[Formendacil]

Despite its brevity and the fact that it isn't properly a tale at all, I think that "A Description of the Island of Númenor" is one of the absolutely key pieces in Unfinished Tales. In terms of factual information, it gives us more information about the culture and geography of Númenor than any other, with the exception of "Aldarion and Erendis," which I think can justifiably be called its companion piece.

The basic story of Númenor is one that we get rather fully in the Appendices--by contrast to anything from the First Age which had to wait until after Tolkien's death to be fleshed out for the fans--and then we get another, slightly fuller, treatment in the Akallabêth. As a major tragedy in Middle-earth's history, the fall of Númenor is perhaps the most important tale in setting up the world of The Lord of the Rings, even more so perhaps than the untold tale of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men. Nonetheless, Númenóreans can come off quite proud and unlikable from the other sources that focus chiefly on the fall and on the role that royalty played therein. At best, we imagine the Númenóreans as proto-Aragorns, but more distantly, without the closeness of Strider-in-Bree. It's easy to think that maybe Middle-earth was better off by forcing these wannabe Elves to have to hobnob in Bree.

I say "we," but maybe that's just "me." In any case, if you can see the temptation to see the Númenóreans that way, then "A Description" is an absolutely important piece for showing just what it is that the Númenóreans fell from, this description, chiefly showing Númenor in its early days before the Fall, does that well. With descriptions of forests, agriculture, shepherding fields, and simple, pre-templar worship, the early Númenóreans feel a lot more "real" to me, and a lot closer to "Bree" than before, which is presumably as it should be: Númenor was a gift to the most noble of Men, where they were supposed to enjoy as close a situation to paradise as those under the Gift of the Death can. We aren't supposed to just feel that Ar-Pharazôn got what he deserved and that the Dúnedain are better off with Hobbits in their lives; we're also supposed to feel the longing for something wondrous that was lost that the Exiled Dúnedain feel.

On another topic completely, I rather disagree with Galadriel55 about mixing religion and Tolkien, but I almost certainly come from a different "real world" paradigm. Nonetheless, insofar as religion has played an important role in the life of most (real) human cultures, it makes Númenor feel real to have it and it's understated enough that it doesn't seem (to me) incongruent with its silence in The Lord of the Rings; certainly, it's no "Athrabeth."