New evidence for the Arkenstone-Silmaril case

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Morsul the Dark

1. Speculation on both sides

2. The Hobbit is written by Bilbo out of his understanding. As has been said chipping it out of volcanic rock will be sufficient explanation of this as misunderstood by Bilbo.

3. Since when has Gandalf been open about anything? His quest and mission was as a guide and his current task was keeping as many people alive as possible. Arguably getting The Lonely Mountain up and running would’ve been, to him, the best way to keep the thing safe. Also I’d say a quick text search of the Silmarillion only mentions Olorin a couple times, did he ever actually see or interact with them? He’s not omniscient.

4. “In those days the Silmarils shall be recovered from sea and earth and air,” it’s still in the Earth buried with Thorin. This doesn’t contradict the prophecy in any shape or form.

5. If they aren’t “searching in vain” then what does “lost” mean. If they supposedly know exactly where they are they’re not lost, just in storage. This interpretation completely contradicts getting rid of the things in the first place.

There’s plenty of reasons to doubt it’s a Silmaril. Plenty of reasons to believe it is. It only stretches Credulity if you’ve already set yourself dead against it.

1. Speculation? It is not speculation. Beleriand no longer exists. Drowned. Broken in the War of Wrath, and what little remained was destroyed by Eru. That whole drowning Numenor flap. Look it up. Also, traveling east from what once was Beleriand, you have to traverse a wide swathe of sea, pass beneath 2 mountain ranges, Ered Luin and Hythaiglir, and ford several rivers to reach Erebor. Jewels do not migrate.

2. So, in a matter of a few thousand years, a jewel suddenly gets a coating of volcanic rock? Well, if we are abandoning millions of years of geological record altogether, how fast did the Silmaril migrate to Erebor? Was it unladen? Did it stop for tea in Hobbiton, perhaps spend a weekend at a B&B in Bree?

3. We know quite a lot about Gandalf in Valinor. We know he was quite close to the Elves, for instance. And that Manwë himself requested Olórin to be one of the Istari. It's rather disingenuous to be dissing Gandalf at this point. But it amuses me to no end that folks will willfully argue that a Silmaril could be the Arkenstone, throw up nonsensical suppositions, and just as willfully ignore everything about the very nature of the Silmaril that would preclude it from being the Arkenstone, cut up and faceted and handled by dwarves and a precocious hobbit. Per the text:

"All who dwelt in Aman were filled with wonder and delight at the work of Fëanor. And Varda hallowed the Silmarils, so that thereafter no mortal flesh, nor hands unclean, nor anything of evil will might touch them, but it was scorched and withered; and Manwë foretold that the fates of Arda, earth, sea, and air, lay locked within them."

"Like the crystal of diamonds it [a Silmaril] appeared, and yet was more strong than adamant, so that no violence could mar it or break it within the Kingdom of Arda."

"And thus it came to pass that the Silmarils found their long homes: one in the airs of heaven, and one in the fires of the heart of the world, and one in the deep waters."

"Thus spake Mandos in prophecy, when the Gods sat in judgement in Valinor.... Thereafter shall Earth be broken and re-made, and the Silmarils shall be recovered out of Air and Earth and Sea; for Eärendil shall descend and surrender that flame which he hath had in keeping. Then Fëanor shall take the Three Jewels and he will break them and with their fire Yavanna will rekindle the Two Trees, and a great light shall come forth."

So Tolkien, who spent the better part of his life lavishing a great chronicle on the utmost importance of the holy jewels for the whole of Arda in the Quenta Silmarillion, suddenly pawns them off to a few shady dwarves in a second-rate backwater dwarven stronghold? One would think the migrating Silmaril would have taken up residence in a snazzier dwarven pad like Khazad-dûm (it would be on the way eastward on its long migration to Erebor).

Needless to say, if you wish to ignore the very nature of a Silmaril, its very specific story and attributes, how it effects those who are not meant or unworthy to touch it (and that would include Morgoth, Carcharoth, Maglor and Maedhros), and the finality by which Tolkien lays them to rest, then further discussion is fruitless.

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

Needless to say, if you wish to ignore the very nature of a Silmaril, its very specific story and attributes, how it effects those who are not meant or unworthy to touch it (and that would include Morgoth, Carcharoth, Maglor and Maedhros), and the finality by which Tolkien lays them to rest, then further discussion is fruitless.

Are we allowing or ignoring voice of the author? Because yeah, Tolkien is pretty clear that the Silmarils stayed where they were put. On that basis I don't think there's an argument to be made (other than the one about the Arkenstone 'being a Silmaril' in the same sense that Mirkwood 'is' Taur-na-Fuin and the Elvenking 'is' Thingol).

But if we treat the Silmarillion as a historical text, then the chronicler (Noldorin or Numenorean) would have no way of knowing! And it's actually feasible for Maedhros' Silmaril to wind up in Erebor - but not to be mined there.

Let's imagine Maedhros' "fiery chasm" is, or shortly after gave rise to, a rhyolitic volcanic eruption. That's the kind of eruption that forms obsidian - black volcanic glass. The Silmaril could have easily been encased in the stuff, and fairly near the surface. Of course, you'd need to be a miner to retrieve it, and fireproof to boot.

Originally Posted by Silm

Last of all the eastern force to stand firm were the Dwarves of Belegost, and thus they won renown. For the Naugrim withstood fire more hardily than either Elves or Men, and it was their custom moreover to wear great masks in battle hideous to look upon; and those stood them in good stead against the dragons.

Oh yeah them. ^_^ Obsidian is probably the sharpest blade you can get - in modern times there have been experiments with using it for surgical scalpels - so I can easily imagine the dwarves of the Blue Mountains finding it and going 'score!'. So they chip away at it, hauling it away in chunks - and then they find a piece which seems to glow with its own light...

We know from Gimli's comments on the Glittering Caves that dwarves didn't just hack up rocks to get to the most valuable treasures. Depending on how much obsidian a Silmaril can shine through, this could be a substantially larger chunk - I think it plausible they would have carved a larger globe around it, not coming close to the actual Silmaril. Cutting facets into obsidian would require remarkable skill, but oh yeah, dwarves.

So now we have the Arkenstone in the Blue Mountains, but, like... it's pretty obviously a Silmaril, right? I mean, the dude who had one of them went for a lava bath, and now the same lava produced a glowing rock. And Silmarils are holy objects. So they wouldn't keep it in the minor holdings the Blue Mountains had become - they would have taken it east, to either Khazad-Dum - or Gundabad, sacred place of the Dwarves.

If it was in Moria, it's hard to see how it couldn't have been common knowledge - but Gundabad is a different story. That fastness was taken by Orcs in the middle of the Second Age. There's a pattern of Silmarils being spirited away from realms under attack - Doriath, the Havens - and with Khazad-Dum locked down at the time, it would have had to be carried east, towards the Iron Hills.

But it's a long way to the Iron Hills, and the Grey Mountains were infested with Orcs. What if the fleeing dwarves never made it that far, but holed up in a single, lonely mountain until at last they were destroyed...?

Three thousand years pass. The Arkenstone, already known only to a few, passes out of all memory - or does it? The Heirs of Durin are known to be able to keep secrets about precious treasures over that timescale - they kept their Ring hidden! They could also have passed down the tale: we once held a Silmaril; it left Gundabad but never arrived in the Iron Hills. It must be somewhere...!

And so, when Nain I is killed by an ancient evil, and Thrain I flees Moria, he decides that his people could really do with a holy relic to gather around. Rather than moving his throne to the already-settled Iron Hills, he heads for the #1 prospect as the resting place of the Arkenstone - the Lonely Mountain. (Being a dwarf, he also hedges his bets and sends some of his people into the Grey Mountains, but he's pretty sure it's Erebor he wants.) And lo and behold, down in the deepest cavern, clutched perhaps in the brittle skeletal hand of an ancient Longbeard, he finds it: the Arkenstone, the Silmaril, the Heart of the Mountain Kingdom.

And no, he doesn't tell anyone what it is - there's a grumpy elf in the forest next door who is noted for all but outright claiming to be the Heir of Doriath. You do not want him repeating Thingol's antics. No, Thrain decides, we'll just claim we mined this up - it's just a random glowing rock, nothing for anyone else to get excited about...

Or something like that. It works only if you treat the texts as historic documents - it's flatly against the will of the author. But sometimes that can be fun to play around with.

(As to Gandalf: well, he did fail to identify the One Ring, which was imbued with power akin to his own, even while picking it up to put in its envelope. But also, given how much trouble the Arkenstone had caused when everyone thought it was just a shiny rock, sticking it unidentified in a tomb was probably the best place for it!)

hS

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

(As to Gandalf: well, he did fail to identify the One Ring, which was imbued with power akin to his own, even while picking it up to put in its envelope. But also, given how much trouble the Arkenstone had caused when everyone thought it was just a shiny rock, sticking it unidentified in a tomb was probably the best place for it!)

hS

That is the thing, with the information available to him Gandalf should have deduced the nature of Bilbo's ring much earlier than he did... It makes me think less of him.

[Galadriel55]

I think it comes down to this: do you WANT the Arkenstone to be the Silmaril? Because, if you want something hard enough - or on the contrary, if you don't want something hard enough, you'll find arguments and counterarguments on both sides, and declare that the legitimate canonicity and interpretation is the one that supports your cause.

I don't want the Arkenstone to be the Silmaril, though I recognize that it was meta-inspired by the Silmaril the way Hui describes (ie in the same way the Elvenking is Thingol). I want the Silmarils to have an epic and symbolic end. I want them to be unique, untouchable, unrepeatable. I want their light to be something special - they are not just gems that glow, they glow with a light that is more than the world of the Sun and Moon. Furthermore, I want the Elves and the Dwarves to have their own unique jewels, not everything must be about the same old Silmarils.

So, all in all, my main argument against the Arkenstone being the Silmaril is that, in my eyes, such a thing would ruin both stories rather than make them more interesting. Cogito, ergo they are not.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

So, all in all, my main argument against the Arkenstone being the Silmaril is that, in my eyes, such a thing would ruin both stories rather than make them more interesting. Cogito, ergo they are not.

I agree with this. As I've said, the idea that one Silmaril was spared so that it could end up lying on the body of a dwarf (an Heir of Durin notwithstanding) underground is out of alignment with the epic stature of the Silmarils.

That aside, has anyone thought how a dragon could have shared a space with a Silmaril for 171 years and never seen or touched it? And the Arkenstone wasn't buried under piles of treasure, either. Bilbo found it near the top of the heap.

[Morsul the Dark]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

I agree with this. As I've said, the idea that one Silmaril was spared so that it could end up lying on the body of a dwarf (an Heir of Durin notwithstanding) underground is out of alignment with the epic stature of the Silmarils.

That aside, has anyone thought how a dragon could have shared a space with a Silmaril for 171 years and never seen or touched it? And the Arkenstone wasn't buried under piles of treasure, either. Bilbo found it near the top of the heap.

Plain insulting dwarves now to make an argument joking

What’s the significance of Smaug being near it? He didn’t eat treasure just hoarded it without seemingly any interest beyond gold=shiny=good.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Morsul the Dark

What’s the significance of Smaug being near it? He didn’t eat treasure just hoarded it without seemingly any interest beyond gold=shiny=good.

It was established that the Silmaril called to those who beheld it. Carcaroth was moved to eat the thing in Beren's hand. It's a stretch to believe that having seen one, Smaug would not have touched it even once.

[Morsul the Dark]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

So, all in all, my main argument against the Arkenstone being the Silmaril is that, in my eyes, such a thing would ruin both stories rather than make them more interesting. Cogito, ergo they are not.

I know you already said both sides will believe as they wish, and I’ve already said neither side can definitively prove the other wrong but this particular argument falls into the same logic ProArkenSils use of “well it’s cooler that way”

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by Morsul the Dark

I know you already said both sides will believe as they wish, and I’ve already said neither side can definitively prove the other wrong but this particular argument falls into the same logic ProArkenSils use of “well it’s cooler that way”

Exactly! If you think it's cooler that way... by all means.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Occam's razor applies here, I think. To make the Arkenstone a Silmaril means assuming a complex chain of improbabilities, starting with a physical explanation as to how the Dwarves could have shaped the unmarrable to begin with, not to mention how the devil it made it from a fiery chasm in drowned Beleriand to Erebor.

Whereas positing that they are two different jewels requires no assumptions at all.

[Huinesoron]

I recently saw a satirical discussion asserting that 1) the Arkenstone was a Silmaril, 2) Gandalf recognised it and deliberately hid the whole thing, and 3) this is why he was so fervently unwilling to recognise the One Ring as yet another artefact of Power picked up by that same blasted Hobbit sweet NIENNA. All in fun, but it brought me back here.

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

Let's imagine Maedhros' "fiery chasm" is, or shortly after gave rise to, a rhyolitic volcanic eruption. That's the kind of eruption that forms obsidian - black volcanic glass. The Silmaril could have easily been encased in the stuff, and fairly near the surface. Of course, you'd need to be a miner to retrieve it, and fireproof to boot.

Oh yeah them. ^_^ Obsidian is probably the sharpest blade you can get - in modern times there have been experiments with using it for surgical scalpels - so I can easily imagine the dwarves of the Blue Mountains finding it and going 'score!'. So they chip away at it, hauling it away in chunks - and then they find a piece which seems to glow with its own light...

Man, that Huinesoron chap is such a clown. Obsidian? The Arkensil being mined in the Blue Mountains and lost in Erebor? The direct statement in the narrative of The Hobbit is just a lie? What a fool (Tookish or otherwise).

Obviously the Silmaril was carried from the wreck of Beleriand in a lava tube, probably when Sauron disrupted the magma systems of the world to build himself a volcano down in Mordor. At some point (probably before it moved, but maybe in a deep lava tube under Erebor), it encountered conditions of such high temperature and pressure that it became a nucleation site for a gigantic diamond. It is this - the diamond shell around the Silmaril of Maedhros - that the Longbeards found, cut, and shaped.

This solves a bunch of problems! It was cut by the Dwarves - "it" being the diamond, not the Silmaril itself. It didn't burn Bilbo (/Thorin/Smaug) because he only touched the diamond. It was bigger than a Silmaril (probably), because of the diamond. Gandalf and Thranduil didn't recognise it because what they saw was a diamond.

But a glowing one. I only know of three glowing rocks in the history of Arda, and one of them's up in space. If the Arkenstone is not a Silmaril, then what exactly is it?

But where did the carbon for that huge diamond come from? Well, it's a bit unpleasant, but... how much carbon is there in an Elvish body? Maedhros jumped in holding the blessed thing, right?

hS

[Priya]

I think we should heed Tolkien’s last known thought on the matter. Per the 2023 The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Revised and Expanded Edition & Letter #283a of 12 January 1966:



“… only one of the silmarils is now visible: … The other two were lost, in the depths of the sea, the other under the earth, until the end of the world.” (my underlined emphasis)

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Priya

I think we should heed Tolkien’s last known thought on the matter. Per the 2023 The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Revised and Expanded Edition & Letter #283a of 12 January 1966:

“… only one of the silmarils is now visible: … The other two were lost, in the depths of the sea, the other under the earth, until the end of the world.” (my underlined emphasis)

It's still underground! It just had a brief excursion above by way of a Hobbit, barely worth mentioning.

Can something be "lost" if it is physically in someone's possession? Absolutely! "Painting in pensioner's house was lost Vermeer", "my long-lost brother lived right next door to us all along", "I lost my glasses; they were on my head the whole time". The key is that the relevant people didn't know they had the thing.

But yes, the whole idea is very silly.

hS

[Priya]

Hello Huinesoron

The key is that the relevant people didn't know they had the thing.

Don’t you think Tolkien is a ‘relevant’ person?
Wouldn’t he be the most ‘relevant’ of all ‘people’?
In fact wouldn’t he be more in the ‘know’ about the fate of the silmarils for his mythology than anyone?

I do understand and acknowledge your examples on ‘lost’. One could also argue that “end of the world” meant end of the ‘old’ world - changed after the fall of Númenor. However I think, when it comes to this particular letter (#283a) these are not natural or straightforward interpretations.

Tolkien offered up some unasked for extra information in his short correspondence. In my opinion it’s quite a stretch to assume there was anything devious, overly clever or a technicality involved with his use of the word “lost”. In this instance, given the nature and context of the correspondence, a found but not recognized situation doesn’t reconcile as ‘lost’ - at least for me!!