itsy bitsy doubts

[daeron]

OK, I've created this thread so we can post our small doubts, which can be answered to in one or two posts.

Let me start.

Was Glaurung or Ancalagon mightier?

Gandalf says not even dragon fire could melt the one ring, not even that of Ancalagon the black.

So does that imply that Glaurung could melt it, or that Ancalagon was mightier, or seeing that Tolkien wanted to make the best impressions possible, felt the name Ancalagon the black sounded more fearsome to a little hobbit than that of Glaurung?

Imagine the sentence,
Not even dragon fire could melt it,not even Glaurung the Golden.

I always felt, 'Black' sounds more scarier and evil than 'Golden'. There seems to be some sort of, well....., good and courage in the word 'golden', I suppose.

[Thinlómien]

I think Tolkien makes it quite clear that Ancalagon was the mightiest dragon. Glaurung was the first and the most famous.

[Alcarillo]

I think that Ancalagon was mightier, because Morgoth probably would've developed his dragons as time went by, tinkering with them to make them stronger, better, etc. Also, Ancalagon was winged and Glaurung wasn't.

[daeron]

Did the battle of Dagorlad go on for months? That is what I read on some site.I always thought it was a day's rush like Pellenor. Months would have had time to camp, recieve reinforcements, rest, medicaton and all. I mean armies fighting on a plain would not have places to hide or camp without being seen, and Mordor would definately have had the advantage of proximity. This becomes another seige again. And while all this was going on, Sauron would have been able to call for reinforcements and regrouped behind Morannon and the Alliance would have had a surprise waiting for them when they threw down the gate. No, a day or two's battle rush is better on Dagorlad.

[Alcarillo]

Well, I'm pretty sure that Dagorlad lasted over a long period of time, months probably. In Appendix B of the Lord of the Rings it is said that the battle took place in 3434, and along with crossing the Misty Mountains before the fight and beginning the Siege of Barad-Dûr afterwards in the same year, I bet there would've been at least a few months for the battle to take place. In Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age, in The Silmarillion, on p. 293, it is said that no greater army had been mustered since the War of Wrath. So they had plenty of soldiers to last a while, too.

Also, my Atlas of Middle-Earth, by Karen Wynn Fonstad, says:

The battle was waged on the stony plain of Dagorlad, north of the Black Gate of Mordor, "for days and months", and the bodies were buried in what became the Dead Marshes.

I cannot find her own quotation from Tolkien, "for days and months", anywhere, but I trust her to accurately quote Tolkien.

[Maerbenn]

She took it from one of Gollum’s lines in ‘The Passage of the Marshes’:

‘All dead, all rotten. Elves and Men and Orcs. The Dead Marshes. There was a great battle long ago, yes, so they told him when Sméagol was young, when I was young before the Precious came. It was a great battle. Tall Men with long swords, and terrible Elves, and Orcses shrieking. They fought on the plain for days and months at the Black Gates. But the Marshes have grown since then, swallowed up the graves; always creeping, creeping.’

[Gil-Galad]

Remember what Gandalf said, "Not even the fires of Ancalgon the Black could melt the One Rinr" so that could mean that Ancalgon was mightier, because Gandalf would have said Glaurang if he was mightier

[daeron]

Can any of you find a battle on clear plains for months comfortable? The first attack might not have lasted months. "Days and months" in Gollum's song might be a reference to the seige. Of course Morannon might have taken time to throw down. Any idea how long?

[Eomer of the Rohirrim]

It looks like Karen has misinterpreted. Gollum speaks of days and months at the Black Gates. That sounds to me like he was referring to the Siege and the War as a whole.

It's probable that the Battle at Dagorlad was fairly swift. The description of Gil-Galad, Aeglos, and the might of the Numenoreans implies that the good guys routed the baddies.

And Gandalf's words about Ancalagon mean nothing because, as has been suggested, the Hobbits might have heard of Ancalagon and not Glaurung. Maybe Gandalf himself had told a young Frodo about Ancalagon.

Ancalagon was mightier, for the reasons stated previously.