[NancyBrooke]

(... it's what I'm good at)

Would use of the word 'coalfire', vis a vis Tolkien's ME, be anachronistic?

[MITAQ]

I may be in an advanced english class, but I can't figure out for the life of me what you mean by coalfire. (Considering it wasn't in the dictionary)

If you meant a fire that uses coal instead of wood, maybe. I don't think that in our world, around the era that Middle-Earth is based on of course, they had coal.

I think. Don't quote me on that. I wouldn't put it in a fanfiction just because I really don't see them having coal yet.

OH! I'm an idiot. If they used coal for fires, in Isenguard (I totally spelled that wrong) they wouldn't have had to cut down Fanghorn Forest. Right?

Mae.

[SpaceWeavil]

I'm a little embarrassed here because all my family were coal miners (or all the male ones anyway) going back about six generations, and yet I know very little about coal mining technique.

I know it's possible to just find the stuff or dig it up without actually having to mine, in a system known as open cast, because my dad's laboratory deals with one of the last ones of those in the UK. So it's feasible that Hobbits or Men in Gondor perhaps could have dug that up quite easily. They could also have sunk mines as well, I suppose, but as far as I know it's not mentioned anywhere.

Another alternative thing they might use is peat, which is also like rotted, fossilised vegetable matter that you can cut out of the ground in marshy / boggy areas.

I have no idea if any of that is helpful in the slightest.

[NancyBrooke]

[krazykataave]

I like the peat suggestion. But perhaps the dwarfs were mining coal somewhere in Middle Earth?

Apologies if i am being silly *i'll blame the allergy med*


Kat

[MITAQ]

For the hair thing you could use the phrase "Her hair was like burning embers." or however you want to put it.

Glad I could help!

[SpaceWeavil]

Ooh, memory just kicked in.

Dunno if this is of any help at all, but in Book of Lost Tales 1 there is a description of Nienna's halls in Aman, where she sits by a brazier with a single coal. (which gives off the only light) So you could draw reference to that, or at least that hints that coal was known of?

[Shanalir]

But then coals are also little chunks of burning wood that are larger than embers (sitting by the coals of the fire kind of thing). And that is how we get charcoal, right? It could be that kind of coal that they're talking about. Half-burned wood, not the rocks, I mean.

Just a thought...

[KhazarKhum]

Charcoal is word that's been burned once. The "little rocks" are processed charcoal.

They might have <b>coke</b> which is a type of coal that's been heated. It's popular with smiths of all kinds, as it burns good & hot.

I would expect that the dwarves use coke for their forges.

[cymrulady]

Um, I'm probably sort of stating the obvious here - but to get charcoal you have to burn coal first, which brings you full circle to the question about coal.

I realise ME is totally fictional, but chemical process would remain the same regardless and coal being a fossil fuel would still form in the same way. Trees may have been used for speed as coal mining is a fairly slow process and would have slowed Saruman down.

In Wales, many years ago, there were areas where coal was visible on the surface. Poor people would collect it in baskets and use it at home.

Hope this has been of some help (probably I've just confused the issue even more - sorry!)

[inglor]

I don't see a problem with using coal (the fossil fuel) either as a description or a heat source. I would think the dwarves would have to use something like that, being holed up in a mountain. Otherwise they would have completely denuded Lorien from Moria. The Elves would have REALLY been pissed at them.

Smithwork takes ALOT of fuel so something besides trees had to be used in Doriath. Gondolin was in the mountains far from large forests and it would take a great number of trees just for cooking fires. So for our purposes, IMHO something like coal had to be used in ME.

Inglor

[Yavanie]

I am supposing that wood burns "cleaner" without the mess of coal the fossil fuel. I go with Inglor's suggestion that for smithwork, partciularly with the dwarves underground, that coal would be a more practical source. However, for daily life, cooking, in a home or house, my bet would be on wood. That's my two cents. I think you could incorporate general reference to either without a problem. I would imagine Tolkien would have been familiar with both.

[NancyBrooke]

Thank you all for your answers; I feel like my sometimes runaway imagination has a good footing now.

Lastly, and Belatedly, I've looked up "Coal" in Websters (www.m-w.com) and here's their first definition:

[Leaward]

I think it also depends if you're thinking coal or charcoal ... which can be 'made' using a mound that slowly chars the wood. It's a method that has been used for centuries (I first discovered it in Edward Rutherfurd's The Forest) but there are plenty of websites that describe it ... it has been used even in medieval times so it is possible that the people of ME could have used a similar method -- even Saruman's ppl. Not sure how to actually code the links, but here are a couple that have photos that show you what is done ... basically wood is piled up, then earth/sod/leaves are piled overtop and the wood is set on fire where it burns extremely slowly and reduces the wood to charcoal. Apparently it produces a fairly high quality charcoal...

http://www.bidwellhousemuseum.org/Program_1999/charcoal.htm

http://www.fao.org/documents/show_cdr.asp?url_file=/docrep/X5328e/x5328e07.htm

[Leaward]

Oh, and just found this reference for you in the Hobbit, Nancy ...