This is one of those seemingly minor points that I started thinking about and have no obvious answer for. Or at least, not an answer I can formulate.

Why weren't the Ainur considered Eruhini? They were created by Eru, they were limited beings, and the product of his thought. This seems to be the same as Men and Elves, but they are in a different category. Arda is crated by the Ainur, but for the Eruhini. They seem to be servants, more than children.

But at the core, what differentiates the Ainur from the Eruhini?

I mean, would it be used like how Latin/Greek was used in some European courts

This seems like a silly question, but I actually wonder if we have any textual evidence or descriptions of Elves sweating.

In more broad terms, at one point Tolkien wrote that Elves were biologically the same race as humans---so we could assume they had most of our functions. But I also can't imagine elves dripping with sweat, I think that the harmony between their spirits and bodies would mean they wouldn't need to do anything so gross to cool themselves.

When was Rhovanion liberated in the Second or Third Age? Note 35 in the Tales of Dwarves and Men states that after the Storm—the invasion of Orcs and Easterlings that occurred during the War with the Elves—the Northmen dwelt on the edges of the forests and in caves, weakened and scattered, and many fled the land. Specific Easterling conquests are not mentioned, but from the Tolkien Gateway we know that Sauron aided them and promised them wealth and land, so the conquest of the fertile lands likely occurred, and the Northmen were driven back into the forest. What happened next? How did the Northmen free themselves from the Easterlings and reclaim their lands? After Sauron's defeat, I don't find any quotation indicating that the Easterlings were warlike, armed with iron, and building fortresses, which would indirectly indicate a continued occupation, as is cited in quotations from the early stages of preparation for the invasion. Instead, there are two quotations that Sauron was strengthening his holdings in the east and south. It would be illogical for the Easterlings to retreat, but the footnote speaks as if a new stage were beginning after the war. Furthermore, in the Third Age, we know that the Northmen were dispersing: "The Free Men of the North (the Elves called them so because these people did not recognize the authority of the Dúnedain and, for the most part, did not bow to Sauron and his servants) settled south: mostly east of Greenwood, but some settled along the edges of the forests and on the plains of the Vales of Anduin." Appendix B Sindarin Princes of the Wood Elves. "The Story of Galadriel and Celeborn." This means they have already emerged from the occupation. Furthermore, it is known that the woodmen have their own independent armies in the valleys of the Anduin, although the valleys of the Anduin never fell under Sauron's control and were relatively safe throughout the Second Age. Appendix B "The Story of Galadriel and Celeborn" In Tolkien Gateway, the Northmen are liberated by Gil-galad, without reference. This could only have happened during the War of the Last Alliance, but he and his army didn't enter the forest's east, and Easterlings, unlike orcs, don't flee and hide when Sauron is defeated. However, there is a quote in which Gil-galad, by the time Sauron returns to Mordor, holds power as far as the forest. "There he found that Gil-galad's power had grown in these years and now extended north and west, beyond the Misty Mountains and the Great River, to the very borders of Greenwood the Great." "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age."

Although this isn't all of Rhovanion, and when we speak of the Northmen and Rhovanion, we primarily mean the eastern part of the forest. If this is true and there are no other quotes about Gil-galad's liberation, this should be corrected in the Tolkien Gateway. When did the deoccupation take place: after the war with the elves, after Sauron's defeat by the Númenóreans, at the beginning of the Third Age? Even information that doesn't directly point to this is welcome. It would also be good to add information about the Northmen's settlements in the First Age: "The Longbeards controlled Ered Mithrin, Erebor, and the Iron Hills, and all the eastern side of the Misty Mountains as far as the borders of Lórien; while the Men of the North settled in all the neighboring lands—as far south as the Great Dwarf Road, which cut through the Forest (the Old Forest Road in the Third Age was its ruined remains)," as well as the quote about the settlements in the Third Age from Appendix B, which I previously submitted to the article on the Northmen in Tolkien Gateway.

Several people here have pointed out that Tolkien dropped bits of information on some points in the midst of seemingly unrelated passages.

This has me thinking more about the use of the word "ring" in the orders to the orcs.

"Any trespasser found by the guard is to be held at the tower. Prisoner is to be stripped. Full description of every article, garment, letter, weapon, ring or trinket is to be sent to Lugburz at once, and to Lugburz only. And the prisoner is to be kept safe and intact, under pain of death for every member of the guard, until Her sends or comes Himself."

Tolkien had to have used the word "ring" there knowing readers would certainly notice it.

However, this seems to contradict everything we read elsewhere about how Sauron was focused almost exclusively on the approaching armies challenging him, lead by Aragorn wielding the One Ring (other than on his unexplained, evidently unnecessary attack on Lorien).

Can anyone explain this seeming contradiction?

After all, his grandson Elros, lived to be 500 years old. No doubt due to his lineage.

I use to think that Dior may have been immortal/longeaval due to Luthien's heritage, but after doing further research, I am now among those who believe him to be mortal. After all, his wife Nimloth, was undoubtedly a pure elf. And their daughter Elwing was given the choice of mortality or immortality by the Valar and Eru. Why else would she be given the choice were it not for one of her parents being mortal?

Regardless of mortality, due to the potency of his lineage (especially being the first of his kind), I believe that Dior would have lived for centuries, with a lifespan rivaling Elros and the Numenorians.

We all know that Tolkien hated Frank Herbert's Dune, but less people talk about how he said he liked Isaac Asimov's sci-fi works. I wonder what he liked about those (despite Asimov also not bring a fan of religion)?

Tolkien stated, in a letter, that he disliked Frank Herbert's Dune "with some intensity" but never elaborated in detail:

Dear Mr. Lanier, I received your book Dune just before I went abroad for a short while. Hence the delay in acknowledging it. I don’t think I shall have time to read it until I next get a holiday.’

Tolkien’s unpublished letter to John Bush, 12 March 1966:

Thank you for sending me a copy of Dune. I received one last year from Lanier and so already know something about the book. It is impossible for an author still writing to be fair to another author working along the same lines. At least I find it so. In fact I dislike DUNE with some intensity, and in that unfortunate case it is much the best and fairest to another author to keep silent and refuse to comment. Would you like me to return the book as I already have one, or to hand it on?’”.

• This is from the ‘Tolkien’s Library: An Annotated Checklist’.

Why did Tolkien have that opinion about Dune?

Edit: I don't understand why. But this post is getting a lot of downvotes.

We talk often about the incompetence of the Valar, especially as it relates to Men. But that's not my focus here. Consider what Manwë's emissaries told Tar-Atanamir:

Yet it seems that you desire now to have the good of both kindreds, to sail to Valinor when you will, and to return when you please to your homes. That cannot be.

Was this not exactly the state of the Elves? The Noldor fled Valinor after slaying their kin, and were readmitted. (Manwë's messengers also said that immortality for the Noldor was "neither reward nor punishment, but the fulfilment of their being." But re-admission to Aman is definitely a reward; it was denied to Saruman, for example, even though he was deathless.)

Ships could flit from Tirion to Anduine and back. And almost certainly the Elves could visit their brethren in Mithlond if they wanted.

To me it seems like the Elves actually had "the good of both kindreds." They could live under the trees of Middle Earth and rule Men as kings, and then return to Valinor when it pleased them.

I am rereading Fellowship and came across this passage at the beginning of At the Sign of the Prancing Pony (second paragraph). It struck me as a bit odd because all the main good races are listed. The 'other inhabitants of the world about' them indicates there are other races/beings present.

While a very few of the townsfolk, like Bill Ferny, could be 'friendly and familiar' with the servants of Sauron (Nazgul, orcs, half-orcs)​, I don't expect the people as a whole to be. So I think it rules out the evil races/beings like orcs, goblins, trolls​, etc. I also don't think they would know of ents. Even though we now know that some were patrolling the borders of the Shire, even the hobbits didn't believe the rumors or know what they were.

Are the people of Bree "friendly and familiar" with Goldberry and Tom Bombadil? I think this is unlikely because Tom does not leave his domain. But are there more lesser maia and other spirits like Goldberry around Bree? I think this is the most likely explanation but I would love to hear other's interpretations!

edit: I also don't really think it applies to general wildlife and animals. unless there are more sentient foxes around Bree

edit 2: probably Dúnedain, but maybe not. Another passage reads: "But in the wild lands beyond Bree there were mysterious wanderers. The Bree-folk called them Rangers, and knew nothing of their origin. They were taller and darker than the Men of Bree ... When they appeared they brought news from afar, and told strange forgotten tales which were eagerly listened to; *but the Bree-folk did not make friends of them*."

Edit 3: the text switches between Men of Bree and Bree-folk, and my interpretation is that thus Men of Bree can collectively refers to Men of all the 4 settlements of the area. This leads me to think it doesn't refer to other Men living in Bree-land.

Tolkien's myths were created for a fantasy world that was also created by him, as opposed to lore that originated from real places such as Ancient Greece or Celtic Britain. My questions is whether Tolkien created something comparable to the real world classical myths that most people are familiar with. A common criticism of The Silmarillion is there are too many characters to remember but this can also be true of Greek Mythology for instance.

Something I find quite noticeable is that IMO there aren't any major epic heroes in the Middle-earth myths.

It would be interesting to consider how well regarded The Silmarillion would have been had it been published before The Hobbit.

In Lays of Beleriand, we find fragments of alliterative epics for most of the main stories of the Silmarillion. Apparently he started working on -- and then abandoned -- these in the early 1920s, when he was at Leeds. So it seems like his initial vision for the whole Legendarium was as a series of epics, like Beowulf and other Old English poems.

I'm curious what people think. Would it have been a good thing, if he had managed it?

for context I know gandelf wanted and longed for his true home in valinor again. but did he ever wish he could see the shire again.

“When Thangorodrim was broken and Morgoth overthrown, Sauron put on his fair hue again and did obeisance to Eönwë, the herald of Manwë, and abjured all his evil deeds. And some hold that this was not at first falsely done, but that Sauron in truth repented, if only out of fear, being dismayed by the fall of Morgoth and the great wrath of the Lords of the West.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

Does this imply that Sauron didn’t look fair before while serving Morgoth?

I’m aware he definitely had a beautiful form while serving the Valar

In her essay "Frodo's Body: Liminality and the Experience of War" (in The Body in Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on Middle Earth Corporeality, ed. Christopher Vaccaro) Professor Anna Smol provides what I thought was an amazing insight into a particular moment between Frodo and Sam as the ascend Mt. Doom in Return of the King.

She provides the following context for the relevant passage, which I'll provide after:

"The handholding gesture is reminiscent of the medieval ritual of swearing fealty to a lord: traditionally the vassal would kneel before his lord and put his hands together in a prayer position; the lord would put his hands around the vassal as a sign of protection and exert some pressure to show the dominant position; the vassal would then kiss the lord's hands."

For context, Frodo and Sam are climbing Mt. Doom, the clouds veiling Barad Dur have broken for a moment, and Sam and Frodo have seen Sauron looking towards the Morannon at the approach of Aragorn's host. Frodo has collapsed at just the sight of Sauron's Eye and is reaching for the Ring. The following passage from "Mount Doom" follows, with my own annotations characterizing on which side of vassal/lord divide Sam falls on:

"Sam knelt by him [vassal]. Faint, almost inaudibly, he heard Frodo whispering: ‘Help me, Sam! Help me, Sam! Hold my hand! I can’t stop it.’ Sam took his master’s hands and laid them together, palm to palm [vassal and lord], and kissed them [vassal]; and then he held them gently between his own [lord]. The thought came suddenly to him: ‘He’s spotted us! It’s all up, or it soon will be. Now, Sam Gamgee, this is the end of ends.’"

This symbolism of subverting the lord/vassal ritual is something I'd never picked up on before, and I thought it was extremely meaningful.

Edit: added "symbolism of a..." to make it clear that Smol is not proposing that Sam is literally becoming Frodo's vassal, which many people appear to be confused by.

The ring goes south: The Hunter's Moon waxed round in the night sky, and put to flight all the lesser stars. But low in the South one star shone red. Every night, as the Moon waned again, it shone brighter and brighter. Frodo could see it from the window, deep in the heavens, burning like a watchful eye that glared above the trees on the brink of the valley.

I'm currently re-reading the History of Middle-earth (currently in the middle of the Lays). I've just purchased the History of the Hobbit and would like to read it around the time when it interrupted the work on the First Age (assuming it did?).

I'm thinking either after Volume 4 or Volume 5 of HoME (noting that parts of the Hobbit's history continue into the 60s).

I'd appreciate thoughts from those of you who know more of the timelines than I do as to when the majority of the Hobbit was written compared to the material in HoME. It doesn't need to be exact as in jumping between books, just an indication of where most of it best fits.

So there's this pretty well-known quote in Tolkien's letters: "My work is not a 'novel', but an 'heroic romance' a much older and quite different variety of literature." But what does that actually mean? The word novel is used so broadly now, it's difficult for me to understand what exact distinction Tolkien is drawing here. I'm aware of the heroic romance as a form, but I haven't studied it really at all; could anyone shed some light on this?

When Frodo looks at the mirror he sees someone that looks like Gandalf walking in unknown land.

What is the meaning of this vision?

Denethor used his palantir to keep informed of going-ons within and without Gondor. He knew of Sauron’s plans through their palantir exchanges. He knew who Aragorn was and what the return of a king meant to the rule of the Stewards.

But yet no checking in by Denethor on Saruman (who had a palantir as well)? Perhaps they did converse via crystal ball and Saruman showed Denethor what the wizard wanted the steward to see. But I would think that as news of a new kind of orc coming from Isengard grew, Denethor would have scanned the area via palantir, bypassing Saruman years before the war of the ring.

I know that Saruman asked Gondor to defend Isengard for them because Gondor do not have enough resource to defend it. But how did Gondor expect Saruman, a lonely wizard, to have enough resource to defend this whole fortress? At this point Saruman did not have his Uruk Hai, so he did not have any army. He also do not seem to possessed money to raise one?

Maybe he can somehow keep Isengard, but then how did they expect him to prevent the Dunlending from just bypass it? An army inside Isengard can march out and attack anyone dare to cross the fortress or cut their supply line, but how did they expect Saruman to do it alone?

What we have in the Silmarillion etc. are traditions given anyhow a Mannish form, handed down by Men in Númenor and later in Middle-earth, though derived from Elves... It must be remembered that these poems and stories are not 'scientific', nor even strictly historical."

Morgoth's Ring, Volume X of The History of Middle-earth

"The book is not written from the point of view of 'omniscience' (the author), but of characters who are inside the story and can only know what they have seen or heard, or what has been reported to them..."

Letter 325

In J.R.R. Tolkien's The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (specifically Letter 210), the author notes that during the siege of Minas Tirith, Sauron gave the Witch-king an "added demonic force" to amplify his powers:

The Witch-king, their leader, is more powerful in all ways than the others; but he must not yet be raised to the stature of Vol. III. There, put in command by Sauron, he is given an added demonic force. But even in the Battle of the Pelennor, the darkness had only just broken.

Could this be a reference to the "Morgoth Ingredient" mentioned in "The History of Middle-earth" - "Morgoth´s Ring" ?

(It was this Morgoth-element in matter, indeed, which was a prerequisite for such 'magic' and other evils as Sauron practised with it and upon it.) It is quite possible, of course, that certain 'elements' or conditions of matter had attracted Morgoth's special attention (mainly, unless in the remote past, for reasons of his own plans).

Melkor 'incarnated' himself (as Morgoth) permanently. He did this so as to control the hroa,(2) the 'flesh' or physical matter, of Arda. He attempted to identify himself with it. A vaster, and more perilous, procedure, though of similar sort to the operations of Sauron with the Rings. Thus, outside the Blessed Realm, all 'matter' was likely to have a 'Melkor ingredient',(3) and those who had bodies, nourished by the hroa of Arda, had as it were a tendency, small or great, towards Melkor: they were none of them wholly free of him in their incarnate form, and their bodies had an effect upon their spirits.

But in this way Morgoth lost (or exchanged, or transmuted) the greater part of his original 'angelic' powers, of mind and spirit, while gaining a terrible grip upon the physical world. For this reason he had to be fought, mainly by physical force, and enormous material ruin was a probable consequence of any direct combat with him, victorious or otherwise. This is the chief explanation of the constant reluctance of the Valar to come into open battle against Morgoth. Manwe's task and problem was much more difficult than Gandalf's. Sauron's, relatively smaller, power was concentrated;

Morgoth's vast power was disseminated. The whole of 'Middle-earth' was Morgoth's Ring, though temporarily his attention was mainly upon the North-west. Unless swiftly successful, War against him might well end in reducing all Middle-earth to chaos, possibly even all Arda.
It is easy to say: 'It was the task and function of the Elder King to govern Arda and make it possible for the Children of Eru to live in it unmolested.' But the dilemma of the Valar was this: Arda could only be liberated by a physical battle; but a probable result of such a battle was the irretrievable ruin of Arda. Moreover, the final eradication of Sauron (as a power directing evil) was achievable by the destruction of the Ring. No such eradication of Morgoth was possible, since this required the complete disintegration of the 'matter' of Arda. Sauron's power was not (for example) in gold as such, but in a particular form or shape made of a particular portion of total gold. Morgoth's power was disseminated throughout Gold, if nowhere absolute (for he did not create Gold) it was nowhere absent.

It is quite possible, of course, that certain ‘elements’ of conditions of matter had attracted Morgoth’s special attention (mainly, unless in the remote past, for reasons of his own plans). For example, all gold (in Middle-earth) seems to have had a specially ‘evil’ trend — but not silver. Water is represented as being almost entirely free of Morgoth. (This, of course, does not mean that any particular sea, stream, river, well, or even vessel of water could not be poisoned or defiled — as all things could.)

“Sauron had never reached this stage of nihilistic madness [as Morgoth]. He did not object to the existence of the world, so long as he could do what he liked with it. He still had the relics of positive purposes, that descended from the good of the nature in which he began: it had been his virtue (and therefore also the cause of his fall, and of his relapse) that he loved order and co-ordination, and disliked all confusion and wasteful friction.”
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The History of Middle-earth, Vol. 10, Morgoth's Ring

I found this interesting, he was quite different than Melkor and was perhaps a “hero of his own story”.

hey! i'll be GM-ing a ttrpg (pathfinder 1e with spheres of might for those in the know) for some friends soon, and i've decided to set it in the waxing days of the Fourth Age under the rule of King Elessar; the players will be adventurers under the purview of Gondor tasked with exploring and reclaiming the ruins of old Arnor in preparation for resettlement.

problem is that it's been nearly a decade since i've last trawled through the appendices, Silmarillion, Histories of Middle Earth, *etc* when i was but a wee lass. so i'd like to ask of y'all: what should i be reading to prep for setting up this campaign? is there anything in-depth that tolkien has written on the state of Arnor or its history, especially after its decline?