Q: Can You Explain Who Gildor Inglorion Really Is?
ANSWER: The short answer is “No”. There are no canonical explanations of who Gildor Inglorion “really is”, with respect to how he is supposed to fit into J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth mythology. Gildor’s character is pivotal in the early part of The Lord of the Rings: He and his companions provide Frodo, Sam, and Pippin with a safe haven; and they warn Tom Bombadil, Aragorn, and Rivendell that Frodo is abroad “with a great burden” and is being pursued by the Nazgul. Gildor also advises Frodo to try to reach Rivendell. Gildor introduces himself to Frodo this way:
‘I am Gildor,’ answered their leader, the Elf who had first hailed him. ‘Gildor Inglorion of the House of Finrod. We are Exiles, and most of our kindred have long ago departed and we too are now only tarrying here a while, ere we return over the Great Sea. But some of our kinsfolk dwell still in peace in Rivendell. Come now, Frodo, tell us what you are doing? For we see that there is some shadow of fear upon you.’
Gildor Inglorion puzzles many readers who are familiar with the names in Tolkien’s genealogies. His name implies he must be one of the great princes of the Noldor, but he is not mentioned anywhere in The Silmarillion. It is not simply a matter of Christopher Tolkien editing Gildor out of the published book — he is simply not mentioned in the source texts. In their book The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion, Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull write the following concerning Gildor:
When The Lord of the Rings was published Finrod was the name of the third son of Finwë, leader of the Noldorin Elves, and Finrod had a son called Inglor Felagund. Some time later in his work on the ‘Silmarillion’ Tolkien changed the name of the son of Finwë to Finarfin, and his son became Finrod Felagund. To agree with this, in the second edition of The Lord of the Rings (1965) he changed the description of Galadriel at the beginning of Appendix B from ‘sister of Felagund of the House of Finrod’ to ‘sister of Finrod Felagund’, and in Appendix F ‘Lady Galadriel of the royal house of Finrod, father of Felagund’ became ‘Lady Galadriel of the royal house of Finarfin’. Yet Tolkien left ‘House of Finrod’ unchanged in Book I, Chapter 3, probably an oversight, though a reference to ‘Finrod Inglor’ in papers associated with the telling of the story of Beren and Luthien under Weathertop (Book I, Chapter 11) might indicate that Tolkien was already pondering the change of names.
It is strange that there is no mention of Gildor in the ‘Silmarillion’ papers, written either before or after the publication of The Lord of the Rings; yet Tolkien wrote Galadriel, Gil-galad, and even (briefly) the Ents into the earlier history. The only Gildor to be found there is a Man, one of the companions of Barahir, father of Beren, introduced after the completion of The Lord of the Rings but before its publication. Inglorion would seem to connect Gildor especially with Inglor Felagund, yet apart from briefly considering Inglor as a possible father for Gil-galad, Tolkien had him remain unmarried because his beloved had stayed in Valinor. Tolkien may have thought of Gildor as the son of one of Finrod Felagund’s brothers, or may simply have used named which seemed suitable for the purpose; or he may have intended the phrase ‘of the House of’ to mean one closely associated with the family of Finrod, a member of the household.
Their last point, that Gildor’s family may only have been associated with the royal house of the Noldor, has been put forth in other, less formal contexts. However, there is no support for such usage in Tolkien’s published (within his lifetime) texts. The nearest such use might be a reference to Theoden’s companions in battle, perhaps his “household knights”, when the King of the Mark rides out of Helm’s Deep at the coming of dawn:
And with that shout the king came. His horse was white as snow, golden was his shield, and his spear was long. At his right hand was Aragorn, Elendil’s heir, behind him rode the lords of the House of Eorl the Young. Light sprang in the sky. Night departed.
Another possible use for “house of …” refers to the three groups of Men who entered Beleriand as the “three Houses of the Edain”. These were tribal “houses” in some contexts and noble houses in other. When Faramir tells Frodo a little about Gondor’s history and he speaks about the valiant Northmen, he says: “Indeed it is said by our lore-masters that they have from of old this affinity with us that they are come from those same Three Houses of Men as were the Númenoreans in their beginning….”
If Tolkien meant for Gildor’s use “of the House of Finrod” to refer to either a servile relationship or tribal designation, this would be the one such use in all of his published stories. Such a use would make Gildor’s place in the ever-evolving Middle-earth mythology even stranger than it already is.
Although the elf was introduced into an early version of the story, according to a note in The Return of the Shadow, Volume VI of The History of Middle-earth, Tolkien only provided a name for the elf toward the end of his appearance in the scene, and then went back and wrote the name in by hand on the typescript. Gildor’s nature, however, may have changed as Tolkien rewrote and edited the manuscript. In another note, Christopher writes:
The striking out of Gildor’s words ‘for the matter is outside the concern of such Elves as we are’ (note 27) is interesting. At first, I think, my father thought of these Elves as ‘Dark-elves’; but he now decided that they (and also the Elves of Rivendell) were indeed ‘High Elves of the West’, and he added in Gildor’s words to Bingo on p. 60 (see note 18): they were ‘Wise-elves’ (Noldor or Gnomes), ‘one of the few companies that still remain east of the Sea’, and he himself is Gildor Inglorion of the house of Finrod. With these words of Gildor’s cf. the Quenta Silmarillion $28, in V.332:
Yet not all the Eldalie were willing to forsake the Hither Lands where they had long suffered and long dwelt; and some lingered many an age in the West and North… But ever as the ages drew on and the Elf-folk faded upon earth, they would set sail at eve from the western shores of this world, as still they do, until now there linger few anywhere of their lonely companies.
At this time Finrod was the name of the third son of Finwe (first Lord of the Noldor). This was later changed to Finarfin, when Inglor Felagund his son took over the name Finrod (see I.44), but my father did not change ‘of the house of Finrod’ here (FR p. 89) to ‘of the house of Finarfin’ in the second edition of The Lord of the Rings. See further p. 188 (end of note 9).
The reference at the end of Christopher’s note is given thus:
The term ‘High Elves’ is here used to mean the Elves of Valinor, not, as in the Quenta Silmarillion, the First Kindred (Lindar, Vanyar): see V. 214, $25 and commentary.
A very surprising point is the mention, a little later in this text, of Finrod Inglor the fair (see p. 72). In the first edition of LR (Appendices) Finrod was still the name of third son of Finwe, as in the Quenta Silmarillion, and his son was Felagund (in QS also named Inglor); it was not till the second edition of 1966 that Finrod son of Finwe became Finarfin, and his son Inglor Felagund became Finrod Felagund.
When did J.R.R. Tolkien begin changing the names in the genealogy? In Morgoth’s Ring, Volume X of The History of Middle-earth, Christopher Tolkien suggests that the transformation may have occurred or begun in 1958:
$$41-2 In Appendix F to The Lord of the Rings is found in the First Edition (published in October 1955): ‘the Lady Galadriel of the royal house of Finrod, father of Felagund’; in the Second Edition (1966) this became ‘the Lady Galadriel of the royal house of Finarphin and sister of Finrod Felagund’. Since as late as September 1954 (Letters no.150) my father was apologising to Allen and Unwin for not having as yet ‘any copy to send in for the Appendices’, it is clear that Finrod > Finarphin and Inglor > Finrod cannot have been entered on LQ 1 until after this time. On the typescript text of AAm (p. 128, $134) he noted that the names of the Sons of Feanor ‘will be revised’, and on the text he changed Cranthir to Caranthir, underlined the n of Celegorn, and struck out Damrod and Diriel without replacing them.
LQ 2 has the altered names. I have suggested that the typescripts of AAm and LQ 2 belong to much the same time (perhaps about 1958): see pp. 141 – 2.
We can infer that Tolkien probably did not think about Gildor at this time. Tolkien does not seem to have given any thought to Gildor again until he was preparing notes for The Road Goes Ever On, which was published in 1967, after the second edition of The Lord of the Rings had been completed. Although Tolkien explains why Gildor and his folk were passing through the Shire when they met Frodo, Sam, and Pippin, he does not comment on Gildor’s lineage or name. The final word on the genealogy of the Eldarin princes of Middle-earth is most likely the unfinished linguistic essay that Christopher published in The Peoples of Middle-earth, Volume XII of The History of Middle-earth, under the name “The Shibboleth of Fëanor”. Christopher introduced that text with this comment:
THE SHIBBOLETH OF FEANOR.
With an excursus on the name of the descendants of Finwe.In all my father’s last writings linguistic history was closely intertwined with the history of persons and of peoples, and much that he recounted can be seen to have arisen in the search for explanations of linguistic facts or anomalies. The most remarkable example of this is the following essay, arising from his consideration of a problem of historical phonology, which records how the difference in pronunciation of a single consonantal element in Quenya played a significant part in the strife of the Noldorin princes in Valinor. It has no title, but I have called it The Shibboleth of Feanor, since my father himself used that word in the course of the essay (p. 336).
Like Of Dwarves and Men, it was written (composed in typescript throughout) on paper supplied by Allen and Unwin, in this case mostly copies of a publication note of February 1968; and as in that essay there are very many notes interpolated into the body of the text in the process of composition. Appended to it is a lengthy excursus {half as long again as the essay from which it arose) on the names of Finwe’s descendants, and this I give also; but from both The Shibboleth of Feanor proper and from this excursus I have excluded a number of notes, some of them lengthy, of a technical phonological nature. The work was not finished, for my father did not reach, as was his intention, discussion of the names of the Sons of Feanor; but such draft material as there is for this part is given at the end of the text. All numbered notes, both my father’s and mine, are collected on pp. 356 ff.
Although “The Shibboleth of Fëanor” introduces new Elven princes and princesses who have not previously appeared in the Silmarillion stories, there is no reference to Gildor or a newly designated Inglor. Gildor Inglorion appears to belong to an intermediate and undocumented lineage. It is possible that Tolkien changed Inglor to Finrod and Finrod to Finarfin because of Gildor’s name. He had an opportunity first in 1965 while preparing the Second Edition of The Lord of the Rings and then in 1967 while preparing The Road Goes Ever On to explain Gildor’s name and family; for reasons we don’t know, he did nothing about Gildor. If Christopher’s dating for the “Shibboleth” is correct then Tolkien did not have Gildor in mind when he composed the genealogy, although it could be argued that since it was an unfinished essay Tolkien might have returned to it later (had he lived longer) and added more names, including perhaps Inglor and Gildor.
These incomplete facts leave us with at least three possibly plausible extrapolations or explanations. First, that Gildor, Inglor, and Finrod were not descedants of Ingwë. Unusual as it may seem, there are a few examples where Tolkien reused the names of notable elves in his histories, including Rúmil (a Noldo of Valinor and an elf of Lothlorien), Galdor (an elf of Gondolin in a pre-LoTR text and an elf Cirdan sent to Rivendell in The Lord of the Rings), the two Glorfindels (whom Tolkien utimately decided must be the same character), the two Gelmir’s (of Nargothrond and Dorthonion), and the twin sons of Fëanor (Amrod and Amras) who were originally named (according to “Shibboleth”) Ambarussa by their mother.
Christopher estimates that his father did some work on the Eldarin genealogies concerning Finarfin’s family in 1960 and 1965 (perhaps while working on revisions to The Lord of the Rings). Orodreth appears to have been made the son of Angrod, younger brother of Finrod, in the 1965 revision. Gil-galad also appears to have been placed as Orodreth’s son at this time. In Note 30 to the “Shibboleth” JRRT states that Finrod’s nickname, Ingoldo (Sindarin form Ingold) “spread from his kin to many others who held him in great honor, especially to Men….” An earlier form of the name, Ingalaurë (Sindarin form Inglor), may have also been given in honor of Finrod.
If that is the case, then Finrod could have been the name of a notable Noldorin prince who was not descended from Ingwë, and that his son Inglor was the father of Gildor, who simply happened to be a member of “a house of princes”, just as Glorfindel is described as “an Elf-lord of a house of princes”.
In the second equally plausible scenario, Tolkien may have decided to create a brother or son for Inglor son of Finrod while developing The Lord of the Rings and simply never followed through. Hence, if Inglor became Finrod in JRRT’s thought during the late 1930s (when Gildor was introduced to the evolving narrative) Tolkien may simply have neglected to follow through on changing the genealogy until the 1960s — hence the change made in 1965 might have reflected a decision reached much earlier. One could speculatively give Orodreth a brother, Inglor, who had a son named Gildor.
Thirdly, it could be that Tolkien envisioned Gildor being a son of Inglor/Finrod (son of Finrod/Finarfin) born in Valinor after Inglor/Finrod was released from Mandos, and who may have traveled to Middle-earth during the Second Age much like Glorfindel.
To assume that Inglor might be a male-line descendant of Finwë born in Middle-earth is troublesome because Tolkien specifically stated at several points in the evolution of these various texts that Gil-galad was the last male-line descendant of Finwë. Elrond and Galadriel were also descendants of Finwë but they and their children could not claim the title of High King of the Noldor-in-Exile.
Of course, it could be argued that Gildor (or his father Inglor) might have refused to claim any right of inheritance from Gil-galad, but it seems most likely that Tolkien would have rejected any idea of making Gildor a member of the most royal family of the Noldor. It seems that he may very well have been aware of Gildor’s nomenclature and decided to resolve the issue by leaving Gildor’s name behind while transforming Finrod and his son Inglor into Finarfin and Finrod.
This would most likely mean that Tolkien simply abandoned “Inglor” to Gildor’s newly emerged family, which was descended from an elf named Finrod who was NOT the son of Finarfin.
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