The Dead and The Undead

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Boromir88

Hey good to still see you around Morthoron. I know nothing about William Morris, so I can't add anything to that piece of information. I am familiar with the connection Tolkien makes between the Dead Marshes and Northern France. I believe in the letter he briefly writes the plot doesn't represent the World Wars, but perhaps the landscape did.

Which is the interpretation that made the most sense to me, because I think the descriptions of the landscape through the entire story are perhaps the most fascinating. The land has a "character" of its own, influenced by the people (or unknown things) who lived there. As Gandalf says to the Fellowship going through Hollin:

Then Legolas feels out of place, because it was a land inhabited by Celebrimbor and his followers. The Noldor had a better relationship with dwarves, so the land takes on the character of their inhabitants:

So, we have the land of Hollin holding on faintly to the memory of its Noldor inhabitants, but it is only in the stones.

Perhaps the Dead Marshes are actually trapped spirits of those killed in the battle from the 2nd Age. It's a topic I'm not at all familiar with besides some basic understanding. Could they be something like a "memory imprint" on the land? Similar to Hollin, where the memory of the Noldor still resides in the stones?

Hello Boro:

I think the issue with the Dead Marshes is that it's not merely the land retaining remnants and vague recollections of previous inhabitants, like Hollin, for instance.

Frodo was able to determine the fallen warriors' identities: "They lie in all the pools, pale faces, deep deep under the dark water. I saw them: grim faces and evil, and noble faces and sad. Many faces proud and fair, and weeds in their silver hair."

Yet he adds the further descriptor: "But all foul, all rotting, all dead. A fell light is in them."

So, something evil and seductive draws Frodo to the pools; however, there are clearly faces of dead Elves among the fallen looking up at him. And Frodo refers to them directly: "Many faces proud and fair, and weeds in their silver hair."

"Silver hair" would indicate Telerin, or more precisely Sindarin Elves. One would assume that the fëar of these Elves would have been called to the Halls of Mandos after they died in battle. I'm not sure how they would become dispossessed spirits enthralled by Sauron when these Elves died during the War of the Last Alliance, in which Sauron himself was defeated. The Dead Marshes came to claim the graves of the fallen warriors over time -- hundreds or thousands of years?

So, when did this "fell light" consume these fallen warriors and reveal their visages after so many centuries? Tolkien never explained.