13 ms·

Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about Tolkien Elves

119 points by BerislavLopac 7y ago

aequitas 7y ago
I don't know the original source, but in the ancient (2016) libraries of tumblr there can be found a tale which compares the relation of man and dog to that of elf and man: https://shadow27.tumblr.com/post/153945874245/in-the-dog-world-humans-are-elves-that-routinely https://shadow27.tumblr.com/post/153945874245/in-the-dog-wor...
- felipelemos 7y ago
  This is beautiful
- jimmux 7y ago
  From the dog's perspective, would a cat then be something like a goblin?
fastball 7y ago
Man, this guy really doesn't want Elves to have pointy ears.
- blackearl 7y ago
  It's funny to me that anyone cares either way. It makes zero difference to the story unless you take LOTR so seriously that it may be unhealthy.
  - tephra 7y ago
    Well there is a whole journal dedicated to the study of the works of Tolkien [0]. So getting things correct can be very important :) [0]: https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/299 https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/299
  - pretendscholar 7y ago
    Tolkien's works are not just interesting for the plot. They are about world building, linguistics, mythology building.
  - timdiggerm 7y ago
    I think it's more just that because everyone assumes they have pointy ears, it's good to point out that the text doesn't say so. It's good to point out common assumptions, as it helps us realize the unconscious biases we bring to a text.
  - true_religion 7y ago
    So literary criticism is unhealthy now? This level of hair splitting is par per course for any undergrad English class.
- Psyladine 7y ago
  Wonder what his thoughts on balrog wings are.
  - okayitsofficial 7y ago
    I mean, Tolkien was very clear as to if Balrogs had wings or not: yes.
  - edflsafoiewq 7y ago
    https://web.archive.org/web/20100621200005/http://www.xenite.org/tolkien/do-balrogs-have-wings.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100621200005/http://www.xenite...
    - BerislavLopac 7y ago
      No need for the archive.org link: https://www.xenite.org/special/do-balrogs-have-wings-do-balrogs-fly/ https://www.xenite.org/special/do-balrogs-have-wings-do-balr...
    - tynpeddler 7y ago
      I don't find that argument very convincing. I don't know if Balrog's have wings, but I do know they fall off high stuff a lot. His analysis of the line, "it was LIKE a great shadow, in the middle of which was a dark form, of man-shape maybe yet greater" is deeply flawed. He argues that since a simile was used to describe the Balrog's darkness (and it has darkness), then the simile used to describe its wings means it has wings. Tolkien says "like a shadow" because it's dark like a shadow but it's not a shadow because shadows don't have physicality like the Balrog's darkness. We're clearly talking about a supernatural phenomenon that the english language can only describe via simile. Tolkien's abandonment of simile in later passages is to simplify the language. Repeating the exact same simile over and over drags the writing down. Here's what we do know about balrogs, their essential characteristics are darkness, fire, speed, strength and magic. Flying is not an essential characteristic. It's never mentioned directly, and description of their rapid movement tends to be very metaphorical. We also know that if they do fly, they don't fly like dragons or eagles because they played no part in the conflict between the dragon and eagles. Balrogs were tossed aside with all of Morgoth's unflying creations. Only flying dragons specifically posed any threat to the Valar, and that was because of their flight.
- Steuard 7y ago
  He so very much doesn't. Back in the days of Usenet, Michael was one of the best-read experts in our discussions, and I admired him for that a lot. There weren't that many of us who could go toe to toe with him in a debate about Middle-earth lore. (There certainly were a few! And honestly, intense debates with him did a lot to hone my own expertise in this stuff: it was fun, especially if you could avoid provoking too many flames.) That said, he also had a strong tendency to reach some conclusion on a controversial topic and then defend it to the death, even when most of us felt that the ultimate answer seemed unknowable or even fairly firmly different than what he claimed. His arguments were based on immense textual knowledge, followed up with emphatic assertions of truth if you dared disagree, and intense flames if you gave him the slightest excuse to get personal. He said, at times, that the rest of the newsgroup had a grudge against him and that people arguing against him were rejecting Tolkien's words or not arguing in good faith. For quite a while I remained on cordial terms with him and with everyone else, but at some point he decided that doing that constituted me enabling what he viewed as their toxic behavior, and we haven't interacted as friends since. All that is to say: the guy knows his stuff, and unless you're a top-tier expert he'll argue circles around you, but I still don't trust his conclusions on controversial topics. If anyone wants a more balanced look at the Elf-ears question (from the same era when Michael wrote this FAQ, I think, or at least compatible with it), I've got an essay by Conrad Dunkerson on my site: http://tolkien.slimy.com/essays/Ears.html http://tolkien.slimy.com/essays/Ears.html
belval 7y ago
While I never read Tolkien's notes and letters, I did read the Silmarillion and it does not consider Gandalf/Olorin/Mithrandir to be an elf. He is a maia which is not the same thing. We do know that whatever Maiar are, they can have children with elves, from Melian and Thingol. Deducing that maia = elf from that is quite a leap in logic. EDIT: Author was referring to Gandalf being mistaken for an elf, as per this excerpt of the unfinished tales: "Mostly he journeyed tirelessly on foot, leaning on a staff, and so he was called among Men of the North Gandalf 'the Elf of the Wand'. For they deemed him (though in error) to be of Elven-kind, since he would at times work wonders among them."
- ZiiS 7y ago
  The claim is if a bearded Maia is commonly taken for an elf; people did not think of elves as beardless.
- darkwater 7y ago
  Yeah, that struck me as well, especially considering that I'm pretty sure OP has read way more Tolkien material that I have ever did. There must be something we are missing.
- evanb 7y ago
  I think the author is saying that characters in Tolkein's world, who gave him the name 'Gandalf'='Wand Elf' must have thought him to be an elf, which would be evidence that those characters don't think it strange for an elf to have a beard.
  - belval 7y ago
    In that case that would make sense. From the other post on that website, it seems clear that the author is too knowledgeable to make that kind of mistake.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    I wonder if that author supposes the Malaysians, or whoever, thought orangutans (reported to mean "men of the forest") were humans? Or that those naming sea-cows thought that manatee were actually cows? Surely his name having "modifier+elf" in it shows that he's recognised as distinctly not an elf, nor recognisable as one, but is considered to have elf-like characteristics. I don't think it tells you anything about whether it's strange for an elf to have a beard.
mellosouls 7y ago
“Oh God, not another f-ing elf!” Hugo Dyson, member of Tolkien's reading group. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/j-r-r-tolkien-and-c-s-lewis-revived-myth-telling/399347/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/j-r-r-t...
- mcguire 7y ago
  "Who?" About a billion Tolkien fans.
kriro 7y ago
As an interesting linguistic side note in the German translation the Elves are called Elben. I believe this term is only used for Tolkien-Elves. The term Elf/Elfen exists in German as well and is commonly used in fantasy/RPGs to describe the standard pointy eared folks. Always thought that's a pretty curios thing.
- TsiCClawOfLight 7y ago
  This is actually not a side note, but a very important point. The German translation simply replicates what Tolkien did: He specifically used elf/elves in order to differentiate his creatures from the shakespeare-esque tiny fairies, which were much closer to what Disney did in Peter Pan than to his vision. The correct English spelling at the time was elf/elfs, and he had to fight the proof readers and editors who constantly tried to correct his spelling. Interestingly though, dwarf/dwarves, while also wrong (the plural would have been dwarfs), was actually an accident, since his dwarves are not too different from previous folklore. Which explains why the German translation uses the standard "Zwerg" for them.
- mordechai9000 7y ago
  There is also the poem by Goethe, "Der Erlkönig". Although a literal translation would be The Alder King, it is usually translated to English as The Elf King. Alder King does fit with the traditional idea of elves/faeries as non human spirits or supernatural beings associated with nature, who sometimes spirit away mortals to live in the fairy realm. According to Wikipedia, the idea for the poem is believed to trace back to a Danish story about an Elf King. And Elf King in Danish sounds a bit like Alder King in German.
asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
I love stories that subvert the elvish tropes. Maybe because so many have used the elves basically unmodified, it's great to see someone do it differently. In the Second Apocalypse, there is a race called the Nonmen who are clearly inspired by the elves. They are beautiful, immortal, strong, and talented in sorcery, like Tolkien's elves. But the trope is subverted in a variety of ways. They were not originally immortal, they were granted this "gift" by the main antagonists of the series. The same agent that gave them immortality also killed off all the females of their species. Moreover, while it made them ageless, it did not give them minds capable of coping with that agelessness, so many of them have gone insane. It's an interesting take on a darker version of elfdom.
- grawprog 7y ago
  I've always been a fan of Michael Moorcock's melniboneans. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melnibon%C3%A9 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melnibon%C3%A9 >Its people, the Melnibonéans, are not wholly human and are commonly depicted as elven. They are skilled with magic and beautiful, though psychologically similar to cats, with a callous nature. They lack a moral sense. Their actions are determined by tradition and by the search for pleasure and new sensations.
  - marcus_holmes 7y ago
    Moorcock famously despised Tolkien's work. I always wonder if he invented Melnibone to be "how elves would really turn out"
    - jpgleeson 7y ago
      Moorcock also has denied that the Melniboneans are elves. To him "elves are the little things that you'll find in gardens or in rings in the countryside". There's a good, recent interview here where he talks about this and his opinion of Tolkien, which I wouldn't quite call despising it: https://appendixnbookclub.com/2019/12/02/an-interview-with-michael-moorcock/ https://appendixnbookclub.com/2019/12/02/an-interview-with-m...
onewhonknocks 7y ago
This makes me wonder, are Vulcans basically Space Elves?
- marcus_holmes 7y ago
  Klingons = Space Orcs
  - DataGata 7y ago
    Romulans = Space Haradrim? Really it doesn't make sense to connect these different things directly, because they point towards higher archetypes that we have embedded in our collective consciousness.
    - Psyladine 7y ago
      Romulans would be like the wood elves.
- einpoklum 7y ago
  Not quite, because Elves are not devoid of emotion or super-logical. But there are commonalities, I suppose... they share sympathy for hobbits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC35cQKHwzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC35cQKHwzg
- corysama 7y ago
  https://www.geeksaresexy.net/2017/07/16/star-trek-just-space-fantasy/ https://www.geeksaresexy.net/2017/07/16/star-trek-just-space...
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  More Romulans if you have seen Picard - though I do get slight father ted vibe
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  As a Tolkien fan, Leonard Nimoy was among the first to correct people that Vulcans were nothing like Tolkien's elves. Among other things, it is said that Nimoy picked the distinctive Vulcan ear where the point is almost straight up specifically to differentiate it from usual book descriptions of elven ears.
psychometry 7y ago
I have a hard time believing that any immortal character in any fictional universe would be so cavalier with their life as an elf is. Imagine a world where the only way you could die is in some sort of accident or due to violence. The downside from even stepping outside, where you risk getting killed by a falling tree or any such random event, would be effectively infinite. I don't think this aspect is generally well-explored in fantasy.
- ashtonbaker 7y ago
  In LOTR, the souls of dead elves go to the Halls of Mandos to await reincarnation, so there is an explanation. https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Halls_of_Mandos https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Halls_of_Mandos
- Swizec 7y ago
  > The downside from even stepping outside, where you risk getting killed by a falling tree or any such random event, would be effectively infinite. And yet here we are, doing it every day even though our 80 year natural lifespan looks like immortality to all but a few other animal species.
- peter303 7y ago
  I suspect you could get used to immortality and not think about accidental deaths. That is pretty much the case with human teenagers.
- einpoklum 7y ago
  Well, most elves are not of the kind that's cavalier about their lives: They went to Valinor and stayed there. Or stayed put in Doriath for millennia and then went to Valinor. Or to Greenwood, stayed there for a few millennia, and then went to Valinor. You catch my drift...
- logfromblammo 7y ago
  The sociological response to the ossification of civilization, brought on by excessive longevity, is murder of the immortals. We currently have several septuagenarians duking it out to be our next elected executive leader. Imagine the political discord that would exist between generations if all the leaders were over seven hundred years old. We'd be warring constantly over the inequality. If one stays inside, eventually the 20th-generation scion of a human family that they have been collecting rents from all that time comes in to kill them, and free his children from the yoke of their undying ownership. Inspired, of course, by an alliance with their grandchild, who wants to inherit something of their own before they turn 500. It's not that they are cavalier with their lives, as fighting to wrest resources away from their elders, when Death refuses to help. The young have no place to call their own in which to stay. The old cannot fortify against every threat, and must project the impression that they take enough risks to die from their own activities, otherwise be murdered for calcifying local developments. Alternately, an immortal society could have a festival every century in which all property passes to one's living heirs, and the eldest living ancestor, who would otherwise receive no inheritance, is paid some cash by all their living descendants. I recall a story in which people above a certain age were banned from all governing roles, and could only fill advisory positions. Futurama had the retirement planet, where the eldest (a.k.a. Prof. Farnsworth) were imprisoned to keep them out of the way. Even the various cultural mythologies had new gods arising to slay and replace the old gods. It's very well explored--immortals get murdered. Even the Monkey King, who was six-ways immortal, faced execution, and when the gods discovered they couldn't kill him by any of the known methods of killing immortals, they instead put a mountain on top of him to keep him from moving.
injb 7y ago
I'm surprised he doesn't mention Native Americans as a source of inspiration for the elves. If you've read The Last of the Mohicans, this is very obvious (including parallels between Aragorn and Nathaniel/Hawkeye).
- TsiCClawOfLight 7y ago
  I am very surprised by this comment. Could you elaborate? I read nearly everything published by JRR or Christopher, including notes and letters, and never is any north american influence mentioned. There are Norse/Germanic/Finnish, Icelandic, Celtic, Byzantine (for Gondor) influences and Atlantis for Numenor, that's pretty much it. It is also worth noting that Aragorn is not, in fact, the last of his race, as there are still other rangers. He is merely the last one of royal line.
  - d883kd8 7y ago
    Hawkeye is a white mountaineer, not the titular Last Mohican (that's Chingachgook)
  - injb 7y ago
    Well, I'll try, but I don't know if I can explain it very well. In The Last of the Mohicans, Nathaniel (Indian name: Hawkeye) is a British-American scout and frontiersman who has largely forsaken white civilization, and lives/hunts/travels with a Mohican chief and his son. He speaks their language and understands their ways. The influence is a bit mixed up though; in TLOTM, there is an exiled chief, the last of his race, who wanders in the wilderness keeping his true identify a secret, but it's the Mohican, not Hawkeye. But in most other ways, Hawkeye is like Aragorn. Another obvious similarity is the theme of the passing of an age - the natives have lived in their own old fashioned ways for centuries, but now they're receding, and their way of life is fading away in the face of increasing colonialism. Finally, the storyline of the three companions Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli tracking their friends the captured hobbits across the wilderness, hopelessly outnumbered is pretty much lifted from TLOTM, although Toklien's version is far more epic. I'm surprised that you would never have heard of this. I read that book only recently, but I always believed it was an influence on Tolkien. I remember reading that he used to dress up as a Native American to entertain children. Here's an interesting quote[1]: "I had very little desire to look for buried treasure or fight pirates, and Treasure Island left me cool. Red Indians were better: there were bows and arrows (I had and have a wholly unsatisfied desire to shoot well with a bow), and strange languages, and glimpses of an archaic mode of life, and above all, forests in such stories." TLOTH is pretty much set entirely in a forest, populated by almost mystical race of forest-people and their enigmatic white friend. If he read books from that era (like Treasure Island) and had an interest in "Red Indians" then he must have read TLOTM. I hope I've made a good case for this, but if not then I think reading the book will make the link much clearer. [1] http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/jrr_tolkien_in_his_own_words.html http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/jrr_tolkien_in_his_own_wo...
peter303 7y ago
Contrast this to Shakespeare's fairies who are playful and smaller stature.
jdlyga 7y ago
Tolkein originally had the "tall, beautiful, elder people" race to be fairies in his earlier stories. The elves in The Hobbit were very different from what they ended up being in Lord of the Rings. They were more mischievous and Santa Claus elf-like. It looks like he combined the two ideas for his later books.
- TsiCClawOfLight 7y ago
  He called them fairies in the beginning (in what is now the Silmarillion), but they were always taller and more beautiful than humans, always immortal in some way, and always arrived before humans. He simply changed his names for them, as he also did with the 3 main race names.
csours 7y ago
Archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20200302122344/https://middle-earth.xenite.org/answers-to-frequently-asked-questions-about-tolkien-elves/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200302122344/https://middle-ea...
iambateman 7y ago
This article is great, but to offer a quick correction to the final Q: Gandalf is not an elf, he’s a Maiar. His dark counterpart before becoming Gandalf the White would be a balrog, which is why Gandalf takes on the balrog in Moria and not Legolas. ;)
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

119 points by BerislavLopac 7y ago

I don't know the original source, but in the ancient (2016) libraries of tumblr there can be found a tale which compares the relation of man and dog to that of elf and man: https://shadow27.tumblr.com/post/153945874245/in-the-dog-world-humans-are-elves-that-routinely https://shadow27.tumblr.com/post/153945874245/in-the-dog-wor...

felipelemos 7y ago
This is beautiful
jimmux 7y ago
From the dog's perspective, would a cat then be something like a goblin?

fastball 7y ago

Man, this guy really doesn't want Elves to have pointy ears.

blackearl 7y ago
It's funny to me that anyone cares either way. It makes zero difference to the story unless you take LOTR so seriously that it may be unhealthy.
- tephra 7y ago
  Well there is a whole journal dedicated to the study of the works of Tolkien [0]. So getting things correct can be very important :) [0]: https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/299 https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/299
- pretendscholar 7y ago
  Tolkien's works are not just interesting for the plot. They are about world building, linguistics, mythology building.
- timdiggerm 7y ago
  I think it's more just that because everyone assumes they have pointy ears, it's good to point out that the text doesn't say so. It's good to point out common assumptions, as it helps us realize the unconscious biases we bring to a text.
- true_religion 7y ago
  So literary criticism is unhealthy now? This level of hair splitting is par per course for any undergrad English class.
Psyladine 7y ago
Wonder what his thoughts on balrog wings are.
- okayitsofficial 7y ago
  I mean, Tolkien was very clear as to if Balrogs had wings or not: yes.
- edflsafoiewq 7y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20100621200005/http://www.xenite.org/tolkien/do-balrogs-have-wings.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100621200005/http://www.xenite...
  - BerislavLopac 7y ago
    No need for the archive.org link: https://www.xenite.org/special/do-balrogs-have-wings-do-balrogs-fly/ https://www.xenite.org/special/do-balrogs-have-wings-do-balr...
  - tynpeddler 7y ago
    I don't find that argument very convincing. I don't know if Balrog's have wings, but I do know they fall off high stuff a lot. His analysis of the line, "it was LIKE a great shadow, in the middle of which was a dark form, of man-shape maybe yet greater" is deeply flawed. He argues that since a simile was used to describe the Balrog's darkness (and it has darkness), then the simile used to describe its wings means it has wings. Tolkien says "like a shadow" because it's dark like a shadow but it's not a shadow because shadows don't have physicality like the Balrog's darkness. We're clearly talking about a supernatural phenomenon that the english language can only describe via simile. Tolkien's abandonment of simile in later passages is to simplify the language. Repeating the exact same simile over and over drags the writing down. Here's what we do know about balrogs, their essential characteristics are darkness, fire, speed, strength and magic. Flying is not an essential characteristic. It's never mentioned directly, and description of their rapid movement tends to be very metaphorical. We also know that if they do fly, they don't fly like dragons or eagles because they played no part in the conflict between the dragon and eagles. Balrogs were tossed aside with all of Morgoth's unflying creations. Only flying dragons specifically posed any threat to the Valar, and that was because of their flight.
Steuard 7y ago
He so very much doesn't. Back in the days of Usenet, Michael was one of the best-read experts in our discussions, and I admired him for that a lot. There weren't that many of us who could go toe to toe with him in a debate about Middle-earth lore. (There certainly were a few! And honestly, intense debates with him did a lot to hone my own expertise in this stuff: it was fun, especially if you could avoid provoking too many flames.) That said, he also had a strong tendency to reach some conclusion on a controversial topic and then defend it to the death, even when most of us felt that the ultimate answer seemed unknowable or even fairly firmly different than what he claimed. His arguments were based on immense textual knowledge, followed up with emphatic assertions of truth if you dared disagree, and intense flames if you gave him the slightest excuse to get personal. He said, at times, that the rest of the newsgroup had a grudge against him and that people arguing against him were rejecting Tolkien's words or not arguing in good faith. For quite a while I remained on cordial terms with him and with everyone else, but at some point he decided that doing that constituted me enabling what he viewed as their toxic behavior, and we haven't interacted as friends since. All that is to say: the guy knows his stuff, and unless you're a top-tier expert he'll argue circles around you, but I still don't trust his conclusions on controversial topics. If anyone wants a more balanced look at the Elf-ears question (from the same era when Michael wrote this FAQ, I think, or at least compatible with it), I've got an essay by Conrad Dunkerson on my site: http://tolkien.slimy.com/essays/Ears.html http://tolkien.slimy.com/essays/Ears.html

belval 7y ago

While I never read Tolkien's notes and letters, I did read the Silmarillion and it does not consider Gandalf/Olorin/Mithrandir to be an elf. He is a maia which is not the same thing. We do know that whatever Maiar are, they can have children with elves, from Melian and Thingol. Deducing that maia = elf from that is quite a leap in logic. EDIT: Author was referring to Gandalf being mistaken for an elf, as per this excerpt of the unfinished tales: "Mostly he journeyed tirelessly on foot, leaning on a staff, and so he was called among Men of the North Gandalf 'the Elf of the Wand'. For they deemed him (though in error) to be of Elven-kind, since he would at times work wonders among them."

ZiiS 7y ago
The claim is if a bearded Maia is commonly taken for an elf; people did not think of elves as beardless.
darkwater 7y ago
Yeah, that struck me as well, especially considering that I'm pretty sure OP has read way more Tolkien material that I have ever did. There must be something we are missing.
evanb 7y ago
I think the author is saying that characters in Tolkein's world, who gave him the name 'Gandalf'='Wand Elf' must have thought him to be an elf, which would be evidence that those characters don't think it strange for an elf to have a beard.
- belval 7y ago
  In that case that would make sense. From the other post on that website, it seems clear that the author is too knowledgeable to make that kind of mistake.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  I wonder if that author supposes the Malaysians, or whoever, thought orangutans (reported to mean "men of the forest") were humans? Or that those naming sea-cows thought that manatee were actually cows? Surely his name having "modifier+elf" in it shows that he's recognised as distinctly not an elf, nor recognisable as one, but is considered to have elf-like characteristics. I don't think it tells you anything about whether it's strange for an elf to have a beard.

mellosouls 7y ago

“Oh God, not another f-ing elf!” Hugo Dyson, member of Tolkien's reading group. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/j-r-r-tolkien-and-c-s-lewis-revived-myth-telling/399347/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/j-r-r-t...

mcguire 7y ago
"Who?" About a billion Tolkien fans.

kriro 7y ago

As an interesting linguistic side note in the German translation the Elves are called Elben. I believe this term is only used for Tolkien-Elves. The term Elf/Elfen exists in German as well and is commonly used in fantasy/RPGs to describe the standard pointy eared folks. Always thought that's a pretty curios thing.

TsiCClawOfLight 7y ago
This is actually not a side note, but a very important point. The German translation simply replicates what Tolkien did: He specifically used elf/elves in order to differentiate his creatures from the shakespeare-esque tiny fairies, which were much closer to what Disney did in Peter Pan than to his vision. The correct English spelling at the time was elf/elfs, and he had to fight the proof readers and editors who constantly tried to correct his spelling. Interestingly though, dwarf/dwarves, while also wrong (the plural would have been dwarfs), was actually an accident, since his dwarves are not too different from previous folklore. Which explains why the German translation uses the standard "Zwerg" for them.
mordechai9000 7y ago
There is also the poem by Goethe, "Der Erlkönig". Although a literal translation would be The Alder King, it is usually translated to English as The Elf King. Alder King does fit with the traditional idea of elves/faeries as non human spirits or supernatural beings associated with nature, who sometimes spirit away mortals to live in the fairy realm. According to Wikipedia, the idea for the poem is believed to trace back to a Danish story about an Elf King. And Elf King in Danish sounds a bit like Alder King in German.

asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago

I love stories that subvert the elvish tropes. Maybe because so many have used the elves basically unmodified, it's great to see someone do it differently. In the Second Apocalypse, there is a race called the Nonmen who are clearly inspired by the elves. They are beautiful, immortal, strong, and talented in sorcery, like Tolkien's elves. But the trope is subverted in a variety of ways. They were not originally immortal, they were granted this "gift" by the main antagonists of the series. The same agent that gave them immortality also killed off all the females of their species. Moreover, while it made them ageless, it did not give them minds capable of coping with that agelessness, so many of them have gone insane. It's an interesting take on a darker version of elfdom.

grawprog 7y ago
I've always been a fan of Michael Moorcock's melniboneans. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melnibon%C3%A9 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melnibon%C3%A9 >Its people, the Melnibonéans, are not wholly human and are commonly depicted as elven. They are skilled with magic and beautiful, though psychologically similar to cats, with a callous nature. They lack a moral sense. Their actions are determined by tradition and by the search for pleasure and new sensations.
- marcus_holmes 7y ago
  Moorcock famously despised Tolkien's work. I always wonder if he invented Melnibone to be "how elves would really turn out"
  - jpgleeson 7y ago
    Moorcock also has denied that the Melniboneans are elves. To him "elves are the little things that you'll find in gardens or in rings in the countryside". There's a good, recent interview here where he talks about this and his opinion of Tolkien, which I wouldn't quite call despising it: https://appendixnbookclub.com/2019/12/02/an-interview-with-michael-moorcock/ https://appendixnbookclub.com/2019/12/02/an-interview-with-m...

onewhonknocks 7y ago

This makes me wonder, are Vulcans basically Space Elves?

marcus_holmes 7y ago
Klingons = Space Orcs
- DataGata 7y ago
  Romulans = Space Haradrim? Really it doesn't make sense to connect these different things directly, because they point towards higher archetypes that we have embedded in our collective consciousness.
  - Psyladine 7y ago
    Romulans would be like the wood elves.
einpoklum 7y ago
Not quite, because Elves are not devoid of emotion or super-logical. But there are commonalities, I suppose... they share sympathy for hobbits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC35cQKHwzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC35cQKHwzg
corysama 7y ago
https://www.geeksaresexy.net/2017/07/16/star-trek-just-space-fantasy/ https://www.geeksaresexy.net/2017/07/16/star-trek-just-space...
C1sc0cat 7y ago
More Romulans if you have seen Picard - though I do get slight father ted vibe
WorldMaker 7y ago
As a Tolkien fan, Leonard Nimoy was among the first to correct people that Vulcans were nothing like Tolkien's elves. Among other things, it is said that Nimoy picked the distinctive Vulcan ear where the point is almost straight up specifically to differentiate it from usual book descriptions of elven ears.

psychometry 7y ago

I have a hard time believing that any immortal character in any fictional universe would be so cavalier with their life as an elf is. Imagine a world where the only way you could die is in some sort of accident or due to violence. The downside from even stepping outside, where you risk getting killed by a falling tree or any such random event, would be effectively infinite. I don't think this aspect is generally well-explored in fantasy.

ashtonbaker 7y ago
In LOTR, the souls of dead elves go to the Halls of Mandos to await reincarnation, so there is an explanation. https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Halls_of_Mandos https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Halls_of_Mandos
Swizec 7y ago
> The downside from even stepping outside, where you risk getting killed by a falling tree or any such random event, would be effectively infinite. And yet here we are, doing it every day even though our 80 year natural lifespan looks like immortality to all but a few other animal species.
peter303 7y ago
I suspect you could get used to immortality and not think about accidental deaths. That is pretty much the case with human teenagers.
einpoklum 7y ago
Well, most elves are not of the kind that's cavalier about their lives: They went to Valinor and stayed there. Or stayed put in Doriath for millennia and then went to Valinor. Or to Greenwood, stayed there for a few millennia, and then went to Valinor. You catch my drift...
logfromblammo 7y ago
The sociological response to the ossification of civilization, brought on by excessive longevity, is murder of the immortals. We currently have several septuagenarians duking it out to be our next elected executive leader. Imagine the political discord that would exist between generations if all the leaders were over seven hundred years old. We'd be warring constantly over the inequality. If one stays inside, eventually the 20th-generation scion of a human family that they have been collecting rents from all that time comes in to kill them, and free his children from the yoke of their undying ownership. Inspired, of course, by an alliance with their grandchild, who wants to inherit something of their own before they turn 500. It's not that they are cavalier with their lives, as fighting to wrest resources away from their elders, when Death refuses to help. The young have no place to call their own in which to stay. The old cannot fortify against every threat, and must project the impression that they take enough risks to die from their own activities, otherwise be murdered for calcifying local developments. Alternately, an immortal society could have a festival every century in which all property passes to one's living heirs, and the eldest living ancestor, who would otherwise receive no inheritance, is paid some cash by all their living descendants. I recall a story in which people above a certain age were banned from all governing roles, and could only fill advisory positions. Futurama had the retirement planet, where the eldest (a.k.a. Prof. Farnsworth) were imprisoned to keep them out of the way. Even the various cultural mythologies had new gods arising to slay and replace the old gods. It's very well explored--immortals get murdered. Even the Monkey King, who was six-ways immortal, faced execution, and when the gods discovered they couldn't kill him by any of the known methods of killing immortals, they instead put a mountain on top of him to keep him from moving.

injb 7y ago

I'm surprised he doesn't mention Native Americans as a source of inspiration for the elves. If you've read The Last of the Mohicans, this is very obvious (including parallels between Aragorn and Nathaniel/Hawkeye).

TsiCClawOfLight 7y ago
I am very surprised by this comment. Could you elaborate? I read nearly everything published by JRR or Christopher, including notes and letters, and never is any north american influence mentioned. There are Norse/Germanic/Finnish, Icelandic, Celtic, Byzantine (for Gondor) influences and Atlantis for Numenor, that's pretty much it. It is also worth noting that Aragorn is not, in fact, the last of his race, as there are still other rangers. He is merely the last one of royal line.
- d883kd8 7y ago
  Hawkeye is a white mountaineer, not the titular Last Mohican (that's Chingachgook)
- injb 7y ago
  Well, I'll try, but I don't know if I can explain it very well. In The Last of the Mohicans, Nathaniel (Indian name: Hawkeye) is a British-American scout and frontiersman who has largely forsaken white civilization, and lives/hunts/travels with a Mohican chief and his son. He speaks their language and understands their ways. The influence is a bit mixed up though; in TLOTM, there is an exiled chief, the last of his race, who wanders in the wilderness keeping his true identify a secret, but it's the Mohican, not Hawkeye. But in most other ways, Hawkeye is like Aragorn. Another obvious similarity is the theme of the passing of an age - the natives have lived in their own old fashioned ways for centuries, but now they're receding, and their way of life is fading away in the face of increasing colonialism. Finally, the storyline of the three companions Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli tracking their friends the captured hobbits across the wilderness, hopelessly outnumbered is pretty much lifted from TLOTM, although Toklien's version is far more epic. I'm surprised that you would never have heard of this. I read that book only recently, but I always believed it was an influence on Tolkien. I remember reading that he used to dress up as a Native American to entertain children. Here's an interesting quote[1]: "I had very little desire to look for buried treasure or fight pirates, and Treasure Island left me cool. Red Indians were better: there were bows and arrows (I had and have a wholly unsatisfied desire to shoot well with a bow), and strange languages, and glimpses of an archaic mode of life, and above all, forests in such stories." TLOTH is pretty much set entirely in a forest, populated by almost mystical race of forest-people and their enigmatic white friend. If he read books from that era (like Treasure Island) and had an interest in "Red Indians" then he must have read TLOTM. I hope I've made a good case for this, but if not then I think reading the book will make the link much clearer. [1] http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/jrr_tolkien_in_his_own_words.html http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/jrr_tolkien_in_his_own_wo...

peter303 7y ago

Contrast this to Shakespeare's fairies who are playful and smaller stature.

jdlyga 7y ago

Tolkein originally had the "tall, beautiful, elder people" race to be fairies in his earlier stories. The elves in The Hobbit were very different from what they ended up being in Lord of the Rings. They were more mischievous and Santa Claus elf-like. It looks like he combined the two ideas for his later books.

TsiCClawOfLight 7y ago
He called them fairies in the beginning (in what is now the Silmarillion), but they were always taller and more beautiful than humans, always immortal in some way, and always arrived before humans. He simply changed his names for them, as he also did with the 3 main race names.

csours 7y ago

Archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20200302122344/https://middle-earth.xenite.org/answers-to-frequently-asked-questions-about-tolkien-elves/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200302122344/https://middle-ea...

iambateman 7y ago

This article is great, but to offer a quick correction to the final Q: Gandalf is not an elf, he’s a Maiar. His dark counterpart before becoming Gandalf the White would be a balrog, which is why Gandalf takes on the balrog in Moria and not Legolas. ;)

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]