Latest news on Amazon's "Lord of the Rings" series

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Keep in mind that the bulk of the ultimate Numenorean colonies lay off-map in Harad; Umbar and Pelargir were the northernmost. As to why Aldarion originally landed in Lindon- well, besides the fact that one would want an established port for refit and resupply, not an uninhabited bay, it's also the case that the Numenoreans are stated to have been taught shipcraft and sailing "by the Eldar," which I expect means Cirdan's people rather than the occasional visitors from Eressea. So the route to Lindon was known and Aldarion may well have had Elvish navigators on his first voyage.

Why harvest timber and establish a logging port in Minhiriath? Probably because it was "uninhabited" in the usual imperialist meaning of the term (Eriador means, roughly, "empty land"); Harad was full of "civilized" peoples who likely would have objected rather violently to wholesale felling (those of Eriador did, too, but they couldn't do much about it).

This is good stuff. I love the idea that Harad was "the civilised world" at that time - after all, they hadn't just undergone a cataclysmic destruction of the western seaboard...!

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Equatorial latitude: the Annals of Valinor state that Tun (later Tirion) is located on the "girdle of the earth." Eressea is in the bay of Eldamar, necessarily also on or near the equator; and Numenor was just within distant sight of Eressea (from the top of the Meneltarma, so say ~100 nautical miles).

Um... the world is flat. ^_^ Eressea is visible from arbitrary distances, weather and the observer's visual acuity permitting. The top of the Meneltarma is presumably Pretty High, so I think the only limit can be haze/shadow - which in the Shadowy Sea, is magical rather than meteorological, so it's very difficult to calculate how far away you can still see through it from.

hS

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

Eressea is visible from arbitrary distances, weather and the observer's visual acuity permitting. The top of the Meneltarma is presumably Pretty High, so I think the only limit can be haze/shadow - which in the Shadowy Sea, is magical rather than meteorological, so it's very difficult to calculate how far away you can still see through it from.

Wouldn't that presuppose a conscious allowance on the part of the Valar for Men to see "over the fence", as it were? Get a look at how the other half lives? If that was the case, it would seem the Valar either were deliberately baiting the Númenóreans, or were blissfully ignorant of the perils of being mortals among the immortal.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Assuming that Numenoreans have RW human vision or close to it (and they seem not to have Elvish eyes, since Aragorn is always using Legolas as his binoculars), then their angular resolution is approx one arc-minute or 1/60 of a degree. That's why you can't look up at the moon and see flags and old lunar rovers there, and why the military relies on radar to pick up approaching aircraft that the Mk 1 eyeball hasn't a chance of seeing before it's too late..

So, even if we assume absolutely clear air without haze or turbulence, the maximum distance at which an unaided human eye could pick out a tower of ~ 30m diameter would be around 100 kilometers.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Assuming that Numenoreans have RW human vision or close to it (and they seem not to have Elvish eyes, since Aragorn is always using Legolas as his binoculars), then their angular resolution is approx one arc-minute or 1/60 of a degree. That's why you can't look up at the moon and see flags and old lunar rovers there, and why the military relies on radar to pick up approaching aircraft that the Mk 1 eyeball hasn't a chance of seeing before it's too late..

So, even if we assume absolutely clear air without haze or turbulence, the maximum distance at which an unaided human eye could pick out a tower of ~ 30m diameter would be around 100 kilometers.

And that's why well-to-do Numenoreans visited Dr. Henfanwa for a LASIK procedure at the Armenelos Eye Institute.

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Assuming that Numenoreans have RW human vision or close to it (and they seem not to have Elvish eyes, since Aragorn is always using Legolas as his binoculars), then their angular resolution is approx one arc-minute or 1/60 of a degree. That's why you can't look up at the moon and see flags and old lunar rovers there, and why the military relies on radar to pick up approaching aircraft that the Mk 1 eyeball hasn't a chance of seeing before it's too late..

So, even if we assume absolutely clear air without haze or turbulence, the maximum distance at which an unaided human eye could pick out a tower of ~ 30m diameter would be around 100 kilometers.

I will accept your maths.

The source text is:

Originally Posted by Silm: Akallabeth

...at times, when all the air was clear and the sun was in the east, they would look out and descry far off in the west a city white-shining on a distant shore, and a great harbour and a tower. For in those days the Númenóreans were far-sighted; yet even so it was only the keenest eyes among them that could see this vision, from the Meneltarma, maybe, or from some tall ship that lay off their western coast as far as it was lawful for them to go.

So could everyone see the city? Assume it's a km across & 100km away, and you get a width of ~30 arc-minutes (half a degree). From the top of Meneltarma, that should be visible to almost everyone. A nice addition to the religious ceremonies. Then the keen-eyed could catch a glimpse of the tower.

This does mean that Eressea itself would be a major presence on the 'horizon' - it would be impossible to miss from anywhere on the slopes of Meneltarma! But I guess Numenor doesn't really have other mountains, so that's not necessarily a problem. (I am now imagining young Numenorean kids in the west climbing trees and insisting "I can totally see it! Wow, that tower's so tall!" and suchlike.)

So why couldn't they see Taniquetil? Surely the tallest mountain in the world would be... kind of hard to miss?

hS

[William Cloud Hicklin]

...at times, when all the air was clear and the sun was in the east, they would look out and descry far off in the west a city white-shining on a distant shore, and a great harbour and a tower. For in those days the Númenóreans were far-sighted; yet even so it was only the keenest eyes among them that could see this vision, from the Meneltarma, maybe, or from some tall ship that lay off their western coast as far as it was lawful for them to go.

Aliquoque dormitat bonum Homerus? By interjecting the Meneltarma - and the ship off shore can be interpreted the same way - it almost appears Tolkien was forgetting that the world was flat and thinking in terms of a round-world horizon. On a flat world elevation wouldn't make any difference, not if nothing intervenes but ocean.

This impression is reinforced in that the passage originated with the first draft of the Drowning of Anadune (circa 1945-6), which appears, not definitively but suggestively, to have been a Round-World text. At least there is the passage (§ 31, HME IX p. 347) "For with subtle arguments Sauron gainsaid all that the Avalai had taught. And he bade them think that the world was not a closed circle; and that there lay therein many lands yet for their winning..." Nor, in DAI, do we have the passage from the Downfall in which Eru globed the world, simply that the great chasm opened and Aman was removed from reach.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

So why couldn't they see Taniquetil? Surely the tallest mountain in the world would be... kind of hard to miss?

I'm not saying it's aliens, but....

it's aliens.

[Inziladun]

A new link has emerged to tie the Amazon series to Game of Thrones.

Are the signs indeed pointing toward a new GoT with a Tolkien flavor?

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

A new link has emerged to tie the Amazon series to Game of Thrones.

Are the signs indeed pointing toward a new GoT with a Tolkien flavor?

My question is, what the heck is up with this:

Originally Posted by Deadline

No details about the characters are being revealed but it is believed that English actor Mawle will play the series’ lead villain, Oren, opposite Poulter’s young hero Beldor and female lead Tyra (Kavenagh)

Oren? Beldor? Tyra? Those can't be real names, right?

-They're very clearly not Adunaic names. Those come in forms like Îbal and Zamîn; having three without accents on would be implausible, given how accented Adunaic is in general.

-Beldor looks like Sindarin, but I think it might be... bad Sindarin? 'Bel' could be Beleg (strong), and 'dor' is, well, Dor (land), but a) Strong Land is a stupid name for a person, and b) I'm pretty sure you'd wind up with something like Belegdhor, or even Belendor, not 'Beldor'.

-Tyra is clearly not Sindarin, with that ending - the only instance of 'yra' in the entire Sindarin corpus is in the collective plural yrath of the suggested Sindarin form yr of Noldorin ior. I don't think it can be Sindarin, either - 'ty' seems to be a consonant cluster, so can't be followed by another consonant. What it is is an Old Norse name, derived from Tyr (the god), which means it could be standing in for Northern Mannish.

--Which takes us back to Beldor, which is very close to Baldr, the son of Odin. So we have two possible Northern Mannish names - but would they really set a Second Age series up in Lake Town? (Or maybe they're dwarves? That would be hilarious, actually.)

-Oren... well, in our world it's a Hebrew name, so if you accept the reductive 'dwarves are Tolkien's Jews' stance, you've got a good case for Khazad-Dum: The Series (not gonna lie, I'd love that). It could be Quenya, using órë, 'heart' - in fact if you put the accent back on, it's valid Quenya for 'my heart'. There's nothing to stop it being Sindarin, but it feels a bit too Quenya-y for that to me.

So. We have three characters who cannot all be Elves, and cannot all be Numenoreans. They could all be dwarves (maybe), or Men of Middle-earth - but those really aren't the sort of stories you'd expect to see in such a series. Taking a quick look at the actors, I can see Elf or Numenorean in the two heroes, but not Dwarf. 'Oren's' actor could pull off a Dwarf, but I'm not sure he could play an Elf or Annatar.

Best guess? Fake names, because they're actually playing canon characters. Given the number of pouting faces both of the 'goodies' pull in their Google photos, I'm guessing Aldarion and Erendis.

hS