Tidbits of Curiosity

[William Cloud Hicklin]

The Translations are said to be from Rivendell's records, which presumably were previously records in Lindon, but how did they get into there?

I've always gone with the head-canon that in the last days of Arthedain, the library of Fornost or copies thereof were sent to Rivendell for safekeeping. After all, Tolkien in his later period keeps telling us that the Silmarillion incorporated (garbled?) Mannish traditions- which wouldn't have been the case with material written in Lindon or by Elrond (or Glorfindel*)

Why would Bilbo have used these Arnorian materials ("from the Elvish" because written in Sindarin)? Probably because Elvish historiography was in a style relatively alien to mortal minds, written by and for conditional immortals with perfect recall. History written by Men would have been more comprehensible to a Hobbit.

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*Another potential source for the Fall of Gondolin