Lorien’s right next to Moria, it’s just a little way south of the high pass, it’s on the Great River. In terms of transport infrastructure, it’s really central (not that there’s much travel in Middle-earth these days, but still.)
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Yes, but when was the last time you walked onto a busy roundabout?
(I like the idea that everyone knows where it is, and it’s halfway to anywhere, but virtually no one ever visits because dealing with the elves is such a drag)
“an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit mist, or a roundabout without a pedestrian crossing. To go there is to destroy the magic, unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed.”
- early draft of letter 247
That’s a remarkable bit of modernity for a letter from 1963; while circular junctions predate WW2, what we’d recognise as a roundabout was an early 60s development by the TRL.
Tolkien’s obsession with transport infrastructure is woefully underdiscussed, with the possible exception of CF Farnstable’s 1982 essay “He goes On and On about the Roads” where he argues that the Lost Road was not the path through time to Numenor, but actually the A431 near Birmingham.
- but she’s presented as being so nice and caring when we actually meet her, it’s hard to believe she’s got the capacity to be the scary Belle Dame Sans Merci needed to inspire such takes.
i always read that as the Rohirrim having little more than anecdotes and rumours about Galadriel and/or Lothlórien, and playing generational telephone with that 'knowledge' to boot...
This was something that irked me about the ROP series – elves watching over the lands of men should be a flicker of movement in the corner of the eye, a whisper on the edge of hearing, a ruined tower that We Do Not Visit. Not squaddies clumping into a pub going "anyone seen anything odd this week?"
But it’s mostly a mood piece, I suppose, a glimpse of the elder days. Structurally, it’s in the same place as Beorn’s house - it’s the respite after the perilous crossing of the mountains.
And just as Beorn - the big goblin-slaying warrior-bear - sort of sets the tone for the rest of the Hobbit (moving from a picaresque farce to something that can have Smaug and the Battle of Five Armies), so does Lorien signal a shift towards something more epic and melancholy. Death and fading.
The more I study Middle-earth, the more I think Tolkien’s reputation as a world-builder is misunderstood. His world doesn’t “work”. It’s not carefully thought out alternate-history, he doesn’t think through all the ramifications of magic or whatever.
I don't know - I can think of precursors to Tolkien, like William Morris, but the whole 'consciously creating a fictional myth-cycle'... I can't think of any.
But the oft raised complaint about the all too useful ‘Eagles to the Rescue’ - I feel overlooks the unwritten multi-volume tome on Eagle Political machinations of the 2900s-3100s
Individual *bits* are considered in astounding detail. I’ve been deep in Gondorian and Arnorian history for a while, and it’s all really detailed and consistent, all great pseudo-history. But it’s sort of sectioned off from the rest of the world.
Middle-earth’s more like a wonder-cabinet - a collection of cherished obsessions, all stored side-by-side in their own little compartments. But it works as a whole because it’s unified by Tolkien’s love of each thing, and that’s the consistent factor.
The Great River north of Rohan is kind of shockingly underdeveloped and underpopulated for being "the Great River".
The Third Age is decline all over, but from the time the Elves first hit it during the Great Migration it doesn't really seem there was ever much farming, urbanization, or trade.
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(I like the idea that everyone knows where it is, and it’s halfway to anywhere, but virtually no one ever visits because dealing with the elves is such a drag)
- early draft of letter 247
But the oft raised complaint about the all too useful ‘Eagles to the Rescue’ - I feel overlooks the unwritten multi-volume tome on Eagle Political machinations of the 2900s-3100s
The Third Age is decline all over, but from the time the Elves first hit it during the Great Migration it doesn't really seem there was ever much farming, urbanization, or trade.
If Gondor doesn't do it, whoever's there has straightforward trade links with them & their seaports.
(Maybe passing btw Lorien & Dol Guldur was a deterrent in the later TA.)