Tolkien Fans: Comments and Questions

[StillStunned]

That isn't explained in The Lord of the Rings (the book), either. It's a throwaway.

I always assumed Flame of Udun was a Japanese noodle and grill restaurant.

 

[Voboy]

I always assumed Flame of Udun was a Japanese noodle and grill restaurant.

Naming a restaurant "Flame of Udon" and decorating it with a fiery bullwhip would be just the kind of joke that would make me come to a restaurant loyally forever.

 

[Voboy]

Naming a restaurant "Flame of Udon" and decorating it with a fiery bullwhip would be just the kind of joke that would make me come to a restaurant loyally forever.

Lol.

Menu option: "served with or without wings."

This is fun.

 

[Belegon]

I would like to point to the left here and point out that we have multiple serious Tolkien nerds.... "Belegon" is pulled from the Sindarin glossary included in The Silmarillion.

My actual name is anglo-saxon for Powerful Ruler. Many years berfore I strated writing fiction I wanted to be a rock star. My first attempts at poetry were song lyrics. I wanted a Rock Star name that had a personal connection and I loved all things middle earth.

Beleg is Sindarin for Mighty. A fair enough synonym for Powerful, I thought. the suffix -on indicates royalty, as in Fingon and Turgon. Thus, Belegon is my Anglo-Saxon name expressed in elvish. When in high school and thinking I was going to be a rock star, I used Rikki as a first name. I stopped that because I felt too adult to be called Ricky anymore and because a member of Poison had the same idea for a cool rock star first name. My first pen name was therefore just Belegon . When Switch got picked up by Phaze Books, I needed a first name to go with Belegon, so I took my middle name and cut it down to Will.

Dragon fire is mentioned as having been able to destroy some magic rings, specifically referenced in regards to the dwarven seven although we are never given a direct example, such as "So and so's dwarven ring was melted down by a dragon who destroyed the dwarven realm of XXXXX-dum in the Grey Mountains." So I think that the lesser rings, at least, were vulnerable to dragonfire. But it is specifically said that no dragon who ever lived, even Ancalagon the Black, could have harmed the One.

I was not disturbed in the slightest by Arwen taking the role of Glorfindel in the rescue of Frodo. I think it was one of the smarter choices made when needing to condense the character list.

I am a little put off by the way that Faramir is portrayed, but my biggest issue of that arc is Frodo and Sam being taken to Osgiliath. Out of the choices made regarding Gondor's hierarchy, I am more put off by the reduction of Denethor to a short-sighted bad father who hates Faramir. I do understand that it would have been difficult to portray his slow corruption via the palantir of the White Tower, but I really do wish we could have had at least a glimpse of it upon Denethor's pyre as a small nod to the actual cause of Denethor's madness. Plus I've always thought that needing a strong will in the following times to be able to force that palantir to show images other than Denethor's burning hands was a particularly good detail.

 

[onehitwanda]

Naming a restaurant "Flame of Udon" and decorating it with a fiery bullwhip would be just the kind of joke that would make me come to a restaurant loyally forever.

You could put a free bowl of rice crackers on each table, crammed in between the soya and the beers. It would be a tolkien gesture, but appreciated nontheless.

 

[StillStunned]

I wonder how many Tolkien-themed restaurants there are in Turin.

 

[onehitwanda]

I wonder how many Tolkien-themed restaurants there are in Turin.

I mean...

 

[SimonDoom]

Lol.

Menu option: "served with or without wings."

This is fun.

I'm there.

I'm sure it would serve good barbecue.

 

[TheLobster]

Naming a restaurant "Flame of Udon" and decorating it with a fiery bullwhip would be just the kind of joke that would make me come to a restaurant loyally forever.

Unless the bouncer tells you that you shall not pass.

 

[SimonDoom]

Unless the bouncer tells you that you shall not pass.

A large Vietnamese bouncer who tells you, "This pho is beyond any of you."

 

[TheLobster]

A large Vietnamese bouncer who tells you, "This pho is beyond any of you."

And if you cannot decide what to get for dessert, the waiter will sooner or later drop his impeccably polite demeanor and say, "Flan, you fools!"

 

[onehitwanda]

A large Vietnamese bouncer who tells you, "This pho is beyond any of you."

I hate how much I love this.

 

[SimonDoom]

I hate how much I love this.

And I love that you feel that way.

 

[naughty_stories]

There are many Tolkien fans and nerds in this forum, and many previous threads that have discussed his works, but I thought I'd start a thread anyway to give people an opportunity to ask questions or offer opinions on his work.

I read LOTR in 1976, 50 years ago. Been a fan and nerd ever since.

Here's a question I have: How did Gandalf and Elrond know how to destroy the One Ring? They somehow knew you could only destroy it by casting it into the fires of Mount Doom, but how did they know that? As far as we know, Sauron forged the ring by himself, and it doesn't make sense that he would put in writing how to destroy it. I can't imagine that Gandalf or Elrond found a scroll in the Minas Tirith archives somewhere where Sauron or some other witness wrote, "Just in case anybody wants to destroy the ring, here's how you do it."

It had to be destroyed in the same fires that made it. Sauron made it in secret at Mt. Doom

 

[Britva415]

It had to be destroyed in the same fires that made it. Sauron made it in secret at Mt. Doom

I wonder how did they know, if it was a secret?

 

[TheLobster]

I wonder how did they know, if it was a secret?

It may have been part of, or an obvious implication from, the domain of craft/magic/knowledge that is referred to as "ringlore".

Also, Gandalf does imply in Shadows of the Past that when it comes to magic rings, durability is correlated with power: lesser rings can be destroyed by dragons, but the One Ring is so powerful that not even the biggest baddest dragon could harm it. And from that it pretty easily follows that if no external fire can touch the One, then only the fire that forged it can unmake it.

 

[Statius]

Inference maybe? Isn't it implied on the script on the ring itself? If that's accurate then the question becomes how did anyone read it on the ring? Isildur lost it almost immediately right? Damn it's been so long since I've read those books

 

[TheWritingGroup]

Inference maybe? Isn't it implied on the script on the ring itself? If that's accurate then the question becomes how did anyone read it on the ring? Isildur lost it almost immediately right? Damn it's been so long since I've read those books

Isildur wrote a description of the Ring before his death, which Gandalf found in Minas Tirith.

 

[naughty_stories]

I wonder how did they know, if it was a secret?

He helped with the seven Rings for Dwarves and the nine for Men (the Elves had control of making the three). Then he forged the One giving him control of the others he had a hand in. The seven were lost in antiquity and the nine corrupted the souls of their owners leading to creation of the RingWraths.

 

[Voboy]

I wonder how did they know, if it was a secret?

Have you read the very first post in this thread? That's exactly what the OP asked. The early replies contain a number of us speculating on just that topic. Here's my guess.

 

[Britva415]

only the fire that forged it can unmake it

he forged the One giving him control of the others he had a hand in

Right, I wondered how they knew which fire it was though.

Like, was Mt. Doom well known to be the most intense fire in the land?

Have you read the very first post in this thread? That's exactly what the OP asked. The early replies contain a number of us speculating on just that topic. Here's my guess.

Those were about "how to know how to unmake it." I myself contributed ideas as to why "unmake it in the fire that made it" could be a known solution. I didn't see any of it get to where "which fire even was that" would be obvious, though.

 

[Voboy]

Right, I wondered how they knew which fire it was though.

Like, was Mt. Doom well known to be the most intense fire in the land?


Those were about "how to know how to unmake it." I myself contributed ideas as to why "unmake it in the fire that made it" could be a known solution. I didn't see any of it get to where "which fire even was that" would be obvious, though.

The short answer is "we don't know how the Wise knew."

The long answer is "your imagination can probably provide several answers." It might have been something Celebrimbor knew. It might have been something Sauron bragged about; it might have been common knowledge among his more senior servants, for example. It is canon that Sauron kept the road to the Sammath Naur in good repair so that he could go there whenever he wanted; maybe it was known that the Cracks were where Sauron forged everything he made. It might be that Aule knew, and told the Istari.

I think it's most likely to be something Saruman discovered when he was a Good Guy, which he was until relatively recently by the time of the War of the Ring. We should remember that he made a special study of the Rings of Power, and was likely to have winkled out everything about them. He would have then told the Wise about it.

 

[Bramblethorn]

The link between the One Ring and the lesser rings goes both ways: "As soon Sauron set the One Ring upon his finger they were aware of him; and they knew him, and perceived that he would be master of them, and of all that they wrought". It's possible that this assisted in figuring out how it was made.

Also possible that the forging process caused volcanic activity at Orodruin, and the Wise realised its significance with the benefit of hindsight.

I think it's most likely to be something Saruman discovered when he was a Good Guy, which he was until relatively recently by the time of the War of the Ring. We should remember that he made a special study of the Rings of Power, and was likely to have winkled out everything about them. He would have then told the Wise about it.

This one doesn't fit the timeline. Saruman and the other Istari arrive in Middle-Earth about a thousand years into the Third Age, at the time when Sauron begins his comeback as the Necromancer of Dol Guldur.

But the Ring's connection to Orodruin is known to the Good Guys by the end of the Second Age/beginning of the Third. When Isildur takes the Ring from Sauron, Elrond and Círdan "counselled him to cast it into the fire of Orodruin nigh at hand, in which it had been forged, so that it should perish, and the power of Sauron be for ever diminished" etc.

 

[Voboy]

This one doesn't fit the timeline. Saruman and the other Istari arrive in Middle-Earth about a thousand years into the Third Age, at the time when Sauron begins his comeback as the Necromancer of Dol Guldur.

But the Ring's connection to Orodruin is known to the Good Guys by the end of the Second Age/beginning of the Third. When Isildur takes the Ring from Sauron, Elrond and Círdan "counselled him to cast it into the fire of Orodruin nigh at hand, in which it had been forged, so that it should perish, and the power of Sauron be for ever diminished" etc.

Oh. Well, there we go: they already knew. I'd forgotten, mostly because I lack an Elrond around to remember for me.

My assumption was always that Celebrimbor and his homies understood enough about Sauron's methods and habits that they would have realized the Sammath Naur were where the thing came from. Or that he told them when he was Annatar; there would have been no reason for him not to have said something like, "Yeah, to make a really good Ring of Power, you need something wicked hot. Like, say, a volcano, if you can find one." Especially if that were true.

So the Noldor of Eregion invent blast furnaces or find a lava vent in Middle-Earth's version of Yellowstone. Later, when they perceive the One Ring, they realize Sauron must have used Orodruin.

I can think of enough answers, I suppose, that it has never occurred to me to ask the question.