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07-05-2006, 05:00 PM | #61 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Lady of the Ulairi
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As for "further in time, it is so, but the nazgul saw this particular hobbit for the first time in their lives. They couldn't know how strong he could prove to be. They didn't expect resistance at all, when they advanced, then the hobbit puts on the Ring - still an object of terror to the Nazgul, now or several months further (what is the difference?) , draws the anti-nazgul blade the likes of which has not been seen for 1500 years and that the Barrow-wights guarded. Sure the nazgul were dismayed swiftly coming from under-estimation of Frodo to over-estimation of him. Quote:
And how on earth is Goldberry relevant here? Quote:
The shattering of the blades at the first "piercing" of the skin, assures a certain immunity, does it not? The nazgul get a superficial wound, then the blade perishes. Quote:
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As for the Mouth being "foolish", it was not a smart thing to allow Gandalf to take the sword from him unhindered. The only explanation for this utter foolishness was that he didn't know what an unique thing it was. Quote:
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The Dwarves also used runes of Power Quote:
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So before one deciphers the runes and understands the nature of the spell, there is no way one could know WHAT spell it was. It could have been anything... But when there were NO RUNES to read on the Barrow-blades, or maybe only invisible runes, that one can see only in the Spirit World, how could the spell be understood? Workmanship was Arnorian, that was ALL that an EXPERT such as Aragorn or Denethor or the Mouth could see! Quote:
I can prove that he mistakenly thought it to be a general "anti-Mordor" spell. Quote:
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I say I am sure that Mouth was unable to recognize the blades unless Sauron or a nazgul told him. As for Sauron, I said "probably". He had too much on his mind to peer at all the blades captured by his orcs. Quote:
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Well, I happily announce that now I have found proof for my hypothesis. I was looking for proof since I posted my theory and I found it finally in a book that I don't have and that I didn't ever read: "Hammond and Scull, LOTR Readers Companion" About a month ago, in another thread Roccondil, one of the best Tolkien scholars I know, has pointed to me the existence of this rather recently published book containing TOLKIEN'S OWN, previously unpublished NOTES. I have tracked Roccondil on other forums and I have found the proof for my (and Alcuin's - because Alcuin was the first to consider the Wight's problem) theory in this thread on theonering.net: http://forums.theonering.com/viewtop...er=asc&start=0 Tolkien has considered the Weathertop situation and made such comments: Quote:
On the Minas Tirith forum my "opponent" has deleted the whole thread once he saw this post. All my posts and Alcuin's are now gone. Some cowards just hate to be proven wrong. Here I hope it will only provide us with more things to discuss. |
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07-05-2006, 05:28 PM | #62 |
Elven Warrior
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I don’t think that there is really anything left to discuss. That quote is almost completely true to your theory, point by point. The only thing I see lacking is the Witch King’s assumption that Frodo got his (apparent) strength from the Ring, but even that could be (probably, should be) implied. Congratulations Gordis.
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07-05-2006, 05:58 PM | #63 | |
I'm Eru, and lord of Arda.
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Hellow all. comparitivly late to join in the discussion, but have been keeping up with it. anyways, i wish to present you with a quote that no-one seems to have noticed. frodo has been captured by the wights, and is about to defeat it.
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07-05-2006, 06:04 PM | #64 | |
Elf Lord
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best BB |
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07-06-2006, 04:05 AM | #65 | |||||||||||||
Elven Warrior
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07-06-2006, 05:32 AM | #66 |
I'm Eru, and lord of Arda.
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er, hello, anyone going to look at my post.
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07-06-2006, 06:28 PM | #67 | |||||||||||
Lady of the Ulairi
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No there is still a lot to discuss, I think. We don't have the answer whether the nazgul knew about Tom. We don't know whether they knew about the Wight destruction before Weathertop - though it seems not, after all. The quote doesn't say whether Aragorn, Gandalf etc. recognized the swords. And there is an additional element, not really discussed before: the nazgul believed that Frodo was somehow associated with High Elves. And another matter: the nazgul here seem so very HUMAN in mind, not some zombie-like creatures implied by UT quotes "had no will of their own", "utterly subservient" etc. They had their own good and bad moments, their own fears and doubts, different from Sauron's. Also, the quote says that the only thing that made the Witch-King act was his fear of Sauron. NOT the desire to get the Ring for his master. Whatever the UT may say, they were motivated in exactly the same way as all the servants of Mordor. Also, we learned the reason why the nazgul didn't attack again - not that they were busy preparing spells to shatter the sword, but they were simply too dismayed. The WK went away from the others (isn't it very human not to wish your underlings to see your bad moments?), while the others were more bothered with what happened with their Captain, that with the hobbits. That is how the company of the ringbearer slipped away on the early morning of 7. Also, from the quote in Reader's Companion, it seems very probable that the spells on the sword were NOT against all the nazgul, but against the WK alone. Have you also got this impression? Quote:
To me the new quote is another proof that they DIDN't and COULDN'T command him before he got stabbed by the Morgul blade.. Quote:
You miss my point entirely. How could the nazgul at Weathertop know how great Frodo was at that moment? They saw the guy for the first time! I am not saying that he COULD at this point command the nazgul, as he would be able later, but that the nazgul THOUGHT that he could. Quote:
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For instance, Gandalf visiting Tom after the War could have asked him "By the way, old chap, what were these handy little swords you gave to the hobbits? One proved really useful!" And Tom told him the story about "him who made the sword long ago when Dunedain were young.. and "no other sword..." thing and so the story got into the chronicles, and from there into the Red Book. Think on it. No character in ALL the story has told the hobbits: "keep your blades at hand, these are the only things really handy against a nazgul!" Why? No one told it to Sam, for instance - he left his sword at the "dead" Frodo's side for the orcs to take and took Sting instead, because he believed Sting was a better sword! Imagine that the confrontation with the nazgul at Sammath Naur, so many times sketched by Tolkien, DID indeed happen. Dearly would he have paid for that choice! To me it is PROOF that NO ONE in the Fellowship knew the truth about the swords before Path Galen, and therefore practically surely before the Pelennor. Quote:
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We differed later, you said they underestimated him during the attack, I said that the sight of Frodo's sword and his puttimng on the Ring made them pause and come from under-estimation to overestimation. Quote:
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I think it is more than likely that Frodo picked one of the Barrow-Downs TM swords, enspelled against the WK and used it on a Wight. Tolkien in his earlier drafts in HOME VI believed that Wights were akin to the nazgul, but later dropped the idea. As it stands now (as far as I remember from numerous threads on the matter) the Wights are thought to be Housless Spirits inhabiting dead bodies in the Barrow. But it seems the Wights had similar to the nazgul's protection spell on them, that made the sword shatter. Anyway, it is canon, that it was the WK who sent them to Tyrn Gorthad. So being his creatures, they may have been vulnerable to the blades enspelled against him. But may be not so vulnerable as the Witch-King himself (if the spell was indeed very specific)? The wight lost its arm, but still snarled and may have recovered, had not Bombadil intervened. So, Jammi, it is a very good observation. The more the wights were similar to the nazgul, the more the news of the Wight's destruction should have been ominous to them. Last edited by Gordis : 07-06-2006 at 06:32 PM. |
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07-06-2006, 06:39 PM | #68 |
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Thanks Gordis. i'm surprised that no-one picked this quote up earlier.
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07-06-2006, 06:39 PM | #69 |
Elf Lord
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chickening out of the question huh Gor??
.............. seriously though, i wish you guys would write slightly less sometimes .. it is frankly impossible for me, with what time i have, to actually follow it, and it seems like a good one this... can someone give me a concise summary of where we are at ? |
07-06-2006, 06:55 PM | #70 |
I'm Eru, and lord of Arda.
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very good point butterbeer.
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07-07-2006, 03:48 PM | #71 | |
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That is so funny I can't even read the rest of the thread now!
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! Ñá ë?* óú éä ïöü Öñ É Þ ð ß ® ç å ™ æ ♪ ?* "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
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07-07-2006, 03:49 PM | #72 | |||||||||
Elven Warrior
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07-07-2006, 05:29 PM | #73 | |||||||
Salt Miner
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The Nazgûl had no “will” of their own in matters concerning their instructions from Sauron. To the best of their abilities, they would carry out not only the letter of his instructions, but the malign spirit of them, too. That they could still make mistakes in these matters is demonstrated by the incident in “The Hunt for the Ring” in which the Nine wander about the Vales of Anduin, hunting fruitlessly for “Shire”, when it was on the other side of the Misty Mountains. As an aside here, I believe that Christopher Tolkien has wondered in print why the Witch-king would have been unfamiliar with “Shire” and its locale. I think the answer is fairly straightforward. “Shire” was in fact the old royal demesne of the Kings of Arnor, given over to the halflings after it had become depopulated of Dúnedain with stipulations the hobbits continued to follow for 1400 years, 1000 of which were without a sitting king in Fornost. Had the Nazgûl left with instructions to find the old royal demesne, they would have headed straight for it: the Witch-king knew where that was. But “Shire” was a new one: he simply did not recognize the name, nor did he understand the association between the two. Such transpositions and changes in the names of regions are common over history: how old were you when you learned that Portugal is part of the ancient Kingdom of the Visigoths? (Maybe just now…?) If you were a Roman transported into the 21st century, and someone said, “Oh, we’re going to Colchester, you know where that is!” even when you arrived, would you recognize it as the old provincial capital city, Camulodenum? Quote:
-|- Recognition that the barrow-blades were the “work of Westernesse, wound about with spells for the bane of Mordor,” as Aragorn put it, does not seem to have been secret. Aragorn knew it, the orcs of Isengard knew it, the Nazgûl certainly knew it, and the Mouth of Sauron knew it. What none of them other than the Nazgûl and Bombadil seem to have recognized was that they were designed to do grievous harm to the Ringwraiths. Had Sauron closely inspected Sam’s barrow-blade himself, he might have realized this; but the way events fell out, the implication is that he did not: in his impatience, he seems to have focused entirely upon the assault on the Morannon by Aragorn, taking the bait that Aragorn and Gandalf dangled before him: the façade that they had the Ruling Ring and were challenging Sauron for supremacy, just as Ar-Pharazôn had at the end of the Second Age. Sauron seems to have grasped Mark Twain’s observation that, “History never repeats itself, but it rhymes.” Fortunately for the Good Guys, he was humming the wrong tune. (And yes, that is a reference to the Ainulindalë.) It was a masterful deception, and Sauron was taken in completely, as Gandalf hoped he would be. Last edited by Alcuin : 07-07-2006 at 05:37 PM. |
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07-07-2006, 05:47 PM | #74 |
I'm Eru, and lord of Arda.
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This has been discussed on another thread about wether the nazgul had any free will of their own here. in my personal opinion, i believe Sauron had to be focusing on them to be able to control them. so when they were serching for the Ring aroung Anduin, he was throrughly serching there because that's where he know it last was. once he realized it wasn't there, and gollum said 'shire' and 'baggins', he let the nazgul have their free will back because a) he had other things to focus on, and b) they're his most loyal servents, and so should be able to find it quickly and efficiantly. of course, once they got their will back, they also recovered their former fears etc. i think this is the best senario with the evidence we've got, both from UT and letters, as well as lotr itself. what do you guys think.
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07-07-2006, 07:00 PM | #75 | ||
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Since Aragorn, Gandalf, and even Elrond failed to recognize completely the significance of the blades, I think we can speculate that they were manufactured only in Cardolan. Had they been devised by the smiths of Arthedain, or had they been used in both daughter kingdoms of Arnor, then Elrond would likely have known all about them; but the wars with Angmar under the Witch-king’s leadership broke out in the 14th century of the Third Age (that would be during the 1300s, not the 1400s), and Cardolan fell early in the 15th century. Frodo and his companions were trapped by a barrow in the tomb of the last Prince of Cardolan, who died in III 1409. Tom knew him as well as his family, it would seem, and it seems he was aware of the knives’ powers and purposes. There do seem to have been quite a few of them in the tomb: each of the hobbits received one from Tom that he selected, and it may be that the blade that splintered when Frodo struck the barrow-wight was a fifth blade of that kind. The Dúnedain seem to have buried their dead kings much as the Egyptians had (and also the heathen Anglo-Saxon and Norse, as well as many other peoples throughout history), with rich treasures. That the survivors of devastated Cardolan would bury the last royal heir of their little kingdom with the best treasures they could afford would not be surprising: after he died, they all again became subjects of the king at Fornost, and Cardolan ceased to exist as a separate kingdom. We should consider two points. First, why would these blades appear in Cardolan and not in Arthedain, the senior and greater kingdom? Second, how would Bombadil know the purpose and powers of the blades when even Elrond seems to have been unaware of them? Again, we are speculating, but an answer the first question might be this. Cardolan was likely by far more heavily traveled by visitors than Arthedain, whose capital at Fornost was well north of the main trade routes. Cardolan sat astride the Greenway and along the Great East Road (a very ancient route: it was probably the same as the old Dwarf Road whose western end led past Nogrod in the Blue Mountains to Doriath). Tharbad, at one time both a great inland port and the site of the bridge across the Greyflood maintained jointly by both Arnor and Gondor, was on Cardolan’s border and thus its concern as long as Cardolan was independent. Bree was part of Cardolan, too: it was one of the primary junctions of the northern trading system. This might mean that the Dúnedain of Cardolan were able to obtain knowledge from Arthedain, which was once again an ally after the wars with Angmar began; from Rivendell and Lindon; and from the other great Dúnedain kingdom, Gondor. We might suppose that scholars would have traveled south from time to time to study the ancient documents stored in Osgiliath, Minas Tirith, and Minas Ithil, all of which still stood. What was lost in the ruin of Osgiliath and the capture of Minas Ithil can only be imagined, but it must have been similar to the information lost when Fornost fell. The Dúnedain of the late Third Age were a mere shadow of themselves at the end of the first millennium. The Elves and Dúnedain probably realized fairly quickly what the Witch-king of Angmar was: a Nazgûl. It is no great stretch to imagine that some genius of Cardolan, which was likely a wealthy and prosperous kingdom due to its location, started hunting about for a means of fighting this scourge, particularly if the Witch-king was already using Morgul-knives: after all, if the process of turning someone into a wraith using an enchanted blade worked, why could not the process be reversed, and a wraith be made vulnerable to the weapons of the physical world? It is also possible that these blades were copies of weapons made in the Second Age, when the Nazgûl were first encountered by the Númenóreans, or based in part upon knowledge still intact from those days. Cardolan was most centrally located for such an effort, and if the junior kingdom was under greater threat and stress than anyplace else in Eriador (Rhudaur had already fallen to Angmar’s control), the learnéd Dúnedain of Cardolan had by far the greatest motivation to discover some means of combating their undead foe. If you can swallow all this speculation, the second question becomes much easier. I have suggested that the folk of Cardolan went all over the West to find a solution to the problem of making the Nazgûl vulnerable to their weapons. This might have been the life-long pursuit of several learnéd men, and possibly with royal support. Bombadil was their neighbor, and they actually claimed to rule the territory that he also claimed: the Old Forest and the Barrow-downs. As long as they adopted a live-and-let-live attitude to Tom Bombadil, and they were not evil, as seems likely, they would have had some interaction with him: after all, Bombadil maintained contacts in the Shire: with Farmer Maggot for instance; and Aragorn knew him, too, indicating that he had had some conversations with Bombadil in his lifetime. It might even be that Bombadil had been consulted in the matter of overcoming the necromantic defenses of the Nazgûl: if he had, that would explain his extraordinary interest in the Black Riders when Frodo was telling about his adventures on the way to meeting Tom at Old Man Willow. And if Old Man Willow was one of the “things of evil spirit, hostile to Elves and Men, … on the watch in the Old Forest” stirred up by the Witch-king during the hunt for the Ring (Unfinished Tales, “The Hunt for the Ring”), then that would be an added impetus for Bombadil to think about how Frodo might best deal with the Nazgûl, whom he was likely to encounter again. Had someone consulted with him 700 years earlier, he would be unlikely to forget; but even if had never been consulted, were the barrow-blades of Cardolan’s exclusive manufacture, and the folk of Cardolan in contact with Tom the way Farmer Maggot was in Frodo’s day, he might be the only living creature other than the Nazgûl themselves who remembered it. Now, as a parting thought, consider this: whether any of this speculation about where the barrow-blades was constructed is correct or not, it is quite possible that the Witch-king was unaware of the disposition of the knives custom-designed to destroy him and his eight necromantic fellows despite the fact that the wight had them in the tomb. The wight might or might not have been aware of it; and even if he were, there is no way to know that the Witch-king made the rounds to check on his undead minions once he had sent them to haunt the barrows. Quote:
Last edited by Alcuin : 07-07-2006 at 07:19 PM. |
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07-07-2006, 07:13 PM | #76 | |
I'm Eru, and lord of Arda.
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07-07-2006, 08:27 PM | #77 | ||||||||||
Elven Warrior
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Alcuin, I like your theory concerning the origins of the barrow-blades. Seems very reasonable. But I have to question this part: Quote:
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07-08-2006, 12:58 AM | #78 | ||||
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As for the Witch-king’s sending the wights to the barrows specifically to guard the swords, I do not think that was his primary purpose, although perhaps it was a consideration. The Kingdom of Cardolan ceased to be an independent, junior monarchy in III 1409. Its last prince died in the war that year, and Amon Sûl was also destroyed in that war, and its palantir removed to Fornost. During the war, Appendix A of Return of the King tells us, Quote:
But the clear text says that they “held out in Tyrn Gorthad (the Barrowdowns)” during the war of 1409: they were hiding out in and amongst the tombs themselves. Fornost had been overrun by the forces of Angmar, and Araphor, who became king of Arthedain when his father Arveleg was killed fighting at Weathertop, was able to defeat Angmar only with help from C*rdan in Lindon. The implication is that the enemy was not cleared from Cardolan until after Fornost had been secured: in other words, the Dúnedain engaged in the kind of guerilla warfare against Angmar that their distant Edain ancestors had waged against the forces of Angband toward the end of the First Age. Bombadil was in the Forest and among the barrows, as well; but whether he made himself known is not clear. Put yourself for a moment in the Witch-king’s position at the conclusion of the war of 1409. Amon Sûl, which posed a serious impediment to the domination of eastern Eriador, is destroyed. You can’t use it, but neither can your enemies. The palantir has eluded you, but you get another shot at it later, as well as at the palantir of Annúminas: both are now in Fornost. You have entered your enemy’s capital, killed or enslaved the inhabitants who did not escape, looted the city of whatever treasures and information (another kind of treasure) left behind, and possibly burned it as well when you were forced to leave. But you were unable to secure the southern border of Cardolan and complete an envelopment of the Dúnedain because you were unable to clear them from the barrows and the Forest. The Forest, for some reason, you cannot overrun; but the barrows, which are stone (or wood) tombs dug into the earth, represent a large number of localized fortifications that your opponents have used to deny you control of the Barrowdowns. The use of these barrows must be denied to them if you are to conquer Arthedain; otherwise, the Dúnedain will be able to bring up reinforcements from Lindon through Cardolan, or perhaps by landing them at Tharbad or marching overland from Gondor or Lórien or maybe even from Khazad-dûm. How do you stop the Dúnedain from using the barrows as cover and make-shift fortifications? Why, you infest them with wights, of course! And after Cardolan’s population was nearly annihilated through the ravages of the Great Plague in III 1636, and they are unable to resist or repel the invasion of the tombs by the wights, you seize complete control of the formerly productive and defensible Barrowdowns, which now become your defensible positions and all but unassailable unless the Dúnedain really expend a lot of resources to dislodge and destroy the wights. By now, fellow ’Mooters, you’ve either decided I’ve wasted a lot of your time and posting-space, or you understand where I’m headed with this: the wights are not in place to prevent the Dúnedain from retrieving the enchanted knives they have constructed to fight the Nazgûl, although that might have been a consideration, assuming that the Morgul-lord knew where these weapons were disposed. The barrows were infested with wights in order to prevent the Dúnedain from using them to fortify and secure what had once been central Arnor. In fact, what had been a series of Dúnedain strongholds now becomes a series of Morgul strongholds. Moreover, the barrows were exceedingly ancient. The Edain had buried their lords in the oldest of the barrows in the First Age before ever they crossed the Ered Luin into Beleriand and met the Eldar. The Barrowdowns were a place of not only immense antiquity, they were revered as the place in which their forefathers lay before they became “the Edain”. The Dúnedain buried their own lords and noblemen in barrows on the downs. They were outstanding scholars, and they still had the resources of the Eldar to help them remember their history; it is likely that, during the Second Age, and certainly during the Third Age, they were able to identify the tombs of some of the ancestors of Bëor the Old, lord of the First House; Marach, lord of the Third House; and possibly even some of the Haladin, the folk of the Second House. This was an important place to the Dúnedain of Arnor. Remember how hard their southern cousins must have worked to build and maintain Rath D*nen and its Houses of the Dead in Minas Tirith; and in Númenor, the Kings and Queens were buried in the Noirinan, the Valley of the Tombs between the southeastern and southwestern spurs of Meneltarma. This is an echo in literature of ancient Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, and like the ancient Egyptians of the real world, like the ancient builders of New Grange in Ireland, and the barrows in sight of Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England, they remained places of special reverence: the place of the ancestors. (Stonehenge itself is not a tomb but a stone circle within a complex of stone row approaches and menhir, or standing stones, outside the circle.) Besides Stonehenge and the barrows of Wiltshire, there are barrows all over the island, especially in Hampshire, Dorset, Somerset, Shropshire, Cornwall, Norfolk, Somerset – you get the picture. There are other stone circles, portal tombs, dolmens (burial chambers), cairns (piles of stone above a tomb) – the remains of a veritable stone-age civilization. Tolkien was aware of them: so were the Dark Age writers that he studied, both in Britain and across Western Europe. These are the archetype of the barrows of the Barrowdowns. The people who lived in the places – whether in Egypt or the long-lost kingdom of Mercia (Tolkien considered himself a descendant of the Mercians: see Letter 55 and especially Letter 95) – value these ancient tombs as the resting places of their forefathers. How the Dúnedain of Arnor must have valued their ancient tombs! It was the one thing that they possessed that preceded even their experience with the Eldar. To lose possession of these tombs, to be denied access to them as a places of refuge, and to find them desecrated by evil wights, must have been very demoralizing to the Dúnedain, especially to the few survivors in Cardolan of the Great Plague. I have rattled on far too long. (Cheers from the sidelines as Alcuin finally stops!) But the infestation of the barrows – and their importance to the Dúnedain as tombs, as refuges, perhaps even for storage of foodstuffs and reserves and weapons for war, and certainly as places of reverence, should not be underestimated. Control of the Barrowdowns was crucial to control of central Arnor, and loss of control of the Barrowdowns has to be one of the contributing factors that led to the ultimate destruction of the state of Arnor. Quote:
Last edited by Alcuin : 07-08-2006 at 01:41 AM. |
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07-08-2006, 04:10 AM | #79 |
I'm Eru, and lord of Arda.
Join Date: May 2006
Location: southampton, hampshire
Posts: 2,609
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bloody hell, you're excelent! why didn't you join earlier! . i just have one question. how could the barrow blades that the hobbits have just be specific to the witch-king, and not to any of the other nazgul?
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07-08-2006, 08:55 AM | #80 | |||
Elven Warrior
Join Date: Feb 2006
Posts: 306
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Excellent post Alcuin.
Quote:
I must admit that I never gave too much thought to the Witch King’s reasons for sending the wights to the barrows. It seemed to require more “strength” than the he should have had (but obviously, that isn’t true), so I looked at it from a story external point of view: Tolkien wanted Frodo to encounter a wight on the way to Rivendell and he needed a reason for the wight to be there. I hate to go back to this now, but... Quote:
Quote:
Since there were no other Nazgul in Angmar, the barrow blades were probably meant for the Witch King alone. Having said that, I would guess that the blades would have been equally effective against the other Nazgul since it is probably easier to make a weapon which is strong against a category of beings rather than against an individual. However, there are other ways to look at the issue, and I couldn’t really get into it without going on and on (and I’m not Alcuin, so it wouldn’t be as informative or interesting). |
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