Q: Are All Tolkien Elves Fair-skinned?
ANSWER: The short answer is “no”. Nor was J.R.R. Tolkien a racist or white supremacist. All Tolkien Elves are NOT fair-skinned. But I’m not going to provide citations to explain that answer. I’ll quote the question I received in (almost) its entirety but then I’ll address what I feel is the deeper issue.
There is currently a debate unfolding on [YOUR FORUM HERE] …
At present in the game players are only allowed to make elven characters with Caucasian skin tones. That limitation is being defended by a group of players who seem to suggest that light skin is intrinsic to Tolkien’s elves and the original ethnically homogeneous northern European culture that imagined them. They seem to suggest that without white skin they would no longer be elves.
The contrary position suggests that Tolkien actually spends very little time describing elven skin tones and it is not an intrinsic part of their identity or role in the story. Therefore we can take creative liberty as readers and interpreters to show more diversity in skin tones of elven characters in the name of inclusion. They also suggest that the ancient world where the myths came from was not as ethnically homogeneous as it is often made out to be.
My question for you is who is more correct here? Is there a place for elves of color in the Lord of the Rings? Is that particular creative liberty one Tolkien would have approved of or denounced? I would like to be clear that I’m not trying to suggest that Tolkien is a racist, but I do find it troubling that people interpret his work to justify the exclusion of POC characters in fantasy narratives. Thanks for you time.
Who is correct? In my opinion – NEITHER side is correct.
This is like Jeff LaSala at TOR.Com claiming the evidence about pointy-eared Tolkien elves is inconclusive. Inconclusive my dark hairy behind. In no story published ANYWHERE does any Elf described by J.R.R. Tolkien have pointy ears. The pointy ears are just made-up nonsense. Tolkien rejected the idea of putting pointy ears on his elves. Misquoting a letter about Hobbit ears won’t change that.
And what does that have to do with the color of elven skin you may ask? These questions are cut from the same cloth as the Balrog Wings debate. Someone plucked a bit of text out of the book and used that to justify what, for lack of a better expression, is COMPLETE BULLSHIT.
I’m sorry if the game designers won’t let people create elves with the physical attributes they desire. I could quote the books all day long for the next 50 blog posts and that won’t change one opinion on what Tolkien has to say about elvish skin color. The fact that no one has EVER found a Tolkien elf with pointy ears doesn’t stop half the Tolkien fans in the world from arguing ad nauseum that Tolkien elves have pointy ears.
People are just going to make up shit and argue about it for the next 100 years. When I first became involved in the Tolkien Flame Wars more than 20 years ago DOZENS of people emailed me and begged me to stop arguing with idiots and fools. I guess they didn’t realize they were begging and pleading with yet one more idiotic fool. It took me several years to learn that lesson.
This isn’t worth arguing over. There is no “right” or “wrong” side in these debates because, frankly, no one actually pays attention to what J.R.R. Tolkien wrote on many of these topics.
Imagine a rainbow. Each color in the rainbow represents a different description of a [TOLKIEN CONCEPT]. What you get with all the books and random notes and essays that have come to light over the past 70 years are RAINBOWS OF DESCRIPTIONS. In nearly every one of these debates you can find at least 1 passage of obscure text SOMEWHERE that agrees with your chosen point of view. That’s all it takes for people to smugly insist they MUST be correct.
There is no canon for Middle-earth because no one has defined a canon that a majority (let alone all) of Tolkien readers, commenters, and adapters agree to.
Who is supposed to settle these arguments? Logic and the texts themselves have failed to settle the debates.
If you sign up to play in a game that doesn’t allow dark-skinned elves then at best you need to make a logical case to the game designers and live with whatever their final decision is.
Middle-earth Is Not Based on Nordic Europe
Let me address the other point that you raise. And although I welcome comments on this post (even opposing points of view – just to be clear: profanity-laden diatribes accusing me of being a snowflake or social justice warrior or whatever will be deleted on sight), I will not respond to anyone who wants to argue with me on the point. You can have your say below and you get the last word as far as this article is concerned.
Middle-earth isn’t Europe and Europe isn’t Middle-earth. ALL of the races and characters in the Middle-earth stories are MADE UP, fictional races, tribes, characters and they are not thinly disguised anythings for whatever you can glean from real history.
The very best Tolkien scholars in the world (and many of lesser skill and knowledge) have tackled the question of what sources Tolkien used for his elves. I think it’s fair to say that the MAJORITY consensus favors a mix of Celtic and Norse/Germanic influences. I’ve come across some arguments for Slavic influences. There may even be some other postulated influences I’ve forgotten about. But those are just influences. The Lord of the Rings is not an updated telling of any specific myth or story from the past. It’s a new thing, compared to all those old things people associate it with.
If we assume for the sake of discussion that a majority consensus about any one element of Middle-earth (a race, tribe, or region) is clearly traceable to a specific region of historical Earth, then it follows that the fiction should represent that source enough to ensure proper identification of the connection. Otherwise, all bets are off and reader assumptions don’t count.
Example: It’s pretty clear that the Rohirrim are heavily influenced by Anglo-Saxons. Move on.
And yet J.R.R. Tolkien wrote on numerous occasions that Middle-earth is ALL of the Earth – “round and inescapable, the habitable lands of men”. Even if you limit his ideas to the lens of Norse mythology (which is very sparse in detail), that mythology was intended to explain the whole world as far as the Scandinavian peoples were aware of and understood it.
That is the purpose of ANY mythology – to explain things in understandable terms. The Scandinavians didn’t spend much time in Africa and eastern Asia while crafting the stories that encompassed their myths. But you can find examples of how their myths go well beyond the common tropes most readers associate with Tolkien. My article “Who Was Narvi, Maker of the Doors of Durin?” goes much deeper into Norse myth and history than you’ll find in almost any online Tolkien discussion.
If the Scandinavians could include all the lands and tribes of men (unlike them) in their myths and histories, why can’t Tolkien fans do the same?
J.R.R. Tolkien hinted at many non-Scandinavian, non-European influences on Middle-earth including but not limited to Byzantium, Israel, Africa, India, Egypt, Slavic cultures, and more.
If you find yourself arguing with someone about the color of skin in Tolkien’s fiction, run away. Run far away. They’ve already made up their mind in spite of the published stories. You can’t change those kinds of opinions.
Tolkien’s Use of Skin Color was Strategic
If he put dark skin on a character, there was a reason for it, usually a “natural” reason. Some hobbits and Gondorians were darker-skinned because they spent more time outdoors (presumably) than others of their kind. But Tolkien’s fictional history implies that over time the darker skin colors became inherited traits within tribes or ethnic groups because that is what naturally happens.
There is no evidence whatsoever that J.R.R. Tolkien wanted his fiction to represent some brazen idea of “racial purity”. Geeze, every great tale in Middle-earth is about someone crossing those barriers and defying conventions. In terms of political correctness, my opinion is that Tolkien was a rebel who didn’t think much of people who today would be described as white supremacists.
He specialized in studying Germanic languages but that doesn’t mean he saw himself as a representative of a higher race. His letters reveal a man of profound thought who had witnessed up close the terrible things men do to each other. He was so deeply affected by that evil that even his “good” Elves committed horrific atrocities against each other.
No one can win these arguments. Even the people who defend Tolkien against allegations of racism have failed to convince the general public despite lengthy citations and carefully constructed logical arguments. Facts and logic are rarely relevant to the truths people want to believe in.
Addendum: Concerning the Quote from The Lord of the Rings Appendix
A passage from The Lord of the Rings, “On Translation” in Appendix F, is being passed around the Internet as proof that all Tolkien elves were fair-skinned. The passage reads:
…They were a race high and beautiful the older Children of the world, and among them the
Eldar were as kings, who now are gone: the People of the Great Journey, the People of the Stars. They were tall, fair of skin and grey-eyed, though their locks were dark, save in the golden house of Finrod; and their voices had more melodies than any mortal voice that now is heard…
However, that passage is wrong, according to Christopher Tolkien. He explains what happened in The Book of Lost Tales, Part One:
I conclude this commentary with a note on my father’s use of the word Gnomes for the Noldor, who in the Lost Tales are called Noldoli. He continued to use it for many years, and it still appeared in earlier editions of The Hobbit.
In a draft for the final paragraph of Appendix F to The Lord of the Rings he wrote:
I have sometimes (not in this book) used ‘Gnomes’ for Noldor and ‘Gnomish’ for Noldorin. This I did, for whatever Paracelsus may have thought (if indeed he invented the name) to some ‘Gnome’ will still suggest knowledge. Now the High-elven name of this people, Noldor, signifies Those who Know; for of the three kindreds of the Eldar from their beginning the Noldor were ever distinguished both by their knowledge of things that are and were in this world, and by their desire to know more. Yet they in no way resembled the Gnomes either of learned theory or popular fancy; and I have now abandoned this rendering as too misleading. For the Noldor belonged to a race high and beautiful, the elder Children of the world, who now are gone. Tall they were, fair-skinned and grey-eyed, and their locks were dark, save in the golden house of Finrod…
In the last paragraph of Appendix F as published the reference to ‘Gnomes’ was removed, and replaced by a passage explaining the use of the word Elves to translate Quendi and Eldar despite the diminishing of the English ‘word. This passage — referring to the Quendi as a whole — continues however with the same words as in the draft: ‘They were a race high and beautiful, and among them the Eldar were as kings, who now are gone: the People of the Great Journey, the People of the Stars. They were tall, fair of skin and grey-eyed, though their locks were dark, save in the golden house of Finrod…’
Thus these words describing characters of face and hair were actually written of the Noldor only, and not of all the Eldar: indeed the Vanyar had golden hair, and it was from Finarfin’s Vanyarin mother Indis that he, and Finrod Felagund and Galadriel his children, had their golden hair that marked them out among the princes of the Noldor. But I am unable to determine how this extraordinary perversion of meaning arose.
The name Finrod in the passage at the end of Appendix F is now in error: Finarfin was Finrod, and Finrod was Inglor, until the second edition of The Lord of the Rings, and in this instance the change was overlooked.
The fact more than one editing error creeped into the text people use to argue (wrongly) that all Tolkien Elves are fair-skinned is never alluded to in the cherry-picked citations and memes. Don’t be fooled by people who deliberately, willfully omit important information.
Does “Elf” Mean White People?
This is another lie being passed around the Internet. The meaning of elf is given as “sprite, fairy, goblin, incubus,”. That article on the Etymology Online Dictionary says one scholar traced the word back to a Proto-IndoEuropean word: “possibly from PIE *albho- ‘white.'” Regardless of whether his argument was correct, elf does NOT mean “white person”. Furthermore, anyone even remotely familiar with Norse and German mythology knows that the Alfar were divided into “dark” (Norse svart) and “light” Alfar, and the Dark Alfar were sometimes confused with Dwarfs.
The argument that “elf” means “white person” or “white people” is racist trash promoted by white supremacists who have perverted both Tolkien’s work and the mythological and etymological sources of his stories.
This article is featured in the Middle-earth Blog Hot Zone.See Also
Is It True There Is Racism in The Lord of the Rings?
# # #
Have you read our other Tolkien and Middle-earth Questions and Answers articles?
Well the only thing I can think of now, that ever says something about Elves in relation to skin color is this:
“They [the Quendi] were a race high and beautiful, the older Children of the world, and among them the Eldar were as kings, who are now gone: the People of the Great Journey, the People of the Stars. They were tall, fair of skin and grey-eyed, though their locks were dark, save in the golden house of Finarfin …” Appendix F: Part II, “On Translation,”
And this in particular about Arwen herself (who is part mortal because of line of Peredhil):
“In the middle of the table, against the woven cloths upon the wall, there was a chair under a canopy, and there sat a lady fair to look upon, and so like was she in form of womanhood to Elrond that Frodo guessed that she was one of his close kindred. Young she was and yet not so. The braids of her dark hair were touched by no frost, her white arms and clear face were flawless and smooth, and the light of stars was in her bright eyes, grey as a cloudless night; yet queenly she looked, and thought and knowledge were in her glance, as of one who has known many things that the years bring.”
So Arwen specifically had ‘white arms’ and was like her father only in feminine form, that’s it from Lotr. There might be something in other texts (something about ‘ruddy complexion’ of Nerdanel in HoME).
Yes, but there are contrary examples. The pointless argument about the color of Legolas’ hair is another example of how people get caught up in unnecessary minutiae.
My point is that people are taking this whole “faithful to Tolkien” thing too far. What is “faithful to Tolkien”? Everyone has their own idea of how Middle-earth should look.
I spent years ruining my own and other people’s enjoyment of Middle-earth by arguing about every little detail. I wish I had appreciated what people tried to warn me about when they were warning me.
Not that I’m trying to imply anything simply say neutral stuff, examples of what is said in text itself (the most popular and known texts published in Tolkien’s lifetime that is Lotr itself) and there’s nothing wrong with that to say ‘this and this is described this way in this specific text’, if there is something more Tolkien may allude or not, it’s simply as it is and there’s no point trying to argue about it :). Texts of HoME are a whole mix itself of various versions and evolving constantly stories, so they may or may not be a source for something. I tend to think that whenever something does not contradict something else explicitly stated we can accept it, conflicting versions etc. are fun in themselves because it’s just like that with ‘real history’ things are often unclear, lost in time, and it’s adding that sense of realism (but I think the published versions with the Tolkien approved changes are enough for us, though nobody says that the tomatoes he removed from The Hobbit putting pickles insted, couldn’t be reinstated if someone feels like it in role playing or something hehe). The discussions about canon are one thing it’s part of enjoyment of it to discuss stuff how Tolkien changed this or that over time.
But those kinds of discussions are simply an example of larger problem, whenever people start those debates they are only fixating on one thing and it’s certainly not Tolkien lore, people are trying to push something they view as ‘politically correct’ way of viewing things, truth be told I wouldn’t care much for those demanding ‘african elves’ or whatever they really want, (they may imagine it in their own role playing sessions as some Avari in Far Harad) I accept Middle-earth as it is simply because I enjoy this world and Tolkien’s work, I don’t try to ‘fix it’ by adding something that may be demanded by popular opinion (whether there is textual evidence for something or not, it’s still as Tolkien wrote incomplete imaginary world, we should probably say the same he said in a letter: “I don’t care this is biological dictum in my imaginary world…” etc.).
On the other hand, it will be highly controversial what I will say now, maybe a bit exaggerated, but for me such tries to push in for ‘forced diversity’ disregarding what Tolkien may have said or written about his world smells more of censorship, compromising integrity of a work of fiction for some agenda. It’s natural that Middle-earth is to represent the world in it’s entirety, in mythical version of prehistory, but what Tolkien focuses on is specific places, specific times, specific peoples, he expands whenever he can but even he couldn’t write about every possible thing that modern audiences wouldn’t feel offended by lack of (we don’t hear for instance about far eastern ‘asian cultures’ we don’t see equivalent of China out there, no Thailand or Indonesia, we simply don’t hear about those things, they may or may not be out there, but does that mean we need to put them in on our own and tell it’s totally what Tolkien intended? Does it make the world that Tolkien created worse for lack of it?), the elves as we see them in stories, most of them in the north-western portion of the world may be white generally speaking is that wrong? It is what it is.
The debate extends well beyond one gaming forum. I was easily able to find other groups arguing about this exact issue. I don’t know why it’s important to anyone to insist that a derivative work exclude elves that don’t have fair skin. I’m not a member of those communities and have no history with them.
Maybe there is a deeper issue here than “fans arguing about minutiae”. If so, I’m not sure what else I can add to the discussion. I’ve already addressed the idea of racism in Tolkien’s fiction more than once. Others, including Dr. Dimitra Fimi, have also stepped up and tried to explain Tolkien’s tropes and ideas.
At this point I felt compelled to say something to the people engaging in these arguments, having been down that path more than once. Maybe I’m just wasting my time.
Exactly! You addressed the issue many times (I guess some people will be always convinced that Tolkien was racist, or whatever other ‘-ist’ they can come up with, for some there is no enjoyment of a work for what it is it may seem, but they need to find something that offends them, so I say there’s no point in convincing them otherwise) and we know well stance in which Tolkien was in this matter. I for one highly value your work and opinions on the side of Tolkien world and it’s lore (sometimes even bring up your essays as examples for some highly entertaining discussions, speculation threads etc. Tolkien was an author with his own vision and creative imagination, we wrote what he liked to write about and he made his world into a wonderful monument to his passion and creativity, we should enjoy it all not search for it’s perceived weaknesses or flaws, and that is all I would advise too 🙂 (of course if someone says he doesn’t like Tolkien works because this or that, it’s his opinion and he will not be convinced otherwise, though sometimes people who previously didn’t like somethign may find it enjoyable despite all in later time? Everything depends on the person some want to see something in particular in any work of fiction, others are allured to something else, not everything needs to appeal to everyone, there are tastes etc. and it involves every other work of art and that would be all :)).
We wouldn’t be here if JRRT hadn’t stimulated our imaginations. Each of our imaginings will be somewhat different (perhaps dramatically different) based on our personal understanding/knowledge of language and the world around us (and philologist JRRT certainly understood that).
There are forests near me that, to my eye, resemble places described by JRRT… But I experienced some of those forests before my first readings of Tolkien, so those real-world experiences formed the basis for my first imaginings of Middle-earth. Those imaginings have changed over time, as I’ve re-read the texts (finding different meanings each time) and added many more woodland experiences. This diversity of experience makes the Ithilien you imagine and the Ithilien that I imagine somewhat (or dramatically) different, and the Ithilien I imagined in 1970 is different than the one I imagine today.
A person who tries to insist that Ithliien is one, immutable place lacks self-awareness. If one can’t appreciate just how much of our worldview is an internal, mental construct, then then one may very well insist that the world must conform to ones internal worldview. And from that rigidity we get debates over ears, skin color, etc.
One might ask, “What is reality,” but in these matters, its even more amorphous, “What is the fantasy?”
As to “forced diversity?” I might argue that the Red Book of Westmarch was based on the worldview of the Hobbits. They had not been to the East or the South. Bilbo’s experiences, though certainly much greater than the denizens of Bywater’s pubs, still exposed him to a very small part of Middle-earth. What rumors and tales of those places that came to their ears were already modified by all the forces that separate tales from fact, all the biases of all those who told and retold those tales.
Basically, if ones personal worldview prefers diversity and there is no clearcut, canonical statement from the author to the contrary, what’s the problem with imagining a diverse Middle-earth? It’s a matter of filling in the gaps left by the author, not re-writing the extant text.
Of course the Red Book is based on certain experiences and view of specific in-universe characters in that ‘literary agent’ approach 🙂 it’s based on memoirs of Bilbo and chronicles written by Frodo with added ‘lore’ of the world based on other in-universe texts etc. Ithilien, well the land itself may be shown differently in each visual medium, it’s description may bring in mind Tuscany, Provance or other such ‘mediterranean regions’ or other analogical areas of the world due to it’s flora richly described in text and it simulating the position of mediterranean-like sphere geographically (Bay of Belfalas in general is such a place, warm climate, Ithilien is growing olives for example and bay that sort of thing, also in one letter Tolkien even compared Pelargir to Venice :)) in the same time the land is it’s own unique thing, placed in this and that specific lay of the fictional geography the region of hills and forests beneath the dark Mountains of Shadow (the description of some old gondorian ruins may also vaguely bring in mind roman styled ruins of ancient villas or some such thing :), that’s clear as day, we can imagine it in various ways basing on the depiction of the place in Lotr (Americans will look towards the regions of their country that fit the most in some southern states, Europeans will view it in context of their own areas, or some portions of north Africa in mediterranean basin or parts of south America and Australia with similar features of climate and plant species etc.). Gondor also has it’s population a mix of purer blood Dunedain and “shorter and swarthier” men, “They were reckoned men of Gondor, yet their blood was mingled, and there were short and swarthy folk among them whose sires came more from the forgotten men who housed in the shadow of the hills in the Dark Years ere the coming of the kings.”, you have this and that, each region being distinct, having some specific geographic features, but would you imagine Ithilien to be an amazonian rainforest, with palms, vines, flooding forest floor with mangrove? There is always a certain border in interpretations, because if we go beyond the text and claim it can totally look like that, then what’s the point of the text? 🙂 Ithilien also lies in precisely defined place in the ‘imaginary world’, places which as Tolkien himself often noted correspond with various real world areas.
“…a fair country of climbing woods and swift-falling streams. Before them, as they turned west, gentle slopes ran down into dim hazes far below. All about them were small woods of resinous trees, fir and cedar and cypress. and other kinds unknown in the Shire, with wide glades among them; and everywhere there was a wealth of sweet-smelling herbs and shrubs. The long journey from Rivendell had brought them far south of their own land, but not until now in this more sheltered region had the hobbits felt the change of clime. Here Spring was already busy about them: fronds pierced moss and mould, larches were green-fingered, small flowers were opening in the turf, birds were singing. Ithilien, the garden of Gondor now desolate kept still a dishevelled dryad loveliness.
South and west it looked towards the warm lower vales of Anduin, shielded from the east by the Ephel Dúath and yet not under the mountain-shadow, protected from the north by the Emyn Muil, open to the southern airs and the moist winds from the Sea far away. Many great trees grew there, planted long ago, falling into untended age amid a riot of careless descendants; and groves and thickets there were of tamarisk and pungent terebinth, of olive and of bay; and there were junipers and myrtles; and thymes that grew in bushes, or with their woody creeping stems mantled in deep tapestries the hidden stones; sages of many kinds putting forth blue flowers, or red, or pale green; and marjorams and new-sprouting parsleys, and many herbs of forms and scents beyond the garden lore of Sam. The grots and rocky walls were already starred with saxifrages and stonecrops. Primeroles and anemones were awake in the filbert-brakes; and asphodel and many lily-flowers nodded their half-opened heads in the grass: deep green grass beside the pools, where falling streams halted in cool hollows on their journey down to Anduin.”
…
“Great ilexes of huge girth stood dark and solemn in wide glades with here and there among them hoary ash-trees. and giant oaks just putting out their brown-green buds. About them lay long launds of green grass dappled with celandine and anemones, white and blue, now folded for sleep; and there were acres populous with the leaves of woodland hyacinths: already their sleek bell-stems were thrusting through the mould.”
Tolkien letters often addressed the topic of how Middle-earth is in relation of our world:
“The action of the story takes place in the North-west of ‘Middle-earth’, equivalent in latitude to the coastlands of Europe and the north shores of the Mediterranean. But this is not a purely ‘Nordic’ area in any sense. If Hobbiton and Rivendell are taken (as intended) to be at about the latitude of Oxford, then Minas Tirith, 600 miles south, is at about the latitude of Florence. The Mouths of Anduin and the ancient city of Pelargir are at about the latitude of ancient Troy.”
…
“I am historically minded. Middle-earth is not an imaginary world . . . The theatre of my tale is this earth, the one in which we now live, but the historical period is imaginary. The essentials of that abiding place are all there (at any rate for inhabitants of N.W. Europe), so naturally it feels familiar, even if a little glorified by the enchantment of distance in time.”
I share here a thought trying to add something from the perspective of a RPGamer: after long years playing, I’ve found that people very fond of Tolkien’s books (as myself) get very easily frustrated when playing RPGs in Middle-Earth and come across not one but several things shocking for them (us) in terms of canon.
Surely it is a flaw of us, but we roll very quickly down the road to “go and play D&D if you want a non-bearded dark skinned dwarf female assasin with a crossbow” – it spoils the game for us – and this doesn’t happen to us when we are actually playing D&D in other fantasy worlds… what I’m trying to say is that I don’t think I should be considered a racist or a fanatic or even a purist for feeling a Middle-Earth game session ruined if a player insists on roleplaying that dark skinned dwarf female assasin with a crossbow or a human character gets flying and casting fireballs.
As dark skinned Elves in Middle-Earth in particular, it sounds very much The Uzi Rule to me…
There are POC in Middle-Earth, natives of countries of Harad and Rhûn, but the races of the Elves, the Dunedain and the Rohirrim are all white skinned in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth because Tolkien wanted those races to resemble historical European races as he wanted Eriador, Rhovanion, Calenardhon/Rohan and Gondor to resemble Great Britain, Northwestern Europe and Southwestern Europe.
I have no wish to ruin anyone’s enjoyment either of games set in Middle-earth or of the books.
As far as non-fair-skinned elves go, I assure you the Uzi rule does not apply here. I don’t want to get into a citation war over the topic. As I noted above, people will choose the texts that support their views. And it would be as destructive to someone else’s view of Middle-earth for me to exclude any obscure texts as it would be to your view for me to insist that 1 or 2 descriptions be used as canon.
Ultimately, every Middle-earth game must be constructed to please the people who play it. While there isn’t much people can do about the licensed games, a lot of Middle-earth games aren’t licensed.
And in those games I would say the Uzi Rule is perfectly acceptable. Applying the Uzi Rule to a game won’t change the books or put words into Tolkien’s mouth. Many people already accept the movies as canon, and they depart from the books in some pretty radical ways (while also offering alternative interpretations of some rather obscure ideas Tolkien included in the primary stories).
A lot of people were upset at the way Peter Jackson’s Arwen used “elf magic” to communicate with Aragorn. That was a bit of a stretch but the “Tale of Aragorn and Arwen” states clearly that she watched over him from afar. Jackson didn’t stray as far from the text as a lot of people believed (on that point).
So it is with elves that aren’t fair-skinned. The idea isn’t as far-fetched as many people have come to believe.
I have a confession, I’m one of those guys that will argue about the shape of elf ears until I’m blue in the face. I know I’ve spoiled some conversations that way. Too few illustrators show elves without the donkey ears. But audiences expect it now. I don’t think an audience would know what to do with an elf out of uniform so to speak.
I know Amazon will not resist the pointy ear. They’ll also pointlessly have elves with every sexual orientation possible and pretty much anything else that would offend the deeply Catholic Tolkien. It might not start that way but they will not resist.
Jackson for better or worse is now the template for middle-earth and we know what middle-earth looks like without Tolkien.
I forgot to ask, have you ever been consulted for a table top Tolkien rpg? If you were to give a game designer advice what would it be? I am asking as my group wants to play in Tolkien’s playground but remain as true as possible to the books.
Years ago I had some informal discussions with table top game designers. I don’t recall at what stage in their work they were when we connected. But their project was shelved. I also had a contract to do some consulting with an online gaming project at one point. If I were to give a game designer advice today it would depend on what they want advice on. Many of the articles on this blog do address some questions gamers have for campaign development.
I’ve played merps and converted Adventures in Middle-Earth to first edition d&d (we’re old school). Right now we’re exploring the borders of Angmar.
We have a Dunedain, an elf and a Woodsman, so far it’s fun. I want to keep the feel from the books. That means a fair amount of change to the old d&d system of course.
Which articles do you think would be good to start with?
You might like this one: “Horror in the Woods – How Men Live in Mirkwood”. It’s an experimental article, not a question and answer article. It’s been well-received by gamers.
There are some gamer groups who focus on Rangers who like this one as well: “Of Thegns and Kings and Rangers and Things”.
And this one might be of interest to people playing elves from the havens: “Life In An Elven Fishing Town”
But there are so many articles here that might appeal to people playing games. I can’t really pick out the best.
Thanks these are great. The elf one gives a great look at the culture and lifestyle.
Is there any illustrator that shows elves without pointy ears?
J.R.R. Tolkien.
My understanding is he drew one elf and you would need the Hubble telescope to see the ears
If J.R.R. Tolkien wanted us to see his elf’s ears, he would not have made it an impossible task. Elf ear shapes are not important to J.R.R. Tolkien despite all the creative arguments people think of to make it seem like he thought they should be important.
At the end of the day, whether you’re writing fan fiction, drawing your own elves, running a game, or designing a movie or TV show – it’s up to you to decide whether your elves have pointed ears.
Tolkien’s elves don’t. That will never change.
I was just looking for pics without the weird pointy ears.. My players are visual. So few artists show them. There are a few I like for instance I like Naismith for Aragorn. He looks rough. Right now they are trapped in a shrine to the dark Lord by a treacherous petty dwarf while lost shades close in.
Some of the pics I find are shocking to an old man like me. I never thought people thought of Elrond like that.
Did the people of the third age play games like chess? I seem to remember a reference to checkers but not chess.
Well, technically it would be an anachronism as the Third Age in Middle-earth is supposed to have occurred more than 6,000 years ago but there are two references to chess (including “chessboard”) in The Lord of the Rings. One can rationalize this by assuming that Tolkien-as-translator substituted references to chess for a strategy game he found in the Red Book of Westmarch that would have no significant meaning to a modern audience.
That’s how some people explain the narrative voice’s use of “express train” in “A Long Expected Party”.
Hi Michael,
I’m writing a dissertation about Tolkien, race and how his works have been appropriated by right wing groups to support white supremacy. Please could you point me in the direction of where the Tolkien scholars have discussed the accusations of Tolkien as being a Nordicist, or have themselves accused Tolkien of being a Nordicist/racist. It would be very much appreciated, and don’t worry I am arguing for the contrary.
Thank you
Just so everyone knows, I replied to Ollie by email.