[cellurdur]

Originally Posted by Galin

If it's generic in the first place

Your choice of words above, a rugby team 'full of 6 footers', is not exactly the phrasing Tolkien employs for the Eldar in any case [whether or not they played rugby aside]; and not that you said otherwise, but I see no reason why Elendil's own son could not match him in height.



Did Tolkien himself publish this however? If not it's easily altered to reflect a new idea.

No, but it is published in the UT and Christopher Tolkien has the right himself to define what is cannon. A right he usually does not choose to use, but anything what he publishes should have a fair amount of weight behind it.

Isildur was undoubtedly very tall himself, but his incredible height was never a distinguishing feature for him as it was his father.

Tolkien did actually publish this nickname for Elendil, so yes, even he might explain it somewhow with respect to a given idea. Above you made the statement 'supported by other published material' but we must remember very little of any of this was published by JRRT himself, and thus was quite open to change.

Tolkien published the prologue of the Hobbits where he listed them as being between 2ft and 4ft. However in a later note he cleared the ambiguity by pointing out he was talking about the present shrunken Hobbits of today. The clarification supports the way I read the text in the prologue.

'Their height is variable ranging between two and four feet of our measure. They seldom now reach three feet; but they have dwindled they say, and in ancient days they were taller.'-Prologue LOTR

The note that clarifies this is found in UT.

'The remarks [on the stature of Hobbits] in the prologue to LOTR are unnecessarily vague and complicated, owing to the inclusions of of references to survivals of the race in later times; but as LOTR is concerned they boil down to this: the Hobbits of the Shire were in height between three and four feet, never less and seldom more.'

Then in the Peoples of Middle Earth further information is given about the height of the Hobbits. I won't quote it, but it has the quote about Numenoreans being about 7ft and then says Hobbits were rarely over 3'6.

Thanks again to the scholarship of Hammond and Scull, with respect to the 'halfling' idea as it relates to the Numenoreans, we now have: 'three variant statements, written c. 1969, with some repetition as Tolkien develops the text' (only part of which was printed in Unfinished Tales).

In the third section [the more developed section?] as printed in the Reader's Companion, Tolkien writes:

I think you are giving too much credit to Hammond and Scull. I don't see three variant statements at all. I see a consistency that Tolkien has stuck with. Things like the question of Turin of Galadriel's true history are problematic.

Through out several different notes Tolkien has maintained or hinted (by the very use of Halflings in LOTR) that the Numenoreans were twice their height. He then in multiple sources writes that Hobbits were between 3ft and 4ft.


Even in the description of Aragorn and Boromir as 6'6 and 6'4 respectively we know that the Numenoreans have decreased in height. Even from that one rough note, the Numenoreans must have been close to 7ft.

So that's an average of 6 foot 10 inches at this time for the Numenoreans. This actully seems to agree well enough with the other text, as this is well after the Downfall of Numenor, if still well before Aragorn's time.

But again, is Tolkien being consistent in any case?

Hammond and Scull also point out that in The Hobbit [thus published by JRRT himself of course] it is noted that Hobbits were 'about half our height' and in a letter Tolkien referred to Bilbo as about 3 feet tall or 3 feet 6 inches. Well, which is it? Three feet tall would explain 'halfling' well enough in a world where Men were reaching 6 feet tall [and half 'our' height hardly refers to Numeoreans I would say], but 3 foot 6 would mean we should be talking about a much taller people.[/QUOTE]
I have addressed this point with Tolkien clarifying that Hobbits at the time of LOTR were between 3ft and 4ft. It is only in this 'present' day that Hobbits have shrunk to under 3ft.

Anyway, Elendil is a notable person here, historically. He need not be the only person to ever reach this height to acquire such a nickname...

... I note Maedhros the Tall wasn't the tallest Elf ever [Thingol was taller], nor even the tallest Elf in Aman if we allow that 'Turgon himself would appear 'tallest of all the Children of the World, save Thingol' (Of Tuor And His Coming to Gondolin). That is, if we forget the later account, or explain it in some way, where Argon is seemingly said to be taller than Turgon in The Shibboleth of Feanor.

That's if all these descriptions were made with each other in mind too, which I tend to doubt with respect to Argon and Turgon actually, although there is a way to explain how these two statements can both be true, since Argon was slain relatively early

Being named as Tall does not mean you are the tallest, but it certainly means you are taller than the average person. We must also take into account that Maedhros, Turgon and Argon are all different ages. There may well have been a time that Maedhros was the tallest of the elves in Aman, before Turgon and Argon surpassed him.

This though is really not that important, because being a couple of inches taller than the average is unlikely to get you a nickname as Tall.

Moreover, if Tolkien wants to retain a given concept about 'Halfling' being a Numenorean term, and thus retain 'taller' Hobbits in the past for instance, but feels that he must explain 'Elendil the Tall' as notably tall among the Numenoreans of his time, or among those with whom he escaped the fall of Numenor at least, he can in turn make Elendil not 'merely' 7 feet tall but, say, 7 feet 2 or 3 inches...

Being a couple of inches taller than average as I said is really not a great distinction. To put it into context the average height for a British Male is about 5'10. Somebody, who is 6'2 is not going to get the nickname Tall.

... and doing so I think he could still retain the general idea about the Eldar expressed in reaction to the artwork of Pauline Baynes. Yes that would mean tinkering with the 'artwork quote' itself, or making it more general than accurate -- I'm not actually against the notion that Tolkien might be speaking a bit generally here when he describes both Isildur and Elendil as 7 feet tall -- what I think is too strained however is that he really imagines a nearly 8 foot Elendil whe he wrote the 'artwork description'.

That's too significant a difference in my opinion, even if Tolkien is not being specifically accurate.

There is not a significant difference if Isildur was say 7'3 or even 7'4. Their average height would be around 7'6 and so it would be correct to roughly pin them as 7ft.

If we take the 'artwork description' as true we don't need to dismiss every other quote in my opinion. But even if we have to then we have to. I dismiss any earlier references to the Eldar being reborn as children because Tolkien changed his mind about this, for example. Of course again, if we have different ideas [one in which both the Eldar and Elendil are arguably shorter than the other notion], we still don't know which idea was later than the other!



And you're not necessarily wrong as far as Tolkien's intent, but I see a difference with respect to interpreting the 'artwork quote' as it stands, alone an unaffected by another idea: again, interpret A without mixing in B to see if you find the two statements in accord.

Maybe I'm crazy but 'some' of the Kings and leaders being taller naturally begs the question 'taller than what'? And to answer that you are seemingly employing another citation [normally 7 feet from Of Dwarves And Men] instead of using the context of the description in which the statement is found.

Taking the artwork statement as true and literal creates a problem on several things as we have been through. These were some of Tolkiens latest writings on the subject and not brief notes which accompanied the artwork. He wrote entire essays such as Of Dwarves of Men or Numeanorean Linear Measure. Even if you want to insist that there is a contradiction in the sources, which is more likely to be correct: the short brief note about a picture or two separate essays he wrote on the subject?

Lastly about your interpretation 'some of the kings' being taller. If the minimum height was 6'6 for an Elvish male then what would the average height be? It would obviously be greater than the minimum. There is an assumption that the 'kings' are taller than the average which he has given elsewhere.