Gnome or Elf?

[Groin Redbeard]

Originally Posted by Anárion Cúthalion

The Noldor.

The Silmarillian states that they are Elves, but the Lays of Beleriand and the Unfinished Tales both say that they are Gnomes.

I wish I had my Silmarillion book with me, I just lent it to a friend! Wasn't Beren mentioned as being a Gnome?

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Groin Redbeard

I wish I had my Silmarillion book with me, I just lent it to a friend! Wasn't Beren mentioned as being a Gnome?

That would be really weird.

At least I am pretty convinced that's not in Silmarillion, neither in the UT. And I doubt that the HoME would be any different, because, as we just heard, Gnomes are Noldor.

Although... now that you speak of it, I have something like vague impression that I heard somewhere something like that. But more like the thing that Túrin was called "wild Wose". But maybe I am just imagining things.

[Groin Redbeard]

Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc

That would be really weird.

At least I am pretty convinced that's not in Silmarillion, neither in the UT. And I doubt that the HoME would be any different, because, as we just heard, Gnomes are Noldor.

Although... now that you speak of it, I have something like vague impression that I heard somewhere something like that. But more like the thing that Túrin was called "wild Wose". But maybe I am just imagining things.

I remember reading it when Luthien was dancing and Beren had just caught his first glance of her. Tell you what I'm going to see if I can get the book back and look it up.

[skip spence]

Originally Posted by Groin Redbeard

I wish I had my Silmarillion book with me, I just lent it to a friend! Wasn't Beren mentioned as being a Gnome?

In the published Silmarillion Beren was a mortal man but in BolT II (or HoME II), written much earlier than both the Hobbit and LotR, he was indeed a Gnome. In Tolkien's early writing the Gnomes fell under Morgoth much earlier and much more comprehensively than in the later legendarium. When Beren made his way into Doriath the kingdom was still free behind the Girdle of Melian, while the Gnomes were long defeated and broken mentally by Morgoth and they basically did what he asked them to do. Therefore he often allowed then to move freely and they were distrusted and shunned by the elves of Doriath. Beren was originally intended as one of these Gnomes and was ie a Noldor Elf and not a Man to use the more familiar terminology.

[Galin]

In the early Tale of Tinúviel Beren was seemingly first a Man, then an Elf (a Gnome), and ultimately a Man again of course.

'The rejected passage given on p. 71, together with the marginal note 'If Beren be a Gnome (as now in the story of Tinúviel) the references to Beren must be altered' (note 4), is the basis of my assertion (p. 52) that in the earliest, now lost, form of the Tale of Tinúviel Beren was a Man (...) Beren was a Man, and akin to Mavwin, when the extant Turambar was written; he became a Gnome in the extant Tinúviel; and this change was then written into Turambar.'

Christopher Tolkien, commentary, Turambar And The Foalóke