Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical | Appendix A, I The Númenórean Kings, (iii) Eriador, Arnor, and the Heirs of Isildur

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A black, white, and dark blue striped header image with the text Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical | Appendix A, I The Númenórean Kings, (iii) Eriador, Arnor, and the Heirs of Isildur

This week, I am back with more from Appendix A, by far the longest and most dense of the appendixes. For those concerned with timing, my final post about Appendix A is currently scheduled to run on July 7, while my final post about the appendixes as a whole will appear many months from now on November 10, all dates subject to change. This week, I move along to “(iii) Eriador, Arnor, and the Heirs of Isildur”, which focuses mostly on the North Kingdom and the Dúnedain, the Men of the West. As for historical connections, the section is filled with references to topics from across European and world history, including ancient burial customs, colonization, Arctic technology, idioms, royal jewels, and how medieval internships worked. Plus, a few popular characters from the dialogue portion of the books make appearances.

The section began with a brief refresher on what land was considered Eriador: everything from the Misty Mountains to the east and the Blue Mountains to the west, which by the late Third Age included Bree-land, Buckland, and the Shire. West of Eriador past the Lune were the Grey Havens governed by Círdan the Shipwright, perhaps the oldest elf in Middle-earth. Much like the division between Arnor and Gondor, the northern country divided into three smaller countries — Arthedain, Rhudaur, and Cardolan — as detailed in “(ii) The Realms in Exile”. Three of the seven-seeing stones brought to Middle-earth by Elendil and his sons, as mentioned in “(i) Númenor”, were in the North Kingdom. Two were kept by the king of Arthedain, while a third was kept at Amon Sul, also known as Weathertop. At this location many years later, in T.A. 3018, Gandalf would fight the Ringwraiths, Aragorn sang the about Lúthien and Beren, and the Witch-King of Angmar stabbed Frodo.

Battles and Barrows

While the three countries fought over the possession of Amon Sul, the Witch-King raised an army against the Dúnedain. By the next generation, in T.A. 1409, the Witch-king attacked and took Weathertop. Elrond allied with some of Círdan’s elves from Lindon and Galadriel’s elves from Lórien to defend Rivendell, while others of Círdan’s elves worked with the King Araphor son of Arveleg to protect Fornost, the capital of Arthedain. The Stoor fled the area to live along the river, where they became the river people. Rhudaur and Cardolan collapsed. The last prince of Cardolan was buried with honor in at the Barrow-downs, also called Tyrn Gorthad, which were built during the First Age. This may have been the barrow where the barrow-wight remained and the Hobbits of the Fellowship were taken captive, as Merry Brandybuck’s vision in “Book I, Chapter VIII: Fog on the Barrow-Downs” matched the events of the battle.

While I will have much more to say about barrows upon arriving at that chapter in several months, the concept is worth covering here as a brief overview. The Modern English word for barrow meaning “grave-mound” is not related to the gardening tool, a wheelbarrow. According to Etymonline, burial barrows arrived in English from Old Norse bjarg, meaning “mountain”, and fell out of use around the 15th century, only surviving in place names and the dialects of southwest England such as Cornish English, which some of my ancestors spoke. The word wheelbarrow arrived in the mid-14th century just as burial barrows were disappearing.

Historic England produced a comprehensive paper “Introduction to Heritage Assets: Prehistoric Barrow and Burial Mounds”, which gave a timeline of barrow construction and barrow classification. The oldest style, long barrows, were first built between 3800 and 1400 BC during the Neolithic period, while the most recent ancient barrows were constructed around AD 800 during the European Medieval Period. Archaeologists love barrows because they are filled with artifacts and bones from ancient British cultures, while literary experts appreciate the opportunity to see representation of structures described in the epic poem Beowulf. Near the end of that story, the titular hero is “buried in a barrow overlooking the sea” during a ceremony that blended Christianity from the recently fallen Roman Empire with paganism from Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon cultures. Unfortunately, many of these barrows have been destroyed by modern farmers and construction workers. The outlines of these barrows are still visible from a plane; they often look like crop circles.

The Snowmen

The tale about Snowmen of Forochel, also called Lossoth, and their attempts to help the foreign Dúnedain was my favorite short story in the appendix so far. When the Witch-King captured Fornost in T.A. 1974, King Arvedui escaped with his people to hide first in dwarf-mines and then moved north to get help. Forochel people were descended from Forowaith people, a cold land once ruled by Morgoth, hence the matching name. Despite this association with an evil entity in the minds of southern Free People, Snowmen helped Dúnedain refugees and gave advice. However, Dúnedain maintained a sense of colonial superiority to Snowmen and their cultural practices, remarking that “The Lossoth house in the snow, and it is said that they can run on the ice with bones on their feet, and have carts without wheels” (Part Three: Return of the King, 352). This line gave many clues on how Snowmen could be understood in parallel with northern people in the real-world.

Houses of snow are generally associated with igloos from Inuit cultures in Canada’s Central Arctic and parts of Greenland. Japan developed traditional snow huts called kamakura in the northernmost prefecture of Hokkaido, which they use in ceremonies or as play houses rather than long-term dwellings. More recently, tourist attractions like ice hotels appear across Scandinavia and Germany. In this aspect, Tolkien most likely had Inuit in mind when appropriating the housing of Snowmen.

The description that Snowmen “run on the ice with bones on their feet” perfectly matched early skates, which appeared in Scandinavia and Russia around 1800 BC, or the Bronze Age. This invention quickly went south to the Netherlands, where 13th century Dutch inventors created modern skates as the safest and most convenient method of travelling down a frozen canal during long winters, which remains a common mode of transportation to this day. This piece of Snowman culture is distinctly European in the real-world.

Finally, the “carts without wheels” were likely sleds, also called sledges or sleighs. This tool was created independently by European, Asian, and Indigenous American cultures in the north. According to archaeological findings, Eastern Siberians used sleds and sled-dogs up to 15,000 years ago or around 13,000 BC during the early Holocene period. Their descendants travelled across the Artic, going west into Northern Europe and east into the Americas. Modern Inuit call their sleds qamutiik, literally meaning “the two used for pulling”, which refers to the two runners on a sled. Traditional dog sleds have fallen in popularity, as snowmobiles are easier to maintain. In contrast, archaeological evidence from Scandinavia proved that Sámi have used reindeer to pull their sleighs or pulka since at least the Viking Period, around 800 to 1000 AD. This characteristic of Snowmen culture was a true amalgamation of multiple real-world cultures.

Back in Middle-earth, Círdan the Shipwright, ordinarily an elf of great wisdom, sent a ship guided by Lindon Elves to rescue his Dúnedain friends. When the ship came in, local weather experts warned that taking the ship would be dangerous until the Witch-king went home for the winter. King Arvedui ignored their advice, instead giving them the ring of the House of Isildur, also called the Ring of Barahir, as ransom so his people would pay back the Snowmen for their hospitality. This ring came with its own long story, as it was the first connection between Galadriel’s family through her brother Finrod and the ancestors of the Dúnedain, formerly the Númenóreans, through Barahir the father of Beren, who married Lúthien Tinúviel as I first discussed in “(i) Númenor”. This ring will come up again in this and future posts, and I wish I could say its history becomes less confusing. It does not.

At any rate, the ship was crushed in the ice, just as the Snowmen feared, and with it sank two palantíri, Annuminas and Amon Sul. The only palantír left in the North belonged to Círdan’s Tower of Emyn Beraid near the Gulf of Lune, who had guarded the seeing-stone since Elendil set it up to look straight West. Unfortunately, with the drowning of Númenor and the world turning round at the end of the Second Age, the palantír could not see far West anymore. But “all’s well that ends better” for the Snowmen, as the Gaffer would say, because they did eventually receive a ransom from the surviving Dúnedain and give back the ring.

The ending of this story shared an unfortunate parallel to events in the real world. During the late 19th and early 20th century, multiple European explorers went north not to flee an evil warlord but to become the first man to reach the North Pole. In some cases, explorers retrofitted sleds for polar exploration, or even integrated into local communities, as was the case for Robert Peary and Matthew Hensen, whose descendants through their Inuit partners still live in Greenland as documented in the 1991 book North Pole Legacy: Black, White & Eskimo.

But many of these trips ended in disaster despite the available advice and assistance from Indigenous people. Ernest Shackleton survived a disastrous South Pole trip only to die on a disastrous North Pole trip. The Sir John Franklin Expedition ended with cannibalism and starvation in 1845, while the similarly named Lady Franklin Bay Expedition in the early 1880s was also rumored to have involved cannibalism, although the surviving explorers would not speak of it. The only eyewitness testimony available for the 1845 expedition were accounts from local Inuit whose ancestors had lived in the area for thousands of years, and whose descendants live there to this day without any cannibalism. Seeing how much Tolkien enjoyed a cannibal character, I am surprised he did not slip at least one into this tale.

My parting thought on this section views the story through a post-colonial lens, a theory I first discussed during my analysis of the “Introduction” by Peter S. Beagle. Dúnedain refugees talked down to Snowmen as if those with a pacifistic, non-industrialized lifestyle did not understand the value of technology and jewelry, even though the Dúnedain were in no position to criticize. In fact, Dúnedain critics were the ones lacking in knowledge. They did not have words to describe igloos, skates, and sleds, apparently having never asked Snowmen what they call these integral parts of their lifestyle. While writing this fascinating passage, Tolkien employed defamiliarization or estrangement, a literary tool often found in fantasy and science fiction. He described objects familiar to the reader but used terms divorced from daily reality to make these objects seem “peculiar”, to borrow one of Tolkien’s many favorite terms of ambiguity. This allowed readers to see objects as they appeared to the in-universe writer. He employed this technique throughout the books, casting as diverse an array of objects as vodka, treehouses, and hospitals in a different light.

When the King Comes Back

The Dúnedain Men did not fight alone against the Witch-King of Angmar. Hobbit warriors aided in the battles, although the archers never made it home to the Shire. The king had disappeared, and the Dúnedain never told the Hobbits what happened. To fill the power vacuum, Stoor leader Bucca of the Marish because the first Thain of the Shire in T.A. 1979, or Shire Reckoning (S.R.) 379. He was the ancestors of the Oldbucks who later became the Brandybucks when their power shifted to Brandy Hall in Buckland, and the position of Thain “passed to” — or, more likely, was somehow forcibly taken — by the Fallohide Took family. The Hobbits developed the saying “when the King comes back”, indicating “some good that could not be achieved, or of some evil that could not be amended” (Return, 353).

The early generations of Hobbits in the Shire likely believed the king would return as a savior, much like the messianic traditions of the West. As literary scholars have already pointed out, this was a classic Tolkien combination of his Catholic beliefs and love of mythology. The word “messiah” was derived from the Hebrew word mashiah meaning “the anointed” and originally described the savior of Jewish people as appearing in the Old Testament. The Greek translation was khristos, which became Christ in English, and the return or Second Coming of Jesus Christ was described in the New Testament. The pending return of King Arthur from Avalon to reunite his kingdom described in legends has likewise been called messianic.

Less discussed is the position of this phrase as an idiom of improbability, also called an adynaton, when one thing occurs sooner than another. The most common adynaton is the concept of a pig flying. Wenn Schweine fliegen können in German, quando os porcos voarem in Portuguese, când va zbura porcul in Romanian, and cuando los chanchos vuelen in Spanish. While the last three phrases are from Romance languages and bear similarities, a major gap exists between these and the variant in Germanic languages. According to Phrase Finder — I know a niche website for nearly everything — a variation of the phrase first appeared in English around 1616. However, the site gives no indicator if it came from another language, or if these languages borrowed from English. One nice thing about a fictional idiom is that its origins are easy to find.

The Crown Jewels

Aranath son of Arvedui somehow survived the war and became the first Chieftain of the Dúnedain. For the next sixteen generations, these chieftains had a single son and then died young, leaving Elrond to become the foster dad. According to an extensive footnote on page 353, Bilbo knew quite a bit about Aragorn’s family, including the crown jewels kept in Elrond’s archives. When you are a rich immortal, your possessions are archives instead of basement clutter. The heirlooms included “the ring of Barahir, the shards of Narsil, the star of Elendil, and the sceptre of Annuminas”.

I have already briefly covered the ring of Barahir used as ransom. The shards of Narsil, the sword used by Isildur to cut the ring from Sauron’s hands, was reforged at Rivendell into Aragorn’s new sword, Andúril. The star of Elendil was a white gem named Elendilmir tied to the forehead with a “silver fillet”, in this case meaning a strip of metal instead of a cut of meat or fish, although the words have the same origin. The scepter was the silver rod of the Lords of Andunie since the original sceptre of Numenor was destroyed with King Ar-Pharazon. The scepter was “perhaps the most ancient work of Men’s hands… more than five thousand years old when Elrond surrendered it to Aragorn” (Return, 353). Not included on the original list but just as important was the Crown of Gondor modeled to look like a Númenórean war-helm covered in jewels.

Monarchs across Eurasia once had their own crown jewels kept locked in their vaults under guard. Owing to the number of revolutions and democracies in the modern world, many of those items have been lost. Fortunately, the favorite monarchies of this blog — the United Kingdom and Denmark — not only have their collections intact but also keep them on display so we peasants can get a glimpse. The Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom were traditionally the focus of men, having been assembled in 1661 by King Charles II during the Stuart Restoration, as Oliver Cromwell destroyed the original collection, and the royals added to their collection ever since, much of which can be seen at the Tower of London.

The Crown Jewels of Denmark, in contrast, were the focus of women. They were first assembled in 1746 by recently widowed Queen Sophie Magdalene, wife of King Christian VI. Believing she would soon die in grief, she ordered that her jewelry be kept with the crown, and then proceeded to live another twenty-four years. Other major contributors to the collection included Queen Caroline Amalie and Queen Louise or Lovisa. Today, some of the pieces can be seen at Amalienborg Museum.

Internships in the Middle Ages

Winding down to the final paragraphs of the section, the book briefly reviewed the timeline for events mentioned in The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring but occurred many years prior. In 2509, Celebrían was kidnapped, tortured, and poisoned by Orcs while going across Redhorn Pass, called Caradhras in Sindarin, the same mountain that was too snowy for the Fellowship to cross. Elrond healed his wife using the power of his ring, but she no longer wanted to live in Middle-earth and left for Valinor the next year, 2510. Revenge against the Orcs was found in both likely and unlikely places. The twin sons of Elrond and Celebrían, called Elladan and Elrohir, fought them with the Dúnedain, while Bandobras “the Bullroar” Took knocked the head off a goblin leader who dared to enter the Shire, winning the battle and inventing the game of golf at the same time (The Hobbit, 18).

The section ended on a light note from a Hobbit scribe. The Shire people liked the new king, especially since he stuck to his own laws and did not enter the Shire, as Aragorn had banned Big People from the country after the Ruffians destroyed the land. Thain Peregrin and Master Samwise the Mayor visited him, which would have been part their duties as vassals to the feudal king. More interestingly, the scribe noted that Sam’s daughter, Elanor the Fair, was a maid to Queen Evenstar. This was the highest ranking position for an unmarried woman in a feudalist kingdom, below only the married ladies-in-waiting, and was similar to a modern executive at a Fortune 500 company having his daughter intern for the CEO. Royal courts were considered social centers, a place to see and be seen. Elanor almost certainly would have been the only Hobbit among Women, along with the only commoner among a mix of nobles (the rank of Tooks and Brandybucks) and gentry (the rank of Bagginses and Bolgers).

Elanor would have received an excellent education, learned to fluently speak multiple dialects of Westron and Sindarin, developed an in-depth understanding of court politics and national policy, and seen the behind-the-scenes negotiations for the running of a large country. While being the only one of her Race and social class at court would not have been easy, she clearly proved herself as valuable to the kingdom, as she and her husband would receive titles and land in S.R. 1462 when the Westmarch was incorporated as a semiautonomous region of the Shire, as mentioned in “Prologue 3 On the Ordering of the Shire”.

Conclusion

This section was packed with allusions to real-world events, technologies, and ideologies, successfully creating a well-rounded fantasy world. While a reading of the text without knowing these parallels still would give a comprehensive look at history and culture in Middle-earth, an understanding of how these events related to what Tolkien knew from his own research and life experiences improved my own attempt to construct a framework for how the world functioned, thereby allowing me to incorporate information from these stories into the main narrative for the hypothetical animated musical.

I call my technique for using this knowledge “extending scenes”, meaning that I would find thematic similarities between a scene in the dialogue portion of the book and invent new dialogue in Tolkienese to insert information found in the appendixes. Some scenes easily lend themselves to extension, such as using the information on barrows to flesh out “Fog on the Barrow-downs” in Book I, or Aragorn telling the story of the Snowmen in an attempt to pacify members of the Fellowship while getting snowed out at Redhorn, only for the morbid ending to lead his plan to backfire, as his plans often do throughout Books I and II.

Other extended scenes would be inserted independently as “cut material”, items written or edited into the original manuscript by Frodo but removed by a later editor. A single extended scene as the Hobbits travel with Aragorn from Bree towards Rivendell would include phases such as “when the King comes back” along with “he has not heard of the King” from the Prologue, transforming the scribe’s excitement over Aragorn as the returned King into dialogue spoken by Frodo, and the multiple explanation of Hobbit words found in both the Prologue and upcoming appendix sections spoken by Merry. Bilbo might discuss the crown jewels and artifacts at length, along with whatever else he found when “organizing” Elrond’s basement, with the younger Hobbits in his room at Rivendell. Finally, a flashback of Elanor’s service in Minas Tirith could be incorporated into my framing device for the musical, which offers explanation on the editing process of the Red Book of Westmarch and subsequent editions of the work.


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