Elrond: crowned with many winters

Anthony Lawther

Anthony Lawther

Well-Known Member
Listening to Episode 107 (catching up slower than some) the class seemed to reach no resolution regarding Elrond being "crowned with many winters", and an allusion to "kind as Christmas" was invoked.
Being from the Southern Hemisphere, we don't make an automatic association of Christmas with winter (but with summer when it rarely snows), but something that does appear to be universal is the association of winter with hardship, troubles, and loss including death.

For a monarch to retain their crown through many periods of hardship, troubles, and loss indicates that those who follow them maintain respect and consider their guidance worthy, which ties in with the description of venerable, and also with "the memory of many things both glad and sorrowful."

I think this reading fits well with the rest of the description, so what do you think?
 
I was genuinely confused in the class to hear so much talk of the line as an indicator of age and a chronological time marker. Tolkien has already made a couple of comments about Elrond being "not young" and referencing his age. It feels a bit much for another one so soon in the text, even if this is the most simile/metaphor heavy section of text we have encountered so far.

It was briefly brought up that in The Hobbit Elrond is described as "kind as summer" but I really felt that there was more to the line here calling back to that thought. "Kind as summer" feels very different than being "crowned in winter." Instead of comparing the passing of time from Summer to Winter, I had been comparing the seasons themselves. Summer as open and warm and full of life, whereas like you mention Winter is a period of hardship and loss and insulation. It may not be a long time relative to how long he has been on Middle Earth, but he has been going through periods of hardship, troubles, and loss since when we first met him in the Hobbit (as far as I know? but perhaps i am misremembering) and he knows there is more trouble to come with the growing dangers of the East. So I had been reading the line less as a literal he has been crowned with many years of life, and more as a metaphor in a metaphor. He is metaphorically crowned with the metaphorical winters of hardships to see through and the burden of these trials bring him experience rather than age as he changes with them.
 
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