Thread: Anomalies
View Single Post
Old 08-18-2003, 01:50 AM   #10
Gwaihir the Windlord
Essence of Darkness
 
Join Date: Jul 2000
Location: Evermore
Posts: 1,420
Gwaihir the Windlord has just left Hobbiton.
Sting

Hmmm, a were-bear as that article says, Sharku; but how did he get this way? Personally, I would say that it's probably more than likely that Radagast had something to do with it. Beorn seems to be friends with him -- although he won't say much about him in the Hobbit -- and as Inderjit points out, the brown-wizard may have possessed adequate powers for this type of thing.

Obviously, Evisse, Tolkien's world permits for more of what we, were they to take place today, would call 'Mysteries of the Unexplained'; acordingly, things like the Dead Marshes -- while an exact definition of the powers behind it does not exist -- can exist in Middle-Earth. In our world, such things -- as far as we know or think, anyway -- always have some sort of scientific explanation; in the mythology, they do not, and really, when you think about it, this actually fits in with the over-rules of the invented world. They are not fully scientific.

The Music of the Ainur is, in all probability, the source of most such anomalies. The incredible complexity of the world is supposedly still unravelling, a complexity layered on by the multitudes of the Choir of the Ainur. And then, of course, there is the presence of the Ainur themselves (i.e. the Valar and Maiar) as well as the power and influence that other, more mysterious spirits have on the world. After all this, there is Illuvatar.

In all this complexity, there are consistent rules -- but there must always be the odd difference. Through this view, you are right, the invented world is augmented by these things and, trusting in the above-mentioned sources for their origins (although we don't actually know what they may be), there is a sense that indeed it does all fit.

------

Just on the subject of the Druedain;
Quote:
I do not think Tolkien ever excessively mentioned them in any of his writings, although I may be wrong.
They are pretty well explained in UT, actually. They are simply another tribe of Men, coming Westward into Beleriand with the Haladin. There is nothing particularly 'magical' about them (unless you want to believe the story of the watch stone (to my opinion, intentionally written as a superstious story oft he time), but they have a strange culture and strange ways.
Gwaihir the Windlord is offline   Reply With Quote