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Post by Andorinha on Sept 6, 2011 9:35:40 GMT -6
One thing to keep in mind about the "backstory" of the White Council etc, is that this material was written quite a bit later than The Hobbit, in fact Erebor is usually dated to 1953.
In Bilbo's tale, the luck ring he gets from Gollum has nothing to do with the Necromancer at all. It is not a supreme talisman of Evil, it is just a ring that increases one's luck, and helps one out by conferring temporary invisibility. The entire complex of ideas regarding Gandalf as being a member of a special order of Wizards (The Five Istari), Bilbo's ring being made into The One Ring, even the character of Galadriel (who appears early in The Silmarillion stories, but has no role in The Hobbit) are all later additions/ revisions to blend The Hobbit into LOTR.
Consequently, such matters as Sauron being aware of the One Ring when anyone uses it, simply does not come up at all. This is one of the problems Tolkien was unable to smooth over when he took the largely independent Hobbit as the starting point for his sequel, LOTR.
Unfortunately, in deciding to offer the Quest of Erebor, and some of the Silmarillion material as a prequel to the upcoming movie version of The Hobbit, PJ will have to find ways to clean up this mess of inconsistencies on his own. I imagine he'll just ignore the problem, and pretend that Bilbo's ring always was the One Ring, and just not mention such things as Sauron's supposed ability to sense each time the Ring was being used...
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Post by Stormrider on Sept 6, 2011 20:28:54 GMT -6
Unfortunately, in deciding to offer the Quest of Erebor, and some of the Silmarillion material as a prequel to the upcoming movie version of The Hobbit, PJ will have to find ways to clean up this mess of inconsistencies on his own. I imagine he'll just ignore the problem, and pretend that Bilbo's ring always was the One Ring, and just not mention such things as Sauron's supposed ability to sense each time the Ring was being used... Yep, that's probably the way it will work out. I don't imagine PJ will take on cleaning up the inconsistencies himself. Most people are probably going to just sit back and enjoy the movie and not worry about anything like that anyway.
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Post by Stormrider on Sept 9, 2011 6:01:34 GMT -6
We are still behind in Hobbit time! August 24, after filling everyone in on The Ring, Gollum, and how Bilbo snuck past Balin's lookout (which greatly relieved his peace of mind!), Dwalin asks, "Where is Thorin?"
Thorin was overcome by the sleep enchantment and was trussed up by the Elves and taken back to their Cave. I like how when questioned by the Elven King, Thorin would only say, "We did not attack your folk, we came to beg, because we were starving." When questioned on where Thorin's friends were, he replied, "I don't know, but I expect starving in the forest." But Thorin would not say anything when asked why they were in the forest to begin with. So he was thrown into a dungeon cell and fed.
Meanwhile, back in the forest, the rest of the party decide to try to find the path again, but many torch lights sprang out and the wood elves were there with their bows and spears and told the Dwarves to halt. The Dwarves didn't want to fight and they just stopped and sat down. But Bilbo slipped on his Ring and disappeared so the Elves never saw him when the Elves blindfolded and tied up the Dwarves and marched them to the Cave. The Elves never saw or heard Bilbo as he followed along.
Inside the Dwarves were brought before the Elven King and untied and unblindfolded since they could not escape with the magic doors. (There's the MAGIC again!) They were questioned for a long time but they all gave similar answers about being lost in the forest, hungry and thirsty, and trapped by spiders. But the Elven King stated that it is a crime to be in the forest without his leave, troubling his people at feast, and rousing the spiders so he threw them all in dungeon cells and fed, too.
Now we are more or less caught up. Bilbo is wandering around the Elven Cave locating all the Dwarves and Thorin and trying to figure a way to rescue the Dwarves. They will be held captive until Sept. 20th...
Speaking of magic, I imagine it was something like the door into Moria (speak the password) or the door into the Lonely Mountain (have the right combination of things--we will talk about that later).
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Post by Andorinha on Sept 11, 2011 10:07:14 GMT -6
Poor Bilbo. Here, in the caverns of the Elves, we have yet one more instance of Bilbo's second-guessing his involvement with the Dwarves:
"Poor Mister Baggins -- it was a weary long time that he lived in that place all alone, and always in hiding, never daring to take off his ring, hardly daring to sleep..."
"'I am like a burglar that can't get away, but must go on miserably burgling the same house day after day,' he thought. 'This is the dreariest and dullest part of all this wretched, tiresome, uncomfortable adventure! I wish I was back in my hobbit-hole by my own warm fireside with the lamp shining!' He often wished too, that he could get a message for help sent to the wizard, but that of course was quite impossible; and he soon realized that if anything was to be done, it would have to be done by Mr. Baggins, alone and unaided." (The Hobbit, pp 169-70, emphasis mine)
I like the fine irony that JRRT uses here, Bilbo is trapped in the "house" he is burgling, and cannot escape. Of course, Gandalf has been deliberately removed from our story, just so that Bilbo has opportunities to grow into his new role as leader of the Dwarves -- after the Spider fight and this episode with the Elves, Bilbo is really becoming quite an "expert Burglar!"
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Post by Stormrider on Sept 12, 2011 6:13:01 GMT -6
Very ironic! Imagine how difficult that would have been if Bilbo did not have his Ring! That would have been an even bigger challenge to stay out of sight--probably impossible. Yep! This is another opportunity that JRRT provided for Bilbo to show his resourcefulness. He sneaks around the cave following the guards and locates each Dwarf and also discovers that Thorin is there in a deeper darker dungeon cell! Lucky he got there in time, because Thorin was almost on the verge to telling the Elven-King about his true mission. But once Bilbo showed up, Thorin had Bilbo tell the rest of the Dwarves that Thorin was there and not to tell the Elven-King anything about their mission. Thorin had a very high opinion of Bilbo now! I was glad that Bilbo could manage to get out of the cave once in a while if he was quick enough to sneak out with Elves going out to hunt or do other errands. I am surprised that JRRT did not mention that Bilbo was looking the outside of the cave over to see if there were other escape routes. He mentions that Bilbo didn't want to stay with the Elves in case they saw his thin shadow or was bumped into accidentally (and that he couldn't keep up with them anyway). He tried to find ways out of the woods but was terrified of getting lost and didn't want to go too far. So it wasn't until he was inside that he found out how they could escape.
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Post by Vanye on Sept 13, 2011 21:08:40 GMT -6
It is for sure that Bilbo started to take the initiative to solve problems & become a leader or his Great Adventure while he was trapped in the Halls of the Elven King. Somebody needed to do it & he was pretty much it! What is the saying about having greatness thrust upon you? It happened to Bilbo & from here on,for the most part, he acts like a leader; the dwarves no longer have to push him forward to get him going at every twist of the plot. I think heaven surprises himself. 8^)
edited to improve thought & to correct spelling
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Post by Stormrider on Sept 14, 2011 5:58:25 GMT -6
Vanye:
Yes, greatness was thrust upon Bilbo. I agree with that! If Bilbo had not had his ring, he would be in the same pickle as the Dwarves. I guess we could say greatness was first thrust on Bilbo when he was lost in the Goblin Cave and wandered down to Gollum's pond. After that, it kept being thrust on him.
Entering Mirkwood has proven Bilbo's ability to handle all that has been thrust on him. It has been challenge after challenge!
He had a good amount of time to wander around in the Elven-Cave (Aug. 24 to Sept. 20--that is 28 days). Even though their spirits had been lifted when Bilbo found Thorin and passed Thorin's message to the others, the Dwarves must have been pretty anxious and wondering what was taking him so long. Bilbo didn't like being depended upon by everyone and he didn't feel very hopeful about being able to rescue them all. How in the world would he get thirteen Dwarves locked in dungeons out of there! It is a very daunting challenge.
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Post by Andorinha on Sept 15, 2011 8:47:31 GMT -6
RE Bilbo: "'This is the dreariest and dullest part of all this wretched, tiresome, uncomfortable adventure!"
LOL, in sticking with the "timeline" approach that Vanye set up for us in this discussion, I am realizing now just how much time they spent underground in the Elven King's realm, doing nothing... We have to wait, like Bilbo, all the way until the 21st/ 22nd for the next bit of excitement. JRRT and his "regular" readers, those not following a "timeline," get to breeze along with the story, but I'm sitting here now, just twiddling my thumbs, waiting, dully waiting...
Humph, I guess we might be able to discuss Bilbo's surroundings a bit, JRRT does mention that the hobbit got out into the forest from time to time, as Stormrider notes, but other than his anxiety about getting lost, Tolkien does not tell us much. It seems the forest even around the Wood Elves home is still tall, dark and gloomy, with no defined paths/ roads that a hobbit might follow. No glimpse of the end of the trees, no view of the open lands beyond. No flowers either, at least none mentioned, no sunlight on his face as he sits outside for a "breather," just more dark forest, and no berries to eat...
LOL, reading by a "timeline," this is very interesting -- gives me an appreciation of just how long the journey really was, and how the narrative successfully compresses all the "dull periods" of slogging travel that came between the episodes of action. Sigh, yawn, got almost another full week before things get stirring again...
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Post by Fredeghar Wayfarer on Sept 15, 2011 23:47:24 GMT -6
In the meantime, maybe we could discuss the Elven-cave itself. When I reread this chapter, I was reminded of King Thingol's cave of Menegroth in The Silmarillion. I wonder if Tolkien was drawing from his earlier work again with this scene. The idea of Elves living in caves strikes me as somewhat odd. Seems more like a Dwarvish thing to do. I suppose they'd need some sort of shelter from the dangers of Mirkwood though. Offhand, I can think of a few elf-like creatures in mythology that live underground. Germany has stories about little subterranean sprites called kobolds. And Wales and Cornwall have legends of elves that knock on the walls of mines. The Welsh called them coblynau and the Cornish called them knockers (descriptive, if not overly imaginative. And kinda dirty-sounding by modern standards ). Could these have been an inspiration for cave-dwelling elves or was it just the necessity of having somewhere to hide from the giant spiders?
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Post by Stormrider on Sept 16, 2011 6:26:55 GMT -6
When I first read The Hobbit, I thought it was strange that the Wood Elves lived in a Cave. After all, they were called "Wood" Elves! I guess hills or mountains could be found inside a forest but I just never thought of Elves living in caves until I read The Silmarillion! The stories about Elves I have read usually have them living in the woods or near or in ponds.
But when you think about it, caves are a natural part of the world and would make sense to make use of them for housing. Ancient man lived in caves because caves were a good place to shelterwithout having to construct anything.
Most caves are pretty cool and get colder the deeper they go. If the Dwarves were in dungeons, I would assume they were deeper down. How cold the Dwarves must have been while waiting there! But Dwarves were familiar with cave-dwelling so it might not have been that uncomfortable for them. I was just thinking how long the time must have seemed to them, too, Andorinha! You are right, this is a good idea that Vanye had to follow along with the timeline! I do feel pretty antsy waiting around for Bilbo to find a way to rescue them--and they must be antsy, too.
Was the Mirkwood Cave a remnant of one of those older Caves from the Silmarillion? I know parts of the old world were covered in water but I think Mirkwood is far enough from the ocean that it may not have changed that much over the centuries. I should get out the Fonstadt map book and compare.
Freddie, you are so knowledgeable about other legends from other countries. (you, too, Andorinha) I should find some of those old tales and read them, too. I still have not delved into the Kavela (spelling?). How would I find titles to take out of the library or buy from a book store? I could peruse the fantasy book section I suppose, but I think I would mostly find newer authors and tales there instead of the ancient tales.
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Post by Andorinha on Sept 16, 2011 10:02:47 GMT -6
Hmmm, very interesting:
RE Freddie's "The idea of Elves living in caves strikes me as somewhat odd. Seems more like a Dwarvish thing to do. I suppose they'd need some sort of shelter from the dangers of Mirkwood though." (my emphasis)
Dwarvish indeed! I wonder if Tolkien is using some older, real-life sources for his own Elves? In the Norse system, the Dark Elves, Svart-alfar, sometimes appear very much to be Dwarf-types, or even Goblin-like...
________________________
We do have several other examples of Elves living underground in the Middle-earth tales: in Valinor, Finwe and Feanor of the Noldor live in the caves of Formenos;* in Nargothrond, the Noldoran king Finrod Felagund lives in a cave-palace; and then we have Olwe/ Thingol, not a Noldoran elf, living in the greatest of the cave complexes. So, half the Elven-cave complexes have a Gnome/ Noldor-connection, but the other two, Menegroth and Thranduil seem to be Twilight Elven establishments, definitely Wood-elves in the Mirkwood case. Shouldn't at least the Thranduil elves be living in the tree tops like their relatives in Lothlorien?
I never really stopped to think about this, how does JRRT get the dryad-like Wood-Elves of Mirkwood underground? Maybe it is simply for "protection" as Freddie suggests? But, maybe also, Tolkien is associating his Middle-earth elves with the folkloric tales about the Svart-alfar? Maybe there is even a connection with the Celtic tales of magical folk living underground? Here, I'll let Fredeghar develop that theme, as he knows a good deal more about the Celtic material than I!
In the ME mythology, Tolkien goes the Nordic source tradition one (or four!) better by having three basic Elf-types (and two or three more sub-types!).
1. The Light Elves, the Vanyar, led by Ingwe. 2. The Deep Elves, the Gnomes or Noldor, led by Finwe. 3. The Twilight Elves, Sindar, led by Olwe who becomes Thingol. But these Sindar then become a sort of catch-all for several Elf types, the Sea Elves, Teleri, the coastal Elves of Dol Amroth, and the Green Elves of the forest. Then Tolkien sort of adds another type of Elf (supposedly close to the Sindar and Wood-elf types, I think) the Wild Elves, the Avari.
In the Norse root mythologies there are only two Elven types: the Light-elves, Lios-alfar, who would would stand for Tolkien's Vanyar; and the Dark Elves, the Svart-alfar who would probably be the source of Tolkien's Gnomes or Noldor. In the Norse mythology, the distinctions among goblins, dwarfs, trolls, and Dark-elves are very tenuous. The Svart-alfar live underground, work with metals, do mining, make magical weapons and musical instruments, etc., and may be helpful to humans, or may be hostile towards them. Here, both the Noldor Elves and the Dwarves of Tolkien seem to have many of the same qualities as the Svart-alfar.
So, of all his elven types, the Gnomes, or Noldor seem the closest to the Nordic Dark Elves. The Svart-alfar live underground where they are associated with the practices of mining, and gathering ores, and blacksmith work turning these ores into manufactured products. Tolkien's Noldor are associate with the Vala Aule, they become master craftsmen, miners, and it is interesting to note that Formenos, the home of Feanor and his father Finwe, is depicted as an underground palace, a series of connected caves that act as a storehouse, and series of procurement mines where precious and regular ores may be found. The Noldor seem in fact to be Elven examples of dwarves, or some type of Svart-alfar.
How then, does Tolkien get his Sindarin Elves to live underground in Menegroth -- these are basically a Wood-elf type, not Deep Elves, or Gnomes. I can understand Finrod Felagund, a Noldoran Elf, living underground in Nargothrond, but Olwe/ Thingol was not a Noldoran type. As for Thranduil and his people (mainly Sindarin Wood-elves, though their royal family may have been of other stock?) how did they come to take up a Deep Elf, Noldoran lifestyle?
__________________ In Fonstad's Atlas of Middle-earth, Formenos (which means "Northern Fortress") is shown on page 7 as a series of cave mouths in a box canyon, no surface structures being shown.
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Post by Fredeghar Wayfarer on Sept 16, 2011 13:16:03 GMT -6
Oh, man, how did I forget the Svartalfar? (Must have been tired last night.) Tolkien loved the Norse/Germanic mythologies so he definitely would have been aware of them. There seems to be some debate among scholars on whether Svartalfar were a separate elf species or another name for dwarves though. Both were a dark, somewhat unfriendly race that lived underground mining for jewels and treasures.
Tolkien does use the term "Dark Elf" but he meant it as one who had never seen the light of Valinor. Not sure if his cave-dwelling Wood-elves were his take on the Dark Elves of Norse myth. None of them saw the Undying Lands so, technically, they would have been Dark Elves/Moriquendi.
Since you want me to delve into the Celtic side a bit, the Daoine Sidhe ("Deena Shee," Celtic faeries) lived under hollow hills. That could have also been an influence. As we've discussed before, Tolkien claimed to dislike Celtic mythology though. So that probably rules out the Welsh and Cornish legends I mentioned too, unless the professor considered them to derive from the Germanic kobolds.
Stormrider, I've found that Wikipedia is a good starting point for learning about ancient myths. You get the basic info about a mythical creature and a list of related creatures/legends at the bottom of the page. If I come across one I don't know, I'll read the entry, then do a Google search to see what other sources (either online or in print) I can find.
Andorinha, I think Olwe was Thingol's brother, the one that sails to Valinor. Wasn't Thingol's real name Elwe?
Storm, the Mirkwood cave wouldn't have been a remnant of one from The Silmarillion. The Sil takes place in Beleriand, which was past the Ered Luin (Blue Mountains) on the western end of Middle-earth (Mirkwood's in the east past the Misty Mountains). The Mirkwood cave might have existed back then but we weren't really told about that part of the world in The Sil. The Wood-elves may have been following the example of their ancestors in Beleriand though.
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Post by Andorinha on Sept 16, 2011 19:09:16 GMT -6
Oops! Yes, Freddie, Thingol's name was Elwe! In Tolkien's take, I think he sometimes makes a distinction between the "Dark Elves" and the "Twilight Elves," the Sindar. The term Moriquendi (literally "Dark Elves") includes ALL Elves who did not ever see the Light of Valinor. But sometimes this term, Dark Elf, seems to refer only to the Avari, those who heard the Call to Valinor, but refused it. So were the Wood-elves of Mirkwood, who were predominantly Dark Elves, but not necessarily Avari, based on the Nordic Svart-alfar? Gets a bit confusing here, and I guess it depends on whether we view the Svart-alfar as closer to Goblins than Elves? Here, I think the entire pre-Tolkien concept of Elves allows us a broader range of character types -- some of the "Elves" in English Folklore were real pests, causing cow milk to dry up, putting tangles in our hair (Elf-locks), stealing children, or swapping human babies for sickly Elf babies, kidnapping maidens, etc, etc. With Tolkien, I think, begins our modern conception of Elves as being almost always "Good People," while the original hostilities and prankish nature of traditional Elves gets shoved off onto goblins, gremlins, leprechauns etc. I think the "Dwarvish" tone of the Noldor may hark back to some of the earlier, pre-Tolkien Elf types, where the Elves were considered largely as underground dwellers associated with the products of the deep earth, and artisan activities, things we more regularly associate with just the dwarfs. I think, furthermore, the establishment of underground dwellings for both Noldoran and Sindarin type Elves also comes from this early Victorian (and far earlier) view of Elves as living underground, and having many of the characteristics we now associate with dwarfs, trolls, goblins. On the possible Celtic connection, I remember we discussed how Tolkien said he disliked much about the entire tradition, but still went ahead and borrowed from it massively! Stormrider, in addition to Freddie's excellent suggestions, you can do a full book search on Google. At books.google.com/books you can then type in your key words, like "Elves + Underground" -- this gives you the more serious folklore, ethnographic, historical sources. You can even choose to pick up those works available as full E-Books online. Thomas Keightley has one of the landmark books on Fairy Mythology, and it can be read for free online. books.google.com/books?id=HOo9AAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Thomas+Keightley&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false
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Post by Andorinha on Sept 16, 2011 19:28:01 GMT -6
There is a nice article by T.A. Shippey, where he tries to find the root sources of Tolkien's "Elf." I'll drop off a section here, where the original wide variety of Elfish personality types is discussed. Here, Shippey seems to be saying that in the Nordic mythologies, even the dwarfs were actually a type of Elf -- "while Snorri identifies four groups, light-elves, dark-elves, black-elves, and dwarves, there are really only two: the last three are just different names for the same group." Light-elves, Dark-elves, and Others: Tolkien's Elvish ProblemTom Shippey The data as regards elves had been known to investigators, at least in great part, since well before Tolkien's time.7 There are some ten words for "elf" in Old English, the male and female forms ælf and ælfen, and the compound words land-, dún-, feld-, munt-, sæ-, wæter-, wudu-, and possibly [End Page 2] berg—ælfen, or, more rarely, -ælf, i.e., "hill-, land-, field-, mountain-, sea-, water-, wood-," and once again "mountain-elf." These look promisingly precise and varied, but are in fact almost always glosses, words written in over a Latin text to translate a hard word in Latin, in this case and respectively to items four to nine in the list above castalides, moides, oreades, naiades, nymphae, and dryades. The simplest explanation is that an Anglo-Saxon translator long ago, stumped for an equivalent to "naiad, nymph, dryad," decided not unreasonably to solve all his problems at once and create "sea-elf, water-elf, wood-elf," etc. Meanwhile Anglo-Saxon medical or magic texts throw up another run of more interesting if more threatening compounds, such as ælfadl, wæterælfadl, ælfsiden, ælfsogoda, the names of "elf-diseases" like (it has been suggested) chicken-pox, dropsy, lunacy, epilepsy, anaemia.8 The last is a guess from ælfsogoda, "elf-sucking," and indicates that one way elves were thought to work their damage was by a kind of vampirism, while we also hear several times of "elf-shot" or ylfa gescot, which implies a belief (perhaps illustrated in one of these texts) in invisible disease-bearing darts. Elves also appear to have been associated with sexual temptation. Several charms associate the elves with nihtgengan, "night-walkers," with "temptations of the fiend" and with þam mannum þe deofol mid hæm, "the people the devil has sex with." It is not surprising that Anglo-Saxon elves are commonly called "malignant" by modern scholars.9 And yet it is a compliment for a woman to be called ælfsciene, "elf-beautiful," and Anglo-Saxons stubbornly continued to give their children names like Ælf-wine, Ælf-red, Ælf-stan, and so on, "Elf-friend, Elf-counsel, Elf-stone." Some of the names, like the common Alfred and the rare Elwin (as in Elwin Ransom), have remained in use to this day, though no longer with any sense of their meaning, and some of the beliefs about sexually alluring elves, elf-hills, and elf-changelings also lasted into the modern period.
The Scandinavian tradition is even more well-attested, though not as old, and on the face of it rather different. The álfar are mentioned thirty times in the poems of the Elder Edda, though in a rather restricted list of uses: usually they occur in association with either the Æsir, the pagan gods, or with the iötnar, the giants, as if to imply universality: "everyone knows it, elves and gods," "tell me its name among the elves, tell me its name among the giants," and so on. There are hints of meaning in the poems of the Elder Edda, as there are here and there in sagas. But the work which attracted most attention from the beginning of modern investigation, and which seemed closest to giving answers of the thoroughness and complexity which philologists demanded, was the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson, the nearest thing we have to a mythical handbook of pre-Christian belief.
Commentators often forget that Snorri was not writing a pagan text. He wrote his work in the 1230s, by which time Iceland had been Christian [End Page 3] for more than two centuries, and Snorri's own family had been Christian for six generations. He knew no more about what pagans really did, or really thought, than we would about the folk-beliefs of the eighteenth century. His work was in essence an attempt to explain poetic diction, the phrases used and allusions made in traditional poetry, but to do this he had to tell stories, often about the gods, giants, elves, dwarves, and other supernatural creatures of the pre-Christian world. The connected nature (and the literary power) of what Snorri wrote perhaps aroused unreal expectations in his first modern admirers, for what Snorri says about elves is hard to make out. He invariably uses álfr as a compound, one of these being Álfheim or "Elf-home." But every other time he uses álfr, he prefixes it with a word of color, ljós-, dökk-, or svart-, i.e., "light-elves," "dark-elves," "black-elves." A critical passage is this one:
Sá er einn staðr þar er kallaðr er Álfheimr. Þar byggvir fólk þat er ljósálfar heita, en dökkálfar búa niðri í jörðu, ok eru þeir ólíkir þeim sýnum en myklu ólíkari reyndum. Ljósálfar eru fegri en sól sýnum, en dökkálfar eru svartari en bik.
There is one place that is called Alfheim. There live the folk called light-elves, but dark-elves live down in the ground, and they are unlike them in appearance, and even more unlike them in nature. Light-elves are fairer than the sun to look at, but dark-elves are blacker than pitch.10
What Snorri says is clear and unequivocal, but it raises an immediate problem. "Dark-elves" (dökkálfar), he says, are "black" (svart). Surely that means that they are "black-elves" (svartálfar)? But everywhere else in Snorri's work, it is clear that when he says "black-elves" (svartálfar), he means "dwarves": Odin sends Skirnir í Svartálfaheim til dverga nokkurra, "to the home of the black-elves to certain dwarfs," and Loki too goes into Svartálfaheim where he too "comes across a dwarf." There is a simple explanation here, which is that while Snorri identifies four groups, light-elves, dark-elves, black-elves, and dwarves, there are really only two: the last three are just different names for the same group. The first group, meanwhile, are very like angels, or for that matter eldila—these are Lewis's "albs"—while the last group have been made to seem faintly diabolic, quite like the Anglo-Saxon elves of the medical textbooks, indeed. This line of thought has the blessing of being clear, and of not multiplying entities, but it was once again quite unacceptable to early investigators, including Tolkien: it meant, in effect, throwing away their best text, just as my suggestion about a baffled Anglo-Saxon translator above meant saying that dún-ælf and the rest were just "ghost-words," with no real meaning in Anglo-Saxon culture. Neither proposal has been popular, and Tolkien devoted considerable fictional energy to providing [End Page 4] more face-saving refutations to both. (Above emphases mine) So, if Tolkien is using an Anglo-Saxon based Elf, it accounts for all the "ugliness" we see in his Middle-earth Elves (the short tempered Thranduil, the murderous Feanor and most of his "ugly" acting sons (but not Maedhros!); and if he is simultaneously using aspects of the Nordic tradition, it accounts for the Dwarvish characteristics seen in the Noldor (Gnomes), and the underground, Dwarvish style dwellings of Feanor, Elwe Thingol (thanks fer da correction Freddie!), Finrod Felagund of Nargothrond, and even Thranduil's Mirkwood palace. For full Shippey text: muse.jhu.edu/journals/tolkien_studies/v001/1.1shippey.html
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Post by Stormrider on Sept 17, 2011 6:17:01 GMT -6
Freddie and Andorinha: Thanks for the Elf book links and ideas where to find material. The Eldar Edda...I forgot about that one.
Earth-dwelling elves goes along with the Elves I read about that lived in or around ponds. I would have thought the Mirkwood Elves would have been tree dwellers with the forest all around them!
Interesting info on Elves. It is confusing!
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