[ Daily Tolkien ] Is your canon on the loose?

Until now I have given only light support to a fannish effort intended to establish a canon for Tolkien discussions. Not the canon, mind you, or the ultimate canon, or the final canon, or even the best canon. Merely a canon. My light support has consisted of granting permission to people to mention the project on The Tolkien and Inklings Forum (formerly The White Council).

The real canonical discussion was started over at The Barrowdowns Web site, but it seems (as of this writing) to have stalled. And I think I can understand why it stalled. Part of the problem is that something like this project will take a lot of time, and it's very daunting.

But let me start at the beginning, as much as I can go back that far. The issue of "canon" has often come up in many Tolkien discussion forums. Two or more people will disagree over something in the books and start providing citations to prove their points. Hopefully the citations are full and relevant, but all too often someone objects to another person's source of information. The citation may be complete, but it may not seem relevant to all parties.

For example, is it relevant to cite The Book of Lost Tales when discussing The Silmarillion? The two works are separated by more than 50 years. Many people feel The Book of Lost Tales is just an early "Silmarillion" (it's not). Many people point out that Christopher Tolkien used The Book of Lost Tales to write portions of The Silmarillion (he did). So, is The Book of Lost Tales a relevant source of information?

Oh, the headaches that question has led to. No one can provide a definitive answer. The best answer I have ever contrived is, "It depends." Some people have (wrongly) alleged that means "it depends on whether [Michael Martinez] wants to use it". What it depends on is whether you're talking about the works of J.R.R. Tolkien or the world portrayed by The Silmarillion. The Book of Lost Tales is set in England. Firmly, squarely, undeniably. Tolkien even worked the geography of England into the stories. England was supposed to be that portion of Tol Eressea which was restored to the mortal world. The Book of Lost Tales was a mythology Tolkien had written for England.

Somewhere in the 1920s Tolkien gave up on writing the mythology for England, but he didn't give up on writing a mythology. i.e., it was no longer intended for England. It became the mythology for J.R.R. Tolkien. I think he always wanted to publish it, but he realized somehow that it wasn't the sort of thing one could expect publishers to pursue. After all, false mythologies weren't exactly flooding the bookstores in those days.

The mythology was linguistically driven. That is, the stories were often bound up with Tolkien's constructed Elvish languages. He was driven by three passions: a passion for his beloved wife, Edith (whom he almost lost to another man before they were wed); a passion for language; and a passion for story-telling. It was the latter passion which eventually ensured Tolkien would be published, but it was the first passion which gave rise to Tolkien's greatest story, the tale of Beren and Luthien. And yet he attributed the greater part of his histories to the second passion, his love of language. He wanted to know the histories behind individual words, and he tied them all together and created a fantastic imaginary history.

We can lay out the books in The History of Middle-earth series and say, "this one documents this period", and so forth, but these arbitrary divisions Christopher Tolkien imposed upon the history owe much to his human limitations. The reuse of stories, ideas, characters, and languages through the years blurred the distinctions for J.R.R. Tolkien, and those blurry distinctions are preserved for us. Now we find them blurry, too.

There was always, I am sure, a world in Tolkien's mind in which his characters lived and acted. He called it a secondary world, or a sub-creational world (his sub-creation). Christopher Tolkien has continued to call it a secondary world, set beside the primary world (our world) and consisting of imaginary times in the past, before our mundane history began.

Tolkien's secondary world at first included Gnomes and Men, and (evil) Dwarves. But with the publication of The Hobbit he had to confront the real burden of providing a sequel for a story he had only assigned a secondary importance to. By this time Tolkien was dropping other creatures from his secondary world which no longer suited it: pixies, fays, and other types of fairies. The Gnomes were really Elves, Elves of a special sort only glimpsed in actual northern mythologies, slightly enhanced by a twinkle in Tolkien's eye, perhaps.

To satisfy his inner need to see the mythology published, and so given a "reality" of its own, and to satisfy his publishers and readers who wanted more about Hobbits, Tolkien merged the world of The Hobbit with the world of "Quenta Silmarillion", which had come to replace The Book of Lost Tales as "the mythology". "Quenta Silmarillion" was already a very different work from the Lost Tales, but it still resembled the tales in many ways.

Hobbits, on the other hand, were a wholly new creation. They had no place in the old mythology (now more than 20 years old). They in fact had no real place in Tolkien's secondary world, so he made a place for them, and in doing so changed that world radically. The change forced Tolkien to dispense with some of the conventions he had adopted previously. Hobbits were informal creatures. And the change forced Tolkien to look at how these creatures could share a world with the heroic, tragic, and powerful Gnomes and Men without being overwhelmed.

Tolkien produced The Lord of the Rings, which millions of people have now read. And he suggested some revisions for The Hobbit to his publisher, which were taken as de facto changes to the story. When Tolkien learned his suggestions had been made reality he had to scramble to revise the historical material he was still preparing for the yet-unpublished Lord of the Rings. When the book was finally published, Tolkien had to revise the historical background information yet again, compressing it and reorganizing it considerably. So, much of what he had intended for publication never saw the light of day during his lifetime.

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were revised again years later when Ace Books took advantage of a loophole in copyright law and published an unauthorized edition of Tolkien's works. To combat the unauthorized books, he was asked to submit enough changes to both books to justify a new copyrighted edition. These changes invariably altered the evolving world in Tolkien's mind again and introduced controversies over the progression of the imaginary history.

So, many years later, people on the Internet discovered Michael Martinez and his lengthy citations from Tolkien. I have long pondered and pontificated on the worlds of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. And occasionally (when it suits me, some might say) I drag out some volume from The History of Middle-earth and include its contents in my ponderings and pontifications.

But is there a rhyme or reason to it all? Quite often my citations must seem confusing to many people. I'll quote The Book of Lost Tales here when discussing "The Fall of Gondolin" but I'll exclude it there when discussing the fall of Gondolin (in The Silmarillion). "The Silmarillion is not canonical," I'll tell people, and then I'll proceed to quote it to make whatever point I think I can.

That's the trickiest question of them all. It's not relevant to the other books because Christopher Tolkien has removed it from such relevance. In the foreword to The Silmarillion Christopher warned the reader that "a complete consistency (either within the compass of The Silmarillion itself or between The Silmarillion and other published writings of my father's) is not to be looked for, and could only be achieved, if at all, at heavy and needless cost."

Christopher has since repudiated some of his editorial decisions in The Silmarillion, however, and of the critical changes he introduced to the story of the fall of Doriath he has gone on to say, "this story was not lightly or easily conceived, but was the outcome of long contemplatiomn among alternative conceptions....It is, and was, obvious that a step was being taken of a different order from any other 'manipulation' of my father's own writing....It seemed at that time that there were elements inherent in the story of the Ruin of Doriath as it stood that were radically incompatible with 'The Silmarillion' as projected, and that there was here an inescapable choice: either to abandon that conception, or else to alter the story. I think now that this was a mistaken view, and that the undoubted difficulties could have been, and should have been, surmounted without so far overstepping the bounds of the editorial function."

This admission all but invalidates The Silmarillion as a representation of J.R.R. Tolkien's hand. In fact, there is no Silmarillion which represents J.R.R. Tolkien's direct authorial achievement. Even the "Quenta Silmarillion" of the late 1930s is not part of a greater, more complete work which would have become The Silmarillion.

To be sure, most of the material in The Silmarillion was written by J.R.R. Tolkien...at one time or another. It was never written to be part of this book, however. Not by J.R.R. Tolkien. Christopher Tolkien wrote the final Silmarillion, and after spending nearly 20 years analyzing his father's work and comparing that to the published book, he came to the conclusion that he had not been as faithful to his father's hand as he had hoped.

So when people see me repudiate Christopher's Silmarillion they invariably ask how I would compose the book, were the task given to me to revise it. I've never been able to answer that question. I think it's inevitable that new editions of The Silmarillion will be published. Once the copyrights on the Tolkien materials are allowed to expire, and the stories become public domain, people will set themselves the task of writing new Silmarillions.

Such efforts will be both deplored and hailed with great praise at the same time. Self-styled Tolkien purists will argue that only one of the two Tolkiens is qualified to define the correct Silmarillion text, if such a text can be contrived. Anyone else is merely passing off a counterfeit. Perhaps, but Christopher Tolkien is retired, and he has indicated he will write no more. His achievements in documenting his father's works are unrivalled, and he has laid bare the tree which bore the odd-shaped fruit we have to share amongst ourselves.

The taste of The Silmarillion is both bitter and sweet, and in that end it may serve its authors' purposes better than any future edition. But it doesn't obtain the consistency with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings that is required of it. And to achieve such a consistency, one needs must rewrite not only The Silmarillion but also one of the other two books. The thought of rewriting The Silmarillion is barely approachable for most Tolkien fans. But none would dare rewrite either of the other two books.

And yet the deed has already been done, to both books, by publishers eager to bring the "correct" Tolkien texts to print. You see, J.R.R.T. had indicated some corrections should be made to the texts which weren't incorporated until after his death. These are the "fourth" edition of The Hobbit and the "third" edition of The Lord of the Rings, barely distinguishable from their predecessors but different enough that some readers find profound significance in their existence.

And it is a far cry from correcting texts to actually revising the story of either book. Yet, this has also been done, to both books again, and more than once. Both books have been adapted to film and television, and to radio. The Hobbit has been adapted to the stage as well. The stories have undergone more changes, perhaps, than any one person can ever hope to document.

So it is not much of a step, except in emotional terms, to consider a formal revision of, say, The Hobbit, to bring it into a more consistent state with The Lord of the Rings. J.R.R. Tolkien himself wrote "I think that The Hobbit can be seen to begin in what might be called a more 'whimsy' mode, and in places even more facetious [than The Lord of the Rings]....but I regret much of it all the same."

Humphrey Carpenter says in his biography ,when Tolkien revised The Hobbit in rebuttal to the unauthorized Ace Books edition, "he found a good deal of it 'very poor' and had to restrain himself from rewriting the entire book."

The Vulcans have a saying, according to Mr. Spock: only Nixon can go to China. Most Tolkien fans might say, only Tolkien can rewrite Tolkien. It is true, most likely, that no one would be able to rewrite The Hobbit as J.R.R. Tolkien would rewrite it. Any currently published author would undoubtedly produce a thoroughly different kind of story, providing a different tone, new characters, additional "uncanonical details", foreshadowings and borrowings from The Lord of the Rings, and worse. That is the way of pastiches. The new writer cannot help but leave his own imprimature on the work.

What is required is a master forger, someone who wants to produce another Rembrandt, not a painting as good as a Rembrandt. A forger would immerse himself in Tolkien's style and prose, would add nothing Tolkien himself hadn't added, would use no words Tolkien himself wouldn't have written. The peril of relying upon a forgery, however, is that the forger may nonetheless produce a stale and unentertaining work. It would look like Tolkien had written the book but it would fall flat. Only a master forger with a gift of story-telling similar to Tolkien's could have a chance of succeeding. But does such a person exist?

But in answer to the unanswerable question, if I were to attempt to revise The Silmarillion, I would also try to revise The Hobbit. I have no idea of what I would do to the latter book, but it would require changing. A new edition of The Hobbit would free the author of the new Silmarillion from obligations to honoring inconsistencies. These obligations hampered Christopher Tolkien, who seriously abridged some historical points in order to achieve a modest level of consistency with The Lord of the Rings. He never took The Hobbit into consideration.

For my Silmarillion I would revise the stories of Maeglin, Beren and Luthien, Turin, the Fall of Gondolin, and Earendil. I would reassert a number of passages which were dropped from the texts. But I would also have to write new material to bring the Silmarillion stories into consistency with The Lord of the Rings. I would not, on the other hand, introduce Hobbits to the Silmarillion. They have no place in the Elvish histories. They have their own histories: lost, forgotten, buried in unfathomable traditions which have not been preserved. The lack of Hobbits in The Silmarillion has been regarded as a weakness of the book for Hobbit fans. Perhaps, but there is no indication that J.R.R. Tolkien ever leaned toward including Hobbits in the Elvish histories. He probably would have included the Druedain.

So a good forger cannot put Hobbits in Beleriand. How many people could resist the temptation, though, if they were given the task? The resounding thunder of former President George Bush's campaign promise comes to mind: "Read my lips: no new taxes." Two years later, he approved new taxes. To succeed, a new Silmarillion simply cannot include Hobbits. It would not be consistent with Tolkien's vision. We know a great deal about that vision, so we can pretend to be competent forgers if we're going to discuss the idea of "canon". Only Tolkien could define his canon, and since he didn't bother too, if we rudely insist on doing it for him, we must become forgers.

It might be argued that, to "succeed", a new Silmarillion must appeal to its modern audience, especially if it's not to be written for another 50-75 years. The old book shares a vision for an audience long gone. But when forging a Rembrandt one does not paint with Picasso's style. One paints with Rembrandt's style. To approach perfection, one must use the same types of paints and brushes, canvases, and even lighting as Rembrandt. One must become Rembrandt in every way possible, and live in his world, and produce a work of art that would have come from his world. The same principle holds true for forging literature. If one would add a new book to Caesar's Gallic commentaries, one must write as Caesar did (and ignore the controversy over whether the last book was a poor forgery anyway). One must seek consistency with what is widely known and accepted by the experts as the hallmark of the artisan whose works are being forged.

And that is where I would pick and choose my texts. What is consistent with Tolkien's canon? If someone plucks a topic out of a book, I look for the relevant passages in other books (if they exist). The Middle-earth canon, as defined by J.R.R. Tolkien, already exists. He established it in The Hobbit, 3rd edition, The Lord of the Rings, 2nd edition, The Road Goes Ever On, and The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. It may be argued that the Pauline Baynes map of Middle-earth is also a part of that canon.

These books are, for the most part, consistent with each other. The Silmarillion deals with a lot of material not covered in those books, so the opportunities for consistency (or making errors that deviate from consistency) are not many. Tolkien himself did not say, "These books are the canon; they define the laws of my world." He merely published them. He approved them, wrote them, revised them. They are J.R.R. Tolkien's formal statement on what is and is not Middle-earth. And there are minor inconsistencies between them, but nothing like the inconsistencies which arise between these books and Christopher's Silmarillion.

But if one sets about revising the Silmarillion text, one must have a source for new material which is indistinguishable from J.R.R. Tolkien's material. And that, of course, is where The History of Middle-earth and Unfinished Tales become important. Christopher Tolkien has already published many of his father's previously unpublished works. He utilized some of the material in Unfinished Tales to write parts of The Silmarillion. And the direct sources for much of the book have been published in The History of Middle-earth.

What a modern (or future) forger can count on is having the secondary canon published by Christopher to consult. When he was composing The Silmarillion, Christopher did not have this extensive body of research available to him. He was only then in the first stages of undertaking the research. If he had only known then what he knows now, he would have written a different Silmarillion. And if Christopher Tolkien could have written a different book based on the knowledge we all now have available to us, then why not someone else? Well, that's another unanswerable question, so we'll just forge ahead and assume it's been answered satisfactorily (or this essay ends here, and I'm not ready to end it).

There are sticky questions which must be addressed. The overall length of "Quenta Silmarillion" must be considered, for example. It was never intended to convey all the details of the fuller stories. It is a summation, a layer of interpretation if you will, which stands between the reader and the "true" accounts. Hence, one cannot simply embed the entire "Narn i Chin Hurin" in the text. On the other hand, "The Wanderings of Hurin" is an important extension of the story of Turin and his father, and it should not have been excluded, raw though it was in the form in which Christopher found it (in fact, the published version is very different from the unedited manuscripts, by Christopher's explanation). The story of Turin must return to Doriath, and it does so quite inadequately in the published Silmarillion because Christopher literally chopped off the end of the story and fabricated an entirely new ending.

Another issue concerns how the older passages that Christopher used should be rewritten. And they must be rewritten, because they are so inconsistent with things J.R.R. Tolkien later introduced into the canon. Followers of the Great Balrog Debate undoubtedly know that often people plead Balrogs could not have flown because in the Dagor Bragollach Glaurung comes charging out of Angband with Balrogs in his train. Never mind the fact that his train could include flying creatures; the passage is technically inappropriate for inclusion in The Silmarillion because it was written before Tolkien radically altered the physical description of the Balrogs (in the 1940s, while writing "The Bridge of Khazad-dum") and their number (in the 1950s, reducing them from hundreds or thousands to no more than 7), and before Balrogs became corrupted Maiar.

There are strong emotions attached to this "train" passage. It has often been used to "prove" (unsuccessfully) that Balrogs cannot have wings and cannot fly. Well, the Balrogs for which J.R.R. Tolkien wrote those words did not have wings and did not fly, they numbered at least 1,000, and they rode on the backs of dragons and/or other creatures. They were a horrific cavalry force. They were quite unlike the Balrog of Moria.

Not to reargue the Balrog debate here, my point is that some things to which strong feelings (and loyalties) have been attached would simply have to go. Not to prove that Balrogs have wings and fly, but because they are inconsistent with Tolkien's published canon, or with Tolkien's decisions that were contemporary with the published canon.

And there arises another thorny issue. Is it fair to utilize decisions made during the years 1950 - 1966, when the published canon was established, but which were not included in it? Take the parentage of Gil-galad, for example. Christopher now readily admits that he should never have declared Gil-galad to be Fingon's son in The Silmarillion. He based that statement on a marginal note which he later realized had only been "an ephemeral idea". Gil-galad was a sort of genealogical hot potato, bouncing around the House of Finwe from father to father, starting out with Inglor (make that, Finrod) and moving to Fingon and back to Finrod and ultimately to Orodreth. And there he stayed as the son of Orodreth, lost in the genealogies.

It's inappropriate to use the Fingon --> Gil-galad connection in The Silmarillion. Christopher says it would have been better had he left Gil-galad's parentage uncertain, saying nothing. I believe it would have been better to state that Gil-galad was the son of Orodreth, and to figure out some way for him to avoid the fall of Nargothrond, just as Galadriel avoided it. People want to know who Gil-galad's father and mother were. At least part of the information is established in posthumously published material.

Some folks at the Barrowdowns are asking whether the "Myths Transformed" section of Morgoth's Ring could or should be used in establishing a canon. They settled on the revised myth of the Sun and Moon. I would not take this step. It is completely inconsistent with what else was published. Tolkien, in his later years, became concerned, perhaps even alarmed, that the Silmarillion (when published) would establish the ancient myth (in terms of his life) about the creation of the Sun and Moon from the last leaves of Laurelin and Telperion in the Elvish histories. But the Elves, he reasoned, particularly the Eldar whose histories these were, had been instructed directly by the Valar and Maiar, the angelic beings who had existed since before Time. They should not be so quick to devise obviously false pseudo-religious babble about how the Sun and Moon were leaves from trees.

For a while Tolkien toyed with the idea that perhaps Men, in recording and passing on the Elvish histories, had mangled the stories. But he ultimately rejected that idea and came to the conclusion that the entire history needed to be rewritten. This is the real reason for why Tolkien never published The Silmarillion himself. It simply didn't exist, except in the form of odd jottings and notes to himself about what worked and what didn't. Everything was about to change again.

One simply cannot reconcile The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Adventures of Tom Bombadil with actual human history, and our deductions about what came before. If one must rewrite The Silmarillion, then one must rewrite all these other books, too. And is that really what the forger should do? It would be like replacing all the surviving Rembrandts with new paintings to justify a less coherent forgery. In Tolkien's case he had not proceeded far enough with his extrapolations to realize the broadest implications, and perhaps it was a mercy for him that he didn't see where the revisions must end.

So inevitably one must remain faithful to the older myths, and produce a Silmarillion that lives in the imaginary world of the published canon. In that world, Galadriel cannot side with the Teleri at Alqualonde against the Noldor (one of the decisions Tolkien made late in his life). Nor can Celeborn be an Elda of Aman, grandson of Olwe (a relationship which would make him Galadriel's first cousin, and thereby violating a taboo against such unions he had previously established but apparently forgotten). The history of Galadriel would have to be devised for the forged Silmarillion. There is no real history for Galadriel. There are several attempts by Tolkien to devise one for her, but each ends all too soon, and introduces its own serious problems into the storyline.

At least, I would remain faithful to the older myths. Yes, the Elves should know better than to think that Earendil is Venus, that the Sun and Moon were only created about 11,000 years ago, and that the world was flat but made round when the Numenoreans rebelled. But, you know, I just can't get into rewriting The Lord of the Rings, since the whole purpose of rewriting The Silmarillion is supposed to be to make it consistent with the former book.

And I think that's where people who want to define a canon for discussions should go. There is a wealth of material which can be used to describe what is needed for consistency with LOTR. But if one is going to get into rewriting the myths, one is going to have to rewrite The Lord of the Rings, and then the point of defining a new Tolkien canon loses all value. You won't be able to discuss Tolkien according to the new canon, you'll just be able to discuss the new world you create.

Of course, some Tolkien fans might say, "Why not just create new worlds, and leave Tolkien's alone?"

Author: Michael Martinez
Published on: August 11, 2000
Michael Martinez is the author of Visualizing Middle-earth

Did you guys see this article? It's kinda technical but interesting and I wondered if you have any thoughts. I don't like this guy's final conclusion, that the myths (Sun, Moon, Earendil, and the 'Breaking') should not be included. After all, the Valar are supposed to be gods, or at least demigods. If they can't do something like create the Sun out of a fruit, who can?

He wants to take out some of the most beautiful stuff, for the sake of 'consistency'. Leave well enough alone, I say.

He wants to take out some of the most beautiful stuff, for the sake of 'consistency'. Leave well enough alone, I say.

I kinda liked the article myself. If one wants to approach Tolkien in a scholarly way, these items have to be considered. JRRT was sub-creating whole mythologies, complete with languages, and their own internal creation myths. A mighty big task for one man.

The problem comes when we, fans and scholars, try to see if all of his works fit together. I think Christopher Tolkien sent us down the garden path with his editing of the Silmarillion, where he used what was at hand to complete one of his father's universes. He gave us plenty of warning that it was a good-faith effort, but we shouldn't take it as gospel.

It's interesting how Tolien's successful "The Hobbit" brought a demand for more about hobbits. That, in turn, led him to use his Silmarillion universe, with modifications, as the setting for LOTR, with hobbits shoehorned in. Things grew and diverged, ("balrog wings"), and with the inclusion of material from "Unfinished Tales" guaranteed that no comprehensive canon could ever be agreed to.

I don't get upset about it. I look at all that material, and treat it like the fragments of ancient tales that have come down to us in various versions and fragments, giving us a tantalizing glimpse at a vast universe that we will never know clearly.

That's one way to look at it. One I have no trouble with. An easy way for me to consider it is to say that Tolkien worked on a single, great painting his entire life and portions of the canvas were reworked, repainted, added, or left out. The various notes Chris found reveal the canvas in stages. The published posthumous material attempts to show how the various layers of the painting relate to one another.

It's hard to say what kind of good a definitive canon for Tolkien would do. Fans would still ignore or critique the parts they don't like and filmmakers will simply rewrite it the way they want to anyway.

I think what Christopher has done with his father's notes is about the best we can hope for: an accumulation of the source material that will allow us to enjoy JRR's writing and invention as if we were to watch over his shoulder as he wrote it.

Which is why I enjoy The Silmarillion a great deal, even if it is not, in Mr. Martinez' opinion, "canonical: the wonder of JRR's invention and the splendour of his writing are still there for us to enjoy. That wonder and splendour are lost completely when Mr. Martinez tries to parse it for us to establish his canon.

That wonder and splendour are lost completely when Mr. Martinez tries to parse it for us to establish his canon.

I don't think he's proposing rewriting Tolkien to establish a canon, but rather pointing out the consequences of an attempt. There was so much work Tolkien did behind the scenes in producing his completed works, that any attempt to bring his more incomplete writings into a canonical framework would take several lifetimes. He was given only one lifetime, and we should be grateful for that.

There is so much wonder and beauty in The Silmarillion that I feel it's better just to have it, as non-canonical (in parts) that it is, than to never have had it written in the first place. Who knows what wonders might have been produced if Tolkien came to fame (and fortune) twenty years earlier than he did?

Hair: your head explosion sent off a chain effect...mine exploded too!

I think what Tolkien's son was trying to do was cobble together all those notes and sketches and excerpts etc together into some credible format for fans to get a better picture of Middle Earth...but as authors who have tried to construct a world of their own have found out (like me!) doing so is haphazard at best. Right now I have TWO cardboard boxes full to the brim of tablets and notes of various ideas and scenes and notes that I have taken over the years...not to mention a LOT of blank books that are not so blank anymore because I have entered in information that I wanted to have on reference. If someone were to try to construct my world based on that, there would be inconsistencies too.

I think it important to keep 'canon' as it were...archaeologists refer to this as remaining 'in situ.' The context of something is not going to make sense outside the provenience it was originally settled.

But I also think it silly for the purists to get their noses out of joint when fanfic writers try to fill in the gaps or inconsistencies with ideas of their own.

Like the Took clan having stewardship ties with the Kings of Old...and Peregrin Took and Aragorn re-establishing that connection through Pippin's knighthood and the fact that the hobbit was strangely attracted to the Big Glass Ball that Knows All.

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The Daily Tolkien articles by various authors	The Tolkien Virgin articles by Mark-Edmond
ARTICLES 01-10	ARTICLES 01-10
ARTICLES 11-20	ARTICLES 11-20
ARTICLES 21-30	21) Of the Fifth Battle: Nirnaeth Arnoediad
ARTICLES 31-40	22) Of Turin Turambar
ARTICLES 41-50	23) Of the Ruin of Doriath
ARTICLES 51-60	24) Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin
61) Gil-galad was an Elven-king...	25) Of the Voyage of Earendil and the War of Wrath
62) The Folk of Angmar
63) Is Your Canon On The Loose?