[Galin]

Originally Posted by Findegil

- journeys over the mountains without Celeborn
- Celeborn escapes the fall of Doriath
- Galadriel follows the sumons of Eönwë and returns to Beleriand (most proable place of abbiding are the Havens of Sirion where we would suppose Celeborn could be meet again.

I realize the guidelines are specific in this forum, but for me it seems simpler for Galadriel to stay with Celeborn in whatever's left of Beleriand, receive her ban, then cross the mountains of Ered Lindon at some point.

The mountains as noted in The Lord of the Rings are never named there of course, and are already arguably confusing: the Company had just crossed, albeit "under", a very notable mountain range (quite notable to the Lindar on the Great Journey too) to "get to" Galadriel...

... but she doesn't mean these mountains?

Okay she might have gone round, or be generally referring to both Ered Lindon and the Misty Mountains, but if it's arguably vague, why not the Ered Wethrin in Beleriand? And it appears that this "ghost" statement might have begun in reference to the Mountains of Valinor (Christopher Tolkien's commentary), granted with different wording, but why not mentally change the range yet again to fit the later idea of Celeborn the Sinda of Doriath?

Two objections I've thought about (and have run into on line):

1) What's so notable about Galadriel's crossing of the Ered Wethrin (to get mention here)?

2) Ere the falls of Nargothrond and Gondolin... when (if we imagine the Ered Wethrin), it's also ere the founding!


My answers are (in reverse order)

The falls of Nargothrond and Gondolin didn't happen on the same date. Galadriel's reference is arguably a general one to evoke "long long ago" especially to the ears and mind of the four Hobbits. If I said (something like) "these people came to England before the Fall of Rome" I could simply be generalizing by using a well known event of the deep past. It merely suggests "they arrived a long time ago" for the minds of folks who are not history buffs and don't care when Rome was founded. They get the idea.

As for the notability objection: Galadriel need not have passed over the Mountains of Aman, and it seems to me that there was a pass into the Echoing Mountains as well -- the Noldor took it, and a massing of orcs appear to travel fairly far to take it -- but it's not very convenient considering where Galadriel ended up, if one is then going to the feast and on to Doriath.

In other words, crossing Ered Wethrin could have been Galadriel's first experience with crossing high mountains.

I know it's not what Tolkien meant

But I really only "know" this to some measure of certainty due to posthumously published texts and commentary. In any case none of this need be explained in your version of Quenta Silmarillion. It's just a possible mental way (if one feels it "works" well enough) to keep Galadriel in Beleriand with her husband, and not have to return from Eriador to find out...

... she's been banned! Obviously it's up to you folks. I'm not sure my blather about this appears in the linked thread, if maybe in other threads at Barrow Downs. In any case I had some free time to annoy this thread with it too!



Also, in my experience I've run into the question, despite what is said in RGEO: why does Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings say she passes the test and will go West, as if she already knows her ban has been lifted before she sings her lament? Some take this to challenge the "truth" of the ban, and one person I chatted with even went so far as to say RGEO represents external author commentary and invoked the "death of author" principle to essentially "erase" the ban as Tolkien's own personal interpretation of his world.

For the record I found no evidence that RGEO is written as external commentary (Tolkien as author), rather than the internal guise of the translator used elsewhere, and I take the directness of RGEO to be true, over Galadriel's possible implication in the story in Fellowship of the Ring. Here I'm just noting, some disagree.

For myself, so far, I just mentally imagine Galadriel to be leaving out "if allowed"... in other words, she passed the test and she'll return West (if allowed), but she doesn't want to confuse folks about her ban at this point.

Or something