Quote:
Originally Posted by Tuor in Gondolin
A clarification on elves wandering from an area such as Harlindon to Fangorn.
I actually had two points in the above post.
The lack of a continuous forest wouldn't necessarily preclude wandering
bands going south around the Misty Mountains. In addition to
avoiding difficult winter weather it would be an exploratory/discovery
trip, especially if they got the chance to talk to the folk (Ents) that
elves gave speech to, or perhaps to visit a believed friendly maia
once he took over guardianship of Orthanc.
And the road from Rivendell to the Gray Havens also had considerable
non-tree covered areas.
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Of course it did. As much as the road from Rivendell to Grey Havens. However, the point was aimed against the idea of an "elvish trip through the woods". There would not have been any elvish trip, for there were no woods.
However, what you say is considerable. The Maia part would be, of course, quite outdated thing and would work only in the early days, and Saruman himself did not seem to be that greatly fond of Elves anyway, and except for a few Noldo-minded inventors, not having anything to give to the Elves after a few hundred years of residing in M-E. No, I actually believe that by the time he settled down in Orthanc, he was basically done with the Elves, and whoever wanted to meet him had done so already, and the air of freshness and curiosity about him had mostly disappeared by then.
The talk to Ents is a better idea, though still, not as great, as the Fangorn was probably considered a bit of an obscure ancient place, just as much as Celeborn did warn the Fellowship against it. Moreover, the country around was so wild that only a few very brave elves from Rivendell who would be really deeply fascinated by Fangorn would pass, and thus, we cannot consider it as any important traffic. It would be one Elf like that in a hundred years, if ever. The pilgrimage to Ost-in-Edhil sounds far more pleasant and as an option of bigger frequency (I would say one in ten years as an average number is not even bad to consider). Had it not been for Legolas' words (saying that the Noldor were strange to the forest folk), I would even consider some visits from Lórien, but in this way it seems a bit unlikely. (It is of note, though, that Dunland seemed to have been the home for Celeborn and Galadriel in ages past, at least for a time, and speaking of that, it used to be a home for Dwarves in exile like Thráin and his folk AND also the ancestors of Hobbits in times past, so in fact, I am really starting to reconsider my opinion on this land as a piece of nowhere full of savage barbarians - the land seemed to have a, let's say, historically-cultural importance of tremendous significance).