Keep getting stranger

Skip to content

Christine Kelley

Christine Kelley writes about art and politics. Currently her main project is Nowhere and Back Again, a psychogeography of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth. Her first project was the now semi-retired blog Dreams of Orgonon, a song-by-song study of Kate Bush. Support Christine on Patreon.

4 Comments

  1. HelenaHermione
    October 4, 2024 @ 12:00 pm

    I wish they spelled out the final location of the elves, like they spelled out Mordor at the end of last season. It was less obvious, because the geography of Middle Earth can be difficult to remember sometimes. I just finished rereading Return of the King, and I was looking at the maps at the end of the book, so I know it better now. I found out from the map that Khazad-dum is Moria, and Hollin (Eregion) is next door on the map. And north of Hollin/Eregion is Rivendell. The riven valley in the mountains with the waterfall. They haven’t built the last Homely House yet, but it definitely looks like the location. Lorien is on the other side of the Misty Mountain range, more of a forest, less mountainous. I don’t think they traveled that far. Thematically, Elrond finding Rivendell/healing Galdadriel sounds in line for that location in the movieverse. Maybe Galadriel finds Lorien later.

    I’m also reading the Appendices for the first time, going straight into that. They should have gone into more detail about Numenor’s issues with elves, wanting to be immortal and travel to the Undying Lands. I think they also accidentally called Elrond’s mother Melian of the Valar, when that was his great-grandmother or something like that. I know it’s a bit nitpicky, but just a minor detail. I also looked into the Undying Lands-so the gods, Valar, basically live next door to the elves there? That’s kind of crazy. The dwarves worship Aule the smith, and the elves might’ve met him millennia ago. “Oh, I knew him, he was my neighbor. We said hi.”

    Reply

    • HelenaHermione
      October 4, 2024 @ 12:08 pm

      Also, Celebrimbor was Feanor’s grandson, if I remember correctly? Did they mention that? That’s kind of an interesting detail. There’s a lot of interesting details, too, looking at the maps and reading the appendices. A lot of different places never fully explored before by the movies, and I don’t know if the TV show would ever touch them. Like the frozen tundra at the beginning of the first season, I didn’t know that actually existed in the world, until I read about it in the appendix. The Forochel/Forodwaith, just a footnote in the book, yet kind of interesting.

      Reply

    • Steve Morrison
      October 4, 2024 @ 11:26 pm

      It’s even worse—Melian was Elrond’s great-great-grandmother!

      Reply

      • Abigail Brady
        October 14, 2024 @ 8:30 am

        the word used is “foremother”, which is a perfectly good word for “female ancestor, any number of generations away”

        Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.