For what it's worth, the "mysterious wizard Gandalf" that Elempi identifies with the first section of The Hobbit (prior to his return at the Lonely Mountain) belongs entirely to the earlier draft of the book where the wizard was called Bladorthin and "Gandalf" was the name of the Dwarf we know as Thorin.
The new names arrived around the time Thorin & Co. reached the Lonely Mountain--thus freeing up the name "Bladorthin" to belong to the king of the undelivered spears--and when the wizard returned to the stage he was Gandalf.
It's interesting to me that Elempi sees "Nordic/Germanic" writ heavily on the older parts of the wizard because in those parts of the story (and they are not greatly different from the finished book) he bears an Elvish name! Tolkien didn't change his name to the Norse "Gandalfr" until he reached the point where LMP thinks the Norse-ness waned.
(N.B. All the above derives from reading Rateliff's [i]History of the Hobbit[/b].)
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I prefer history, true or feigned.
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