[inglor]

Does anyone know how many came back from Valinor?

Does the Prof ever hint at the total number of Elves? The only time I can think of a specific number ever assigned to a group of elves was Turgon's host at the Nirnaeth: 10,000.

What happened to all those thousands who were taken to Angband in thrall after the War of Wrath?

Side note: One would think after all those battles and the slow reproduction of the Eldar that there would be A LOT more females than males...


Thoughts, observations...


Inglor

[Andreth]

My thoughts are that you just sit around and purposefully think up the most difficult questions you can devise. Mah-mah-my Mama says you're de Debil. (Bet you'd never guess that I watched The Waterboy last night.)

I have to run some errands but I will check on this later and let you know what I find. I think I'm going to take the easy way out and call my brother or one of my uber-Tolkien geek friends. Where those people are concerned, I am the eternal grasshoppah.

[Thuriniel]

Well, Andreth, I thought you to be THE Tolkien authority ... and it seems that your brother is even more of an authority ... I feel so small!

About the 10,000 warriors ... would ellith be counted among them? I know the great dislike of ellith warriors and I know that Tolkien didn't mention any ... but if I recall correctly it says in the LACE essay that there were no real differences between ellyn and ellith when it came to vocation, so ... I guess it could happen?

... and Andreth ... how many Dom avvies do you have ?!

[inglor]

Oh no... I've made Andreth call in the cavalry

I have seen some estimations of troop numbers based on that one figure from people who war-game and have a good idea about such things but thats all that Ive ever seen in regard to Elf numbers.

Thu: intersting point which brings me to another but I will start a new thread so this one doesn't get derailed

Inglor

[Andreth]

Inglor - No definite or even vague numbers on how many Noldor there were returning to ME. They were the mid-sized group - more than the Vanyar but less than the Teleri - and less than half of them came to ME. Years ago my friends' discussion group came up with a number of 40,000 as a guestimate but I was far too tired last night to hear how they came by that number, or whether or not that was the total number of Noldor or the number who crossed the Ice.

There are vague comments here and there, like in the Battle Under the Stars it says that Feanor's host was outnumbered by the great host of Orcs Morgoth sent out to meet them (and the Elves kicked their butts anyway), and in the Grey Annals when Tolkien is discussing the language shift from Quenya to Sindarin he says 'though the Sindar were not numerous they far outnumbered the hosts of Feanor and Fingolfin, such as in the end survived their dreadful journeys and reached Beleriand.' And with Turgon's host of 10,000 from Gondolin there were more than just Noldor there. When he left for Gondolin and took his people with him, there were "even to a third part of the Noldor of Fingolfin's House and yet a greater host of Sindar".

As to the reproduction of the Elves during the First Age, there were time frames like the hundred years of peace after the Third Battle (I think?) and then the two hundred years of the Long Peace after that, when the Noldor could have had children. Personally, I think the Sindar would have been having children anyway. They'd been living over in ME and faced with turmoils their whole lives. If they had to wait until times of peace to have kids, they'd have never reproduced.

Then you've got Gondolin and Nargothrond that were each hidden for almost 400 years. At the average Elven maturity rate of 50 years, that's plenty of time for each couple to pop out a couple of kids.

So I think their hosts would have had opportunities to be replenished somewhat. But you're right in that there must have been more women than men, because as a rule, men did the fighting. I'll comment more on that on your other thread.

[inglor]

I love it when she kills a thread...

[Andreth]

Thuriniel - you have no idea of the industrial strength geekiness of my brother, though I love him dearly. He's about 14 years older than me and had read LotR half a dozen times before I was even born.

Then I've got some friends (my brother's friends, actually) who discuss Tolkien and they are really, really, REALLY into it. There's one guy in particular who's as sweet as they come, but he's very anal. He gets down to every little specific.

I once asked him to help me figure out what route Elrond would take if he were traveling from Lindon to Ost-in-Edhil in the mid Second Age. I thought it would just be a matter of pulling out some ME maps and plotting a route. But no. It turned into this long session of how much of the great forests would have been left by that time and whether or not their decimation came about because of Aldarion and his men cutting timber for ships or from Sauron razing the land as he went in the War of the Elves and Eregion. Then he moved on to what would be reasonable locations for Inns and such along the way, because there would have to be Inns, where the best river crossings would be, how far up Ents might have ranged at this time and the possibility of Huorns in the forests, etc...

It was like plotting a route with Rain Man. "Def-def-definitely a hundred miles. First two days, definitely a hundred miles. Elrond would cross o-o-only at the Sarn Ford, yeah....yeah...only at Sarn Ford."

As you can see I'm still scarred from that discussion.

And I have about six or seven Dominic avatars that I've been saving up for Queen of the Shire. I forgot I even had them until a few days ago when she started that other thread.

Anna

PS Inglor, you might want to come up with a different shortened version of Thuriniel's name. Thu was Sauron's original name in the Fall of Numenor story.

[Andreth]

[Andreth]

[inglor]

[inglor]

[Thuriniel]

[Thuriniel]