Unfinished Tales - Part Two - I - A Description of the Island of Númenor

[Dilettante]

Most people I know would pass over this chapter thinking "That's not very interesting, who cares what Numenor looks like?" It is certainly their loss if they do. This chapter adds so much to the rest of the story that it is almost essential. Case in point the Numenorians themselves, they can't seem to get over the fact that they are exiles and were once so much more than they are. Aragorn lived some 4,000 years after the Downfall yet they still refer to themselves as Numenoreans, Dunedain, rather than just regular men. There is no chance that they will ever, ever go back but they still consider themselves exiles. That is quite pointless until you get a sense, as seen in this chapter, of what they left behind really was. Essentially, they had paradise on earth and were the greatest men that ever would live, so certainly hundreds of generations later their descendants who never saw Numenor would claim to be from it.

I too like the idea of religion in Middle-earth. Most people in the world are religious in some form or another, and to have an idea of a structured religion (rather than just the occasional passing reference to the sky gods) makes imaginary worlds and lands seem all that more real.

Speaking of gifts to the most noble of men, this may be a topic for a later chapter discussion but I will risk mentioning it here. There is a passing mention of the king's sword and the footnote mentions Aranruth, which is the sword of Thingol, the Ring of Barahir, and several other relics of the past that belonged to the elder days. I find it interesting that practically all of these relics, though some belonged to elves and others to men, ended up being inherited by the Numenoreans, the Edain rather than the Eldar. Common sense would state the things of such high value would be in the hands of the Elder ones rather than the Younger.

[Faramir Jones]

Although the 'Description' is short, nine pages long in my edition of Unfinished Tales if one also includes the map and footnotes, I think it's the key to understanding everything written about Númenor. All I had about that island at first were the few pages in Appendix A of The Lord of the Rings. Then there was the 'Akallabêth' from The Silmarillion, which filled in that very brief story. However, I still had no proper idea about what that island kingdom looked and sounded like, until I read the 'Description', and used it as a key, not just to what I'd read before, but also to the other relevant tales in Unfinished Tales: 'Aldarion and Erendis' and 'The Line of Elros'.

I could now imagine where all these events happened, as well as their context, something important (and previously lacking) because of Tolkien's emphasis on places and names in his works.

The 'Description' is tantalising but oh so brief, giving the reader a glimpse of so much that was lost in the Downfall. If it is added to all the other pieces on Númenor I already mentioned, the total would still be very small for such a large and influential civilisation that lasted for 3287 years. A good comparison would be if that same small amount of information was all that survived of the history of the Roman state, from its founding in 753 BC to the Fall of Constantinople in AD 1453, a period of 2206 years.

The preface of the work sets this tone of loss, saying that the survivors of the Downfall in Middle-earth and their descendants 'never even after long ages ceased to regard themselves as in measure exiles'. There are references to the many works about the island that perished, the 'Description' being presumably the compilation of the surviving fragments.

We have a map and a physical description of the island, with the names of places, the most important being the Meneltarma, 'sacred' to the worship of Eru, where the King spoke 3 times a year. Tolkien was seemingly influenced by Judaism in this portrayal of Númenorean religion. In a letter of 4th November 1954 to Father Robert Murray S.J., he said that the Númenoreans were 'like the Jews (only more so) with only one physical centre of 'worship''. (Letters, Letter 156, p. 204) He later said to Rhona Beare in a letter of 14th October 1958 that the later Númenoreans of Gondor were in their theology 'Hebraic and even more puritan'. (Ibid., Letter 211, p. 281)

Between two of the roots of the Meneltarma was the 'Valley of the Tombs', where the Kings and Queens of Númenor were buried. When I read this, I thought of the Valley of the Kings in ancient Egypt. This was correct; because Tolkien in his already mentioned letter to Rhona Beare said that the Númenoreans of Gondor were 'best pictured in (say) Egyptian terms. In many ways they resembled 'Egyptians' - the love of, and power to construct. And their great interest in tombs'. (Ibid., p. 281) This would seem to have also been the case for their ancestors.

I loved the descriptions of and names for the trees, including malinornë, and the same for the birds. Also the fact that such was the love of some men and women for their horses that they could summon the latter by thought alone.

The mention of the royal heirlooms was interesting, with the sad mention that only one survived the Downfall.

As Dilettante correctly says, it was obviously the nearest thing to an ideal place for humans to live in its early days, though, as 'Aldarion and Erendis' shows, the basic human emotions remained the same. Tolkien, commenting on that story, in relation to childbirth, said this:

And though childbirth had less of ills and peril, Númenor was not an 'earthly paradise', and the weariness of labour or of all making was not taken away. (Unfinished Tales, 'Aldarion and Erendis', p. 207)

I also agree with Dilettante that the 'Description' explains why the Númenoreans, millennia after the Downfall, still harked back to that place and time as a kind of 'golden age'.

When I read this piece, I keep thinking of William Wordsworth's 1802 'Ode on the Extinction of the Venetian Republic', about the great Italian maritime republic, which went into a long decline, and was ended by Napoleon in 1797.

ONCE did she hold the gorgeous East in fee;
And was the safeguard of the West: the worth
Of Venice did not fall below her birth,
Venice, the eldest Child of Liberty.
She was a maiden City, bright and free; 5
No guile seduced, no force could violate;
And, when she took unto herself a mate,
She must espouse the everlasting Sea.
And what if she had seen those glories fade,
Those titles vanish, and that strength decay; 10
Yet shall some tribute of regret be paid
When her long life hath reach'd its final day:
Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade
Of that which once was great is pass'd away.

Obviously, Númenor and the Venetian Republic had significant differences, the former ever rising in power, though most of its people and kings had turned to evil, before being ended by divine wrath, while the latter went into a long decline, before its ending by a mortal conqueror.

However, I think that lines 1-3 at the beginning, and lines 11-14 at the end can evoke Númenor, the first part its earthly power, which even the Faithful admired, the second the sadness at its passing felt by the survivors and those who knew them.

[Guinevere]

I haven't much to add to what everybody else already mentioned.
I love maps and descriptions and so of course didn't pass over this chapter. Like Esty wrote I was also struck by the abundance of all the invented beautiful names of places and especially trees and even birds, so typical for Tolkien the Philologist and lover of trees and nature. ( I have the same interest and so I have learned many names of plants and trees in English while reading LotR. I know people that pass over those, but I looked them all up in the dictionary!!)

Concerning the interesting story of how the Mallorn trees came to Lorien, I now wonder at Haldir's words to the Fellowship in the LotR:

"It would be a poor life in a land where no mallorn grew. But if there are mallorn-trees beyond the Great Sea, none have reported it."

As an island "raised from the Sea" it seems logical to me that Númenor must be of volcanic origin, and Meneltarma with its flattened and depressed top an extinct volcano.(Though the island is much larger than any volcanic islands I can think of.) If I remember rightly, in the Akallabeth it is mentioned that smoke and fire emerged from the Meneltarma right before the downfall, so apparently it was only slumbering and not extinct!

I personally wasn't put off by the description of the Númenorean worship of Eru, but found it fascinating. The quotes from Tolkien's letters that Faramir Jones gave are very enlightening!

[Galin]

Originally Posted by Guinevere

Concerning the interesting story of how the Mallorn trees came to Lorien, I now wonder at Haldir's words to the Fellowship in the LotR:

Part of the reason I say that Tolkien's original idea was that the Mallorn-trees existed in Lothlorien, and did not begin to flourish there only under Galadriel's influence.

Although it's strange, Robert Foster, for example (Guide to Middle-earth) noted that there also seemed to be mallorn-trees in Eldamar -- which appears, considering his choice of term here, to be based on Galadriel's song in The Lord of the Rings, which references a golden tree.

Foster's updated guide (updated after the Silmarillion was published) retained the possibility, while altering Eldamar to Aman.

[Thinlómien]

When I reread the UT two years ago, this chapter caught my attention. How come I never paid attention to it before? It was like all new for me, even though I've read the UT several times. I love it - what an amazing place Númenór must have been! For me, it is the paradise on Arda, not Valinor (too otherwordly) or The Shire (too countryside-ish and bourgeois). The sea (ah! the sea!), the forests and gardens, even the mountains, all of it must have been so beautiful. (Great, I'm talking like it really existed. )

[Guinevere]

Originally Posted by Thinlómien

Great, I'm talking like it really existed.

That is exactly the effect Tolkien's detailed description has on me too!

[Thinlómien]

Originally Posted by Guinevere

That is exactly the effect Tolkien's detailed description has on me too!

I think it's also because he so convincingly manages to sound like ancient and medieval historians when he is writing about the history of his world.