would also explain how they could be defending the borders of the Shire.
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Post by Stormrider on Jun 11, 2011 18:24:54 GMT -6
Fredegahr:
That's right Arnor was more or less in the area of The Shire. That was why I thought they lived around there somewhere. Although if they were keeping low profiles to hide the fact that they were decendents of the Kings of Gondor, they may have moved further away from that area to throw off any attempts to find them and wipe them out. There may have been several areas that the Dunadain lived in the north and this area near Rivendell is probably one of them.
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Post by Vanye on Jun 23, 2011 22:50:38 GMT -6
Well, it would seem that I have been tripped up & led astray as well as downright confused by my sources on the subject of Midyears Day & when it is supposed to occur! Curses! The source which I used a few years back in posting the Shire Calendar on TR has it occurring a month later than Tolkien seems to have it in The Hobbit. By Shire Reckoning Midsummer is on June 24th & Fonstad's map (top of pages 100-101) has it on June 4th but The Annotated Hobbit states that Fonstad has interpreted Tolkien's phrase "a midsummer's day'"to mean literally Midsummer's Day. At the bottom of the same pages in the larger map it says Midsummer's Day & gives the dates of July 1-18 as the time period when Bilbo & Co. are in the Goblin's cave. So, in that case & since tomorrow would be Midsummer's Day-this all then begs the question where are our pony riders at on June 24th (a) just leaving Rivendell or (b) riding Beorn's ponies toward Mirkwood Forest ?
I shall continue to read in my sources to see if I can find any sort of clarification on this point. The rest of you - have at it as well! There appears to be a discrepancy of some 20 days difference between the dates on the 2 maps. 8^)
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Post by Stormrider on Jun 24, 2011 4:46:51 GMT -6
Well, I hope they are just leaving Rivendell because otherwise we have missed a lot of their adventure. Darn calendar interpretation!
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Post by Andorinha on Jun 24, 2011 9:48:21 GMT -6
Hmmm, this is a problem...
I never noticed the discrepancy? Maybe we can choose one or the other, and just move along on the same course/ schedule? LOL, I'll check it out too.
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Post by Andorinha on Jul 1, 2011 12:12:07 GMT -6
Hmmm,
Not sure, but it looks as if the daily count by Fonstad can stand independently of the caption "Midyear's Eve," and "Midyear's Day?" So while Fonstad places Bilbo and the Dwarves in Rivendell on the 4th of June, they seem to leave there on July 1 (thus they are recuperating with Elrond when the 24th of June, Midyear's Day, arrives). They are captured by the Goblins on the 16th of July, the Dwarves and Gandalf escape on the 17th while Bilbo makes his fated side-trip down to see Gollum. They are re-united in time to meet the Eagles at the forest margin for their rescue from the wargs and goblins on the 19th of July. September 22 is a firm date, Bilbo's birthday and the day the company arrives at Lake-town, which Fonstad has correctly placed -- so, it looks like it does not matter that she has "Midyear's Day" mis-labeled as the 4th of June?
I think the problem arises with the Tolkien statement (p. 61, paperback version): "Their plans were improved with the best advice. So the time came to midsummer eve, and they were to go on again with the early sun on midsummer morning." (The Hobbit, p. 61, paperback version)
If we take "midsummer's day" as June 24, this makes fairly good sense. But why does Fonstad, lower map p100, show the trek as dated July 1 to July 16, from Rivendell to the Goblins' Gate? Maybe this map is approximating the actual situation, so that the company really leaves Rivendell on the 24th of June, and travels through July 16 to reach their experience with the Goblins, while the map may seem to indicate they left Rivendell on July 1, not June 24th as Tolkien definitely states?
Nonetheless, whether Fonstad has them leaving July 1 rather than June 24, the rest of the dates seem to be in good sequence. I guess, I'd just stick with the schedule we started with, which I think is an approximation of our own modern, Julian calendar anyway, and is not directly using the Shire month names, and the strict 30 day months?
It looks as though we could just ignore the mis-statement that June 4 = Midyear's, and go on with the day count scheme Fonstad proposes?
If so, today, July 1, the company has been on the road out of Rivendell for one full week, and will be at the Goblins' Gate in 15 more days.
Does this make sense?
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Post by Andorinha on Jul 1, 2011 13:32:51 GMT -6
Ah, just read p. 97 of Fonstad's book, where she admits that the travel time from Hobbiton is just an approximation:
"The company left Bag End on April 27 and Rivendell on Midyear's Day* (where they had spent 'fourteen days at least'), so they could have been upon the road for as much as fifty-one days. The distance from Bag End to Rivendell was slightly more than 400 miles, so the company might have averaged as little as eight miles per day. Perhaps they did not hurry on their way. ... Perhaps they spent more than two weeks in Rivendell -- mortals seemed to have great difficulty keeping track of time in Elvish cities. As a compromise the final estimate was that they travelled for thirty-eight days and spent twenty-seven in Rivendell -- still only an average of ten miles per day!" (Fonstad, The Atlas of Middle-earth, p 97)
So, if we use this "compromise," the company, in 38 days travel from Hobbiton would have reached Rivendell on June 3rd or 4th, and would have left Rivendell on Midsummer's morning. So, despite the confusion from the map caption, if they stayed two weeks or more in Rivendell, then, even for Fonstad, Midsummer's day* would have been June 24th, not June 4th. So this would give a rest of exactly 20 days in Rivendell...
Apparently, JRRT with Chris Tolkien's help, revised the travel schedules for the transit from Hobbiton to Rivendell when he made Frodo's narrative more realistic. But he did not see how the time schedule of The Hobbit could be re-worked without messing up the narrative, so he left the travel times for Bilbo and the Dwarves a bit vague, and quite a bit slower than Frodo's journey:
"Consistently the Dwarves went slower in all their travels than the Hobbits [Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin] did in the later story. We can only surmise reasons for such variance. It is possible Tolkien had longer distances in mind for The Hobbit travels, and either did not check the effect of the scale placed on the map in the later book or chose to ignore it. Had the scale of the Dwarves' pace been about twice that of the rest of Middle-earth, the Dwarves' pace would have been nearer normal. Tolkien 'was greatly concerned to harmonise Bilbo's journey with ... The Lord of the Rings ... but he never brought this work to a definitive solution.' Rather than analyze too closely, it is preferable we merely gain a general impression of the seemingly endless toil necessary to reach Lonely Mountain." (Fonstad, Atlas, pp 97-98)
From all this, my understanding is that we may as well go on using Fonstad's "approximation," as JRRT never had the time to work out a precise travel schedule himself. It also appears from the quotes above, that Fonstad was actually counting Midsummer, or Midyears Day as being the 24th of June, despite the misleading appearance of the "June 4th caption" on the p. 100 maps.
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Post by Vanye on Jul 1, 2011 23:32:12 GMT -6
Thanx Andorinha for teasing this out! So it looks like Bilbo & the Dwarves are somewhere in the Misty Mountains. Bilbo is muttering that the blackberries will be ripe by the time they get through the pass! I agree that the dwarves seem to have a speed seen as slow by Hobbits & others. But, that is their speed & there seems to be no hurrying them. 8^)
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