Comments on: Weekly Tolkien: Go Not to the Elves, Follow-Up http://www.anwyn.com/2007/05/30/weekly-tolkien-go-not-to-the-elves-follow-up/ Sometime editor, all-the-time mother, delivering facts, reviews, commentary, and rants. Occasionally in that order. Fri, 05 Dec 2008 04:03:41 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.4 by: LagunaDave http://www.anwyn.com/2007/05/30/weekly-tolkien-go-not-to-the-elves-follow-up/#comment-50238 Tue, 12 Jun 2007 05:07:41 +0000 http://www.anwyn.com/2007/05/30/weekly-tolkien-go-not-to-the-elves-follow-up/#comment-50238 I haven't read the voluminous background material available in The History of Middle Earth, so I can only speculate. I wonder if Tolkien was consciously or unconsciously contrasting different mythologies. The Elves' fate seems more reminiscent of Norse/Germanic mythology (Valinor = Valhalla), which Tolkien was very in tune with, while men's place in the cosmos seems more Judeo-Christian. It may have been one of your old columns on TORN that pointed out how closely the elves are linked to the earth. One can view them as being sort of permanent features of the landscape/scenery, like the mountains and oceans. Another thing I've always found bizarre about the elves - they must be unbelievably chaste. An immortal race - especially one which presumably doesn't lose fertility through aging - should have overrun the planet completely in 10,000 years. Even if every elf couple only had one child, the population would grow exponentially. Given that birth control is never mentioned by Tolkien, we may have stumbled onto a more mundane explanation for why the firstborn are so dour... :-) I haven’t read the voluminous background material available in The History of Middle Earth, so I can only speculate.

I wonder if Tolkien was consciously or unconsciously contrasting different mythologies. The Elves’ fate seems more reminiscent of Norse/Germanic mythology (Valinor = Valhalla), which Tolkien was very in tune with, while men’s place in the cosmos seems more Judeo-Christian.

It may have been one of your old columns on TORN that pointed out how closely the elves are linked to the earth. One can view them as being sort of permanent features of the landscape/scenery, like the mountains and oceans.

Another thing I’ve always found bizarre about the elves - they must be unbelievably chaste. An immortal race - especially one which presumably doesn’t lose fertility through aging - should have overrun the planet completely in 10,000 years. Even if every elf couple only had one child, the population would grow exponentially. Given that birth control is never mentioned by Tolkien, we may have stumbled onto a more mundane explanation for why the firstborn are so dour… :-)

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