A first time reader's actual experience

Rachel Port said:
There is so little of Arwen that you are able to imagine anything into her. So go ahead.
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We know even less about her brothers, Halbarad, Gamling or Háma or even Lotho Sackwille - Baggins.
We still can picture their characters.
On what ground should she be exempt?
 
Odola said:
They do it the Mesolithic way according to the description. And Meosolithic people are stil counted as hunter-gatherers even if they have a few small fields they return to to gather what they have planted.
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That's true, but - and again, we arrive at considerations of how canonical we consider certain writings - Lost Tales, The Etymologies, and The Silmarillion gives us a Quenya word for plough, and a constellation named the Valarcirca (Sickle of the Valar). Of course Tolkien would later rethink many of these earlier elements, but I don't see that these notions are incompatible with anything that came later.
 
Beech27 said:
That's true, but - and again, we arrive at considerations of how canonical we consider certain writings - Lost Tales, The Etymologies, and The Silmarillion gives us a Quenya word for plough, and a constellation named the Valarcirca (Sickle of the Valar). Of course Tolkien would later rethink many of these earlier elements, but I don't see that these notions are incompatible with anything that came later.
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I never claimed some of the Valar or Maiar were not horti- or agriculturalists. If Aule was a smith, others might have another hobbies. Ent wives loved gardening and the elvish maiden you have mentioned in your citation were devotees of Yavanna. Which implies she was a patron not only over wild but also over cultivated nature.
 
Odola said:
It would be grain in the fields. Beans and vegetables were planted next to the houses in fenced off gardens. And would be still be growing at that time of year. So no point trampling on them.



When there is harvest there is "all hands on board". The Halls would have its own fields to care about. And the crop has to be stored for the winter. The Halls would have its share. We would see it being brought to the Hallls. We do not. We see plenty of hunting expeditions going out. And Mirkwood has a sunlight deficiency. No real farming possibile anyway.



No problem at all in prehistoric Europe which the location is based on. The neolithic farmers lived this way for thousands of years. And we had plenty of wild houses living in the forest. Nowadays they are mixed with domestic horses. But we have imported Przewalski's horses in their place doing as well in the forest as they did. America's "wild" horses are all just feral. And the Pioneers were mostly former city dwellers who were not the most experienced farmers back on the Old World. They made plenty of beginners'mistakes.

Edit: here photos of our half-domesticated archaic horse race "Konik Polski" which descenst from the now extinct European wild horse the "Tarpan" or its subspecies, the "Forest tarpan" also called the "Wood horse" in our place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarpan - as you see it still does fine in the woods:
View attachment 3745
View attachment 3744
The foresters do find it quite usefull for tending to the forests.
Here you have them in the forest - just ignore the speaking person - but the footage is from wild-living forest horses.



Most Hunter-Gatherers are wandering people. They do fine. Hunters had the right to hunt in the fields here much to the deep resentment of the farmers whose crops their horses were destroying. There was plenty of game in the fields because there was plenty to eat for them there. And I did not say suburbs. Our deer doesn't eat trash as yet (wild boars might). Our fields are smaller, the are small forest pockets in between. Like in the Shire. And our hunters can hunt wherever there is need to. You need gain a permission to be a hunter but then you have to go wherever game is doing damage. Still deer are seen in the fields quite often. Wolves seldom go there, and there is plenty of food to be had. No problem for elves to hide in the high grain or next to a watering place. As hobbits do not hunt much, and only try to scare game away, real hunters would have no problem. Also Shire is not big. They would need one or two deers for their whole time going though there. Perfectly doable.



They do it the Mesolithic way according to the description. And Meosolithic people are stil counted as hunter-gatherers even if they have a few small fields they return to to gather what they have planted.



I do not think Tolkien would accept the claim "her character was left uncomplete" as a valid point in a story. Her character is what it is. He would have left her out altogether if he felt she is that much uncomplete to not be able to stand on her own as is. And he is quite good on disfuctional marriage dynamics, we have plenty of those in his myths - Myth or not, there is always a place for a disfuctional marriage for him, it seems ;-). Maybe he wanted it to be more realistic so he avoided making it too perfect. But what he didn't write is as important as that what he did
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Those pictures show horses in very light forest with plenty of grass all around. The forests in those pictures do not resemble our forests here in New England, nor the descriptions of Mirkwood at all. There was no grass in New England (except salt marsh grasses near the coast - which work, but are not the best fodder for animals) until English grass seed was imported and planted once enough trees had been cleared to allow it to grow.
 
Flammifer said:
Those pictures show horses in very light forest with plenty of grass all around. The forests in those pictures do not resemble our forests here in New England, nor the descriptions of Mirkwood at all. There was no grass in New England (except salt marsh grasses near the coast - which work, but are not the best fodder for animals) until English grass seed was imported and planted once enough trees had been cleared to allow it to grow.
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All Europe was inhabited by forest wild horses in prehistoric times. And by forest wild cattle - auerochs and the wild forest bison - the wisent. All big grasing animals but living in forests. Not a problem here. And they were able to eat shrubs and other greens in winter. Lived so for thousands of years untill they were hunted down for sport and as pest control - actually relatively recently - like a couple hunderts of years ago. Wisents are still there.
And there is grass in the forest, maybe not at all places, but enough. Especially near rivers.
See here some photos of forests in the UK. Almost every one has some grass somewhere. And if grazing animals graze there, even more, as they limit the undergrowth.
www.woodlandtrust.org.uk

Ancient Woodland - British Habitats - Woodland Trust

Ancient woodlands are woods that have existed since at least AD 1600 and have developed irreplaceable, complex ecosystems. Find out more about them.
www.woodlandtrust.org.uk www.woodlandtrust.org.uk
So Mirkwood elves could wery well have some herds of mostly self-sufficient semi-wild horses, which came only when needed, like Shadowfax does for Gandalf, not a problem in prehistoric European context.
 
Odola said:
If so, how do you explain Galadriel's gift to Sam and its effect? It excelerated plant growth exceedingly, even with no elf actually being present. The much would it be with the additional elves' presence is anybody's guess.

"So Sam planted saplings in all the places where specially beautiful or beloved trees had been destroyed, and he put a grain of the precious dust in the soil at the root of each. He went up and down the Shire in this labour; but if he paid special attention to Hobbiton and Bywater no one blamed him. And at the end he found that he still had a little of the dust left; so he went to the Three-farthing Stone, which is as near the centre of the Shire as no matter, and cast it in the air with his blessing. The little silver nut he planted in the Party Field where the tree had once been; and he wondered what would come of it. All through the winter he remained as patient as he could, and tried to restrain himself from going round constantly to see if anything was happening.

Spring surpassed his wildest hopes. His trees began to sprout and grow, as if time was in a hurry and wished to make one year do for twenty. In the Party Field a beautiful young sapling leaped up: it had silver bark and long leaves and burst into golden flowers in April."

No tree blooms the same year it seed has been planted. It takes at least around 7-10 years, sometimes even longer. Our fruit trees are cultivars made from cuttings from adult trees. Those do bloom after 2-3 years usually. And trees making up 20 years in one is also not common occurance in mortal world. How do you explain it?
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As has already been pointed out, Galadriel is not the baseline for 'Elven' abilities. She is highly exceptional. But even here, there is a real seed involved, and it takes at least some time to grow. And this spectacular growth is not completely unrelated to material requirements like soil and water. It simply proceeds faster than would be expected.

There seems to be some confusion of what is being debated. I don't doubt that Elves could be more efficient in producing their food than humans, at least up to recently. There are some techniques recognized lately, by the 'organic' farming movement, that could allow a fairly small population to produce a generous food supply -- for themselves. Check out forest gardening some time. By working with nature, it's technically called 'co-planting', many different food crops can re-enforce each other's growth and even help protect each other from pests and diseases. It's the opposite of our crude technological mono-culture that can also produce large quantities of food, but at considerable costs that we are currently deferring -- soil erosion, pesticide pollution, degradation of the final products (mono-culture crops are provably less nutritious than food grown in a more normal environment), and more. As the environmentalists are warning, these costs will catch up with us sooner or later...

The great disadvantage of intensive co-planting, of course, is that it cannot be mechanically harvested. You just can't design a single machine to gather all of those different fruits and vegetables from the same plot. This difficulty would probably not even occur to Elves. They would certainly be repulsed by modern mechanical agriculture. But, that means it cannot support very large populations. All of the eaters -- or at least the chefs! -- need direct access to the food sources. The ultimate getcheroni!

But this is not 'creating food by magic' or song or whatever. It's simply a smarter way to get real better food with less effort.
 
Galadriel's gift is not just the mallorn seed, but the earth from her garden. Sam puts one grain of that earth with every tree he plants, including the mallorn, and that brings all to maturity years before he expected. That earth is magic, and I would guess it also has some power to heal the earth. Healing is one of the gifts of the elves, it seems. This would also imply that the earth in Lothlorien has special magical properties. They don't grow their food from nothing, but give it a little extra help.

But what's wrong with a little magic?
 
Using the laws of nature differently than we do is not magic, and still has to stay within those laws. Completely ignoring the laws of nature is not possible, even in Middle-earth. As Galadriel puzzles over the hobbit's indiscriminate and very imprecise use of the word 'magic', so must I puzzle over how it is used here. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of the Future" (revised edition, 1973) But it's still technology -- the knowledgeable use of deliberate methods.

BTW, the earth from Galadriel's garden would carry the microbiome that supports the spectacular fertility of an Elven farm/garden. Doesn't seem very surprising that this would boost the fertility of Shire soils. There is a strange kind of soil found in the Amazon rain forest around ancient settlements. It is called terra preta-- literally 'black earth' in Portuguese -- and displays some interesting properties. It's so good for growing crops that there is large scale scientific research currently ongoing into how to create it for modern use.
 
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Odola said:
All Europe was inhabited by forest wild horses in prehistoric times. And by forest wild cattle - auerochs and the wild forest bison - the wisent. All big grasing animals but living in forests. Not a problem here. And they were able to eat shrubs and other greens in winter. Lived so for thousands of years untill they were hunted down for sport and as pest control - actually relatively recently - like a couple hunderts of years ago. Wisents are still there.
And there is grass in the forest, maybe not at all places, but enough. Especially near rivers.
See here some photos of forests in the UK. Almost every one has some grass somewhere. And if grazing animals graze there, even more, as they limit the undergrowth.
www.woodlandtrust.org.uk

Ancient Woodland - British Habitats - Woodland Trust

Ancient woodlands are woods that have existed since at least AD 1600 and have developed irreplaceable, complex ecosystems. Find out more about them.
www.woodlandtrust.org.uk www.woodlandtrust.org.uk
So Mirkwood elves could wery well have some herds of mostly self-sufficient semi-wild horses, which came only when needed, like Shadowfax does for Gandalf, not a problem in prehistoric European context.
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I already pointed out that English forests are not New England forests, and not Mirkwood.

In Mirkwood, no sun reaches the forest floor. "Occasionally a slender beam of sun that had the luck to slip in through some opening in the leaves far above, and still more luck in not being caught in the tangled boughs and matted twigs beneath, stabbed down thin and bright before them But this was seldom, AND IT SOON CEASED ALTOGETHER."

No sun, no grass.

There was no grass on the forest floor. We know this, because we are told what was on the forest floor. "There were queer noises too, grunts, scufflings, and hurryings in the undergrowth, and among the leaves that lay piled endlessly thick in places on the forest floor." "Their feet ruffled among the dead leaves of countless other autumns that drifted over the banks of the path from the deep red carpets of the forest."

Horses cannot eat leaves. If no grass, then no horses.
 
Forodan said:
As has already been pointed out, Galadriel is not the baseline for 'Elven' abilities. She is highly exceptional. But even here, there is a real seed involved, and it takes at least some time to grow. And this spectacular growth is not completely unrelated to material requirements like soil and water. It simply proceeds faster than would be expected.

There seems to be some confusion of what is being debated. I don't doubt that Elves could be more efficient in producing their food than humans, at least up to recently. There are some techniques recognized lately, by the 'organic' farming movement, that could allow a fairly small population to produce a generous food supply -- for themselves. Check out forest gardening some time. By working with nature, it's technically called 'co-planting', many different food crops can re-enforce each other's growth and even help protect each other from pests and diseases. It's the opposite of our crude technological mono-culture that can also produce large quantities of food, but at considerable costs that we are currently deferring -- soil erosion, pesticide pollution, degradation of the final products (mono-culture crops are provably less nutritious than food grown in a more normal environment), and more. As the environmentalists are warning, these costs will catch up with us sooner or later...

The great disadvantage of intensive co-planting, of course, is that it cannot be mechanically harvested. You just can't design a single machine to gather all of those different fruits and vegetables from the same plot. This difficulty would probably not even occur to Elves. They would certainly be repulsed by modern mechanical agriculture. But, that means it cannot support very large populations. All of the eaters -- or at least the chefs! -- need direct access to the food sources. The ultimate getcheroni!

But this is not 'creating food by magic' or song or whatever. It's simply a smarter way to get real better food with less effort.
Click to expand...
Where did I ever claimed that? All I have claimed elves do NOT need to go neolithic. For they needs it od completely o.k. to farm the way the Mesolithic people did. Which is NO huge monocultured fields, NO deforestation of the landscspe, No higly soecialised agriculture. If you can go to an wild growing apple tree and sing it or charms it to give you high quality apples at any time you want, no need to have big orchants and selected cultivars.
Same with grain, as was reporter the elves had grain varieties that grow on Iny weather but Frost, that means Independent of the seosons. No need for developed agriculture if you have such means.
 
Flammifer said:
I already pointed out that English forests are not New England forests, and not Mirkwood.

In Mirkwood, no sun reaches the forest floor. "Occasionally a slender beam of sun that had the luck to slip in through some opening in the leaves far above, and still more luck in not being caught in the tangled boughs and matted twigs beneath, stabbed down thin and bright before them But this was seldom, AND IT SOON CEASED ALTOGETHER."

No sun, no grass.

There was no grass on the forest floor. We know this, because we are told what was on the forest floor. "There were queer noises too, grunts, scufflings, and hurryings in the undergrowth, and among the leaves that lay piled endlessly thick in places on the forest floor." "Their feet ruffled among the dead leaves of countless other autumns that drifted over the banks of the path from the deep red carpets of the forest."

Horses cannot eat leaves. If no grass, then no horses.
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Modern horses do. Wild horses had a far much varied diet. They were forest animals. And Tolkien based his world on England and Europe, as this was what he knew and cared about. Esgaroth was based on Neolithic/Bronze Age settlements View attachment 3770
www.planet-wissen.de

Jungsteinzeit: Klima

Die Entwicklung des Menschen hing eng mit Klimaeinflüssen zusammen. Manche Pflanzen und Tiere verschwanden, wenn sie im neuen Klima nicht zurechtkamen – so wie das Mammut. Dem Menschen aber ist es gelungen, sich an sein neues Umfeld anzupassen.
www.planet-wissen.de www.planet-wissen.de
found in Switzeland and around the South of Germany. He was clearly aware of what ancient Europe looked like, this was to an extent part of his job.

If Mirkwood was usuitable for wild horses it would be even more do for any farming. So no farms.

Has Tolkien ever been to America at all? I highly doubt he did ever consider New Englands's forest as he clearly stated the hobbits lived "in the North-West of the Old World, East of the Sea." In very ancient times Britain was connected to the rest of the continent, it was no an island yet and there were huge and inhabited landmasses in the North Sea.

And one can hunt on foot very succesfully. Ancient hunter-gatherers actually hunted horses, not on them.

So far all that we know for Mirkwood from the Hobbit text as it is is completely consistant with its elves being a hunter-gatherer society, an advanced one, bo non the less. Their high dependance on imports provided by humans might suggest that this was slightly different before it became Mirkwood, - e.g. they might have has some vegetable gardens and/or small fields in the woods at certain places. but this seems to have been made impossible the moment the Shadow crept into the forest. But the forest still supports deer, so it could still support (semi-)wild forest horses if needed. No need for farms to support them.
 
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I stand corrected. I wish she had talked more about the books too. I just wonder how we get to 100 or so comments without mentioning it. These discussions sometimes baffle me. :)
 
Rachel Port said:
I stand corrected. I wish she had talked more about the books too. I just wonder how we get to 100 or so comments without mentioning it. These discussions sometimes baffle me. :)
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It is difficult to discuss someone's reaction, so I've just given my memories from my own first reading in response. Glad she loved Sam - but really - who doesn't?
 
Yes, and I loved when you told that. I knew that was in response to my post. I just don't know how we ended up discussing Iron Age agriculture.

For Beethoven's birthday this year, I watched several people respond to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (1st mvt) for the first time. It's an experience no adult I know will ever have again, and one I don't remember at all.
 
Rachel Port said:
Yes, and I loved when you told that. I knew that was in response to my post. I just don't know how we ended up discussing Iron Age agriculture.

For Beethoven's birthday this year, I watched several people respond to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (1st mvt) for the first time. It's an experience no adult I know will ever have again, and one I don't remember at all.
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Yeah, most adult people I know heard at least the main parts of it this early in their life they do not have any conscious memory of it.
And we were several thousands years before Iron Age in our discussion. Elves are anachronistic and have both the elements of the original human livestyle before "civilisation" and "(agr-)culture" when taken literaly and also an ideal version of "civitas" - they have knowledge without science and science based only on observation without experiment (destroying something to know it).
Some think the original fairies legends and similar contain most ancients memories of various human groups meeting long ago when they arrived here - where there was both strangeness and familiarity - like the neolithic farmers meeting the previous hunter-gatherers (and before that modern humans meeting Neanderthals).They mixed only to an quite limited extent. The forest and its people is remembered as strange, misterious and foreign but wonderfull world to the newcomers. In so far fearies seems to be echos of the long lost people who were here before us, had some very ancient knowledge, had far more time and less toil, less illness, were interested in children and young women, were sometimes interested in casual sexual encounters when met accidentally one-on-one in the forest or in the pastures, were good at war and song, understood nature much better, taught us, intermarried with our kings, but which ways were beyond our understanding, and how they made their living seemed pure magic. "Normal" rules seemed not to apply to them. But for some strange reason they were doomed to wane and to retreat and do seem connected to the ancient graves still visible in the landscape.

Tolkien inherited the elves from those ancient legends. Had he explained their economy he would have to invent it from scratch as the legends are confused about the faeries' nature - Are they humans or are they spirits?
And taking the magic out of elves daily life would have destroyed the connection between those legends and Tolkien's world. Much easier to leave it unexplained.)
 
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Actually, I think that's interesting speculation. I also think some of our more universal fantasies and myths come from our pre-verbal memories - the feelings we remember in our bodies of being carried and crying and magically having mother or other caretaker come and meet our needs, of not being able to control our movements, depending on others completely. The whole world was full of magic and was all there to be learned about.
 
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