Gnome or Elf?

[skip spence]

Originally Posted by Groin Redbeard

I wish I had my Silmarillion book with me, I just lent it to a friend! Wasn't Beren mentioned as being a Gnome?

In the published Silmarillion Beren was a mortal man but in BolT II (or HoME II), written much earlier than both the Hobbit and LotR, he was indeed a Gnome. In Tolkien's early writing the Gnomes fell under Morgoth much earlier and much more comprehensively than in the later legendarium. When Beren made his way into Doriath the kingdom was still free behind the Girdle of Melian, while the Gnomes were long defeated and broken mentally by Morgoth and they basically did what he asked them to do. Therefore he often allowed then to move freely and they were distrusted and shunned by the elves of Doriath. Beren was originally intended as one of these Gnomes and was ie a Noldor Elf and not a Man to use the more familiar terminology.

[Galin]

In the early Tale of Tinúviel Beren was seemingly first a Man, then an Elf (a Gnome), and ultimately a Man again of course.

'The rejected passage given on p. 71, together with the marginal note 'If Beren be a Gnome (as now in the story of Tinúviel) the references to Beren must be altered' (note 4), is the basis of my assertion (p. 52) that in the earliest, now lost, form of the Tale of Tinúviel Beren was a Man (...) Beren was a Man, and akin to Mavwin, when the extant Turambar was written; he became a Gnome in the extant Tinúviel; and this change was then written into Turambar.'

Christopher Tolkien, commentary, Turambar And The Foalóke