The proto-geography of the Third Age

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Quote:Originally Posted by WCH

This might amount to a hijack (spin off thread?) but that's interesting - I had wondered if that was possible, myself. What evidence are you thinking of?

In The History of the Hobbit John Rateliffe makes I think a very, very strong case that in the early phases of writing The Hobbit he placed it in the geography of Beleriand.* Mirkwood was Taur-nu-Fuin (indeed a translation thereof), the Great River was Sirion (which translates, in effect, as The River), and the Misty Mountains were the eastern Mountains of Shadow. Hobbiton accordingly lay somewhere in Hithlum, and leaving sheltered Hithlum meant entering "the Wild." One might also note Amon Ereb, "Mount Lonesome", which is on all the Silmarillion maps but plays no part in the legends; and the "Withered Heath" to the north "from whence come the Great Worms:" Dor-nu-Fauglith?

(It's also interesting that in all versions of the Beren and Luthien story, after Thu/Sauron's defeat by Huan he takes up residence in- Taur-nu-Fuin).

However, T got stuck and left off working on Bilbo's adventures for a while, unsure of what to do next; this apparently came at the Beorn chapter. Plainly there was no room in the Silmarillion geography for Lake Town, the Lonely Mountain and its environs; and there wouldn't be any Elves of any sort, not even the Avari the wood-elves were originally conceived to be, in the grim forest on Dorthonion. (An alternative would be that Mirkwood was equated with Artanor > Doriath; but the rustic Elvenking and his rude caves certainly aren't lordly Thingol and wondrous Menegroth**, nor was Doriath ever black and evil).

This is where things get interesting; evidence is sketchy and I claim no more than one possible interpretation: that Tolkien shifted his concept of The Hobbit's geography so that the Mountains were now the Ered Lindon; crossing into The Wild now meant leaving 'civilized Elvish' Beleriand and striking out into the blank spaces: "Here There Be Dragonnes." Moreover, I suggest, this conception still informed his earliest writing in The Lord of the Rings., which was, after all, supposed to be a Hobbit sequel.

(Before going on, it should be pointed out that at this time, the early Thirties, the Second and Third Ages did not yet exist. Numenor would enter with The Lost Road (1936); and the Third Age was created with the LR. And yes, I'm aware of the end of QN with its distant germ of the Last Alliance).

The Ered Luin, remember, were called the Blue Mountains because of the bluish cast of the mists which shrouded them, rather like the Blue Ridge of the Appalachians and their neighbors to the south, the Smokey Mountains.

A great deal of this hypothesis, this 'Blue Mountains' phase if you will, keys on writings, contemporaneous with the early work on the LR, where Tolkien explicitly identifies Moria with ancient Nogrod: which along with Belegost had always been conceived as lying in the southern Ered Luin. In fact in an entry in the Etymologies Nogrod is translated (as should be plain) "Dwarfmine;" of which Dwarrowdelf is merely an antiqued form. (Only much later did Tolkien cover his tracks and re-gloss Nogrod as "Hollowbold;" and the new Sindarin name for Moria, Hadhodrond, just substitutes "hadhod" (dwarf) for "naug" (dwarf), and restores the elided N in -rond 'cavern, vault.')

There is then a later note in which Nogrod-Moria, still the same place, has been physically moved hundreds of miles to the east into the Misty Mountains. This belongs naturally to the final geography; but illustrates the persistence of the identity of Moria with Nogrod, and the Longbeard Dwarves with the Indrafangs.

But back to the traces of this intermediate 'Blue Mountains' phase: remember that as Tolkien wrote what we know as Book I the geography was entirely vague; the regions between Hobbiton and Rivendell had not been mapped , and T never did successfully square Frodo's journey from Weathertop with what had been said of Bilbo- how on earth did it take Aragorn the Ranger many days to cover ground Thorin & Co. managed in a couple of hours? He tried to rewrite it in the Second Edition but it still doesn't really work.

Anyway, it's important to remember that during the writing of what Christopher Tolkien calls the "first phase," in which Bingo Bolger-Baggins and friends reach Rivendell with the help of Trotter the hobbit-ranger, the geography remained vague and fluid. In notes for what would become the beginning of Book Two, T envisioned the Company crossing the Mountains by the Red Pass***, turning southward along the River Redway, and only then entering Moria which lay "in the mountains of the south." These could of course be a separate range; but, again, Moria at the time was identical to ancient Nogrod, which lay in the southern part of the Ered Luin on their eastern side.


There is, I think, further confirmation if one compares the "Wilderland Map" of the Hobbit (especially the draft form published in Artist & Illustrator) with the (original) Silmarillion Map. The curves and the watercourses in the First Map's Misty Mountains are remarkably like those T had already drawn for his Mountains of Blue Mist in the Silmarillion. Moreover the world-map in the Ambarkanta, which is certainly later than The Hobbit, includes no north-south mountain range between the Blue Mountains in the west and the Red Moutains in the far east. (It's worth noting that, as first made, the Lord of the Rings Map contained nothing west of the Shire; that region, including the Ered Luin, was pasted on later.)



-----------------------
*Despite what T said in a letter many years later, TH *always* took place in the world of the Elvish legendarium; even the earliest drafts contain numerous references to things like the Three Kindreds, Gondolin, and even Beren and Luthien However the time-frame, while vague, seems to be not long after the events of what would later be called the First Age).

** Which were already fully described in The Lay of Leithian of the late Twenties.

***Could Caradhras = Mt Dolmed?

[Aiwendil]

A very interesting hypothesis! I was quite fascinated to discover the apparent identification of elements of TH’s geography with Beleriand when I read Rateliff’s book. And I think there is a reasonable (though circumstantial) argument for an intermediate stage in which the Misty Mountains became the Blue Mountains. However, I think perhaps the situation is a little less clear than your post makes it sound. In particular, I have reservations on this point:

Despite what T said in a letter many years later, TH *always* took place in the world of the Elvish legendarium; even the earliest drafts contain numerous references to things like the Three Kindreds, Gondolin, and even Beren and Luthien However the time-frame, while vague, seems to be not long after the events of what would later be called the First Age).

Now I agree that, as Rateliff shows, the world of The Hobbit was in a sense equated with the Elvish legendarium from the outset. In a sense. For it is not really as simple as that. For all the correspondences between the two there are also significant discrepancies that are hard to explain away. For one thing, the geography is not an exact fit. Amon Ereb was always away in the south of Beleriand, whereas the journey toward the Lonely Mountain was always primarily an eastward journey. Rivendell on this view would be on the western side of the Ered Wethrin, but there is no corresponding place or Elvish dwelling in the Silmarillion. But more importantly, Bilbo’s world doesn’t seem to fit nicely anywhere in the timeline of the Legendarium. Both the 1930 Quenta Noldorinwa and the 1937 Quenta Silmarillion ended with the sinking of Beleriand; therefore if the events of The Hobbit are actually to have occurred, they would need to have happened before the Great Battle. If, further, the Necromancer is Sauron and he dwells in Mirkwood/Taur-nu-Fuin, then The Hobbit must take place after the defeat of Sauron by Huan and Luthien. But the world of The Hobbit clearly cannot fit in that timeframe for many obvious reasons. The alternative – that The Hobbit assumes Beleriand survived the Great Battle and is set after it – is not really tenable either, since all the contemporary Silmarillion accounts have Beleriand destroyed.

I think, rather, that it was only in a very vague sense that Tolkien in his mind equated Mirkwood with Taur-nu-Fuin or the Great River with the Sirion. All indications are that when he began to write The Hobbit he did not really think of it as a ‘serious’ work and that he had no compunction about using elements from the Legendarium haphazardly, without striving for any firm consistency.

This may actually make your hypothesis more attractive rather than less, though. At some point, he obviously did decide that The Hobbit was in fact set in the same Middle-earth as his Elvish material – usually this decision is placed around the beginning of his work on The Lord of the Rings, but it’s quite plausible that it could have come earlier, even if we don’t accept that it came at the outset of The Hobbit. So pushing things east, out of the lands that were, as was well established, destroyed in the War of Wrath, became necessary.

Nonetheless, I am not at all persuaded that the Misty Mountains were equated with the Blue Mountains in the early stages of The Lord of the Rings, even if they were so earlier. The argument from the identification of Nogrod with Moria is a strong one – but it must be noted that Moria was not associated with the Misty Mountains until LotR, that is, after the references to Nogrod as the ancient home of Durin’s folk. So it seems quite plausible that by the time Moria was encountered in LotR, it was no longer identified with Nogrod (unless perhaps I’m forgetting some further Nogrod-Moria identification in the post-LotR writings?)

And though it’s completely irrelevant to the topic:

how on earth did it take Aragorn the Ranger many days to cover ground Thorin & Co. managed in a couple of hours?

I may be mis-remembering, but I thought the problem was the opposite – the journey from Hobbiton to Rivendell took Bilbo and the Dwarves quite a long time while Frodo and company made it quite quickly (and without ponies).

[William Cloud Hicklin]

And though it’s completely irrelevant to the topic:
Quote:how on earth did it take Aragorn the Ranger many days to cover ground Thorin & Co. managed in a couple of hours?

I may be mis-remembering, but I thought the problem was the opposite – the journey from Hobbiton to Rivendell took Bilbo and the Dwarves quite a long time while Frodo and company made it quite quickly (and without ponies).

I was thinking specifically of the problem both Fonstad and C Tolkien bring up, the days taken between fording the river and the Stone-trolls (more glaring in the LR 1st Ed), whereas in TH both incidents occurred on the same night.

Response to the actual meat of your post when I have time.

[Kuruharan]

*Despite what T said in a letter many years later, TH *always* took place in the world of the Elvish legendarium; even the earliest drafts contain numerous references to things like the Three Kindreds, Gondolin, and even Beren and Luthien However the time-frame, while vague, seems to be not long after the events of what would later be called the First Age).

I find this rather curious. What in particular makes you think that TH was originally not very long after the events of the First Age? That's an impression that I never had myself.

I may be mis-remembering, but I thought the problem was the opposite – the journey from Hobbiton to Rivendell took Bilbo and the Dwarves quite a long time while Frodo and company made it quite quickly (and without ponies).

Actually, both problems existed.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Quote:*Despite what T said in a letter many years later, TH *always* took place in the world of the Elvish legendarium; even the earliest drafts contain numerous references to things like the Three Kindreds, Gondolin, and even Beren and Luthien However the time-frame, while vague, seems to be not long after the events of what would later be called the First Age).

I find this rather curious. What in particular makes you think that TH was originally not very long after the events of the First Age? That's an impression that I never had myself.

Well, my statement was perhaps over-definite- what I should have said was that at one stage the time-frame was quite early. Very telling is this, from the second draft of "An Unexpected Party:"

[Bladorthin (> Gandalf):] "... but I found him a prisoner in the dungeons of the Necromancer."
...
[Gandalf (> Thorin, confusingly):] "We must give a thought to the Necromancer."
"Don't be absurd" said the wizard. "That is a job quite beyond the powers of all the dwarves, if they could be all gathered together again from the four corners of the world. And anyway his castle stands no more and he is flown to another darker place - Beren and Tinuviel broke his power, but that is quite another story."

Which implies very strongly that Thrain was imprisoned in Tol-in-Gaurhoth, before it was thrown down! And that, remarkably, this conversation takes place less than a century after that event.

But T quickly revised this thinking, since already in the first draft of Chapter 3 Elrond says that Gondolin was destroyed "ages and ages ago." (Elrond's very existence of course postdated the Fall of Gondolin).

[William Cloud Hicklin]

I think, rather, that it was only in a very vague sense that Tolkien in his mind equated Mirkwood with Taur-nu-Fuin or the Great River with the Sirion. All indications are that when he began to write The Hobbit he did not really think of it as a ‘serious’ work and that he had no compunction about using elements from the Legendarium haphazardly, without striving for any firm consistency.

Quite so. The Hobbit wasn't 'official,' so to speak; certainly there's not much room in the 'canonical' legends for the Bourgeois Burglar with his mantlepiece clock and tea-kettle, and where roadside inns are common! Or, for that matter, comical Dwarves. And T never had any problem recycling his own ideas. If the Elvenking and his halls don't much resemble Thingol and Menegroth, they do rather resemble Tinwelint of the Lost Tales- and the image of a bridge over a river-gorge leading to the hillside gates of a great subterranean fortress was here used for the third time, having manifested twice before in Menegroth and Nargothrond.



Stll, he borrowed a lot. And while I think it's going too far to say that Amon Ereb "was" the Lonely Mountain in any direct sense, I think the association was present in an indeterminate way in Tolkien's mind, at least at some point. While the journey of Thorin & Co. turned out in the event to be roughly due east, this was not a given from the start (in fact, there's really no indication in the text in what direction Hobbiton lay relative to Rivendell); and Tolkien, once he got the party to the eaves of Mirkwood, clearly had little idea what he was going to do next (the early versions of Thror's Map give no indication of its location relative to 'world geography').

I couldn't in the space and time available do justice to the case JDR makes for the 'early' geography, which places TH in some-place-very-like-Beleriand. Read his book!

But as to my own supposition of an intermediate "Blue Mountains" phase: you say

I am not at all persuaded that the Misty Mountains were equated with the Blue Mountains in the early stages of The Lord of the Rings, even if they were so earlier. The argument from the identification of Nogrod with Moria is a strong one – but it must be noted that Moria was not associated with the Misty Mountains until LotR, that is, after the references to Nogrod as the ancient home of Durin’s folk.

Well, Moria only came into being with the Lord of the Rings, at least in any sense equating it with an ancient mansion of Durin's Folk. In The Hobbit itself the "Mines of Moria" is a reference-less and locationless name, merely the place Thror was slain (and which could easily be a goblin-mine). The earliest writing which says more is the 'third phase' continuation of Many Meetings, where Gloin states "Moria was the ancestral home of the Dwarves of the race of Durin." But of course the race of Durin is the Longbeards, and every text up to that time (and even some post-LR!) places their 'ancestral home' in the Blue Mountains.

The entry in the Etymologies is very suggestive precisely because it is contemporaneous with the early work on the Lord of the Rings. While the E were originally written just before Tolkien turned to the 'New Hobbit,' he continued for a while to insert additional entries regarding new names that developed in the early drafts of what we know as the Fellowship of the Ring. The Moria/Nogrod entry is one of these, and plainly was only made after Tolkien had embarked on Book II (late 1939).

It's perhaps instructive to note that though Durin himself only arose in The Hobbit the Longbeards, the Indravangs or Enfeng, had been an integral part of events in Beleriand from the Lost Tales onward. In The Hobbit (1st Ed.) there are two Houses of Dwarves, not seven, in accord with the Nogrod/Belegost meme. While their mansions were at Belegost in the Lost Tales, in QN and QS the Longbeards were the Dwarves of Nogrod (which in QS was actually named Khazad-dum), and Tolkien maintained the association Longbeards-Nogrod even to the extent of temporarily relocating Nogrod/Moria/Khazad-dum to the Hithaeglir, before finally deciding they were separate cities.

On the other hand there is an alternative and passing idea which appears in the first draft of The Ring Goes South- that Moria wasn't the ancestral home at all!

They were made by the Dwarves of Durin's clan many hundreds of years ago, when Elves dwelt in Hollin, and there was peace between the two races. In those ancient days Durin dwelt in Caron-Dun [Dimrill Dale]

In other words, Moria was founded after the War of Wrath- by Durin and his Longbeards apparently after departing their ancestral home.



(It's an odd fact that in the post-LR Annals (both sets), the Enfeng/Longbeards were re-associated with Belegost, rather than transplanted to Moria (although by this time of course the caverns above Mirrormere were clearly the home of Durin's folk). I can't explain this; the feeling I get, though, is that Tolkien was fumbling around with making the Belegostian Longbeards* the Elder Days' 'good' Dwarves, the builders of Menegroth and (according to the History of Galadriel and Celeborn) wholly innocent of its sack- and only these 'good' Dwarves would become an element of Moria's population at the beginning of the Second Age, since the host of Nogrod was said to have been annihilated at Sarn Athrad.).

*One wonders if therefore in the very late essay Of Dwarves and Men, the two named Houses of the Ered Luin are to be associated Firebeards-Belegost and Broadbeams-Nogrod, "Enfeng" reglossed to contain a fire-element rather than AN- "long."

[Aiwendil]

Good points, all. I certainly do agree that Amon Ereb seems likely to have been associated with the Lonely Mountain in some general way, as many features of Beleriand were with The Hobbit's geography. (I have read Rateliff's History of the Hobbit and was quite struck by the correspondences and particularly by the reference to Beren and Luthien). My point here was just that Tolkien didn't really, seriously, consider The Hobbit part of the Elvish Legendarium when it was begun (although, for all its bourgeois clocks and tea-kettles, he did decide later that it was).

Well, Moria only came into being with the Lord of the Rings, at least in any sense equating it with an ancient mansion of Durin's Folk. In The Hobbit itself the "Mines of Moria" is a reference-less and locationless name, merely the place Thror was slain (and which could easily be a goblin-mine). The earliest writing which says more is the 'third phase' continuation of Many Meetings, where Gloin states "Moria was the ancestral home of the Dwarves of the race of Durin." But of course the race of Durin is the Longbeards, and every text up to that time (and even some post-LR!) places their 'ancestral home' in the Blue Mountains.

Yes, it's certainly true that Moria didn't really exist until The Lord of the Rings. Consequently, as you point out, the ancestral home of the Longbeards was not associated with the Misty Mountains until that time (except perhaps indirectly, if as you suggest we assume a stage when the Blue Mountains = the Misty Mountains and ancestral home of the Longbeards = Blue Mountains).

The question I was considering was whether this is true:

Originally Posted by WCH

Moreover, I suggest, this conception still informed his earliest writing in The Lord of the Rings

My argument was just that, even if the Misty Mountains were intended to be the Blue Mountains at one time, we have no particular evidence that this was still the case by the time LotR was begun in earnest. It may be that, at some time prior to the early work on LotR, Tolkien had decided that the Misty Mountains were a distinct range east of the Blue Mountains; then either in the 'third phase' or earlier he decided that the home of the Longbeards was not Nogrod but instead was in the Misty Mountains. Or he decided that Nogrod, while still the home of the Longbeards, was actually in the Misty Mountains.

The Etymologies may indeed suggest (though very indirectly) that Nogrod was still the Longbeards' home at the time LotR was begun. However, we have no indication that the Longbeards' home was associated with the Misty Mountains at this time (not until the third phase, as you point out), so this doesn't establish the identity of the two ranges.

I don't remember the 'later note' you mentioned in which Nogrod is identified with Moria and placed in the Misty Mountains (it's been too long since I've read HoMe VI-IX). Where exactly is it found? In any case, this blows a big hole in my first idea - that Tolkien decided to make Nogrod distinct from the Longbeards' home at the time of the 'third phase'. However, my second suggestion is still intact - that the two mountain ranges were already distinct by the beginning of LotR and that he decided in the 'third phase' to place Nogrod in the Misty Mountains rather than the Blue.

This really is a trifling point though. On the whole, I think your idea is a good one and my only quibble is with the point at which the two mountain ranges were made distinct.

The association of the Longbeards with Belegost in AAm and GA is indeed strange, and I think you may be onto something when you suggest that he was trying to distinguish the good Longbeards/Belegostians from the not so good folk of Nogrod. Your Firebeards-Belegost, Broadbeams-Nogrod idea is also interesting; but is there any evidence for ‘en-’ meaning fire (my Sindarin is rusty, but I can’t think of any suitable root)? I had always leaned toward Broadbeams-Belegost and Firebeards-Nogrod based solely on the order in which they are named matching the usual formula ‘Nogrod and Belegost’, but that is scant evidence indeed.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

I don't remember the 'later note' you mentioned in which Nogrod is identified with Moria and placed in the Misty Mountains (it's been too long since I've read HoMe VI-IX). Where exactly is it found?

War of the Jewels, p. 201. Pencilled emendations to the old QS manuscript, so that above "Nogrod, the Dwarfmine" is written "Dwarrowdelf;" and then in the margin

Dwarrowdelf Nogrod was afar off in the East in the Mountains of Mist; and Belegost was in Eredlindon south of Beleriand.

And, marked for insertion after "Belegost, the Great Fortress,"

Greatest of these was Khazaddum that was after called in the days of its darkness Moria, and it was far off in the east in the Mountains of Mist; but Gabilgathol was on [the] east side of Eredlindon and within reach of the Elves.

(Khazaddum was already the Dwarvish name of Nogrod in QS as written).

-----------------

However, my second suggestion is still intact - that the two mountain ranges were already distinct by the beginning of LotR and that he decided in the 'third phase' to place Nogrod in the Misty Mountains rather than the Blue.

Well, the notion I suppose arises in part from the fact that, when the name first arises in the LR papers, Moria is not envisioned as the route through the mountains; rather, the Co. crosses the mountains by a pass, travels south, and then encounters Moria.

This is perhaps ameliorated by the fact that in the same note the adventures are sequenced Red Pass-Fangorn Forest*-Moria; and it's entirely possible that Tolkien saw Moria as being in the Black > White Mountains, perhaps a distant precusor of the Paths of the Dead.

But if so then why give Moria the established name of Nogrod (Khazad-dum, translated Dwarfmine and Dwarrowdelf), and at least for a time identify the two? Whereas it gives Occam a better shave if Khazad-dum/Moria/Nogrod, for a moment at least, was located in Nogrod's traditional position.

*Fangorn in these August 1939 notes (the beginning of the Third Phase) was seen as lying about the confluence of the Redway (> Silverlode) and the Great River; i.e. conceptually the later position of Lorien.

[Aiwendil]

War of the Jewels, p. 201. Pencilled emendations to the old QS manuscript, so that above "Nogrod, the Dwarfmine" is written "Dwarrowdelf;" and then in the margin

Ah, thanks. I'd thought you meant a LotR-related note.

But if so then why give Moria the established name of Nogrod (Khazad-dum, translated Dwarfmine and Dwarrowdelf), and at least for a time identify the two? Whereas it gives Occam a better shave if Khazad-dum/Moria/Nogrod, for a moment at least, was located in Nogrod's traditional position.

Well, it seems to me equally parsimonious to posit that the view expressed in the note on the QS manuscript had already been reached. We know that at some point the idea was Belegost in the Blue Mountains and Nogrod/Moria east in the Misty Mountains. Is it so implausible that this was the conception that underlay the third (and subsequent) phase(s) of LotR? There's apparently no hard evidence, but this seems to me just as likely as your alternative, that the Blue and the Misty Mountains were at that time one and the same.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Just for completeness' sake, I had forgotten some other details JDR brings up for the 'Beleriandic' nature of the (early) Hobbit geography: the first version of the Lonely Mountain map ("Fimbulfami's Map") shows the "Wild Wood" to the north-northwest of the mountain, with the Withered Heath beyond. And in the next map of the series, the Grey Mountains - Iron Hills chain describes a convex arc that immediately call to mind the Iron Mountains.

[Pitchwife]

Not to forget that in the first draft for the Council of Elrond, Elendil (aka Valandil/Orendil) was referred to as a Numenórean king ruling lands that had formerly been part of Beleriand; so obviously at this time Beleriand was conceived as not quite so completely sunken as it later turned out to be.

As for the Nogrod/Khazad-dûm/Longbeards question, the Etymologies, as far as I can see, don't offer any other possible meaning for Enfeng/Anfangrim than 'Longbeards'. So at the time Tolkien decided that Nogrod and Belegost were the homes of the Firebeards and Broadbeams, rather than the Longbeards, neither of those houses can have been called Enfeng any more.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Not to forget that in the first draft for the Council of Elrond, Elendil (aka Valandil/Orendil) was referred to as a Numenórean king ruling lands that had formerly been part of Beleriand; so obviously at this time Beleriand was conceived as not quite so completely sunken as it later turned out to be.

Yes- a concept taken apparently from the ending of the Fall of Numenor

"But there remains still a legend of Beleriand: for that land in the west of the old world, although changed and broken, held still in ancient days to the name it had in the days of the Gnomes. And it is said that Amroth was King of Beleriand; and he took counsel with Elrond son of Earendel, and with such of the Elves as remained in the West; and they passed the Mountains and came to inner lands far from the sea, and they assailed the fortress of Thu. And Amroth wrestled with Thu and was slain; but Thu was brought to his knees, and his servants were dispelled; and the people of Beleriand destroyed his dwellings, and drove him forth, and he fled to a dark forest, and hid himself."

So not only was Beleriand at this time, shortly before the LR was begun, considered to have survived if in altered form, but it also had a substantial population, sufficient to generate an army capable of defeating Thu/Sauron.


So at the time Tolkien decided that Nogrod and Belegost were the homes of the Firebeards and Broadbeams, rather than the Longbeards, neither of those houses can have been called Enfeng any more.

Quite so- but the time in question was 1969 or later.

[Galin]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

But back to the traces of this intermediate 'Blue Mountains' phase: remember that as Tolkien wrote what we know as Book I the geography was entirely vague; the regions between Hobbiton and Rivendell had not been mapped , and T never did successfully square Frodo's journey from Weathertop with what had been said of Bilbo- how on earth did it take Aragorn the Ranger many days to cover ground Thorin & Co. managed in a couple of hours? He tried to rewrite it in the Second Edition but it still doesn't really work.

I know this is a side topic here but I'm wondering...

A) is my understanding of Tolkien's solution correct?

B) if correct, is it an acceptable solution (if never published!); or in other words, does placing the Troll encounter 25 miles east of the Hoarwell (and somewhat North of the road) fit well enough with The Lord of the Rings, considering the difficulties Strider and the Hobbits encountered?


As noted, according to the revised Hobbit the Stone-trolls appear to be close to the bridge (of Mitheithel), that is, just after the bridge and seemingly not that far from where the Dwarves stopped and saw the fire -- raising the question concerning Strider!

For the '1960 Hobbit' Tolkien set out to fix this among other problems: the bridge here is broken, but he noted: 'Bridge to point where troll fire seen: 20 miles' (Timelines And Itinerary, History of The Hobbit) and a bit later writes: 'Episode of the trolls occurs night of May 19, at a point about 25 miles from the Bridge.'

So the Dwarves were seemingly reimagined as journeying well past the river now, and in the text of the actual chapter (here called The Broken Bridge actually), the Dwarves and Bilbo travel after fording the river, and at last when it was '... night-dark under the Trees, Thorin called a halt. The wind was still blowing, but the rain-storm was passing. The clouds were breaking, and away in the East before them a waning moon was tilted between the flying rags.'

But Tolkien abandoned this entire revision of The Hobbit seemingly on the advice of a friend -- and he was having other problems with the dates and moon phases as well, among everything else. However, when it came time for the 1966 Third Edition (if I've understood all this correctly), Tolkien added the bridge in The Hobbit but nothing of this related detail! and so the Trolls still seem to be close to the river and not that far from the Dwarves (where they stopped).

John Rateliff (History of the Hobbit) agrees with Carpenter that Tolkien probably did not have the 1960 material before him when he made the change to the 1966 Hobbit. And so this never really helped much, except possibly in theory (since we know Tolkien was arguably at least thinking this way). Aragorn crossed the same bridge (now not broken in any case) and: '... a mile further on they came to a narrow ravine that led away northwards through the steep lands on the left of the Road. Here Strider turned aside,...'

Again, if I recall correctly Aragorn and the Hobbits had difficulties travelling in the wilderness, including going 'too far' North, and this more detailed revision could have at least better accounted for how they eventually came upon the Trolls, ultimately coming back to the road at a point east from where they had left it.

What do you (anyone) think of this 'intended' fix?


Although if we imagine this recasting to be true, we arguably 'move' where the Trolls seem to be according to The Hobbit.

[FlimFlamSam]

William Cloud Hicklin spoke: [In The History of the Hobbit John Rateliffe makes I think a very, very strong case that in the early phases of writing The Hobbit he placed it in the geography of Beleriand]
Not just The Hobbit. While writing Lord of the Rings as well, he returned to borrowing from those earlier stories.

Aiwendil spoke: [The Hobbit assumes Beleriand survived the Great Battle and is set after it – is not really tenable either, since all the contemporary Silmarillion accounts have Beleriand destroyed.]
The Hobbit borrowed some thoughts, that is undeniable.
At the time the Eriol story was still a major influence.

When writing Lord of the Rings, Beleriand was re-imagined as the land we now know as North-west Middle Earth and that it had Elvish-isles as a part of it, of which Numenor was one of these--not raised from the sea.
Part of that is seen with the comment about Gandalf taking young hobbits out to sea (to visit the Elvish-isles).

Part of this idea also still survives in Lord of the Rings in The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen, where when Arwen and Aragorn meet in Caras Galadhon; Aragorn appears to be almost an Elf-lord from the Isles in the West (Isles--plural) not Eressea; a single island.

At that time the Kings of Numenor still numbered 13 as far as into making Appendix A (Peoples of Middle-earth). And Elendil/Orendil/Valandil was a Lord on one of these Isles, not Numenor--as mentioned earlier in a post.
Gil-Galad (and at one point Galadriel his sister) was the son (and possibly Galadriel as daughter) of Feanor and also dwelt on one of these islands.

Since Mr. Tolkien had already borrowed the visuals and descriptions for both Menegroth, Nargothrond and Esgalduin in creating the Halls of the Elven-king in Mirkwood, neither of those names would do. He did however transplant Neldoreth to the Sea of Rhun, satisfying both the requirement for a location for Thingol, Melian and Luthien. (See HOME War of the Ring, the second map).
At that point only Elrond, Gondolin and Turgon had been used as named things in The Hobbit. Everything else was open to interpretation and borrowing.

Ossir, the land of seven rivers still remained, and was eventually re-worked as the land of Gondor. Cirdan, Lord of the Falas, now had Belfalas and the port of Edhellond as later named.

It is notable that the upper portion beyond Mirkwood on these maps was not drawn, namely the Grey Mountains and Withered Heath since they existed in The Hobbit. Possibly he was considering revising that area to match descriptions for the Iron Mountains and Angband. Hithlum (a suitable location near the Misty Mountains, and Mithrim with its lake along with Nevrast with its marshy area and of course Dor-Lomin). All areas where the Edain resided, and ultimately where after recrossing the Blue Mountains in The Silmarillion they mysteriously dwelt in Lord of the Rings.

Anduin matches the description fairly well for Sirion, even to the point of having Tol Sirion/Cair Andros, the fens of Serech/Wetwang/Nindalf and even Andram--when the first Lord of the Rings map is interconnected with the second map containing the reworked lands of Gondor and Mordor this Andram runs from the White Mountains, through Emyn Muil and out to a vast area near the mountains of Rhun, including a lone hill--presumably Amon Ereb or its equivalent with another nearby forest (Brethil?).
That this area is close in description to the location of Gondolin, later adapted as Minas Anor/Tirith is also curious. Although, the description better fits the sister city of Minas Ithil, hidden away in a once lush valley, complete with a secret river entrance (Henneth Annun?) and a treacherous pass where Glorfindel duels a Balrog/Sam duels Shelob and where many Elves and Men had died in her clutches over the ages.

A river is shown flowing into the Celduin from this area, which could possibly be a new location for Nargothrond, presuming the Turin story was to be retained.

The isle of Balar at the mouths of Sirion/Anduin is now named Tolfalas.

The mountains of Mirkwood and the nearby spiders as already used in The Hobbit substituted well for the Mountains of Terror Beren crosses on his wanderings leading ultimately to Neldoreth.

As mentioned, Nogrod was the location of Moria/Khazad-dum, with Neldoreth now relocated giving new significance to the story of the Nauglamir and the ambush at Sarn Athrad on the Old Dwarf Road, since Erebor and the Iron Hills were unpopulated by dwarves at this time Moria/Nogrod/Khazad-dum would be the closest location--and possibly even a precurser to the ambush of Isildur at the Gladden Fields.

Many other points were made in other posts, but these two quoted seemed to be able to allow the very brief summary above.