Nitpick: light in the Chamber of Mazarbul

[dietlbomb]

I think Corey misread the light shaft. We're told the light comes from a "wide shaft" and that "far above, a small square patch of blue sky could be seen". This indicates that the sun is not directly shining into the shaft. The light that enters the room is coming from the sky, indicating that the light would point in the same direction no matter where the sun is in the sky.

This is different from the bright beam of light one sees from a louver, a similarly narrow opening, but in a relatively thin ceiling. Instead this is characteristic of a dimmer light coming through a long, relatively narrow shaft.

This further implies that Balin's company deliberately put his tomb in the one spot where the light would fall whenever it was light outside.

 

[David_M_R]

Yes, the shaft of direct sunlight is what it looks like in Jackson's film, though that effect might still happen in a very dim place from the ambient light from the sky. I seem to recall that the moment of the bright light on Balin's actual sarcophagus has passed by the end of the fight scene, indicating that it would in that case be direct sunlight.

Amusingly, this contradicts that medieval idea that Tolkien uses at another time, that you should be able to see the stars from the bottom of a well during the day, if the sun wasn't actually overhead.

 

[MithLuin]

Dúrin's Crown is allowed to be magical! (But yes, I've definitely heard the 'stars in the well' idea before).

 

[David_M_R]

I wasn't actually thinking of the Crown of Durin! The phenomenon is mentioned in The Passing of the Grey Company, in the narrow canyon.

 

[MithLuin]

I think I encountered the 'stars in the well' idea in a biography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, so certainly persisted much more recently than medieval times. But yes, it was familiar to me there from Lord of the Rings.