Elven Characteristics

[cellurdur]

Originally Posted by Galin

By the way, anyone think that the following two descriptions are intended to be consonant with each other:





And...




Or to put it another way, how do you [anyone] interpret this second description, if [for sake of argument] it's read on its own, without the influence of other descriptions?

Or to put it another, another way: if Tolkien believed the first description was 'true' when he wrote the second, do you think he would write this second general description this way?

I think the second seems like a slight 'revision' [or the first, considering I don't know which came before the other] but at least one other person disagrees and [seemingly] finds them in easy accord with each other.

They are harmonious for me. In the first statement it is more about the average height being close to 7ft. So you would expect quite a few Noldor to be shorter than this and as we know quite a few much taller.

The second statement is more concerned with a minimum height. It seems if in general the shortest of the Noldor were 6'6 then the average height would likely be close to 7ft.

The only trouble with this is the description of Celeborn. Let'say that Celeborn indeed was tall for a Sindarin. Let's even allow for him to be a couple of inches taller than Galadriel at 6'6. It would mean that there was such a big difference in stature between the two that a Celeborn whilst very tall for a Sindar would still be one of the shorter Noldor.