
Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about Tolkien Elves - BerislavLopac
https://middle-earth.xenite.org/answers-to-frequently-asked-questions-about-tolkien-elves/
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asdfasgasdgasdg
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.

~~~
msla
It would be interesting to have a story set in the stone age where
_Neanderthals_ are the "normal humans" and the _Cro Magnons_ are the elves,
the lithe, agile, gracile ones with childlike faces (compared to a
_Neanderthal_ ) and a love of innovation and novelty.

This... isn't conclusively ruled out by modern archaeology, as far as I know,
and it would allow you to talk about "half-elves" while maintaining the notion
that they're still separate species.

~~~
WorldMaker
I believe Carl Sagan played with the idea for a fictional story, but never got
beyond what he explored as non-fiction (primarily, to my mind in the book _The
Dragons of Eden_ ). Also, you can argue some of Stephen Baxter's books explore
the ideas, though Stephen Baxter has tried to be both historically accurate
enough that he generally doesn't use fantasy terms like dwarves/elves, and
smart enough to not fall into stereotype traps that you could easily point to
in his descriptions of other hominids. (It's a running theme in among other
things his Manifold books, and probably most interesting in hints and tertiary
themes in the Long Earth young adult fiction he cowrote with Terry Pratchett,
where the term elves is actually used, though not entirely based on hominids
known to this Earth.)

My very lay understanding is that in the cross-over period where early Sapiens
lived with other hominids you could draw some parallels to Neanderthals as
dwarves (or sometimes perhaps trolls) to Sapiens viewpoints at the time and in
that case Denisovans might be elves.

If you want to throw in bad pop-genetics, there'd be more "half-dwarves" among
European descendants and more "half-elves" among Asian descendants, from that
viewpoint.

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belval
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."

~~~
evanb
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.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
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.

~~~
eozoon
To be fair, there's also wood/east-elves, fair/light-elves, grey-elves, green-
elves, all of whom are bona fide elves.

So just because he's called "modifier+elf" doesn't mean they didn't think he's
a proper elf.

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aequitas
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-wor...](https://shadow27.tumblr.com/post/153945874245/in-the-dog-world-
humans-are-elves-that-routinely)

~~~
jimmux
From the dog's perspective, would a cat then be something like a goblin?

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mellosouls
_“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-t...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/j-r-r-tolkien-
and-c-s-lewis-revived-myth-telling/399347/)

~~~
mcguire
"Who?"

About a billion Tolkien fans.

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psychometry
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.

~~~
einpoklum
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...

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kriro
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
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.

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

~~~
blackearl
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.

~~~
timdiggerm
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.

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injb
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
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.

~~~
injb
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_wo...](http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/jrr_tolkien_in_his_own_words.html)

~~~
TsiCClawOfLight
Thank you! In Europe (well, outside the UK at least - I lived in France,
Belgium, Germany and Austria) TLOTM is pretty much unknown to my generation.
It is only left as a figure of speech, probably due to the movies.

Since multiple movies were made in the 60s, I suppose that it was not always
so.

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onewhonknocks
This makes me wonder, are Vulcans basically Space Elves?

~~~
marcus_holmes
Klingons = Space Orcs

~~~
DataGata
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
Romulans would be like the wood elves.

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jdlyga
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
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.

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

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peter303
Contrast this to Shakespeare's fairies who are playful and smaller stature.

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iambateman
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. ;)

