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PotbellyHairyfoot
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Post Quenta Silmarillion 3 (QS3) Of the Coming of the Elves and the Captivity of Melkor- questions
on: March 30, 2016 01:56
1) Suppose that you are Orome and you've bee tasked with choosing ambassadors to take with you to Valinor to learn enough to convince the rest to trust the Valar and to be willing to leave Cuivienen. What criteria would you look for in the Elves you choose?

2) So much time passed before the coming of the Firstborn that Yavanna put a lot of living things to sleep. What length of time would you estimate to have passed from then until the arrival of the Elves?
How long do you suppose that Melkor, alone of all the Valar, was aware of the Elves and was able to grab his victims?

3) What about the decision made to bring the Elves to Valinor? They were awakened on the lands prepared for them and now thev've decided not to leave them there. Does this indicate a bit of laziness in the Valar? They grabbed Melkor, but left a lot of his minions in place, so rather than go and spend the time needed to clear them out they've come up with an easier solution.


[Edited on 03/31/2016 by PotbellyHairyfoot]
Neenime
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on: April 07, 2016 11:22
My thoughts on the questions raised:

1) a good choice from the Elvish standpoint would be someone with an open mind and the wisdom to consider all options and not be too egotistical or easily swayed. A suitable ambassador from Oromë's viewpoint might be an Elf sufficiently awed by the Valar as to be biddable, but also one with good standing among those that he wished to persuade. Perhaps that's a bit cynical, but then Valar are not necessarily in favour of letting creatures work out their own destinies.

2) the language used in the opening sentence of Chap 3 is "Through long ages........all Middle Earth lay in a twilight under the stars." There is also reference to Yavanna and Oromë being the only ones to go and check the situation and the passage of time as Melkor built his strength. For me, that suggests lengthy time frames of hundreds, if not thousands of years. Nothing moved very swiftly in those early times and for the immortal Valar.

No idea how long Melkor was aware of the Firstborn. Have to think in that a bit.

3) Valar bringing the Elves rather than dealing with the threat . I wonder if it was less an issue of laziness or more an awareness of their limitations against Melkor " The mightiest of those Ainur who came into the World......" Perhaps they did not trust their own strength to unearth and deal with all the threats effectively.
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The Lady Idril
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on: April 08, 2016 12:38
3) I generally hold to the opinion that it was a bad idea for the Valar to bring the elves to Valinor. First of all, Eru must have had a reason for why he wanted the elves in Middle-earth. One of his reasons, I think, would be so that the elves could use their healing powers to heal ME of the hurts inflicted by Melkor. Secondly, there is some truth behind what Fëanor spoke of; how the Valar sort of bottled the elves up selfishly in Valinor. I don't agree by a long shot with everything Fëanor said (it is true the Valar didn't FORCE the elves to come to Valinor) but he does raise some questions in my mind. The third and most compelling reason for me is from a quote in "Of the Beginning of Days" (pg. 41 in my edition): "...if ever in their [the Ainur's] dealings with Elves and Men the Ainur have endeavor end to force them when they would not be guided, seldom had this turned to good, howsoever good the intent." Perhaps the Ainur had good reasons behind their push to go to Valinor, but in any case, it ended up badly.
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Gandolorin
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on: April 09, 2016 03:34
1) and 2): no idea.

3) Why did the Valar even have to think about bringing the Elves to Valinor? Just clean up Arda sufficiently (like annihilating Angband as thoroughly as they did Utumno when capturing Melkor - which they did NOT!) and, for example, listening to Tulkas? Tulkas was not considered a "genius" in the written legendarium - but if he was utterly right in considering Melkor's "repentance" to be totally false, what does this tell us about Manwë? And why did they retreat back west and create Valinor (a very defensive location) at all? To put it as I have before, why were they such WIMPS?
(Guess: This is very early stuff that JRRT never got reconciled with later writings of his, leaving CRT with inconsistent sources.)

[Edited on 04/09/2016 by Gandolorin]
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Evil~Shieldmaiden
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on: April 10, 2016 09:06
I will attempt to answer #2)
You've raised a hairy question with this one. LOL Now you get into Valian Years (VY) (including the Years of the Trees) vs Sun Years (SY). The final calculation that seems to have been adopted is 9.582 SY for each VY, although Tolkien kept mucking about with this number.

According to the Timeline of Arda (Wikipedia - The Ring of Morgoth, HOME provides a substantially more detailed timeline.):

3400 VY - Tulkas weds Nessa and, while he sleeps after the wedding feast, Melkor comes down to Arda.

3450 VY - Melkor destroys the Two Lamps, ending the Spring of Arda which began in 1900 VY. Darkness covers Arda (except for the light provided by the stars Varda has placed in the heavens), and the Sleep of Yavanna begins.

4550 VY - the Elves awaken (10, 827 SY after Melkor enters Arda [1100 VY x 9.582 = 10, 827 SY]

4580 VY, or 295.6 SY - Melkor, or more likely one of his creations, discovers the Elves [30 VY x 9.592 = 295.6] and presumably he begins kidnapping them and altering them to suit his purposes.

4601 VY or 206.9 SY - Oromë discovers the Elves and the Valar summon them to Aman and the three ambassadors are chosen. The actual migration began in 4604 VY.

Melkor would have had over 200 SY in which to capture and corrupt Elves before the Valar really became aware of them and decided to move them to the safety of Aman.

Reading the dating can make your head spin so, if anyone has a better numbers for the time periods involved, go for it.
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Neenime
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on: April 12, 2016 09:53
ES- fascinating. Where did you get the figures for VY and SY? Was it from HOME?

I poked about in the Encyclopedia of Arda but their chronicle only starts with the First Age ( I.e. of the kingdoms of Elves and Men in Beleriand.) This links to a page that addresses the lack of detailed info about the First Age.
“Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check. But that is not what I have found. I have found that it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love. " Gandalf
Evil~Shieldmaiden
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on: April 14, 2016 01:00
Wikipedia provides a lovely Timeline of Arda.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Arda

The figures for the Valian Year come from a variety of sources, including Morgoth's Ring, but the best explanation (for me) can be found at The Tolkien Wiki Community site:

http://www.thetolkienwiki.org/wiki.cgi?Valian_Year
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Elthir
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on: April 14, 2016 05:31
To make matters more complicated, if I'm not mistaken the later idea, and thus the latest that we know of, is that 1 Valian Year equals 144 Sun Years. The Valian Year became a unit of perception of the passage of time in Arda, "derived from the capacity of the Valar to perceive at such intervals the process of the ageing of Arda from its beginning to end." Myths Transformed, text XI, note 2.

Compare to the Eldarin yen (long e) referenced in Appendix D of The Return of the King, where the Elvish year (long year) equaled 144 years. Perhaps confusing is the suggestion by Christopher Tolkien regarding a statement in the text Aman:

"we may... use the Valian unit": in other words, presumably, the old structure of dates in the chronicle of Aman may be retained, although the meaning of these dates in terms of Middle-earth will be radically different."

Christopher Tolkien, commentary, Aman, Aman And Mortal Men, note 4, Morgoth's Ring


In other other words, as I read this: retain the dates but plug in the new number, 144.

But if so [noting "presumably"], while this might work to add much more time to the very early days, when we get to the rebellion of the Noldor and so on, it doesn't seem to work that well in my opinion. Then we arguably have too much time between certain events!

The reason most websites go with the earlier, smaller number is probably because AAm (Annals of Aman) and GA (Grey Annals) were originally written with a smaller number in mind, and it seems a bit uncertain or questionable whether or not JRRT really meant readers to retain these dates with the new number.

Christopher Tolkien drew from both AAm and GA for his constructed Silmarillion, as he believed these traditions were merging in style with Quenta Silmarillion. Obviously he steered clear of the dated structure, and the matter of Sun Years versus Valian Years in any great detail. I think JRRT was going to replace AAm and GA with a Tale of Years, to go with the Tale of Years in Appendix B.

As unhelpful as all this post is, admittedly

I guess this brings up the matter of dipping into the Silmarillion as it really stood (HME and so forth), rather than the constructed version, and if so, some questions could have very different answers. But dipping into these dates and the lengths of time they (might) represent is dipping into HME in some measure in any case...

... not that that's good or bad... I'm just sayin

[Edited on 04/14/2016 by Elthir]
Evil~Shieldmaiden
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on: April 14, 2016 09:59
My understanding is that the original Valian Year was a 10:1 ratio. And that while Tolkien did talk about a 144:1 ratio toward the end of his life, he abandoned the idea as he was unable to make it work with his own timeline.

Who knows how many other permutations of the figures he considered over the years?

I suspect his lack of absolute committment to any specific formula was why he avoided mentioning specific dates for the most part.

The formula of 9.582:1 is the formula generally used by scholars today to estimate periods of time.
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Elthir
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on: April 14, 2016 10:44
I don't recall any compelling evidence that Tolkien necessarily abandoned the 144 ratio. As most websites do, I would probably use 9.58 too (with a footnote about 144), because that's what Tolkien at least had in mind when he wrote AAm and GA in the early 1950s.

Makes sense, and it's convenient; but that doesn't mean JRRT cast aside the 144 notion (not that you said it did). The idea shows itself in the later 1950s for example... although granted, "toward the end of" Tolkien's life may mean different things to different people.

I have only heard other folks claim that 144 doesn't work, or work that well, not Tolkien... but of course, if Tolkien himself found things problematic, he wouldn't be forced to use the older timeline for the new conception.

[Edited on 04/15/2016 by Elthir]
Gandolorin
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on: April 15, 2016 05:28
There is this one point in AAm in "Morgoth's Ring", the first part (going to VY 3500), endnote 17 regarding §10, which leads me to a "yes, but ..." reaction: "It has been computed by the Masters of Lore ..." Here then follows the calculation to convert Years of the Two Trees (YT) to Years of the Sun (YS), yielding 9.58 YS for each YT (of which latter there were 1500 before the first rising of the sun).

But the switch from VY to YT occurs in VY 3500 above. The Elves had first-hand experience of the YT, but none of the VY. So who says that 1 VY = 1 YT??? 1 YT certainly did not equal 1 YS. So the assumption that VY and YT are identical is an entirely hypothetical one.

And, to nag further, both the YS and the YT had a sort of clock by which to measure them. What was the clock for the Valar up to VY 3500? Just considering how they got other, more momentous things wrong, how reliable can we consider their "timekeeping" up to VY 3500, when the Two Trees were born?
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Elthir
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on: April 17, 2016 01:44
Well, although possible, to my mind (concerning this matter), such questioning gets us to: maybe the Valar made a mistake here... and maybe not...

... that said, section 5 and 6 of Of the Beginning of Time and its Reckoning (but see below as to the seeming fate of this section) does allow for a measure of uncertainty, and indeed specific information is said to hail from the Loremasters.

That said too (though again note the seeming fate of sections 5 through 10 below), if this had been what JRRT himself published, what more can the Reader do but trust the work of the Loremasters here, besides asterisk any references to uncertainty. It's not that surprising to me that Tolkien essentially "asterisked" such a thing within the text, as I would guess the thought "how did they know" likely occurred to him here.

144

To look further at the larger number: as I see things, the revised characterization of Quenta Silmarillion makes it a largely Mannish account, which suggests that the idea of Men awaking with the first rising of the Sun was a Numenorean myth, blended with Elvish legends of the Two Trees.

In this conception the Sun existed before the Elves awoke (see The Awakening of the Quendi, or possibly even the revised account of the burning of the ships at Losgar in The Shibboleth of Feanor as well). And again, it is said in Appendix D that the Eldar reckoned in long periods, and the Quenya word yén, often translated "year", really means 144 of our years. The yén contained 52,596 days, but "in Middle-earth the Eldar also observed a short period or solar year, called a coranar or "sun-round" (Appendix D)

So during their time under the Sun, the Eldar observed time in two ways. Where did their 144 come from? In Aman, as I quoted above, we see where 144 arose from the perspective of the Valar, and the account further notes:

"It was, however, the fact that the Elvish speed of "growth" accorded with the unit of Valian time* (...)

*Not by the design of the Valar, though doubtless not by chance. That is, it may be that Eru in designing the natures of Elves and Men and their relations to one another and to the Valar ordained that the "growth" of the Elves should accord with the Valian perception of the progress or ageing of Arda, so that the Elves should be able to cohabit with the Valar and the Maiar. (...)"


Once more, not given with concrete certainty, but the reader has little reason to do more than note the internal measure of uncertainty, and yet consider the information "as true as can be known".

Compare to the early idea (early 1950s), where it's supposed that: "the Valar so devised the hours of the Trees that one hundred of such years so measured should be in duration as one age of the Valar (as those ages were in the days of their labors before the foundation of Valinor. Nonetheless this is not certainly known." [and see note 7 and 8 with respect to the readings in The Tale of Years as well]

So the later idea looks at the "fact" of Elvish growth according with Valian time, suggesting that this seems hardly by chance, thus pointing to the design of Eru to possibly explain things. The footnote ultimately notes that it was probably only during the sojourn of Orome that the Valar discovered this.


So while the internet largely seems to ignore "Myths Transformed" as too troublesome, I myself am convinced that whatever the details were going to be, JRRT had at least decided that Quenta Silmarillion was a largely Mannish account. And strange as it may seem, in my opinion the suggestion appears to be that the Elves of the West possessed "more accurate" views -- than Men, or certain Middle-earthian Elves, like the Silvan Elves for example -- of things like the sun, and original shape of the earth (in The Drowning of Anadune the West-elves teach the Numenoreans that the world is round before Numenor's fall).

If so the arguably more accurate tale is that the Sun existed before the Elves awoke, and that the world was always round, but as we see, the Elves are given a reason to count in yéni (144 solar years), and possibly even before the Trees were made (and hidden under the Dome of Varda in this conception)... and by "coincidence"...

... this matches the Valian Year. Why wouldn't then, the Valar create the Trees to match this coincidence?

In my opinion Tolkien would "need" to look at any dates in the older scenario in which "things happen"... cough... to make sure a switch to 144 made enough sense. For instance, a notable section could be the rebellion and journey of the Noldor to Middle-earth, which could in the new conception arguably occur within one Valian Year.

For example, in the account as it stood, in VY 1495 the Trees were slain and in 1497 the Noldor landed in Middle-earth and burnt the ships. But by merely switching numbers, even 1495 to 1496 would no longer be "only" 9.58 years of actual time, but 144 sun years of time!

Did it really take that long for these things to occur, or did the old dating await "some" measure of revision?

AAm again

It's interesting that Tolkien was already thinking of the new transmission according to a variant AAm typescript. This includes a preamble explaining that Rumil made the Annals in the Elder Days, which were held in memory by the Exiles, and "Those parts which we learned and remembered were thus set down in Numenor before the Shadow fell on it."

And not only did this text not include the section Of the Beginning of Time and its Reckoning, this section was struck through on the top copy of the typescript (amanuensis) dating to at least the later 1950s...

... so with respect to AAm, this means sections 5 through 10 were either not included in a variant text, or struck out by Tolkien on at least one later copy containing them.

[Edited on 04/17/2016 by Elthir]
Elfeawen Lomiondil
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on: April 27, 2016 05:11
1. What kind of Elf would Orome choose? First off, he would choose among the Elves that were attracted to the light of Aman that shone from his face. Then I think he would look for those who were emerging as natural leaders among their people, leaders who would have the respect and trust of their people. The best ambassadors would be intelligent, pure hearted, and open minded so they could recognize the light for what it was and distinguish between the truth of the Valar and the deceits of the enemy they feared. They should also be wise enough to have the humility to admit that there was much they did not know so they would be open to learning from the Valar.

2. Were the Valar wrong to move the Elves to Aman? Tolkien drops a number of hints that it led to trouble, but I don’t think he ever says outright that they should not have. Perhaps someone else knows what he thought better than me? I can see the trouble he is talking about, but I can also see many good things that happened because of it. Interestingly, Mandos seemed to think it was fated.

I can also understand why the Valar wanted the Elves to move in. Eru intended Arda to be the home of the Elves, but at this point, Aman was still a part of Middle Earth, a particularly lovely and fruitful part of Middle Earth, but of Arda nonetheless. So it wasn’t like the Valar were defying Eru. I said before that the Valar made Aman an ark/seed bank where they preserved precious and fair things that they would not perish from the earth, and that they may return to the wider world when it was made safe. The Valar, who had given up their place among the Ainur in large part because of their love for the Children of Eru, could not bear the hideous things Morgoth did to the Elves, and wanted to protect them. As enamoured as they were of the mysterious Children, they also desired their company and wished to share their knowledge, to enrich their lives, and surround the Elves with the fair things they felt they deserved. This desire helped overcome the doubts some Valar felt about concentating the Elves in Aman. Perhaps it was a little selfish, but it was done with good intentions. Perhaps the Valar should have moved in with the Elves instead?


3. Why didn’t the Valar do something about Morgoth instead? If they had taken out Morgoth as soon as he became a problem, the Elves would not have been in danger of being corrupted by him. The answer may be that they could not have done so. I think the power of the Valar may often be overestimated. They could not defeat Morgoth outright in the early battles, and they totally failed to prevent him from destroying the Lamps. It says in several places that they needed to rest and renew their strength after that defeat, before they could hope to have a chance at overthrowing Morgoth.

It is also important that the Valar feared war would cause more damage to Arda and maybe wipe out the Elves. I think this may be their most important reason for not unleashing the full extent of their powers throughout the Silmarillion, although the book does not emphasize it. Look at how much destruction ocurred when the Valar overthrew Utumno. Although the Elves were far from the battle where the North was made desolate and the coastline was changed, the earth still shook beneath them and they could see the glow of deadly fires. Not to spoil, but the risk of harming Arda will continue to restrain the Valar.

When the Valar realized that the Elves were awakened and that Morgoth was doing foul things to them, they captured and bound him. It was far from easy.

Why didn’t the Valar root out Morgoth’s evil corruptions so that the world would be safe for the Elves?

Things tend to look simpler in hindsight, and I’m certain finding and destroying every last demon, warg, and orc is a lot easier said than done. While the Valar were doing this, more Elves would fall prey to the evil creatures. Have you ever wondered why people didn’t “do something” about Burmese pythons or some other pernicious invasive species before they became too numerous to deal with? The Valar may not even have realized how many of Morgoth’s followers survived his defeat in the North. Like their master, Morgoth’s followers have a tendency to patiently lay low until their enemies relax their guard. The book says that there were some things hidden even from the eyes of Manwe.

In conclusion, the world was dangerous for the Elves. The Elves may have been able to deal with it better than the Valar gave them credit for, but given their nature, they couldn’t bear to see harm come to the long awaited Children of Iluvatar.
"There shall be war between the Children of Iluvatar and the Ainu Melko. What if we perish in our quest? The dark halls of Vê be little worse than this bright prison" ~ Fëanor
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