Would you have wanted to live in Minas Ithil?

[the guy who be short]

But why would the government want to keep people in the Western Isles?

And, to be slightly on topic, in Minas Ithil?

The two have much in common actually. Dark, water separates them from the main part of the Kingdom, quite far from anywhere reasonably densely habitated...

[Eomer of the Rohirrim]

Nostalgia, maybe. They don't want the towns (a.k.a Minas Ithil) to become ghost towns. Actually, maybe the Gondor administration didn't care too much; and look what happened there.

Take note Blair: the darkness will fall upon thy land in the deepest darkest corner. Angband, Mordor, Hebrides, so the prophecy went.

[Anguirel]

Well...I go to the Western Isles, or a Western Isle, Colonsay, twice a year, and I doubt I'll ever stop...

I would suggest that the citizens of Minas Ithil were in a rather more extreme version of that position (viz. they actually lived there all year round, as do crofters etc). They were bound my history, tradition and love to their native city, and to them, however grim the mountains, they were their mountains.

Not unlike my attitude to Oxford actually. It's small, hopelessly provincial, grey, dismal, and the air is incredibly unhealthy reducing me to a coughing, sneezing wreck much of the time, but I couldn't envisage living anywhere else, though ironically enough I go to boarding school and so do live somewhere else...

[Mithalwen]

Originally Posted by Eomer of the Rohirrim

Take note Blair: the darkness will fall upon thy land in the deepest darkest corner. Angband, Mordor, Hebrides, so the prophecy went.

I always knew it was grim up north First time I went to Scotland it rained for all but one morning over 2 weeks... second time it barely got light....(Aviemore ..November )..it was rather more photogenic than I imagined Mordor ..