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Elves wrote the Silmarillion, and who of them knew how much force Morgoth still had hidden in Angband.
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Actually, Tolkien's latest thought was that Numenoreans wrote it - which only makes it seem less likely, of course, that the author of this statement knew for sure that Angband had been emptied.
But we come again to the whole strange issue of the historical "accuracy" of the Silmarillion. This is an interesting topic and one that has been discussed elsewhere. In the
You say 'Faeries' and I say 'Fairies' thread, I said:
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There's also the question of what it means to wonder whether a fictional story is "true" - what we mean to ask, of course, is not whether it's literally true but whether it's true or false within a supposed fictional world. But what defines that world if not the narrative whose veracity we're doubting?
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I think this is relevant here as well. What do we mean when we doubt the "truth" of what the narrator reports? Obviously, we don't believe that there really was a Nirnaeth Arnoediad which the narrator is inaccurately reporting.
Sorry if this takes the thread a bit off topic, but I think it's an interesting point to consider.