Friday, March 14, 2008

Tolkienian boat names

I am pleasantly surprised by the number of votes I have gathered so far. I had thrown the survey up just as a way to explore the capabilities of this blog service.

I thought I would put up an explanation of the names.

Winged Balrog
This is kind of an inside joke for anyone who has delved into the geekdom that is Tolkien literary criticism. There is a great debate about Balrogs and whether or not they have wings.

For those of you that have seen the movies, a Balrog is the creature that Gandalf fought on the bridge, when he fell to his death (and later rebirth).
In the books it is described:
"the shadow about it reached out like two vast wings"
and then later:
"suddenly it drew itself up to a great height, and its wings were spread from wall to wall...".

Another key passage in the debate appears in another work that Tolkien wrote about the Elder Days. In this passage he writes about the Balrogs:
"'Swiftly they arose, and they passed with winged speed over Hithlum, and they came to Lammoth as a tempest of fire.'

Sounds like they have wings, but then the question arises.
If they had wings why did it fall with Gandalf?
Perhaps it has wings but they don't function as wings?

There is much more to the arguement and it is so overwhelmingly geeky that I can't stop looking at it. Like some kind of terrible literary car wreck.

If you doubt the volume and veracity of this debate. Take a gander at these websites.
http://www.glyphweb.com/ARDA/b/balrogs.html
http://tolkien.slimy.com/essays/TAB6.html
http://www.xenite.org/tolkien/do-balrogs-have-wings.html

Earendil
Known as The Mariner. He is one of the most famous figures of Tolkien's First Age. He sailed to the Valar (the gods) to beg for their help in fighting Morgoth (If you thought Sauron in the movie was bad. Morgoth was his boss.)
The name of his ship was Vingilot which in High Elven means "Foam Flower".
Now that might be a name for my boat!
http://www.glyphweb.com/ARDA/e/earendil.html


Tar-Aldarion
Sixth King of Numenor. Known as the Mariner King or the Great Captain. His story is a tragic one, he basically loved sailing and exploring more than his family.
On second thought this is probaby not a great name for my boat!

1 comments:

Marcel said...

Dear Hobbit fan,
Your little boat seems to me more like something Merry or Pippin would venture on and I don't think that they would pick the balrog name considering their personal experience with one. That aside, I love the add on of taking a poll. It gives a personable touch to your blog.
As a person who grew up reading Tolkien and as a mom whose youngest son decided that ALL his personal communication would be in elvish for several months when he was 16 after reading my copy of the Silmarillion I can understand the ardent fascination.
Michelle