Elven Characteristics

[Galin]

Originally Posted by cellurdur

My first point is that when people use a generic 6ft and in this case 7ft it is rarely to be taken as an accurate reference, especially when talking about two people.

If it's generic in the first place

Your choice of words above, a rugby team 'full of 6 footers', is not exactly the phrasing Tolkien employs for the Eldar in any case [whether or not they played rugby aside]; and not that you said otherwise, but I see no reason why Elendil's own son could not match him in height.

In this very case we know Isildur and Elendil were different heights, because Elendil is mentioned as the tallest man to have survived the downfall of Numenor.

Did Tolkien himself publish this however? If not it's easily altered to reflect a new idea.

Secondly we know the Hobbits are called Halflings, because they were roughly half the size of Numenoreans. If the average height of the Nuemnoreans was 7ft then how could Elendil gain the nickname the Elendil the tall if he was 7ft too?

Tolkien did actually publish this nickname for Elendil, so yes, even he might explain it somewhow with respect to a given idea. Above you made the statement 'supported by other published material' but we must remember very little of any of this was published by JRRT himself, and thus was quite open to change.

In more than one account Tolkien goes into detail about the Numenoreans being around 7ft tall on average.

the Hobbits of the Shire were in height between three and four feet, never less and seldom more. They did not of course call themselves Halflings; this was a Numenorean name for them. It evidently referred to their height in comparison with Numenorean men and was approximately accurate when given.-UT

Thanks again to the scholarship of Hammond and Scull, with respect to the 'halfling' idea as it relates to the Numenoreans, we now have: 'three variant statements, written c. 1969, with some repetition as Tolkien develops the text' (only part of which was printed in Unfinished Tales).

In the third section [the more developed section?] as printed in the Reader's Companion, Tolkien writes:

'But the name 'Halfling' must have originated circa T[third] A[ge] 1150, getting on for 2,000 years (1868) before the War of the Ring, during which the dwindling of the Numenoreans had shown itself in stature as well as in life span. So that it referred to a height of full grown males of an average of, say, 3 ft. 5.'

So that's an average of 6 foot 10 inches at this time for the Numenoreans. This actully seems to agree well enough with the other text, as this is well after the Downfall of Numenor, if still well before Aragorn's time.

But again, is Tolkien being consistent in any case?

Hammond and Scull also point out that in The Hobbit [thus published by JRRT himself of course] it is noted that Hobbits were 'about half our height' and in a letter Tolkien referred to Bilbo as about 3 feet tall or 3 feet 6 inches. Well, which is it? Three feet tall would explain 'halfling' well enough in a world where Men were reaching 6 feet tall [and half 'our' height hardly refers to Numeoreans I would say], but 3 foot 6 would mean we should be talking about a much taller people.

Anyway, Elendil is a notable person here, historically. He need not be the only person to ever reach this height to acquire such a nickname...

... I note Maedhros the Tall wasn't the tallest Elf ever [Thingol was taller], nor even the tallest Elf in Aman if we allow that 'Turgon himself would appear 'tallest of all the Children of the World, save Thingol' (Of Tuor And His Coming to Gondolin). That is, if we forget the later account, or explain it in some way, where Argon is seemingly said to be taller than Turgon in The Shibboleth of Feanor.

That's if all these descriptions were made with each other in mind too, which I tend to doubt with respect to Argon and Turgon actually, although there is a way to explain how these two statements can both be true, since Argon was slain relatively early.

Moreover, if Tolkien wants to retain a given concept about 'Halfling' being a Numenorean term, and thus retain 'taller' Hobbits in the past for instance, but feels that he must explain 'Elendil the Tall' as notably tall among the Numenoreans of his time, or among those with whom he escaped the fall of Numenor at least, he can in turn make Elendil not 'merely' 7 feet tall but, say, 7 feet 2 or 3 inches...

... and doing so I think he could still retain the general idea about the Eldar expressed in reaction to the artwork of Pauline Baynes. Yes that would mean tinkering with the 'artwork quote' itself, or making it more general than accurate -- I'm not actually against the notion that Tolkien might be speaking a bit generally here when he describes both Isildur and Elendil as 7 feet tall -- what I think is too strained however is that he really imagines a nearly 8 foot Elendil whe he wrote the 'artwork description'.

That's too significant a difference in my opinion, even if Tolkien is not being specifically accurate.

We have a lot of accurate measurements of height given and I don't see why we should dismiss it all for an ambiguous note, which can be read in different ways.

If we take the 'artwork description' as true we don't need to dismiss every other quote in my opinion. But even if we have to then we have to. I dismiss any earlier references to the Eldar being reborn as children because Tolkien changed his mind about this, for example. Of course again, if we have different ideas [one in which both the Eldar and Elendil are arguably shorter than the other notion], we still don't know which idea was later than the other!



And you're not necessarily wrong as far as Tolkien's intent, but I see a difference with respect to interpreting the 'artwork quote' as it stands, alone an unaffected by another idea: again, interpret A without mixing in B to see if you find the two statements in accord.

Maybe I'm crazy but 'some' of the Kings and leaders being taller naturally begs the question 'taller than what'? And to answer that you are seemingly employing another citation [normally 7 feet from Of Dwarves And Men] instead of using the context of the description in which the statement is found.