Elves and Gondor

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

A very interesting quote. I find the full passage even more intriguing.

It indeed is! Actually, quite surprising, and it makes me think that I should really try to get myself to re-read all of the LotR again and properly, because I haven't managed to do so for some time now and things like this surprise me! Actually, this quote looks almost fantastic - it looks so strange, so un-Middle-Earthish. Generally, I contribute all ideas of such inter-racial contact by the end of TA only to fanfictions and RPGs where people desperately want to introduce several races at once and so come up with tales of a lonely Gondorian wandering to Lórien or about an Elven scout going to Gondor, but obviously this quote from the very book moves the idea from the realm of pure fiction into, so to say, "canonical reality".

Personally, I believe the idea about people like Haldir going to Gondor makes lot of sense in the light of this. Also, I think we can imagine some Elf-obsessed Gondorians wandering North. The only thing I would argue against is this:

Originally Posted by Inziladun

Perhaps those who went in search of it either were killed in the wild by various means, or were stopped from entering the Wood by Galadriel's power and turned back home.

I think this is actually a very limited view. I actually believe there will be a large portion of people who would just go into the forest... and disappear. Lórien is a dangerous place, place of "Elven magic", and I think that with many people it could indeed turn so that they enter the woods and then spend the rest of their life with sitting in a glade, gazing at the sun and literally losing themselves in the spell of Lórien. This is the way, I believe, in which Lórien would be protected against intruders - they would not go further into the woods, they would not reach Caras Galadhon, but they will be enchanted and simply remain there. Remember Bombur and the forest river. Isn't this the dangerous Elvish magic which made Elven woods so feared in the tales of Men?