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Felagund
Nargothrond
Feb 20, 11:22pm
Post #101 of 203
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settler demographics, including aristocratic diaspora and status-building in a colonial context
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You've hopefully read some of the other stuff that's been posted in this thread. No one, myself included, is relying solely on Vinyalondë to explain the possible presence of 'great lords' in the Númenórean band of settlement in Middle-earth.
It's pretty much impossible for me, at least, to tell whether Tolkien had a specific primary world analogue or analogues in mind, when providing a feigned history for Númenórean colonisation. I do know, however, that colonial aristocracies formed or adapted and became 'great' in outremer territories - either from humble or less humble beginnings. The Crusader States are an example of this phenomenon in action. Indeed, the entire history of the Hauteville family once they left Normandy for southern Italy and beyond is a half-decent microcosm/case in point.
Not that I reckon Tolkien was cutting and pasting 12th century Europe and the Levant. My point is that the assertion you're making that "great lords of Númenórean descent" could not possibly have been present and correct in Middle-earth at any point in the time period we're discussing is too stark for my taste. It's not supported in the text and, for what it's worth, it's not my take on the way in which colonial expansion took place in a Medieval European context. My take on the latter isn't original, for the avoidance of doubt! Robert Bartlett's seminal work, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950-1350 has influenced my thinking on the subject for many years.
Thinking about this:
As for what would count as a "great lord", I think a duke or better? There are not many of those in a realm.
I listed a handful of lords, great or otherwise, linked explicitly to Númenórean terra firma a few posts ago. Subsequently, I re-read footnote 23 to 'Aldarion & Erendis', which sets out that during the reign of Tar-Meneldur the advisory 'Council of the Sceptre' was comprised of representatives from each of Númenor's regions. Perhaps these were accounted as 'great lords' of or in Númenor - Valandil, Lords of Andúnië and Hallatan the 'sheep-lord' being among them, for the Andustar and Hyarastorni regions respectively. At any rate, I wouldn't leap to describe them as "great lords of Númenórean descent". That descriptor, written by Tolkien specifically in relation to the three corrupted Númenóreans who would become Nazgûl, would strike me as redundant in an 'island of Númenor' context. In a colonial context on the other hand...!
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CuriousG
Gondolin
Feb 21, 12:14am
Post #102 of 203
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Thanks for mentioning Robert Bartlett's book
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I had never heard of it, and it seems a fresh take on things often overlooked.
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Felagund
Nargothrond
Feb 21, 12:50am
Post #103 of 203
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Thanks for the reply. Númenórean colonisation is something I defo find interesting. Some of your reply I still couldn't follow. Especially the characterisation of the Númenóreans leaving Sauron alone after the War of the Elves and Sauron, and prior to Ar-Pharazôn military humbling of Sauron. As recounted in the Akallabêth, Sauron is certainly at bay for many years after the devastating defeat he suffered at the end of the War of the Elves and Sauron. However, "when the Úlairi arose [c. II.2251]... he [Sauron] began to assail the strong places of the Númenóreans upon the shores of the sea." In that text and in 'Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age', there is also reference to Númenóreans continuing to aid Gil-galad in his struggle with Sauron.
I guess this material is what you were referring to when you spoke of "some skirmishes and minor clashes". I'd agree that they don't seem like the two huge set-piece wars that bookend Númenórean intervention in Middle-earth. They do sound a bit like centuries of hostilities though, where by choice or because they were under attack, the Númenóreans were hardly "leaving Sauron alone". And Sauron actually attacking the Númenóreans doesn't come across as Sauron trying to subtly influence them to leave him alone either!
Am also not convinced by this assertion:
Consequently all their colonies would have to be built nearly from scratch and it would be a long time for these to grow into the sort of places where "great lords" would live.
You're relying on an assumption that a range of colonial settlements founded across different locations are all growing at a uniformly slow rate in order to explain the lack of three 'great lords', in order to prove that Ciryatan is the Witch-king.
On this one:
The psychological condition of the Númenoreans explains why the king's message would have been so widely popular. Sauron influencing the king through a Ring of Power explains why the king would be propagating the message in the first place. It would have been easy for the king to adhere to the traditions from sheer inertia (after all, those traditions put him at the top), but instead he chose to actively rebel and spread the rebellion.
As flagged elsewhere in the thread, Tolkien directly explains how the King's Men faction arose. At length, in a Melian Dialogue style format. And without reference or recourse to a Ring of Power. You mention psychological condition: the debate between the Messengers of Manwë and the Númenóreans is a genuinely interesting study of the psychology of the Númenóreans of that era. The king, and the Númenóreans by extension, are indeed at the top. But it's still not enough for them and therein is the seed of their fall. The King's Men are the first generation to stumble in this regard.
Thanks for the link to the article - genuinely fascinating stuff! My personal view is that the author mistakes Tolkien's general reference to 'hints' and 'allusions' in Letter 156 as a cypher for a treasure map leading to specific secrets, which the especially attentive (ie. the author) can uncover. And one such secret is that Ciryatan was the Witch-king. The author also makes a date discrepancy do a lot of heavy lifting in order to conclude that Ciryatan lived for 617 years. Letter 156 also happens to be another good source for Tolkien's conceptualisation of the Fall of the Númenóreans, without reference to any Rings of Power.
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Silvered-glass
Nargothrond
Feb 21, 6:27pm
Post #104 of 203
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Tolkien's epistolic commentary on the events of the Akallabêth went even further than the later redrafts of that story in terms of retrofitting, I reckon - as specifically set out in Letter 211, written in 1958: He [Sauron] naturally had the One Ring [with him in Númenor], and so very soon dominated the minds and wills of most of the Númenóreans. (I do not think Ar-Pharazôn knew anything about the One Ring. The Elves kept the matter of the Rings very secret, as long as they could. In any case Ar-Pharazôn was not in communication with them...)
If you think about it, the secrecy of the Elves would have meant that the Númenoreans had absolutely no idea of the potential dangers of magical jewelry. The Númenoreans might have needed some convincing that such items really worked, but side effects such as loss of free will would have been stuff beyond the most paranoid of nightmares.
Then naturally the wielders of the rings would have kept their rings absolutely secret too. They would have done their best to avoid their rings becoming common knowledge (a thief can't target a valuable which he doesn't know even exists), and if any of the contemporaries had suspicions, such ideas would have sounded outlandish both to them and everyone around them.
Then by time of Ar-Pharazôn many generations had passed and everyone in Númenor that had witnessed the changes upon the owners of the rings was long dead or a wraith.
Though, it is possible that Ar-Pharazôn had some idea about the Rings of Power from family lore. Tolkien specifies that Ar-Pharazôn didn't know about the One Ring. He might nevertheless have heard something about how an ancestor had had an exceptionally long life and magical abilities and that that same ancestor had had a very special magic ring with a valuable gem...
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Ethel Duath
Gondolin
Feb 21, 7:55pm
Post #106 of 203
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mispronouncing Bilbo's designation in the Hobbit, all this time!
No wonder he was reluctant to go on the quest.  
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noWizardme
Gondolin
Feb 21, 7:58pm
Post #107 of 203
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Would give a whole new meaning to "he boggled my mind" :) //
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~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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CuriousG
Gondolin
Feb 21, 8:04pm
Post #108 of 203
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We should rename this "The Boggling Room"
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if we're being honest. Yes, I too admit to being a boggler, and an unapologetic one at that.
I don't lose any sleep over Sauron's spirit carrying the Ring back to M-earth. I guess I cherry pick what I boggle about.
There are times when even I admit we shouldn't boggle. I was thinking in that "always on" mentality we have in 2025, how we expect the Ring to act like an appliance. If I turn on a lamp, it sheds light on everyone in the room, right? Or my phone rings for every phone call and not just a few of them, right? So, why didn't the Ring tempt everyone in the Fellowship?
I keep thinking that "old magic" didn't work that way. Say you had a stone circle in England: sometimes when you stepped in it, it would conjure up fairies or turn you into a newt or whisk you off to a land of talking animals, and other times it did nothing. That was part of magic: chaotic, unpredictable, mysterious. It didn't always turn on when you hit the power switch, and no one had that expectation, so no one boggled about it.
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noWizardme
Gondolin
Feb 21, 8:10pm
Post #109 of 203
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That is what Tolkien is thinking in UT
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I'd say that the Nazgul were entirely subservient to Sauron. In The Hunt For The Ring (UT) Tokien writes as follows (This is about Sauron deciding what to do in the 'Cold War' period when everyone is trying to discover stuff about teh Ring, without revealing what they do or don't kow, or what they are trying to find out. This about Sauron's thoughts once he learns that Gollum has been captured by Aragorn):
“At length he resolved that no others would serve him in this case but his mightiest servants, the Ringwraiths, who had no will but his own, being each utterly subservient to the ring that had enslaved him, which Sauron held.
Now few could withstand even one of these fell creatures, and (as Sauron deemed) none could withstand them when gathered together under their terrible captain, the Lord of Morgul. Yet this weakness they had for Sauron’s present purpose: so great was the terror that went with them (even invisible and unclad) that their coming forth might soon be perceived and their mission be guessed by the Wise.”
[my italics]
I like this quandry - the only servants who can hunt the Ring are the Nazgul because (I assume) they are the only ones who would hand it over if they got it). But otherwise they are very unsuitable for this mission to The Shire.
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"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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Silvered-glass
Nargothrond
Feb 21, 10:59pm
Post #110 of 203
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You've hopefully read some of the other stuff that's been posted in this thread. No one, myself included, is relying solely on Vinyalondë to explain the possible presence of 'great lords' in the Númenórean band of settlement in Middle-earth.
It's pretty much impossible for me, at least, to tell whether Tolkien had a specific primary world analogue or analogues in mind, when providing a feigned history for Númenórean colonisation. I do know, however, that colonial aristocracies formed or adapted and became 'great' in outremer territories - either from humble or less humble beginnings. The Crusader States are an example of this phenomenon in action. Indeed, the entire history of the Hauteville family once they left Normandy for southern Italy and beyond is a half-decent microcosm/case in point.
Not that I reckon Tolkien was cutting and pasting 12th century Europe and the Levant. My point is that the assertion you're making that "great lords of Númenórean descent" could not possibly have been present and correct in Middle-earth at any point in the time period we're discussing is too stark for my taste. It's not supported in the text and, for what it's worth, it's not my take on the way in which colonial expansion took place in a Medieval European context. My take on the latter isn't original, for the avoidance of doubt! Robert Bartlett's seminal work, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950-1350 has influenced my thinking on the subject for many years.
The description of the nearly empty and uncultivated Eriador in Aldarion and Erendis reminds me of North America more than anything other real historical place - the North America of literary imagination even more so. Aldarion's early attempts at colonization would perhaps be the most similar to the early journeys to Vinland. Colonization of Middle-earth would eventually lead to a powerful "United States" in the form of Gondor (and a "Latin America" in the form of Umbar and the lands around it), but this wouldn't be until much later.
We also have information on the demographics and technology levels in the wider Middle-earth, but this would be during the reign of Sauron, after the forging of the One Ring and the reveal of the Nazgûl:
But in Lindon Gil-galad still maintained his power, and Sauron dared not as yet to pass the Mountains of Ered Luin nor to assail the Havens; and Gil-galad was aided by the Númenóreans. Elsewhere Sauron reigned, and those who would be free took refuge in the fastnesses of wood and mountain, and ever fear pursued them. In the east and south well nigh all Men were under his dominion, and they grew strong in those days and built many towns and walls of stone, and they were numerous and fierce in war and armed with iron. To them Sauron was both king and god; and they feared him exceedingly, for he surrounded his abode with fire.
-- The Silmarillion
Here the spread of walled towns and iron-working is portrayed as a change in Middle-earth. Sauron with his love of industry appears to have encouraged the spread of these things, or at the very least allowed for them to flourish. Improvements in agriculture would probably have been involved too to allow for population growth. All this advancement however would not have been an instant thing, but something that developed gradually over the so-called Dark Years and was slow to reach the areas of Middle-earth where Sauron didn't rule.
I think the real counterpart for the period of the ring distribution in the Second Age would be in the very distant past. Númenor as Atlantis would be reasonably developed with knowledge of metals and sailing and an organized, hierarchical society, but in the rest of the world it was still a time before the rise of Egypt and Sumer. (Umbar would later develop into Egypt, while Sumer would have been one of the lands under Sauron's control.)
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Ethel Duath
Gondolin
Feb 22, 1:12am
Post #111 of 203
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It seems to me they were coached,
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with some basic ideas on how to talk to "ordinary folk," but that it didn't "take" very well. All that hissing . . .
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squire
Gondolin
Feb 22, 2:24am
Post #112 of 203
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I've been a boggler for ever so long a time.
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I've never accepted Tolkien's nonsensical retcon - except that, of course, I have to. It's "his candy store", as I commented on this question a while ago.
squire online:
Unfortunately my longtime internet service provider abandoned its hosting operations last year. I no longer have any online materials to share with the TORn community.
 = Forum has no new posts. Forum needs no new posts.
(This post was edited by squire on Feb 22, 2:25am)
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Silvered-glass
Nargothrond
Feb 22, 7:37am
Post #113 of 203
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(Answer to that they were coached)
with some basic ideas on how to talk to "ordinary folk," but that it didn't "take" very well. All that hissing . . .
I got the impression that Khamûl wasn't a native Westron speaker. The Witch-king is much more eloquent.
Khamûl would probably be more fluent in his native language as well as Black Speech, and he may also have known other languages used in the East, and maybe even some forms of Elvish. He had a basic understanding of Westron but hadn't used it much.
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noWizardme
Gondolin
Feb 22, 5:41pm
Post #114 of 203
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I just read something about the origins of the word...
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I just blundered into something fun about the origins of the word 'boggle', from the great Jewish lexicographer Miriam Webster:
Usually it’s the mind that boggles or gets boggled. In either case, the person with the mind that is boggling or being boggled is amazed or overwhelmed by something: [example sentences concerning hot pot options and paparazzi squirrels] But before people were overwhelmed by hot pot options and paparazzi squirrels, they were overwhelmed by supernatural forces—at least, they believed they were. Etymologists think that boggle likely comes from an obscure British dialect noun, bogle. A bogle is a goblin or specter, or, more broadly any object of fear or loathing. (Bogle is also the likely origin of the bogey in bogeyman and its variant boogeyman.) [normally nowadays it is the mind that boggles...] But in the earliest known example of boggle in use, it wasn’t a mind or an imagination that boggled but some horses. The sentence is from a late 16th century translation of Homer’s Iliad:
They [steeds] should not with affright Boggle, nor snore. Back then, boggle meant “to make a sudden jerky movement (as of alarm)” or “to start with fright.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the connection between creepy bogles and horses boggling resides in the reputation horses have for being able to see goblins and specters, and to (understandably) start with fright when they do. https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/boggle
And all this seemed a bit related to your idea, CuriousG that our sometimes ideas of Middle-earth might be a little too mechanistic.
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"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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noWizardme
Gondolin
Feb 22, 5:47pm
Post #115 of 203
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Maybe this "Bogglers Anonymous" idea won't work...
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Maybe this "Bogglers Anonymous" idea won't work. For one thing I might have blown the 'anonymous' bit (though maybe nobody noticed?).
For another we'd be supposed to support each other to stop Boggling, and I'm not sure I see why we should. 
~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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Ethel Duath
Gondolin
Feb 22, 5:50pm
Post #116 of 203
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Well, I actually meant their social, not language skills, but
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of course one would affect the other.
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noWizardme
Gondolin
Feb 22, 5:55pm
Post #117 of 203
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I'm still enjoying the idea that, due to a misunderstanding, Bilbo was expecting to join the expedition to be astonished by the wonders of the world outside the Shire....
...and then discovers that they want him to steal something from a dragon.
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"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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Ethel Duath
Gondolin
Feb 22, 5:56pm
Post #118 of 203
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Huh, I've been around horses some, but never heard them do that! I haven't been around any slumbering steeds, though. (Maybe he meant snort?)
Yes, I actually remember reading that somewhere else, about boggle proceeding from the idea of a ghost. Didn't know about that earliest version, though, but it makes sense that one would naturally boggle at a bogle.
Etymology is wonderful thing.
(This post was edited by Ethel Duath on Feb 22, 5:57pm)
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Ethel Duath
Gondolin
Feb 22, 6:08pm
Post #119 of 203
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I wonder if he did feel a little bit like that, even though he did sort of have the idea.
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noWizardme
Gondolin
Feb 22, 6:24pm
Post #120 of 203
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Yes, maybe they lack 'the common touch' having been kings or lords or watnot, and then becoming terrifying supernatural entities that are at some level fundamentally revolting and also give everyone the screaming hab-dabs.
This subthread also has me thinking about who would speak Westron. Tolkien's plot is helped along by his hobbit captives being able to evesdrop on their orc captors, because the different groups can't understand each-others' mother tongues (erm, if orcs have mothers...) and so have to use Westron as a lingua franca.
But let's suppose Westron is wodely spoken as a second language. In a world where most folk don't travel, one could easily assume that there are dialects and accents.
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"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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noWizardme
Gondolin
Feb 22, 6:26pm
Post #121 of 203
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Being amazed by teh wonders of the world is certainly one of Bilbo's endearing characteristics //
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~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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noWizardme
Gondolin
Feb 22, 6:34pm
Post #122 of 203
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"snort" sounds more likely, doesn't it
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And the origin of the word snore is consistent with this:
Middle English snoren, fnoren; akin to Old English fnora sneezing, fnaeran to breathe heavily
~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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noWizardme
Gondolin
Feb 22, 6:42pm
Post #123 of 203
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Oh and also (having narrowly missed the edit wndow)
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Aragorn says of the Nazgul that
...at all times they smell the blood of living things, desiring it and hating it.
...which would be quite distracting in a conversation you'd have thought.
~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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noWizardme
Gondolin
Feb 22, 6:59pm
Post #124 of 203
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Which means that living things smell like prawns to the Nazgul
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Or at least, I remember a time when I couldn't decide whether prawns smelled appetising or disgusting. So I decided to settle on 'disgusting' and have not looked back.
~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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CuriousG
Gondolin
Feb 22, 11:40pm
Post #125 of 203
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Prawns with butter and garlic are heaven, and maybe lemon juice //
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