Unfinished Tales: Aldarion and Erendis

Part 2 of Unfinished Tales continues with the most unfinished of the eponymous tales, "Aldarion and Erendis."

"Aldarion and Erendis" stands out in the corpus of Middle-earth texts for various reasons. For one thing, it is the only story of any detail set in Númenor before the end of that island (the tale of its end is found in The Silmarillion as "The Akallabêth). It takes place in the earlier years of the Second Age, shortly after the Númenóreans began sailing back to Middle-earth for the first time and before Sauron forged the Rings, sparking war with the Elves. The preceding "tale" in the collection, "A Description of the Island of Númenor" functions as a companion piece to "Aldarion and Erendis," fleshing out the geographic and cultural environment of the Númenor of their tale.

"Aldarion and Erendis" is also unique among Tolkien's works because the chief source of its drama is the marriage of the titular characters: Tar-Aldarion the 6th King of Númenor and his wife, the only commoner-born Queen of that land. Mind you, while this marital drama is forefront, the tale is not solely about the tragedy of one family. "Aldarion and Erendis" shows how the earliest seeds of the Akallabêth were laid, what Tolkien called "the shadow of the shadow" that would later fall on Númenor. As the great ship-king of Númenor, Tar-Aldarion's reign laid the foundations for his people's intervention into the later war of Sauron and the Elves, paving the way for the destruction of Númenor at Sauron's conniving and the involvement of Aragorn and Gondor in The Lord of the Rings.

One particular point where "Aldarion and Erendis" converge with Aragorn's tale is the White Tree of Gondor. In The Lord of the Rings we learn that the White Tree, the symbol of Gondor's kings, is descended from a tree on the Elven island of Tol Eressëa. For so long as a descendent of that tree blossoms, the descendent of Elendil rule Gondor. In the same way that Elendil's people came from Númenor, the first White Tree of Gondor came from Númenor as a sapling. Its parent tree, cut down by Sauron in Númenor's last days, was planted during "Aldarion and Erendis"--a wedding gift from the Elves of Tol Eressëa. The prophecy connecting the tree to the kings would not come until later, beyond the scope of this story.



My vignette--and a simple vignette it is--for this story shows Aldarion and the tree. Aldarion's marriage fell apart when he went back to sea and returned several years late. Erendis had returned to her native part of the island and their house together in Armenelos, the royal city, was empty. Aldarion went to visit his wife once he returned, but they were both too proud to bridge the impasse between them and Aldarion returned to Armenelos in cold anger. He then ordered his house there destroyed. The text of this part of the tale, which comes near the point where Tolkien ceased to work on it, reads:

On the next day he gathered men in Rómenna and brought them to Armenelos. There he bade some fell all the trees, save one, in his garden, and take them to the shipyards; others he commanded to raze his house to the ground. The white Elven-tree alone he spared; and when the woodcutters were gone he looked at it, standing amid the desolation, and he saw for the first time that it was in itself beautiful. In its slow Elven growth it was yet but twelve feet high, straight, slender, youthful, now budded with its winter flowers upon upheld branches pointing to the sky.

Unfinished Tales: A Description of the Island of Númenor

Discussion of Unfinished Tales resumed on the Barrow-downs this past week with the first tale of the book's second Part. Except that it isn't a tale, precisely speaking. This piece is "A Description of the Island of Númenor" and it is a pretty much complete, fairly short account of the island-kingdom of Númenor. As such, it doesn't actually tell a story, but it does give an otherwise unparalleled look into the geography and culture of the Númenóreans.

Part 2 of Unfinished Tales is about the Second Age, which began with the defeat of the Dark Lord Morgoth. In reward for their loyalty against him, the three houses of Men allied with the Elves were given the island of Númenor, which was raised from the depths of the ocean especially for them. The Second Age would end after the cumulative effects of the Númenóreans fighting Sauron, being seduced by Sauron, being destroyed (ala Atlantis) by the Powers-that-be for that seduction, and a remnant of the Númenóreans riding the tidal waves to Middle-earth where they would establish the Kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor and face Sauron again, and win, in the War of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men, when Sauron was defeated and his Ring taken.

In other words, the Second Age was pretty much the Age of Númenor. From the point of view of The Lord of the Rings, the most important thing that happened outside of Númenor was the creation of the Rings of Power and the war between the Elves and Sauron that followed--a war that the Númenóreans entered on the side of the Elves, decisively defeating Sauron (yes, even with his ring), starting the whole cycle of Sauron-related events that would destroy their kingdom and begin the Third Age.

So Númenor is clearly and important part of Tolkien's legendarium. It isn't exactly in Middle-earth, which generally refers to the lands East of the Sea, but it certainly isn't "The West," where Frodo is taken at the end of The Lord of the Rings, where normally only Elves can go. Instead, Númenor occupies a special halfway spot, the closest thing to paradise that Men can have on this earth. Most significantly, Men lose Númenor in a "second fall" of sorts, one which is mostly their own fault. Sauron eggs them on at the end and probably hastens their demise, but the Númenóreans really have no one to blame but themselves.

Obviously, if Númenor is so important, you would expect Tolkien to have written a lot about it--but he didn't; not really. Thus, "A Description of the Island of Númenor," despite its brevity (it's about 9 pages, counting footnotes), has a lot of interest to the Tolkien fan wanting to know more about this crucial, but enigmatic, race.



Unfortunately, the picture I composed for this "tale" isn't great. The lack of particular characters and the emphasis on geography made it a challenge to come up with a relatively simple scene and the final result is a bit lacklustre--mostly because I left the stud-wide strip of green at the bottom of the backdrop baseplate and didn't orient the backdrop at a 90 degree angle. This was also a fairly lazy build, since I simply imported the smithy from 6918 Blacksmith Attack.

Ignoring the deficiencies of my building, however, this scene draws on a few brief lines in the "tale" that mention the scarcity of swords in early Númenor. Before they began exploring back to Middle-earth, the Númenóreans had almost no use for swords. The ones that had were heirlooms from the First Age and their part in the war against Morgoth. The only swords that WERE being forged in Númenor were for the King's Heir on the day he took at that office. Thus we see a royal or high official with a more junior assistant at the smithy to inspect the smith's handiwork.

The background, apart from hiding the brick wall against which this photograph was taken, allowed me to work a little bit of Númenor's geography into this image. The single mountain is Meneltarma, Númenor's only mountain. Meneltarma was the place of worship for the Númenóreans, which is part of the reason we don't see much religion in The Lord of the Rings: because, rather like the Jewish temple, the place of worship was lost, although there was a legend that the mountain was not drowned with the rest of Númenor, but rose again above the waves.

Unfinished Tales: Narn i Chîn Húrin

A week ago I put up the first chapter-illustration from Unfinished Tales and with the Chapter-by-Chapter discussion on the Barrow-downs due to resume in the coming week or so, this is the second illustration.

The second tale in the collection also belongs to Part I of the book, tales of the First Age. Like "Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin," this second tale is found in The Silmarillion in a shorter form that puts it in the context of the larger tale of the High Elves and their fight against the Dark Lord; but unlike "Of Tuor," this tale is far more complete.

This tale is the "Narn i Chîn Húrin,"* the Tale of the Children of Húrin. In the Silmarillion this is the chapter called "Of Túrin Turambar," who is one of the titular children of Húrin and the main character of this tale.

Túrin is a Man, the first cousin of Tuor from the previous tale, about seven or eight years older than him, and he also loses his father, the great hero Húrin, in the battle when the Dark Lord Morgoth's armies destroy the great alliance of Elven kingdoms, crushing some of the Elven kingdoms in the process. After that, only three Elven kingdoms remain, all of which are hidden or guarded: Gondolin, which figures into Tuor's story; Nargothrond, and Doriath. Túrin's mother sends him to Doriath to be fostered, but she stays behind because she is pregnant and it's winter.

Fast-forward about twenty years and Túrin grows up and leaves Doriath on bad terms. He joins a band of outlaws and turns them into guerillas fighting Morgoth's orks and has some success before he is betrayed and captured. His best friend rescues him by night, but Túrin kills him thinking he's an ork. Another freed prisoner leads him to the secret Elven kingdom of Nargothrond.

Once again, Túrin becomes a leader and the Elves of Nargothrond begin to wage open war on the forces of Morgoth. This attracts the Dark Lord's attention and he sends a massive army led by the dragon Glaurung to destroy the city, which happens--largely thanks to Túrin's pride. The dragon lets Túrin go, to mess with him further (I should have mentioned that Morgoth put a curse on Húrin's family) and reminds him of his mother and sister suffering in his homeland. Túrin then abandons any thought of freeing the captives taken at Nargothrond, which included his One True Love/Elven Princess to go and rescue his family.

That's where this picture comes in...



Túrin arrives back home only to discover that his mother and sister are long gone, so he goes to the hall of the local Easterling lord, who has taken over the lands since Morgoth's victory, where he hopes to learn of them. He does, but in the process he asserts his rights as the proper lord of the land, starts a fight, kills the lord, and burns the place to the ground. This picture shows his standing outside the hall with Sador Labadal, a lamed servant he knew as a child who has joined in the uprising against the Easterling lord. Sador now tells him to go (and it will be seen from the whole passage that I've changed the appearance of things slightly):

"Then he [Túrin] rested, leaning against a pillar, and the fire of his rage was as ashes. But old Sador crept up to him and clutched him about the knees, for he was wounded to the death. 'Thrice seven years and more, it was long to wait for this hour,' he said. 'But now go, go, lord! Go, and do not come back, unless with greater strength. They will raise the land against you. Many have run from the hall. Go, or you will end here. Farewell!' Then he slipped down and died."

Obviously, I've moved Túrin outdoors, into the winter snow that forms a chilly contrast to the flames of the burning hall, and to make the picture more striking, he isn't leaning against a pillar but standing proud while Sador beseeches him to leave. I've also moved Sador from clutching at his knees for the same reason--and because of the difficulty of getting the LEGO figures posed that easily.

After this scene is the most finished part of this unfinished tale, which includes Túrin's (incestuous) reunion with his sister, his final confrontation with the dragon Glaurung, and death for everyone--much like Hamlet, there's hardly anyone left onstage at the end of the "Narn" to deliver the final lines.

Compared with my previous depiction of Túrin, one can see that I've updated the figure a little. The hairpiece is one that only came out in the past few years; mine comes from the Prince of Persia sets and many more will be available with The Lord of the Rings sets coming out this year. I've also updated his face--I'm not sure if it was available in 2004/2005, but I certainly didn't have any, and while it might be a little grim for the entirety of Túrin's story, it is a grim story and this is a grim part.



One thing that hasn't changed is his black sword. Túrin's black sword, Gurthang, was originally a gift to his friend, Beren, from the King of Doriath, and Túrin used it in accidentally slaying Beren, and then became famed for wielding it as a soldier of Nargothrond. He would carry it until the end of the story when he faces the dragon again. My version of Gurthang is a LEGO great sword that has been painted black. It was one of my original chrome great swords from 1995 that had lost nearly all its chrome so painting it black was a way of salvaging it. It works fairly well, even about the hilt where the paint has partially worn off from the minifig's hand grasping at it.

As a final note, it's worth mentioning that the "Narn" was cleaned up and published in 2007 as a stand-alone work, The Children of Húrin. If you consider that it's a long enough tale to carry an entire book, you'll see that my synopsis here is VERY brief and I heartily commend checking it out. Although it is far more dire than The Lord of the Rings, it might be more approachable for the reader just getting into Middle-earth's other tales, since it has a single narrative and fewer characters, unlike The Silmarillion, the usual starting point.




*In Unfinished Tales it is actually the Narn i hîn Húrin, but we know from The History of Middle-earth series that Christopher Tolkien dropped the "ch" in favour of "h" to distract people from pronouncing it as you would in "not by the hairs of my chinny chin chin." In Elvish tongues, the "ch" is always pronounced as in German, e.g. "Bach."

Unfinished Tales: Of Tuor and His Coming to Gondolin

I've mentioned more than once that I'm a big LEGO fan, and once-upon-a-time I had some rudimentary ambitions to illustrate a LEGO Silmarillion. This never got beyond a Brickshelf folder full of Silmarillion characters, one of which pictures now sits to the right as my profile picture. The recent news that LEGO will be making The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit sets has rekindled my desire to attempt some books-based, canonical MOCs, and I glanced backwards at the old Silmarillion project in finding some inspiration.

At this point, enter the fact that I am a semi-active member at the Barrow-downs, one of the web's best Tolkien-based discussion forums, even if it's a bit sleepy these days. We started a Chapter-by-Chapter discussion of Unfinished Tales. My ambition is thus to make a single LEGO illustration for each of the sections in the book as we read through it. We got through the first two tales before Christmas and should be returning from a holiday hiatus soon.

Thus, to catch myself up, I made a couple MOC-scenes this past week for the first two tales. I say "MOC-scene" because these are not full-fledged, 360 degree angle creations, but MOCs designed for a single illustrative moment. With these illustrations I have the very modest hopes of introducing one or two LEGO fans to the wider world of Middle-earth beyond The Lord of the Rings, and to hopefully help inspire builders (especially builders more talented than myself) to look there for some inspiration too.

Let's begin at the beginning then, by talking about what Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth (to use the full title) are all about.

To put things simply, when J.R.R. Tolkien died in 1973, most of what he had written about Middle-earth was incomplete, for which reason it was unpublished. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings had been around for four and two decades respectively, but everything else about Middle-earth, which predated both and encompassed a huge mythology, was incomplete.

J.R.R. Tolkien's son, Christopher, who followed in his footsteps as a scholar of Anglo-Saxon, was made his father's literary executor, and out of the mess of papers left behind by Tolkien Sr. was, with the help of Guy Gavriel Kay, able to draw together a single narrative of the main stuff of the mythology: The Silmarillion, published in 1977.

The thing is, though, that this still left many untold stories, some of which simply didn't fit into that part of Middle-earth's history, some of which were simply too incomplete, and some of which were both. Seeing their value as his father's executor and recognising the wide interest readers had shown in the rest of the stuff of Middle-earth, Christopher Tolkien put together Unfinished Tales as a collection of most of the more complete stories that were mostly compatible with the previously works.



The first section of the book is comprised of tales set during the First Age, or the same period of time covered by the the Silmarillion. There are two tales here, and the first of them is "Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin."

Actually... the title of the tale was original "Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin," but the unfinished nature of tale comes into effect with the fact that Tolkien ceased to work on the story right as Tuor, the main character, reached Gondolin. In a more abbreviated form, the tale of Tuor and Gondolin's fall is one of the constituent tales of the Silmarillion. It is also one of the oldest tales in the mythology, even arguably THE oldest, going back in its original form to Tolkien's time in the trenches of France during World War I.

To put the story as briefly as possible, Tuor son of Huor is a young Man (as opposed to an Elf, Dwarf, or Ork) whose father died during the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, when Morgoth, the Dark Enemy destroyed the good guy armies and took over most of Middle-earth. Tuor has been raised by fugitive Elves, was captured by evil men and made a thrall, and then escaped again. Then comes the scene I have pictured, as Tuor follows his destiny towards the Sea, where he is given a mission: go to the hidden city of Gondolin and convince the Elves there to leave the safety of their secret city, which is nearing the end of its time of safety.

In the picture I've posted, it is spring in the wilds of Hithlum, the northern lands where Tuor's people lived--a cold, cut-off-from-the-sea-by-mountains north country that I imagine to be a lot like the foothills in Alberta. Tuor's heart has been stirred to move after three years on the run, and while he is playing his harp, the spring bubbles over tempestuously. He will then follow the stream and eventually come to the sea, where he will receive his mission.

From a MOCing standpoint, the harp is worth mentioning. I'm not actually sure if I came up with the design myself, as I think I've seen someone else use the http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giflong-chained cuffs this way before. It was also a complete mess to try and pose, because there's no good way for a LEGO person to hold it.

Tuor himself is based on this picture, from my earlier, illustrate-the-Silmarillion character gallery:



As you can see, he's been updated a little, but still looks essentially the same. Tuor is known to be golden-haired, and because he is mistaken for an Elf a couple times, it seemed fair to make him clean-shaven. I thus stuck with the 1990s Iceplanet/Deputy Sheriff head you see here, but I took advantage of the new male hair in the blond (I got mine with the Series 3 Collectible Minifigs race car driver) to update him a little, and the hardy, former-thrall clothing he wears is right off the peasant from Mill Village Raid.

In the older picture, Tuor has a blue torso, with a custom sticker based on the classic Star Wars Jedi torso. At the time, I was using minifig colour-schemes to show faction allegiances. Blue was used for the House of Fingolfin, one of the royal houses of the High Elves, whose vassals included Tuor's family. Tuor would also go on to serve Fingolfin's son Turgon, when he made it to Gondolin, where Turgon was king. However, since I no longer have the ambitions to illustrate the entire Silmarillion with its gigantic cast of characters, I no longer need to keep all the different factions straight, hence the blander, and more realistic torso.

Tune in soon for Tale II!