Posted by Aiwendil:
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This suggests to me that the version wherein Turin finds a dwarf-mask in the armouries was superceded by the version that extends the story of the Dragon-helm to Nargothrond. In other words, I had thought that the dwarf-mask was only introduced by Tolkien because the Dragon- helm had been lost; when the story was changed so that the Dragon-helm was no longer lost, the dwarf-mask was dropped.
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Isn't that a bit over-reading the passage from
HoME XI? Especially because:
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It seems probable that this story arose at a stage when my father was treating the Dragon-helm as lost and out of the story (from the end of Dor-Cuarthol, the Land of Bow and Helm, when Turin was taken by the Orcs), ...
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(emphasis is mine) Thus we do not know for certain if the mask was intorduce since the Dragon-Helm was lost. For me that is not so clear. Turin did not wear the Helm at first in Nargothrond, he only took it up again when he went into the Battle of Tumhalad.
But Turin was used to wearing the Helm with its visor and he was interested to conceal his identity from his foes. Thus to use a dwarf-mask was very fiting for him.
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... and I extended Turin's wearing of it to the battle of Tumhalad (p.212).
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Couldn't it be, that the dwarf-mask gave rise to the visor of the Dragon-Helm?
Anyway, I don't see any forcing reason why we have to drop the dwarf-mask. But I agree that "we are stung by the lack of the original
Narn material."
NA-RG-101 &
NA-RG-102: Both suggestions are nice.
Respectfully
Findegil