October 13, 2025 • 40 mins
In this episode, we continue our journey through The Fall of Númenor as we explore “The Natural Life of Númenor.” In this section, we’ll learn about the beasts, birds, plants, and other natural phenomena of Númenor, according to Tolkien! Join us!
And as a reminder: I’ve got a brand-new book on the way, Tolkien’s Tragedy: Concerning Númenor, The Rings of Power, and the Second Age. It’s the culmination of years of study, and I believe it’ll change the way you look at Tolkien’s legendarium.
If you’re enjoying this series, make sure you head over to tolkienroad.substack.com and subscribe.
Read Tolkien's Tragedy: https://tolkienroad.substack.com/
That’s where you’ll get early chapters of Tolkien’s Tragedy and all the behind-the-scenes insights I only share with my readers.
Episode Link: https://www.tolkienroad.com/e0331/
To support our work here, please visit Patreon.com/TolkienRoad.
OTHER LINKS:
Video of this episode: https://youtu.be/r1CHGU4gKvg
Watch AD-FREE: https://www.patreon.com/posts/140989226
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Buy Tolkien Road merch @ True Myths Press
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-tolkien-road--5222755/support.
And as a reminder: I’ve got a brand-new book on the way, Tolkien’s Tragedy: Concerning Númenor, The Rings of Power, and the Second Age. It’s the culmination of years of study, and I believe it’ll change the way you look at Tolkien’s legendarium.
If you’re enjoying this series, make sure you head over to tolkienroad.substack.com and subscribe.
Read Tolkien's Tragedy: https://tolkienroad.substack.com/
That’s where you’ll get early chapters of Tolkien’s Tragedy and all the behind-the-scenes insights I only share with my readers.
Episode Link: https://www.tolkienroad.com/e0331/
To support our work here, please visit Patreon.com/TolkienRoad.
OTHER LINKS:
Video of this episode: https://youtu.be/r1CHGU4gKvg
Watch AD-FREE: https://www.patreon.com/posts/140989226
Listen AD-FREE: https://www.patreon.com/posts/80211867
Buy Tolkien Road merch @ True Myths Press
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-tolkien-road--5222755/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey there, fellowship, Welcome to the Tolkien Road. In this episode,
we continue our journey through the Fall of Neuminor as
we explore the natural life of Neumanor. In this section,
we'll learn about the beasts, birds, plants, and other natural
phenomena of Numanor according to Tolkien. Join us, and as
a reminder, I've got a brand new book on the way,
Tolkien's Tragedy concerning Numenor, the Rings of Power, and the
(00:20):
Second Age. It's the culmination of years of study, and
I believe it'll change the way you look at Tolkien's legendarium.
If you're enjoying this series, make sure you head over
to tolkienrooad dot substack dot com and subscribe. That's where
you'll get early chapters of Tolkien's Tragedy and all the
behind the scenes insights I only share with my readers.
All right, let's dive in. Hey there, fellow travelers, Welcome
(00:43):
to the Tolkien Road, Episode three, p. Thirty one. In
this episode, we'll be continuing our journey through the Fall
of Neuminor as we explore the section titled the Natural
Life of Neumanor. In this section, we'll learn about the beasts, birds,
plants and other natural phenomena of Newmanor according to Tolkien.
(01:05):
Before we get started, I'd like to give a double
up bear five to our amazing fellowship. Hands up, stick
them up three two one ooopsht. Very nice good stuff.
Felt it coming at me straight to the heart. Special
thanks to this episode's executive producers, John R. Caitlin of
TA with Tolkien, Jacob Blockhom, John H and Aeru twenty seven.
(01:29):
Also a shout out to those celebrating their Fellowship anniversary
in March of twenty twenty three. Jacob Bess, Peter B.
Paul D. Steven S, Jay Z, bethany E, Daniel D.
Caitlin of t with Tolkien. Thank you all so much
for sticking with us over the last year. Hey, I
wanted to let you all know about some recent podcasts.
(01:52):
I have joined as a guest for a couple of episodes.
So the first one is The Mythic Mind, where I
joined creator Andrew Snyder for a discussion of on fairy
stories and Tolkien's Tales from the Perilous Realm. For those
of you who don't know, these are the stories that
are not necessarily Middle Earth stories, but they are non
(02:14):
Middle Earth stories from Tolkien, but they do tell us
a lot about Tolkien and what he thought about a
whole lot of things, so they're very worthwhile. They're stories
we don't always spend as much time with, but they're
very worth spending time with. But the main crux of
our conversation was on fairy stories, and as you know,
I've talked about it a lot on this podcast. On
(02:37):
fairy stories is it's like the Tolkien's literary manifesto. So
if you have a good understanding of on fairy stories,
you kind of understand what he was up to with
Middle Earth, why he spent his whole life crafting this
legendarium that we all know love and cherish. The other
podcast I was a part of was recently was Window
on the West and this is a pretty new podcast
(02:59):
from the guys at the One Ring dot Com. Now
The Wondering dot Com has actually been around for a
really long time. It actually goes back to like the
early days of the Internet, right, I think even back
to pre two thousand I think is when it started,
and those guys took a little bit of a break
for some time, but they are back and they're back strong,
(03:19):
and they've started a podcast, Window on the West, and
I was recently an honored to be a guest on
their podcast, and we talked about, you know, just kind
of the latest news as far as screen adaptations out
of the world. Tolkan talked a lot about the Rings
of Power, and you know, that's just stuff that everybody
who is into Tolkien enjoys talking about. So I highly
recommend that you go over and listen to our conversation.
(03:42):
Those guys are super entertaining. A lot of fun we had.
We had a lot of fun in that conversation, so
check that one out too. It's Window on the West.
So if with Mythic Mind you can find it tolkienrooad
dot com slash Mythic Mind and that'll take you straight
to the episode, and then Tolkienroad dot com slash window
will take you straight to my episode with Window on
(04:02):
the West. And while you're over at those, you know,
those different podcasts, check out what other episodes they've got
going on, because they're both doing really good work. So also, hey,
I mentioned the Fellowship of the Road earlier. If you
want to become a patron, if you want to support
our work here on the Tolkien Road by the way.
I do promise that Grete will be joining us again soon.
(04:23):
It sho's been a little bit of a busy time
for her. She's working on some professional stuff, doing some
training in her spare time, and that's kind of kept
her away from having enough time really to focus on
doing the podcast. But she will be back, I promise
you hopefully it's very soon, maybe in the next couple
of weeks. Next up is to do our second part
(04:45):
of our Smith of Wooten major discussion. She's definitely going
to be back here soon. But if you want to
become a patron of the Fellowship of the Road, If
you want to join the Fellowship of the Road, do
so by visiting patreon dot com slash Tolkien Road you tube.
Hit that like button, don't forget to subscribe, and let
us know what's on your mind in the comments below.
(05:06):
All right, So, while most of us aren't attracted to
Tolkien's Legendarium because of encyclopedic accounts of the flora and
fauna of a fictional ancient land, it is precisely such
detail found throughout Tolkien's works that accounts for the very
similitude of Middle Earth the way it seems to be
a real place, and in some instances we may even
(05:27):
find that these details provide hints and clues to great
purpose and insight. For example, in Tolkien's mind, how would
men relate to an island paradise if they suddenly found
themselves in it? These are the sorts of questions to
keep in mind as we explore the natural life of
Numenor an account of the flora and fauna of the
Starland the Land of Gift. The sources for this section
(05:52):
are Unfinished Tales and the Nature of Middle Earth. Both
of those two are pretty much the entirety of this section,
arranged by Brian Sibley's was to be a little more
readable for the purposes of the book The Fall of Neumnor.
And there's one brief passage from the Lord of the
Rings that's referenced as well. We'll get to that, all right.
So what were the flora and fauna of middle of
(06:15):
Numenor like? So the first section we deal with is
really interesting to me, and it kind of sets the
stage for how Tolkien maybe thought of this question with
regard to Numenor. So I'm gonna go ahead and read
that it would appear that neither elves nor men had
(06:38):
dwelt in this island before the coming of the Yudine.
Beasts and birds had no fear of men, and the
relations of men and animals restrained more remained more friendly
in Numnor than anywhere else in the world. It is
said that even those that the new Manorians classed as predatory,
by which they meant those that would need raid their
crops and tame cattle, remained on honorable terms with the newcomers,
(07:00):
seeking their food so far as they could in the wild,
and showing no hostility to men, save at times of
declared war, when after de warning the husbandmen would as
a necessity hunt the predatory birds and beasts to reduce
their numbers within limits. All right, So this opening paragraph
is really interesting for a couple of reasons. First of all,
(07:23):
what does this mean by at times of declared war?
It's just a I think he just means when, like,
you know, maybe when the new Minorians felt it was
like there was a problem getting out of hand maybe
with some of these creatures, and it was time to
put some focused effort into taming them and kind of
you know, dialing back the numbers that exist these kind
(07:44):
of animal husbandry questions, if you will. But it's funny
to me to hear and put that in terms of
in times of war. I can't think of any other
meaning he would have for that, you know, like like,
you know, because New Minor war never really came to
the shores of New Minor, like they would go in
fight wars in other lands, but wars never really came.
So I guess it's possible that maybe Salurun had you know,
(08:06):
inspired some evil actions in some of the creatures of
Middle Earth from Afar. But but it's just a yeah,
it's it's kind of a I think what he meant
is the first thing I said there. Uh, And he
actually uses that terminology again a little bit later on
in this section, But he also speaks of, you know,
just being on honorable terms, and I think, you know,
this is really maybe the key phrase, one of two
(08:28):
key phrases to understand the relationship of the men of
numen Or to the natural phenomena of their land, to
the flora and fauna of their land. They they had,
they had a good relationship with these creatures, right, There
wasn't maybe the degree of alienation that sometimes especially in
(08:52):
the modern world, maybe we can feel towards, uh, towards
the creatures that are around us, that are kind of
wild creatures that are around us, towards the you know,
like we we you know, we often think of and
Tolkien kind of had this in the back of his
mind and a lot of his writing about exploitation of
like you know, natural resources, you know, there there wasn't
(09:12):
there didn't seem to be any anything like that going on,
And there wasn't this big issue of like, you know,
the stronger predatory beasts attacking like the newmonorians. Right. He
mentions nowhere in here the idea of like an animal
attacking a child or something like that, or or a
grown you know, certainly not a grown numnorian. So I
(09:35):
think that's what he means by honorable terms. There was
this you know sense in which if if the predatory
beast needed to it, if they did end up doing
something like stealing crops or you know, stealing like maybe
some of the tame beasts those kind of things, it
was only out of sheer necessity, right, It was only
out of sheer necessity. And they seem to have this
kind of like ingrained respect for the Newmnorians, and and
(09:59):
even we'll see something like friendship going on. We'll get
to that a couple of other things from this first
section here of men and Beace. You know, language was
always a very important important part of what Tolkien was
doing with the works of Middle Earth. In a way,
(10:20):
the whole legendarium is kind of this lifelong exercise in
building a legend to support his imaginary languages. And that's
still true here as well. You know, he thinks of terms,
he thinks of he thinks of almost everything in terms
of languages. So I wanted to read this passage just
a little later on here. Regarding the naming of these
(10:41):
various creatures, Neither are the names which the Numonorians gave
to animals and plants always easy to equate with or
relate to the names of those found in Middle Earth. Many,
though given in apparently Quinya or Sindar in terms, are
not found in the Elvish or human tongues of Middle Earth.
This is partly due, no doubt, to the fact that
the animals and plants of numenor similar and related to
(11:01):
those of the Mainlands, were different in variety and seem
to require new names. So in some cases we don't
have you know, we don't have like normal what you know,
common speech names for some of these creatures. And again
remember from the last the last section we looked at
on the geography of New Minor and and just kind
(11:21):
of this general idea. The way in which we receive
this knowledge within within terms of the legendarium is like
three thousand years after after the end of Numenor, right,
It's kind of like these are like records that and
things that are known in Gondor at the end of
the third Age early fourth age, right, that's how we
(11:43):
recount this information. And so there's been a long period
of time since anybody actually was in Nu Minor, actually
saw Nu Minor, So you know, they're trying to piece
things together in some cases from scanty records. But you know,
it's interesting that some of these creatures, while you know,
there's nothing like, you know, nothing like I think that
would feel too crazy to us necessarily in terms of
(12:04):
what these creatures were. There are some creatures where we
have names for them, but they're not there's no equivalent
name in the common speech, right. So you know, for example,
here we do talk about he talks about actually dogs
and cats. There were no dogs in newman or at
least native dogs that were. There were native cats. We
have names for those things, right, we know that they were,
(12:26):
you know, we're talking about dogs and cats as we
would think of dogs and cats. But then he gets
to this creature in the next section called the LOOPOLDI.
The LOOPOLDI, we don't exactly know what they were, but
our best guess is there's something like there's something like
a rabbit. Right, there's something like a rabbit, so, you know,
(12:49):
but we don't have a lot of descriptive information to
distinguish from how they may be different from a rabbit.
But what seems clear is that they're not necessarily just
like rabbits as we would think of them. Okay, So
just an little note there on the languages and in
the limitations of the knowledge that are handed down in
terms of New min Ore. Again, this is the kind
of thing that increases the very similitude of of of
(13:12):
of the Middle Earth legendarium, that the seeming sensation that
it's real when you read it, right, Because Tolkien, even
in terms of the textual history how we get to
knowledge epistemology, he's kind of true to the history of
Newman or there's no like third person objective ability to
just know everything necessarily. Okay, so I mentioned the LOOPOLDI
(13:34):
He also says that foxes were, you know, foxes were
pretty pretty popular creatures, and they would be used and
to train, they would be used to kind of control
the population of the LOOPHOLDI right, these rabbit like creatures
that we don't know a whole lot about. And it's
interesting to me that foxes were because I think of
foxes is normally not being something that human beings can
(13:57):
necessarily train. Now I'm sure there's exceptions to that, but
I know it's not a common thing where I live
or in the United States as far as I know,
to have a fox as a pet or to see
it as any kind of tame creature. But you know,
I've seen a few, you know, in my in my
neck of the woods, had actually had a few in
my backyard in uh, you know, the last few years,
(14:17):
and they're definitely afraid of humans. They definitely don't want
to come near humans. If you've ever by the way,
if you've ever heard of frock a fox screen howling
at night or doing its mating call at night, it
sounds like you've got a ghost in your backyard. It
sounds eerie as heck until you realize what it is.
I actually caught a fox on video a couple of
years ago, maybe just a year ago, in the early morning,
(14:38):
like howling in my backyard, and just put the video
up to it, and it's it. You know, when before
I knew what it was, it sounded like, what is
that thing? It's kind of scary sounding, all right. So
foxes were used to hunt down the Lopoldi and to
kind of keep control of the population there. But again,
it's not like hunting them down to extinction. It's just
controlling the population so that every one can live in harmony, right, all,
(15:02):
all of the creatures of numenor from men to the
smallest can kind of have this harmonious existence together, at
least in natural terms, all right. Next up is bears.
So bears, How did were there bears in numenor how
did they relate to bear? How did they relate to
the men of numnor? You know, bears are frightening creatures.
Bears for us normally we think of them as like, oh, man,
(15:24):
you don't want to you don't want to cross a
bear in the in the wild, right, like, whenever I'm
out hiking. That's something I'm kind of nervous about, you know.
You just you've heard stories about like coming up on
a bear, surprising it, and it is not pretty a bear.
Bears are gonna win a lot of the times unless
you're unless you're armed and prepared, So bears can be
(15:45):
scary for us. But what's really interesting is though they
had bears in Numenor and apparently like pretty big bears,
brown bears, black bears, the bears seem to be pretty
friendly with the Numenorians. It says they never dwelt in
or near the homes of men, but they would often
visit them in the casual manner of one householder calling
(16:07):
upon another, like I love that, right, bears and the
casual manner of one householder calling upon another, like it's like,
you know, the bears your friends, Like you got the
baron stand bears living next door, right, you know, It's
like it's as if they're just these other you know,
not not human, but human like creatures you know that
(16:27):
are just going to visit you. Now, I don't think,
I don't think tolk, I know Tolkien didn't mean by
that necessarily like the baron Stan bear kind of thing,
this cartoonish kind of like bears as humans. But I
think he meant to say that there was, like there
was not nearly this degree of alienation that we have
from bears, where they're these creatures to be feared for us.
These were creatures that were not just going to up
(16:49):
and attack people, right. They were, you know, they were
they were I mean essentially on friendly terms with the people,
with the men of newman Or. So that's kind of cool.
And I love this part about bears dancing, So let
me read this. This is pretty this is pretty funny
to envision. Most strange of all were the bear dances.
The bears, the black bears especially, had curious dances of
(17:11):
their own, but these seemed to have become improved and
elaborated by the instruction of men. At times, the bears
would perform dances for the entertainment of their human friends.
The most famous was the Great Bear Dance Rugzoale of
Tompole in the Forest Art, which every year in the autumn,
many would come from all parts of the island. Since
it occurred not long after the Erujuantale, at which a
(17:34):
great concourse was assembled. To those not accustomed to the bears,
the slow but dignified motions of the bears, sometimes as
many as fifty or more together, appeared astonishing and comic.
But it was understood by all admitted to the spectacle
that there should be no open laughter. The laughter of
men was a sound that the bears could not understand.
It alarmed and angered them. I mean, there's just so much, like,
(17:56):
so much thought into that one little image, this one
little glimpse of like the Bears of newmanor It's it
just shows you. This is why Tolkien was such a genius.
You know. He mentions that was it was astonishing and comic,
but it's not. He doesn't write about this in this
kind of like like weird sensationalist way, right, this way
(18:17):
that you're like, okay, that's like, but it truly sounds
like it could just be this natural phenomena of this
particular land. And you know, if you've if you've ever
seen some of these comic videos of you know, and
and let me say this, when I think of bears dancing,
I do think of, like, you know, the kind of
circus Bear and the two two and everything like that.
And I guess bears maybe can be trained to dance,
but this does not sound like training bears to dance.
(18:38):
It sounds like something they did of their own. And
it's interesting that it came in not long after the
Eru Hantale. And I'm not sure which of the which
of the great prayers it was, but that was one
of the three great prayers that happened on the Mental Tarma.
We'll get to that in another episode. But it's interesting
to think that, like they did this at a time
(18:59):
when the people were all assembled and could kind of
bear witness to this, and it's almost like, you know,
it's it's it's like, what was going on with that?
What was the connection? Was there some kind of connection there? Right?
Was this some kind of like natural joy, like like
supernatural joy that was almost filling the bears, you know,
at this particular time, causing them to you know, to
(19:19):
have this like dance like this, you know, joint dance
going on a fifty or more together. So, uh, you know,
just don't laugh at them when they're doing it, even
though it's comic, right, just even though it's comic, it
will alarm and anger them. And I like that again too,
because Tolkien seems to understand that, like, you know, yes,
nature can be funny, but treat even then, treat nature
(19:41):
with dignity, right, like treat treat it with the dignity
that it deserves. And these are great fearsome creatures, right
they can do some damage if they if they get
angry and alarmed, so uh, you know, treat it with dignity.
But but it certainly would have been a sight to
behold to see these bears dancing. And by the way,
you can find videos of bears dancing in the wild.
(20:03):
It's the one I found was was like a nature show.
I think there was the National Geographic Show on Disney,
and it's like bears after they've been hibernating for a
long time, they like find these find these trees and
they start rubbing their backs up against them and it
looks it looks really funny. Now in the video, of course,
they put some like dance music to it, so you know,
that makes it seem even more comical. But that's the
(20:28):
closest thing to like natural bear dancing. I guess in
our terms that I've been able to find it would be.
But this is this, this does this seems to be
something almost like to another another level that Tolkien is
describing here. So anyway, bear dancing, who knows? Maybe they'll
depict it for us in the Uh in the Rings
of Power, although I don't know that they necessarily have
(20:50):
rights to the idea of bear dancing. Who knows? All right,
next up Woodsfield's Coast. Basically, Tolkien goes on to elaborate
there are many other types of animals. He mentioned squirrels
as being very abundant. There were lots of squirrels, and
the squirrels, again, you know, they would actually come into
(21:13):
the homes of men. Let's see if I can find
this find this line here. The women of New Minor
were specially fond of them. Often they would live in
trees near a homestead and would come when invited into
the house. So it's almost like they had like kind
of this. The squirrels too, had this friendly relation with
with the men of New Minor, and especially with the
(21:36):
women of New Minor. You know, you think we saw
what the bears. They seem to be kind of like
one neighbor to another, right, you know, this kind of
like just showing up from time to time. And with
the squirrels, it would seem the same thing, right, they
would they would actually come into the homes. Now, I've
got tons of squirrels in my backyard. I can never
think of inviting any of the squirrels into my house.
(21:58):
Of course, if I did, one of my two cats
would probably quickly kill them and dispatch them, because the
outside cat really loves squirrels. He kills a lot of squirrels.
But the squirrels here, I would never think of inviting
them into my house. They would never want to come
into my house. But here they actually want to come
into the homes. So again we have this sense of
(22:20):
like friendliness, right that the creatures aren't afraid they they
aren't alienated from the men of Newman or they don't
they don't just fear them. But there's this sense of like, wait,
I can trust to these larger, more intelligent creatures, right,
there's nothing to fear between them. Interesting, it's like this
just natural paradise. It's not it's not you know, it's
(22:40):
not maybe Eden necessarily, but it's a it's more of
a paradise than any place I know of. Right in
this in this world. He also mentions used a term
I'd never heard before kind and that actually just means cattle.
I guess that's that's that's simply what it means. There's
a lot of deer. He mentions another creature that we
(23:01):
don't know exactly what it was, and a kelly, and
he says it's kind of a kind of like a hedgehog.
And lots of other creatures as well. He says there's
lots of seals on the coasts, especially northwest. I was
hoping he would tell us more about if the seals
were friendly, because I always think of seals as being
very funny creatures, like they're they're they're kind of a hoot.
They're pretty entertaining creatures whenever I've seen you know, videos
or anything of them. Maybe walruses too, Like you know,
(23:24):
they're always pretty, they're always pretty entertaining. Uh. But he
just kind of mentions that they that they're there, they
exist on the coast, especially Northwest, and other animals of
uncertain kind, you know, in all of this, I'm just
gonna pause here for a moment before I continue with
this chapter. I get this sense of like this natural
(23:44):
communion with the land, all right, and and and let
me read this from on fairy stories. This is what
he says, and on fairy stories that relates to all this.
Beasts and birds and other creatures often talk like men
in real fairy stories in some part often small. This
marvel derived from one of the primal desires that lie
near the heart of fairy, the desire of men to
(24:05):
hold communion with other living things. So, you know, for
before I look that quote up to prepare for this episode,
I'd read it many times before, and I had kind
of in this mind this idea of like talking, you know,
talking with like animals, like you know, for those of
you who have pets, you ever like think to yourself, Oh, man,
I wish I could really just talk to you like,
(24:25):
you know, like you would understand and then I can
understand what you say back to me. That would be
kind of cool. You know. Tolkien distinguishes an un fairy
stories from the what he calls the beast fable, which
is the idea of like, you know, it's like the
wind in the willows kind of thing, where it's like
the personified creatures of the meadows, right, you know, mister
Toad and all like he's not talking about that. He's
(24:46):
not talking about animals as stand ins for human beings.
He's talking about like actual animals and being able to
hold some kind of communion with him, and that that
word communion is much more than simply communication. Right. Communion
is the sense of like one soul to another. Right,
It's the sense it involves communication of you know many times,
(25:10):
but it goes, it goes way beyond that. I think
sometimes we see that in Lord of the Rings and
the relations of some of the some of the characters
to like horses and that sort of thing, right, the
ability to just like kind of like like, you know,
the horse whisper her idea, right, Like you know, I
can just speak to the horse and I know what
he's saying. Even without using words like that, I would
understand in a normal sense, I kind of understand him.
(25:32):
I get him, right, that kind of deep down soul
to soul understanding between men and beasts. I think that's
what Tolkien is getting at here, and I think I
think he's getting at it on an even greater level.
But it strikes me that what he's describing with Numanor
is kind of an embodiment of that idea, right, the
desire of men to hold communion with other living things.
(25:53):
It's a beautiful notion. It's a really beautiful notion when
I really appreciate, and I see it illustrated here with
Tolkien in the land of Numnor. All right, Fish there
were plenty of fish to eat. Obviously, it's island kingdom,
and there was abundant fish just all around the island.
Another interesting thing is that there were really no sharks
around the coast. They you know, when they went out
to sea, obviously in their ships they might encounter sharks
(26:16):
out there, but apparently it was a grace of the valet,
they say, whether it be a grace of the valor
or some other natural cause. Maybe it's both. Oftentimes it
works that way. There was no shark issue, right, They
didn't have to fear shark attacks on the coasts of Numnor,
so bonus, right, all right? Birds eagles will talk about
eagles more, you know, they actually play a significant role
(26:39):
in kind of some bigger issues with Numnor, as you
would imagine with anything Middle Earth. But the eagles were
all held sacred to manway, so there was certainly no
you know, no battling with the eagles, at least early
on in Middle Ear's history. Later on when things start
to go bad, there is some of that, but we'll
(26:59):
get to that much later. Really interesting note about the
sea birds and that they would like welcome the seafarers
home or a company or accompany them to Middle Earth,
like all the way to Middle Middle Earth, they would
welcome them home. They would like come out to meet
them when they saw them coming home. And and Tolkien
describes it as like an a gesture of like welcome
and gladness. How cool is that again, Like this idea
(27:20):
of commute, like the birds are happy to see the
new Menorians coming home, right, Like, oh man, it's just
it really is this little island paradise. And you might
gloss over these things and say, oh, these aren't important,
but it's it's these details that give us the picture
of what Tolkien have had in mind for Newmanor right,
that things are just they're a little bit different, they're
a little bit happier. They're a little more joyful here
(27:42):
than you would then you expect anywhere else. Okay, you know,
when we're not talking about like you know, you know,
all all Disney light and sunshine. But we're talking about
like in terms of kind of reality, like what if
what if the birds like welcomed you home right right?
You know, what if what if there was this just
(28:03):
natural sense of communion and harmony between all living things
in a particular place. You know, how wonderful and how
beautiful would that be? And it would be a true
sign for people who had come from this land where
maybe there was a lot more alienation going on. It
would be a sign to them that they really were
in this land of grace, this land of gift. There
were many beautiful and small songbirds of great variety, and
(28:27):
the caging of songbirds was thought, i was thought an
unkind to deed, so rarely did they ever own cage them,
and whenever they did, it was because they needed to
for some reason for the good of the songbird. And
then it was just like they could still kind of
come and go as they pleased. Right, So there was
really never like we're keeping you in jail, songbird. Right.
The songbirds were rarely ever caged, and and they were
(28:49):
even when they were, it was for their own good
and for them to be you know kind of and
they were still kind of free to go all right,
trees and plants the flora. So not much as known
about the native varieties. We do know that when the
Neumonorians arrived in Numenora, at first there was an abundance
of timber, and I assumed that was there for them
to be able to, you know, just to build things, right,
(29:12):
to build dwellings, all those sorts of things. There was
a particular type of tree called the Larenque, and it
was so beautiful that that there was a question of
whether it was desired descended from another tree that goes
way back in the legendarium. So let's look at this
(29:33):
passage in the in the higherro star they also found
They found also walnuts in the Larenque, in which they
delighted for its flowers, for it had no other use
this name. They gave it golden Rain because of its
long hanging clusters of yellow flowers. And some who had
heard from the Eldar of law Orleans the golden Tree
of Vallenor believed what it believed, that it came from
(29:56):
that great tree being brought in seed thither by the Eldar.
But it was not so so, apparently, at least in
the description and what they knew of Laurelin, one of
the two trees of Aleanor. It bore a resemblance to it,
and they thought that it might be descended, but in
truth they did learn that it wasn't necessarily. So even
still you kind of wonder, like, was it supposed to
(30:17):
be sort of a tribute or reminder of that particular tree.
We do know that there is a not necessarily direct
descendant from Telperion, the silver tree of the two trees
of Aleanor, but a closely sort of we'll get to
all that, the white tree of Numenor and what that's
all about, but we do know that that's a much
(30:38):
closer sort of relationship they're going on, and maybe we'll
come back to loreen Quay when we talk about that,
just to you know, compare and contrast those two examples.
As far as other trees from the west, from the
Blessed Realm, we have these fragrant trees. Now, these are
really interesting. As you look over these again, you can
you can easily gloss over some of these names and
(30:59):
just think like they aren't that important, But when you
pay attention, it's really neat. And in this case because
some of them seem to have a lot to do
with the Valier, the goddesses of the Blessed Realm, so
they were named the fragrantes just gave off beautiful fragrances,
you know, and and you know you probably have an
idea of how important fragrances are to your how you
might feel in a given situation. And and just like
(31:22):
you know, beautiful fragrances can help you feel at peace. So, uh,
these trees from the west, what were they? There was
there and which means ever summer, And these names are
all from Quinya layr losse losse, which means summer snow white.
Nessa Melda, the beloved of Nessa. Nessa was one of
(31:46):
the was one of the valleer Vardariana, which is which
which I believe means gift of Varda. And Varda was
the high queen of the of the Blessed Realm, uh,
the lady of the stars. And this so this is
where get her gift apparent, right, That's what the name means.
Tanklase which means high snow leaf, and Yavanna mire which
(32:08):
means jewel of Yavanna. And Yavanna was of course the
valier who created all of the who created all of
the flora and fauna, kind of the lesser creatures of
Middle Earth. Right, she was the one that gave life
to them. If you go about to read chapter two
of The Silver Million of Valet and Yvanna, you learn
(32:30):
a little bit more of that. So you know what's
in a name, right, We learned about each of these
things from looking at their names. They're not just random
things that Tolkien made up, but they actually have significance
within those languages. The Malnorne, all right, this is the
golden tree, and this is actually a tree. The description
is one like one big silver trunk, so like a
(32:51):
silver pillar, and then golden leaves. And this is where
the passage from the Lord of the Rings comes in,
because this gets into description of Lothlorian. Apparently these trees
were were the same trees, or at least the predecessors
of the trees that were in Lothlorian, all right, and
(33:11):
gave loft Lorian the appearance, the appearance that kind of
took Legolus's breath away. I'm gonna read this passage that'll
give us a sense of how that worked. Its fruit
was a nut with a silver shale, and some were
given as gift by tar al Darian, the sixth king
of Numenor, to King Gilgalud of Lindon. They did not
take root in that land, but Gilgalad gave some to
(33:35):
his kinswoman Galadriel, and under her power they grew and
flourished in the guarded land of Lothlorian beside the river
I'm doin until the high elves at last left Middle Earth.
But they did not reach the height or girth of
the great groves of Numenor, all right, so that's how
they eventually came to Lothlorian. I didn't look this up,
but I do believe that it is the same. Is
(33:56):
it the same? Nuts? Cruct me if I'm wrong here,
but I believe it's the same. Uh See, that's given
to Sam to plant when he gets back to the Shire.
Could be wrong on that, all right. And lastly we
have of the beasts and birds of the Adigne. Uh
We learned that the Adigne brought many with them, so
not a whole lot to say on that note. But
(34:18):
you know, the Abdyne did bring stuff with them when
they arrived in New Minor, but there was already a
lot there as well, So it's not exactly clear what
always what was native and what wasn't, but we do
know that that there was both there. You know, there
was stuff that wasn't native and stuff that was all right.
And then a couple of illustrations in this particular section.
(34:40):
The first one at the beginning of the section, we
just have an image of what looks like bears, and
it actually looks like one of these bears is rubbing
gets back against a tree doing the you know, the
dance I was describing earlier from the National Geographic video
and U and I was trying to look at these
trees and see if I could pick them out. I'm
(35:02):
just not very good at kind of discerning what tree
is what. That's not really my forte but cool image
there by Alan Lee. And then we also have the
image at the end of the chapter, which I wish
was a little bit bigger, but it's cool sketch. And
this would be the tower of the Tower of armin
(35:22):
of the Palace, King's Palace and Arminelo's the the iri
where the Golden eagles lived, So the Golden eagles, and
actually I didn't mention that, but the Golden Eagles lived
in this eri. Uh, some of them lived in this
Eyri above the king's palace and the capital city of Armenelos.
You know. Again, So just to show the importance the eagles,
(35:43):
they were sacred to manwey, you know, they weren't. They
had a very important purpose in Numanor. They weren't you know.
They weren't like to be viewed as pets. But they
were more like kind of watching over in New Minor.
And they had they were almost like the ambassadors from
manway right, interesting to think about, all right. So these details,
while perhaps obscure in terms of the broader legendarium, form
(36:06):
a picture of Numenor as a land that was indeed
a land of gift, whether it is the strangely warm
relations with bears and squirrels, or the fragrant and majestic
trees that were gifts of the blessed realm to the
elf friends as they arrived in their new home. New
Minor does indeed seem to be a land where men
hold a sort of communion with the natural order, a
communion that we rarely find in our present day. It
(36:27):
further lends to the image of Numenor as an earthly
and temporal paradise, if not quite an undying land. All right, well,
let's hit a quick note of correspondence. Got a really
interesting one from Mary Rose on the tolkienroadt on tolkienoad
dot com. This is in response to episode I believe
(36:48):
it's one forty one goes Back Aways and which was
then Unexpected Party chapter one from The Hobbit one forty four.
It's a response to one forty four. Mary Rose says
this while listening to this my first podcast of yours,
referred by the Wondering Guest appearance again shout out to
the Wondering dot Com. I thought i'd start at what
(37:09):
was the very beginning of the Legendarium. For me, it
occurs to me that the dwarves did Bilbo a huge
favor planned perhaps by clearing almost all the food out
of his house so that nothing badly spoiled when he
was gone for a year. So though he had his
brecky eggs were probably delivered fresh every day, he didn't
leave a lot of food to go bad. Just to thought.
(37:29):
I think it's a great thought, Mary Rose, And in
fact I love the way you're thinking of that. Like
the dwarves again, you know, they seemed like a nuisance
and an interruption and a bother to Bilbo. But it
turns out that in the grand scheme of things, whether
they really intended to or not, they actually did him
a lot of favors. And this may be just another
one of those favors. Right. Well, first of all, they
took him out of his kind of comfortable existence, sent
(37:51):
him off on this big journey, and they were actually
doing a favor not just for him, but for all
of the Middle Earth eventually without necessarily knowing it themselves.
And I think the Dwarves oftentimes, like their their actions
are probably more selfish, but they have kind of a
a serendipitous result to them which is actually beneficial for
(38:11):
you know, for many more than just them. And in
this in this case, I also see it like it's
he doesn't have to spoil worry about the food spoiling,
and he has he doesn't have any food left, so
it's almost like one less thing to keep him behind.
Right He's like, well, I don't have food to sit
here and enjoy. I also don't have to worry about
it spoiling, so maybe I'll just go off on this adventure.
(38:34):
So I think it's a great thought. I you know.
It's it's these sorts of details again that that really
make Tolkien such a great writer, such an enjoyable writer,
and one you can just keep on coming back to
time and time again. So thanks so much for your note,
Mary Rose. Really appreciate it, and keep in touch on
your journey, all right, keep his core, keep the Corresponden's coming.
(38:55):
Everybody will do our best to respond to you somehow
and at some point hey subscribe it in view us
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(39:16):
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Really appreciate all of our fellowship, our entire fellowship, and
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next time. Bye bye
Hey there, fellowship, Welcome to the Tolkien Road. In this episode,
we continue our journey through the Fall of Neuminor as
we explore the natural life of Neumanor. In this section,
we'll learn about the beasts, birds, plants, and other natural
phenomena of Numanor according to Tolkien. Join us, and as
a reminder, I've got a brand new book on the way,
Tolkien's Tragedy concerning Numenor, the Rings of Power, and the
(00:20):
Second Age. It's the culmination of years of study, and
I believe it'll change the way you look at Tolkien's legendarium.
If you're enjoying this series, make sure you head over
to tolkienrooad dot substack dot com and subscribe. That's where
you'll get early chapters of Tolkien's Tragedy and all the
behind the scenes insights I only share with my readers.
All right, let's dive in. Hey there, fellow travelers, Welcome
(00:43):
to the Tolkien Road, Episode three, p. Thirty one. In
this episode, we'll be continuing our journey through the Fall
of Neuminor as we explore the section titled the Natural
Life of Neumanor. In this section, we'll learn about the beasts, birds,
plants and other natural phenomena of Newmanor according to Tolkien.
(01:05):
Before we get started, I'd like to give a double
up bear five to our amazing fellowship. Hands up, stick
them up three two one ooopsht. Very nice good stuff.
Felt it coming at me straight to the heart. Special
thanks to this episode's executive producers, John R. Caitlin of
TA with Tolkien, Jacob Blockhom, John H and Aeru twenty seven.
(01:29):
Also a shout out to those celebrating their Fellowship anniversary
in March of twenty twenty three. Jacob Bess, Peter B.
Paul D. Steven S, Jay Z, bethany E, Daniel D.
Caitlin of t with Tolkien. Thank you all so much
for sticking with us over the last year. Hey, I
wanted to let you all know about some recent podcasts.
(01:52):
I have joined as a guest for a couple of episodes.
So the first one is The Mythic Mind, where I
joined creator Andrew Snyder for a discussion of on fairy
stories and Tolkien's Tales from the Perilous Realm. For those
of you who don't know, these are the stories that
are not necessarily Middle Earth stories, but they are non
(02:14):
Middle Earth stories from Tolkien, but they do tell us
a lot about Tolkien and what he thought about a
whole lot of things, so they're very worthwhile. They're stories
we don't always spend as much time with, but they're
very worth spending time with. But the main crux of
our conversation was on fairy stories, and as you know,
I've talked about it a lot on this podcast. On
(02:37):
fairy stories is it's like the Tolkien's literary manifesto. So
if you have a good understanding of on fairy stories,
you kind of understand what he was up to with
Middle Earth, why he spent his whole life crafting this
legendarium that we all know love and cherish. The other
podcast I was a part of was recently was Window
on the West and this is a pretty new podcast
(02:59):
from the guys at the One Ring dot Com. Now
The Wondering dot Com has actually been around for a
really long time. It actually goes back to like the
early days of the Internet, right, I think even back
to pre two thousand I think is when it started,
and those guys took a little bit of a break
for some time, but they are back and they're back strong,
(03:19):
and they've started a podcast, Window on the West, and
I was recently an honored to be a guest on
their podcast, and we talked about, you know, just kind
of the latest news as far as screen adaptations out
of the world. Tolkan talked a lot about the Rings
of Power, and you know, that's just stuff that everybody
who is into Tolkien enjoys talking about. So I highly
recommend that you go over and listen to our conversation.
(03:42):
Those guys are super entertaining. A lot of fun we had.
We had a lot of fun in that conversation, so
check that one out too. It's Window on the West.
So if with Mythic Mind you can find it tolkienrooad
dot com slash Mythic Mind and that'll take you straight
to the episode, and then Tolkienroad dot com slash window
will take you straight to my episode with Window on
(04:02):
the West. And while you're over at those, you know,
those different podcasts, check out what other episodes they've got
going on, because they're both doing really good work. So also, hey,
I mentioned the Fellowship of the Road earlier. If you
want to become a patron, if you want to support
our work here on the Tolkien Road by the way.
I do promise that Grete will be joining us again soon.
(04:23):
It sho's been a little bit of a busy time
for her. She's working on some professional stuff, doing some
training in her spare time, and that's kind of kept
her away from having enough time really to focus on
doing the podcast. But she will be back, I promise
you hopefully it's very soon, maybe in the next couple
of weeks. Next up is to do our second part
(04:45):
of our Smith of Wooten major discussion. She's definitely going
to be back here soon. But if you want to
become a patron of the Fellowship of the Road, If
you want to join the Fellowship of the Road, do
so by visiting patreon dot com slash Tolkien Road you tube.
Hit that like button, don't forget to subscribe, and let
us know what's on your mind in the comments below.
(05:06):
All right, So, while most of us aren't attracted to
Tolkien's Legendarium because of encyclopedic accounts of the flora and
fauna of a fictional ancient land, it is precisely such
detail found throughout Tolkien's works that accounts for the very
similitude of Middle Earth the way it seems to be
a real place, and in some instances we may even
(05:27):
find that these details provide hints and clues to great
purpose and insight. For example, in Tolkien's mind, how would
men relate to an island paradise if they suddenly found
themselves in it? These are the sorts of questions to
keep in mind as we explore the natural life of
Numenor an account of the flora and fauna of the
Starland the Land of Gift. The sources for this section
(05:52):
are Unfinished Tales and the Nature of Middle Earth. Both
of those two are pretty much the entirety of this section,
arranged by Brian Sibley's was to be a little more
readable for the purposes of the book The Fall of Neumnor.
And there's one brief passage from the Lord of the
Rings that's referenced as well. We'll get to that, all right.
So what were the flora and fauna of middle of
(06:15):
Numenor like? So the first section we deal with is
really interesting to me, and it kind of sets the
stage for how Tolkien maybe thought of this question with
regard to Numenor. So I'm gonna go ahead and read
that it would appear that neither elves nor men had
(06:38):
dwelt in this island before the coming of the Yudine.
Beasts and birds had no fear of men, and the
relations of men and animals restrained more remained more friendly
in Numnor than anywhere else in the world. It is
said that even those that the new Manorians classed as predatory,
by which they meant those that would need raid their
crops and tame cattle, remained on honorable terms with the newcomers,
(07:00):
seeking their food so far as they could in the wild,
and showing no hostility to men, save at times of
declared war, when after de warning the husbandmen would as
a necessity hunt the predatory birds and beasts to reduce
their numbers within limits. All right, So this opening paragraph
is really interesting for a couple of reasons. First of all,
(07:23):
what does this mean by at times of declared war?
It's just a I think he just means when, like,
you know, maybe when the new Minorians felt it was
like there was a problem getting out of hand maybe
with some of these creatures, and it was time to
put some focused effort into taming them and kind of
you know, dialing back the numbers that exist these kind
(07:44):
of animal husbandry questions, if you will. But it's funny
to me to hear and put that in terms of
in times of war. I can't think of any other
meaning he would have for that, you know, like like,
you know, because New Minor war never really came to
the shores of New Minor, like they would go in
fight wars in other lands, but wars never really came.
So I guess it's possible that maybe Salurun had you know,
(08:06):
inspired some evil actions in some of the creatures of
Middle Earth from Afar. But but it's just a yeah,
it's it's kind of a I think what he meant
is the first thing I said there. Uh, And he
actually uses that terminology again a little bit later on
in this section, But he also speaks of, you know,
just being on honorable terms, and I think, you know,
this is really maybe the key phrase, one of two
(08:28):
key phrases to understand the relationship of the men of
numen Or to the natural phenomena of their land, to
the flora and fauna of their land. They they had,
they had a good relationship with these creatures, right, There
wasn't maybe the degree of alienation that sometimes especially in
(08:52):
the modern world, maybe we can feel towards, uh, towards
the creatures that are around us, that are kind of
wild creatures that are around us, towards the you know,
like we we you know, we often think of and
Tolkien kind of had this in the back of his
mind and a lot of his writing about exploitation of
like you know, natural resources, you know, there there wasn't
(09:12):
there didn't seem to be any anything like that going on,
And there wasn't this big issue of like, you know,
the stronger predatory beasts attacking like the newmonorians. Right. He
mentions nowhere in here the idea of like an animal
attacking a child or something like that, or or a
grown you know, certainly not a grown numnorian. So I
(09:35):
think that's what he means by honorable terms. There was
this you know sense in which if if the predatory
beast needed to it, if they did end up doing
something like stealing crops or you know, stealing like maybe
some of the tame beasts those kind of things, it
was only out of sheer necessity, right, It was only
out of sheer necessity. And they seem to have this
kind of like ingrained respect for the Newmnorians, and and
(09:59):
even we'll see something like friendship going on. We'll get
to that a couple of other things from this first
section here of men and Beace. You know, language was
always a very important important part of what Tolkien was
doing with the works of Middle Earth. In a way,
(10:20):
the whole legendarium is kind of this lifelong exercise in
building a legend to support his imaginary languages. And that's
still true here as well. You know, he thinks of terms,
he thinks of he thinks of almost everything in terms
of languages. So I wanted to read this passage just
a little later on here. Regarding the naming of these
(10:41):
various creatures, Neither are the names which the Numonorians gave
to animals and plants always easy to equate with or
relate to the names of those found in Middle Earth. Many,
though given in apparently Quinya or Sindar in terms, are
not found in the Elvish or human tongues of Middle Earth.
This is partly due, no doubt, to the fact that
the animals and plants of numenor similar and related to
(11:01):
those of the Mainlands, were different in variety and seem
to require new names. So in some cases we don't
have you know, we don't have like normal what you know,
common speech names for some of these creatures. And again
remember from the last the last section we looked at
on the geography of New Minor and and just kind
(11:21):
of this general idea. The way in which we receive
this knowledge within within terms of the legendarium is like
three thousand years after after the end of Numenor, right,
It's kind of like these are like records that and
things that are known in Gondor at the end of
the third Age early fourth age, right, that's how we
(11:43):
recount this information. And so there's been a long period
of time since anybody actually was in Nu Minor, actually
saw Nu Minor, So you know, they're trying to piece
things together in some cases from scanty records. But you know,
it's interesting that some of these creatures, while you know,
there's nothing like, you know, nothing like I think that
would feel too crazy to us necessarily in terms of
(12:04):
what these creatures were. There are some creatures where we
have names for them, but they're not there's no equivalent
name in the common speech, right. So you know, for example,
here we do talk about he talks about actually dogs
and cats. There were no dogs in newman or at
least native dogs that were. There were native cats. We
have names for those things, right, we know that they were,
(12:26):
you know, we're talking about dogs and cats as we
would think of dogs and cats. But then he gets
to this creature in the next section called the LOOPOLDI.
The LOOPOLDI, we don't exactly know what they were, but
our best guess is there's something like there's something like
a rabbit. Right, there's something like a rabbit, so, you know,
(12:49):
but we don't have a lot of descriptive information to
distinguish from how they may be different from a rabbit.
But what seems clear is that they're not necessarily just
like rabbits as we would think of them. Okay, So
just an little note there on the languages and in
the limitations of the knowledge that are handed down in
terms of New min Ore. Again, this is the kind
of thing that increases the very similitude of of of
(13:12):
of the Middle Earth legendarium, that the seeming sensation that
it's real when you read it, right, Because Tolkien, even
in terms of the textual history how we get to
knowledge epistemology, he's kind of true to the history of
Newman or there's no like third person objective ability to
just know everything necessarily. Okay, so I mentioned the LOOPOLDI
(13:34):
He also says that foxes were, you know, foxes were
pretty pretty popular creatures, and they would be used and
to train, they would be used to kind of control
the population of the LOOPHOLDI right, these rabbit like creatures
that we don't know a whole lot about. And it's
interesting to me that foxes were because I think of
foxes is normally not being something that human beings can
(13:57):
necessarily train. Now I'm sure there's exceptions to that, but
I know it's not a common thing where I live
or in the United States as far as I know,
to have a fox as a pet or to see
it as any kind of tame creature. But you know,
I've seen a few, you know, in my in my
neck of the woods, had actually had a few in
my backyard in uh, you know, the last few years,
(14:17):
and they're definitely afraid of humans. They definitely don't want
to come near humans. If you've ever by the way,
if you've ever heard of frock a fox screen howling
at night or doing its mating call at night, it
sounds like you've got a ghost in your backyard. It
sounds eerie as heck until you realize what it is.
I actually caught a fox on video a couple of
years ago, maybe just a year ago, in the early morning,
(14:38):
like howling in my backyard, and just put the video
up to it, and it's it. You know, when before
I knew what it was, it sounded like, what is
that thing? It's kind of scary sounding, all right. So
foxes were used to hunt down the Lopoldi and to
kind of keep control of the population there. But again,
it's not like hunting them down to extinction. It's just
controlling the population so that every one can live in harmony, right, all,
(15:02):
all of the creatures of numenor from men to the
smallest can kind of have this harmonious existence together, at
least in natural terms, all right. Next up is bears.
So bears, How did were there bears in numenor how
did they relate to bear? How did they relate to
the men of numnor? You know, bears are frightening creatures.
Bears for us normally we think of them as like, oh, man,
(15:24):
you don't want to you don't want to cross a
bear in the in the wild, right, like, whenever I'm
out hiking. That's something I'm kind of nervous about, you know.
You just you've heard stories about like coming up on
a bear, surprising it, and it is not pretty a bear.
Bears are gonna win a lot of the times unless
you're unless you're armed and prepared, So bears can be
(15:45):
scary for us. But what's really interesting is though they
had bears in Numenor and apparently like pretty big bears,
brown bears, black bears, the bears seem to be pretty
friendly with the Numenorians. It says they never dwelt in
or near the homes of men, but they would often
visit them in the casual manner of one householder calling
(16:07):
upon another, like I love that, right, bears and the
casual manner of one householder calling upon another, like it's like,
you know, the bears your friends, Like you got the
baron stand bears living next door, right, you know, It's
like it's as if they're just these other you know,
not not human, but human like creatures you know that
(16:27):
are just going to visit you. Now, I don't think,
I don't think tolk, I know Tolkien didn't mean by
that necessarily like the baron Stan bear kind of thing,
this cartoonish kind of like bears as humans. But I
think he meant to say that there was, like there
was not nearly this degree of alienation that we have
from bears, where they're these creatures to be feared for us.
These were creatures that were not just going to up
(16:49):
and attack people, right. They were, you know, they were
they were I mean essentially on friendly terms with the people,
with the men of newman Or. So that's kind of cool.
And I love this part about bears dancing, So let
me read this. This is pretty this is pretty funny
to envision. Most strange of all were the bear dances.
The bears, the black bears especially, had curious dances of
(17:11):
their own, but these seemed to have become improved and
elaborated by the instruction of men. At times, the bears
would perform dances for the entertainment of their human friends.
The most famous was the Great Bear Dance Rugzoale of
Tompole in the Forest Art, which every year in the autumn,
many would come from all parts of the island. Since
it occurred not long after the Erujuantale, at which a
(17:34):
great concourse was assembled. To those not accustomed to the bears,
the slow but dignified motions of the bears, sometimes as
many as fifty or more together, appeared astonishing and comic.
But it was understood by all admitted to the spectacle
that there should be no open laughter. The laughter of
men was a sound that the bears could not understand.
It alarmed and angered them. I mean, there's just so much, like,
(17:56):
so much thought into that one little image, this one
little glimpse of like the Bears of newmanor It's it
just shows you. This is why Tolkien was such a genius.
You know. He mentions that was it was astonishing and comic,
but it's not. He doesn't write about this in this
kind of like like weird sensationalist way, right, this way
(18:17):
that you're like, okay, that's like, but it truly sounds
like it could just be this natural phenomena of this
particular land. And you know, if you've if you've ever
seen some of these comic videos of you know, and
and let me say this, when I think of bears dancing,
I do think of, like, you know, the kind of
circus Bear and the two two and everything like that.
And I guess bears maybe can be trained to dance,
but this does not sound like training bears to dance.
(18:38):
It sounds like something they did of their own. And
it's interesting that it came in not long after the
Eru Hantale. And I'm not sure which of the which
of the great prayers it was, but that was one
of the three great prayers that happened on the Mental Tarma.
We'll get to that in another episode. But it's interesting
to think that, like they did this at a time
(18:59):
when the people were all assembled and could kind of
bear witness to this, and it's almost like, you know,
it's it's it's like, what was going on with that?
What was the connection? Was there some kind of connection there? Right?
Was this some kind of like natural joy, like like
supernatural joy that was almost filling the bears, you know,
at this particular time, causing them to you know, to
(19:19):
have this like dance like this, you know, joint dance
going on a fifty or more together. So, uh, you know,
just don't laugh at them when they're doing it, even
though it's comic, right, just even though it's comic, it
will alarm and anger them. And I like that again too,
because Tolkien seems to understand that, like, you know, yes,
nature can be funny, but treat even then, treat nature
(19:41):
with dignity, right, like treat treat it with the dignity
that it deserves. And these are great fearsome creatures, right
they can do some damage if they if they get
angry and alarmed, so uh, you know, treat it with dignity.
But but it certainly would have been a sight to
behold to see these bears dancing. And by the way,
you can find videos of bears dancing in the wild.
(20:03):
It's the one I found was was like a nature show.
I think there was the National Geographic Show on Disney,
and it's like bears after they've been hibernating for a
long time, they like find these find these trees and
they start rubbing their backs up against them and it
looks it looks really funny. Now in the video, of course,
they put some like dance music to it, so you know,
that makes it seem even more comical. But that's the
(20:28):
closest thing to like natural bear dancing. I guess in
our terms that I've been able to find it would be.
But this is this, this does this seems to be
something almost like to another another level that Tolkien is
describing here. So anyway, bear dancing, who knows? Maybe they'll
depict it for us in the Uh in the Rings
of Power, although I don't know that they necessarily have
(20:50):
rights to the idea of bear dancing. Who knows? All right,
next up Woodsfield's Coast. Basically, Tolkien goes on to elaborate
there are many other types of animals. He mentioned squirrels
as being very abundant. There were lots of squirrels, and
the squirrels, again, you know, they would actually come into
(21:13):
the homes of men. Let's see if I can find
this find this line here. The women of New Minor
were specially fond of them. Often they would live in
trees near a homestead and would come when invited into
the house. So it's almost like they had like kind
of this. The squirrels too, had this friendly relation with
with the men of New Minor, and especially with the
(21:36):
women of New Minor. You know, you think we saw
what the bears. They seem to be kind of like
one neighbor to another, right, you know, this kind of
like just showing up from time to time. And with
the squirrels, it would seem the same thing, right, they
would they would actually come into the homes. Now, I've
got tons of squirrels in my backyard. I can never
think of inviting any of the squirrels into my house.
(21:58):
Of course, if I did, one of my two cats
would probably quickly kill them and dispatch them, because the
outside cat really loves squirrels. He kills a lot of squirrels.
But the squirrels here, I would never think of inviting
them into my house. They would never want to come
into my house. But here they actually want to come
into the homes. So again we have this sense of
(22:20):
like friendliness, right that the creatures aren't afraid they they
aren't alienated from the men of Newman or they don't
they don't just fear them. But there's this sense of like, wait,
I can trust to these larger, more intelligent creatures, right,
there's nothing to fear between them. Interesting, it's like this
just natural paradise. It's not it's not you know, it's
(22:40):
not maybe Eden necessarily, but it's a it's more of
a paradise than any place I know of. Right in
this in this world. He also mentions used a term
I'd never heard before kind and that actually just means cattle.
I guess that's that's that's simply what it means. There's
a lot of deer. He mentions another creature that we
(23:01):
don't know exactly what it was, and a kelly, and
he says it's kind of a kind of like a hedgehog.
And lots of other creatures as well. He says there's
lots of seals on the coasts, especially northwest. I was
hoping he would tell us more about if the seals
were friendly, because I always think of seals as being
very funny creatures, like they're they're they're kind of a hoot.
They're pretty entertaining creatures whenever I've seen you know, videos
or anything of them. Maybe walruses too, Like you know,
(23:24):
they're always pretty, they're always pretty entertaining. Uh. But he
just kind of mentions that they that they're there, they
exist on the coast, especially Northwest, and other animals of
uncertain kind, you know, in all of this, I'm just
gonna pause here for a moment before I continue with
this chapter. I get this sense of like this natural
(23:44):
communion with the land, all right, and and and let
me read this from on fairy stories. This is what
he says, and on fairy stories that relates to all this.
Beasts and birds and other creatures often talk like men
in real fairy stories in some part often small. This
marvel derived from one of the primal desires that lie
near the heart of fairy, the desire of men to
(24:05):
hold communion with other living things. So, you know, for
before I look that quote up to prepare for this episode,
I'd read it many times before, and I had kind
of in this mind this idea of like talking, you know,
talking with like animals, like you know, for those of
you who have pets, you ever like think to yourself, Oh, man,
I wish I could really just talk to you like,
(24:25):
you know, like you would understand and then I can
understand what you say back to me. That would be
kind of cool. You know. Tolkien distinguishes an un fairy
stories from the what he calls the beast fable, which
is the idea of like, you know, it's like the
wind in the willows kind of thing, where it's like
the personified creatures of the meadows, right, you know, mister
Toad and all like he's not talking about that. He's
(24:46):
not talking about animals as stand ins for human beings.
He's talking about like actual animals and being able to
hold some kind of communion with him, and that that
word communion is much more than simply communication. Right. Communion
is the sense of like one soul to another. Right,
It's the sense it involves communication of you know many times,
(25:10):
but it goes, it goes way beyond that. I think
sometimes we see that in Lord of the Rings and
the relations of some of the some of the characters
to like horses and that sort of thing, right, the
ability to just like kind of like like, you know,
the horse whisper her idea, right, Like you know, I
can just speak to the horse and I know what
he's saying. Even without using words like that, I would
understand in a normal sense, I kind of understand him.
(25:32):
I get him, right, that kind of deep down soul
to soul understanding between men and beasts. I think that's
what Tolkien is getting at here, and I think I
think he's getting at it on an even greater level.
But it strikes me that what he's describing with Numanor
is kind of an embodiment of that idea, right, the
desire of men to hold communion with other living things.
(25:53):
It's a beautiful notion. It's a really beautiful notion when
I really appreciate, and I see it illustrated here with
Tolkien in the land of Numnor. All right, Fish there
were plenty of fish to eat. Obviously, it's island kingdom,
and there was abundant fish just all around the island.
Another interesting thing is that there were really no sharks
around the coast. They you know, when they went out
to sea, obviously in their ships they might encounter sharks
(26:16):
out there, but apparently it was a grace of the valet,
they say, whether it be a grace of the valor
or some other natural cause. Maybe it's both. Oftentimes it
works that way. There was no shark issue, right, They
didn't have to fear shark attacks on the coasts of Numnor,
so bonus, right, all right? Birds eagles will talk about
eagles more, you know, they actually play a significant role
(26:39):
in kind of some bigger issues with Numnor, as you
would imagine with anything Middle Earth. But the eagles were
all held sacred to manway, so there was certainly no
you know, no battling with the eagles, at least early
on in Middle Ear's history. Later on when things start
to go bad, there is some of that, but we'll
(26:59):
get to that much later. Really interesting note about the
sea birds and that they would like welcome the seafarers
home or a company or accompany them to Middle Earth,
like all the way to Middle Middle Earth, they would
welcome them home. They would like come out to meet
them when they saw them coming home. And and Tolkien
describes it as like an a gesture of like welcome
and gladness. How cool is that again, Like this idea
(27:20):
of commute, like the birds are happy to see the
new Menorians coming home, right, Like, oh man, it's just
it really is this little island paradise. And you might
gloss over these things and say, oh, these aren't important,
but it's it's these details that give us the picture
of what Tolkien have had in mind for Newmanor right,
that things are just they're a little bit different, they're
a little bit happier. They're a little more joyful here
(27:42):
than you would then you expect anywhere else. Okay, you know,
when we're not talking about like you know, you know,
all all Disney light and sunshine. But we're talking about
like in terms of kind of reality, like what if
what if the birds like welcomed you home right right?
You know, what if what if there was this just
(28:03):
natural sense of communion and harmony between all living things
in a particular place. You know, how wonderful and how
beautiful would that be? And it would be a true
sign for people who had come from this land where
maybe there was a lot more alienation going on. It
would be a sign to them that they really were
in this land of grace, this land of gift. There
were many beautiful and small songbirds of great variety, and
(28:27):
the caging of songbirds was thought, i was thought an
unkind to deed, so rarely did they ever own cage them,
and whenever they did, it was because they needed to
for some reason for the good of the songbird. And
then it was just like they could still kind of
come and go as they pleased. Right, So there was
really never like we're keeping you in jail, songbird. Right.
The songbirds were rarely ever caged, and and they were
(28:49):
even when they were, it was for their own good
and for them to be you know kind of and
they were still kind of free to go all right,
trees and plants the flora. So not much as known
about the native varieties. We do know that when the
Neumonorians arrived in Numenora, at first there was an abundance
of timber, and I assumed that was there for them
to be able to, you know, just to build things, right,
(29:12):
to build dwellings, all those sorts of things. There was
a particular type of tree called the Larenque, and it
was so beautiful that that there was a question of
whether it was desired descended from another tree that goes
way back in the legendarium. So let's look at this
(29:33):
passage in the in the higherro star they also found
They found also walnuts in the Larenque, in which they
delighted for its flowers, for it had no other use
this name. They gave it golden Rain because of its
long hanging clusters of yellow flowers. And some who had
heard from the Eldar of law Orleans the golden Tree
of Vallenor believed what it believed, that it came from
(29:56):
that great tree being brought in seed thither by the Eldar.
But it was not so so, apparently, at least in
the description and what they knew of Laurelin, one of
the two trees of Aleanor. It bore a resemblance to it,
and they thought that it might be descended, but in
truth they did learn that it wasn't necessarily. So even
still you kind of wonder, like, was it supposed to
(30:17):
be sort of a tribute or reminder of that particular tree.
We do know that there is a not necessarily direct
descendant from Telperion, the silver tree of the two trees
of Aleanor, but a closely sort of we'll get to
all that, the white tree of Numenor and what that's
all about, but we do know that that's a much
(30:38):
closer sort of relationship they're going on, and maybe we'll
come back to loreen Quay when we talk about that,
just to you know, compare and contrast those two examples.
As far as other trees from the west, from the
Blessed Realm, we have these fragrant trees. Now, these are
really interesting. As you look over these again, you can
you can easily gloss over some of these names and
(30:59):
just think like they aren't that important, But when you
pay attention, it's really neat. And in this case because
some of them seem to have a lot to do
with the Valier, the goddesses of the Blessed Realm, so
they were named the fragrantes just gave off beautiful fragrances,
you know, and and you know you probably have an
idea of how important fragrances are to your how you
might feel in a given situation. And and just like
(31:22):
you know, beautiful fragrances can help you feel at peace. So, uh,
these trees from the west, what were they? There was
there and which means ever summer, And these names are
all from Quinya layr losse losse, which means summer snow white.
Nessa Melda, the beloved of Nessa. Nessa was one of
(31:46):
the was one of the valleer Vardariana, which is which
which I believe means gift of Varda. And Varda was
the high queen of the of the Blessed Realm, uh,
the lady of the stars. And this so this is
where get her gift apparent, right, That's what the name means.
Tanklase which means high snow leaf, and Yavanna mire which
(32:08):
means jewel of Yavanna. And Yavanna was of course the
valier who created all of the who created all of
the flora and fauna, kind of the lesser creatures of
Middle Earth. Right, she was the one that gave life
to them. If you go about to read chapter two
of The Silver Million of Valet and Yvanna, you learn
(32:30):
a little bit more of that. So you know what's
in a name, right, We learned about each of these
things from looking at their names. They're not just random
things that Tolkien made up, but they actually have significance
within those languages. The Malnorne, all right, this is the
golden tree, and this is actually a tree. The description
is one like one big silver trunk, so like a
(32:51):
silver pillar, and then golden leaves. And this is where
the passage from the Lord of the Rings comes in,
because this gets into description of Lothlorian. Apparently these trees
were were the same trees, or at least the predecessors
of the trees that were in Lothlorian, all right, and
(33:11):
gave loft Lorian the appearance, the appearance that kind of
took Legolus's breath away. I'm gonna read this passage that'll
give us a sense of how that worked. Its fruit
was a nut with a silver shale, and some were
given as gift by tar al Darian, the sixth king
of Numenor, to King Gilgalud of Lindon. They did not
take root in that land, but Gilgalad gave some to
(33:35):
his kinswoman Galadriel, and under her power they grew and
flourished in the guarded land of Lothlorian beside the river
I'm doin until the high elves at last left Middle Earth.
But they did not reach the height or girth of
the great groves of Numenor, all right, so that's how
they eventually came to Lothlorian. I didn't look this up,
but I do believe that it is the same. Is
(33:56):
it the same? Nuts? Cruct me if I'm wrong here,
but I believe it's the same. Uh See, that's given
to Sam to plant when he gets back to the Shire.
Could be wrong on that, all right. And lastly we
have of the beasts and birds of the Adigne. Uh
We learned that the Adigne brought many with them, so
not a whole lot to say on that note. But
(34:18):
you know, the Abdyne did bring stuff with them when
they arrived in New Minor, but there was already a
lot there as well, So it's not exactly clear what
always what was native and what wasn't, but we do
know that that there was both there. You know, there
was stuff that wasn't native and stuff that was all right.
And then a couple of illustrations in this particular section.
(34:40):
The first one at the beginning of the section, we
just have an image of what looks like bears, and
it actually looks like one of these bears is rubbing
gets back against a tree doing the you know, the
dance I was describing earlier from the National Geographic video
and U and I was trying to look at these
trees and see if I could pick them out. I'm
(35:02):
just not very good at kind of discerning what tree
is what. That's not really my forte but cool image
there by Alan Lee. And then we also have the
image at the end of the chapter, which I wish
was a little bit bigger, but it's cool sketch. And
this would be the tower of the Tower of armin
(35:22):
of the Palace, King's Palace and Arminelo's the the iri
where the Golden eagles lived, So the Golden eagles, and
actually I didn't mention that, but the Golden Eagles lived
in this eri. Uh, some of them lived in this
Eyri above the king's palace and the capital city of Armenelos.
You know. Again, So just to show the importance the eagles,
(35:43):
they were sacred to manwey, you know, they weren't. They
had a very important purpose in Numanor. They weren't you know.
They weren't like to be viewed as pets. But they
were more like kind of watching over in New Minor.
And they had they were almost like the ambassadors from
manway right, interesting to think about, all right. So these details,
while perhaps obscure in terms of the broader legendarium, form
(36:06):
a picture of Numenor as a land that was indeed
a land of gift, whether it is the strangely warm
relations with bears and squirrels, or the fragrant and majestic
trees that were gifts of the blessed realm to the
elf friends as they arrived in their new home. New
Minor does indeed seem to be a land where men
hold a sort of communion with the natural order, a
communion that we rarely find in our present day. It
(36:27):
further lends to the image of Numenor as an earthly
and temporal paradise, if not quite an undying land. All right, well,
let's hit a quick note of correspondence. Got a really
interesting one from Mary Rose on the tolkienroadt on tolkienoad
dot com. This is in response to episode I believe
(36:48):
it's one forty one goes Back Aways and which was
then Unexpected Party chapter one from The Hobbit one forty four.
It's a response to one forty four. Mary Rose says
this while listening to this my first podcast of yours,
referred by the Wondering Guest appearance again shout out to
the Wondering dot Com. I thought i'd start at what
(37:09):
was the very beginning of the Legendarium. For me, it
occurs to me that the dwarves did Bilbo a huge
favor planned perhaps by clearing almost all the food out
of his house so that nothing badly spoiled when he
was gone for a year. So though he had his
brecky eggs were probably delivered fresh every day, he didn't
leave a lot of food to go bad. Just to thought.
(37:29):
I think it's a great thought, Mary Rose, And in
fact I love the way you're thinking of that. Like
the dwarves again, you know, they seemed like a nuisance
and an interruption and a bother to Bilbo. But it
turns out that in the grand scheme of things, whether
they really intended to or not, they actually did him
a lot of favors. And this may be just another
one of those favors. Right. Well, first of all, they
took him out of his kind of comfortable existence, sent
(37:51):
him off on this big journey, and they were actually
doing a favor not just for him, but for all
of the Middle Earth eventually without necessarily knowing it themselves.
And I think the Dwarves oftentimes, like their their actions
are probably more selfish, but they have kind of a
a serendipitous result to them which is actually beneficial for
(38:11):
you know, for many more than just them. And in
this in this case, I also see it like it's
he doesn't have to spoil worry about the food spoiling,
and he has he doesn't have any food left, so
it's almost like one less thing to keep him behind.
Right He's like, well, I don't have food to sit
here and enjoy. I also don't have to worry about
it spoiling, so maybe I'll just go off on this adventure.
(38:34):
So I think it's a great thought. I you know.
It's it's these sorts of details again that that really
make Tolkien such a great writer, such an enjoyable writer,
and one you can just keep on coming back to
time and time again. So thanks so much for your note,
Mary Rose. Really appreciate it, and keep in touch on
your journey, all right, keep his core, keep the Corresponden's coming.
(38:55):
Everybody will do our best to respond to you somehow
and at some point hey subscribe it in view us
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(39:16):
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CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.