Unfinished Tales - Part Three - I - The Disaster of the Gladden Fields

[Formendacil]

Continuing my catch-up of the UT CbC...

"The Disaster of the Gladden Fields" is one of my favourite pieces in Unfinished Tales. I'm not entirely certain why, though I suspect several of the reasons have already been mentioned on this thread:

1. Characters like Elendur, Ohtar, Estelmo, about whom I'd like to hear more.

2. Details of Númenórean technology and culture from the turn of the Age. This is the closest look we'll ever get to the great armies of the late 2nd Age (even though it's technically the beginning of the Third). Isildur's company probably looks, in miniature, not that much different from Ar-Pharazôn's army that landed in Umbar.

3. The Elendilmir's story. The glimpse into Saruman's backstory (which is also touched on in a number of the other Unfinished Tales) is fascinating, and as a Canadian monarchist, I've always felt a special affection for the dwindled north-Kingdom of Arnor and any scrap of information about it--less frequent than information about Gondor--is welcome.

4. Tolkien's original footnotes. It makes for dense reading if you try and read them alongside the text, but they make for a fascinating case of a "primary text" with "editorial notes"--and the information within them is very welcome, and they WOULD muck up the main text if he tried to work them all in.

Mostly, however, I think what I like about "The Disaster of the Gladden Fields" is how it turns Isildur into a sympathetic character. It's been a very long time now since I first read Unfinished Tales, but I can vaguely remember the days before I had, and in those days I didn't really care for Isildur and the story of his loss--and the loss of the Ring--seemed a distant happening, hardly the tragedy that the loss of Arnor's king and and the malevolence of the Ring should have made it. This piece changes that perception completely.

EDIT: An additional thought, that I mean to include: in this tale, one of the footnotes makes mention of what must surely be the sort of blade that the Hobbits acquire in the Barrow-downs:

Originally Posted by Footnote 28

This was of a kind called eket: a short stabbing sword with a broad blade , pointed and two-edged, from a foot to one and a half feet long.