345 – Take It Easy

Summary

The Prancing Pony Podcast
Episode 345 – "Take It Easy"
Release Date: October 20, 2024

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Introduction

In Episode 345 of The Prancing Pony Podcast, hosts Alan Sisto and Don Marshall delve deep into the lore of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, focusing on the intricate details of Numenor as depicted in "Unfinished Tales" and supplemented by insights from "The Nature of Middle-earth" edited by Carl Hostetter. This episode, titled "Take It Easy," offers listeners a comprehensive exploration of Numenor's geography, language, flora, fauna, and the societal structures that defined this legendary island.

Philology Fair: Exploring Quenya

The episode features a segment called Philology Fair, where the hosts challenge each other to pronounce and dissect Quenya, one of Tolkien's Elvish languages.

• Notable Quote:
  Don Marshall (00:50): "I don't think they know about the second map episode. It's too bad you can't actually show the map in the audio-only podcast."

Alan and Don enthusiastically pronounce and analyze words like Oir, Nessamelda, Vardariana, Taniquelose, and Yavanna Miri, breaking down their meanings and etymological roots within Tolkien's legendarium.

• Notable Quote:
  Alan Sisto (06:00): "That's right. Now then we get to Nesamelda, which not surprisingly is named in part for the Vala. Nessa, the sister of Orome."

Detailed Description of Numenor

Alan provides a vivid description of Numenor's geography, resembling a five-pointed star with a central plateau called Mittalmar and five promontories: Forostar, Andustar, Hyarnustar, Hyaro Star, and Orostaar. The central mountain, Meneltarma, serves as a sacred site, untouched by construction and frequented only by the king during three major ceremonies each year.

• Notable Quote:
  Alan Sisto (13:21): "I'm going to go ahead and bring us then into the description of the island of Numenor. The land of Numenor resembled in outline a five-pointed star or pentangle..."

The hosts discuss the preservation of Numenor's maps and records, emphasizing the loss of detailed knowledge following the island's downfall. They reference sources like "Akallabeth" and "The Nature of Middle-earth" to provide context.

• Notable Quote:
  Don Marshall (17:28): "Now in the part we did not read there. Wonderful pronunciation, by the way."

Flora of Numenor: The Fragrant Trees

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to exploring the unique flora of Numenor, particularly the Malinorne trees, which are described with exquisite detail:

• Notable Quote:
  Alan Sisto (46:10): "So they are flower and leaf and Rhine, for those trees exuded sweet scents. And all that country was full of blended fragrance."

These trees are characterized by their towering height (up to 600 feet), pale green leaves with silver undersides, and golden blossoms. Their introduction to Lothlorien by Galadriel is also discussed, highlighting their significance in both Numenor and Middle-earth.

Fauna of Numenor

The hosts examine the harmonious relationships between the inhabitants of Numenor and its wildlife. Species such as eagles, foxes, beavers, seals, and various deer coexisted peacefully with the Númenóreans.

• Notable Quote:
  Don Marshall (70:08): "There were a large number of bears in the rockier portions of the island, with black bears living mostly in the forestar."

They also touch upon the cultural significance of horses, noting that the Númenóreans were exceptional equestrians, treating their horses with honor and integrating them into their daily lives and festivities.

• Notable Quote:
  Alan Sisto (74:51): "And the decibel level is so high that anybody within 100 yards of the initial sound is blown to smithereens."

Societal Structure and Crafts

Numenor's society is portrayed as advanced and skilled, particularly in crafts learned from the Elves. The Guild of Venturers and the Guild of Weaponsmiths are highlighted as key institutions that contributed to Numenor's prowess in seafaring and craftsmanship.

• Notable Quote:
  Alan Sisto (83:04): "I love the mention here of the Guild of Weaponsmiths. And like I said earlier, I just want to give a little shout out to Rings of Power to choosing to go with the idea of guilds in Numenor."

The episode also discusses the significance of heirloom swords and the fearsome bowmen of Numenor, whose steel-tipped arrows could reach distances of up to 600 yards, making them formidable adversaries in warfare.

• Notable Quote:
  Don Marshall (86:11): "Now, speaking of horses being treated well, I'm going to look at a quote from the Nature of Middle Earth. I really like this. Just a little simple line. The stables of a great man were often as large and as fair to look upon as his own house."

Seafaring and Exploration

The episode explores Numenor's deep connection with the sea, detailing the evolution of their maritime skills from Elvish guidance to independent voyages under leaders like Veantur and Aldarion. The establishment of settlements in Middle-earth and the formation of Gondor and Arnor are also touched upon.

• Notable Quote:
  Alan Sisto (91:24): "Now, after that, sailing became the thing for men. So much so that Aldarian, the grandson of Veontur, formed the Guild of Venturers..."

Mailbag: Listener Questions and Discussions

Listeners engage with the hosts through questions submitted via email, with notable inquiries about the inherent corruption within Numenor's society independent of Sauron's influence.

• Notable Quote:
  Alan Sisto (97:02): "But it does appear that after the. Certainly after Tar Atanamir, that with the split in the Kingsmen and the faithful and the, you know, persecution of the faithful, it was always going to end that way."

Closing Remarks

The episode concludes with reflections on Numenor's downfall, emphasizing the inevitable corruption stemming from pride and the desire for immortality, even in the absence of direct malevolent influence. The hosts express anticipation for future episodes that will further dissect Numenor's legacy and its perpetual impact on Middle-earth.

• Notable Quote:
  Alan Sisto (103:10): "It's one of those situations where, yeah, it would have happened eventually, but the fact that it happened when it did might actually have been a good thing coming from an evil thing."

Conclusion

Episode 345 of The Prancing Pony Podcast offers an enthralling deep dive into the nuanced world of Numenor, blending linguistic analysis with rich descriptions of its natural and societal elements. Through engaging discussions and scholarly insights, Alan Sisto and Don Marshall provide both lore enthusiasts and newcomers with a comprehensive understanding of one of Tolkien's most fascinating creations.

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Note: Advertisements, introductory remarks, and closing promotional content have been omitted to focus solely on the substantive discussions and analyses presented during the episode.

Transcript

[Don Marshall]

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[Alan Sisto]

Good evening, little masters, and welcome to episode 345 of the Prancing Pony podcast. Where. Oh, you've had one map episode. Yes, but what about second map episode?

[Don Marshall]

I don't think they know about the second map episode. It's too bad you. We can't actually, you know, show the map in the audio only podcast.

[Alan Sisto]

That'd be nice. I mean, you know, limitations of the media.

[Don Marshall]

Folks, pull up the bench in the common room and join us. I am Don Marshall, the obscure Lord of the Rings facts guy, and I am here with the man of the west who has put points in the skill describing maps, Alan Sisto.

[Alan Sisto]

Well, it won't help if I still roll natural one though.

[Don Marshall]

True.

[Alan Sisto]

Folks, join us as we take a short but deep dive into unfinished tales as we read through a description of the island of Numenor to go along with what we just introduced to you last week in the appendices.

[Don Marshall]

Shall I describe it to you or would you like me to find you a box?

[Alan Sisto]

Alan, I see the island of Numenor. I'm. I'm too short to see the island of Numenor.

[Don Marshall]

That's okay, we know that was a question.

[Alan Sisto]

Actually, Don, that was. That wasn't a statement. All right then. Yes, you're entirely. And younger than me. I'll pull a dwarves in Doria sort of thing, and you'll bleed out from the shins.

[Don Marshall]

Wow. Okay, deep cuts, deep cuts. Less than a minute. We're not even done the intro, Alan. Folks, pull up a bench in the common room and join us for the chaos. No matter how you got here, you are all welcome in the common room here at the Prancing Pody podcast, where we are reading and talking our way through Middle Earth with plenty of speculation, bad jokes and shins along the way.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, well, you know, hopefully no attempted murders. We do love deep dives into the lore, discussing our favorite themes and a.

[Don Marshall]

Whole lot more, but we try and keep it light and out of prison. So, a couple of friends chatting at a pub. We are very glad you've joined us.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, and we don't want our parole officers to join us, but I'm sure you'll be glad you joined us as well. I think I just caused Don a spit Tick. Before we get to tonight's chapter discussion, though, it is time to visit everybody's fan favorite, Philology Fair. Now, in a little while, we'll be challenging Don to read some Quenya. Now, if he manages it, you'll hear him read about the evergreen and fragrant trees that the Eldar brought to El Donde, the Green, the haven in the bay of Eldana. Now, these trees were called Oir, L Nessa, Melda Tan, and Yavana Miri. And because of their scent, the land was called Nissim Aldar, the fragrant trees. And those are the words we're going to take a look at in today's Philology Fair.

[Don Marshall]

My apologies to our editor, Jordan, ahead of time.

[Alan Sisto]

Multiple takes on each Konya word. Yes.

[Don Marshall]

All right, here we go. First one. Let's see how I do with oir.

[Alan Sisto]

Nicely done.

[Don Marshall]

Thank you. Thank you. Now, you might remember reading it all about it, Aldarian and Orendis, which Alan, you covered in a whole run of Second Age Saturdays on today's Tolkien Times, and which I understand is on the agenda for next season as well, Correct?

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[Don Marshall]

So in that story we read, this here must be told the customer that when a ship departed from Numenor over the great sea to Middle Earth, a woman, most often of the captain's kin, would set upon the vessel's prow, the green bough of return. And that was cut from the tree oil that signifies ever summer, which the Eldar gave to the Numenoreans, saying that they set it upon their ships in token of friendship with Ose and Oinen. The leaves of that tree were evergreen, glossy and fragrant, and it throve upon sea air.

[Alan Sisto]

Now, once again, we get to see what it means right there in the text. Ever summer. But how? Right, let's break this down. The construction of the name Oyolyre. Now, we do find it glossed for us in the appendix to the Silmarillion, that's elements in Quenya and Sindarin names. But surprisingly, we don't find that gloss where you might think I looked for it related to Oyolosi, the other name for Taniquatil. Instead, we see it under the entry for Coron. Now, Coron is mound, as in Corolire, the Quenya name for Ezellohar, the small hill outside the gates of Valimar, the city of the Valar, which we actually mentioned last week when we talked briefly about the tree stone. Now, Ezellohar is a Vanyaren name, which means green mound, but Corolaire is The Quenya version of it, and it means mound of summer. In the appendix entry we read that Corolae is short for coron oyola, which latter word means ever summer. And you compare that with Olosse, which is winter. Basically, it's the snowy, the ever snow. Now there it is. If you think Koron sounds vaguely familiar, that's because the Sindarin cognate of Koron is Keren, as in Keren Amroth.

[Don Marshall]

Wow, this Tolkien guy is like really good at language.

[Alan Sisto]

He's so good at conlang, isn't he? Yeah, that's crazy good.

[Don Marshall]

All right, let's try this first take. Lyra lose is from the Quenya lyre meaning summer and lose meaning white. Snow white.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[Don Marshall]

We see that latter element lose in one of the names of the mountains of Manwe and Varda Taniquetil, as it is known as Oyolose, ever snow White.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[Don Marshall]

So lyre as summer is also seen in appendix D, which is the calendars, as the Quenya name for summer.

[Alan Sisto]

That's right. Now then we get to Nesamelda, which not surprisingly is named in part for the Vala. Nessa, the sister of Orome, who wed Tulkas in Valaquenta. We read of her that she also is lithe and fleet footed deer she loves and they follow her train whenever she goes in the wild. But she can outrun them Swift as an arrow with the wind in her hair. In dancing she delights and she dances in Valamar on lawns of never fading green. So that's Nessa. Now the melda element simply means dear or beloved. We see this at the very end of the chapter Lothlorien in the Lord of the Rings. That's where Frodo is seeing Aragorn at the foot of Cairo. Namroth, clearly wrapped in some fair memory. We read that he spoke words in the Elvish tongue to one whom Frodo could not see. Arwen van Imelda, Namarier. That means Arwen, beautiful and beloved. Farewell. So Nessa Melda is beloved. Nessa Love.

[Don Marshall]

How that all connects.

[Alan Sisto]

I know, Lovely.

[Don Marshall]

And that they worked Arwen in there. That is just. Oh, very cool. All right, next up is Vardariana. This isn't glossed anywhere, but it seems kind of obvious that it includes the name Varda the Valier of the stars and wife of Manwe the High King. Her name means exalted.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[Don Marshall]

It seems that it also includes the element Anna, meaning gift, as in Yavanna, giver of fruit. And Annatar, Lord of Gifts.

[Alan Sisto]

That's right.

[Don Marshall]

Also. Yeah. So Rings of Power fans will be able to have a language lesson in here as well. We also appear to have the element ria, which is wreath or garland, as in Galadriel's qu. Name name Altariel, which means maiden crowned with a garland of bright radiance. So this is a combination of exalted garland and gift.

[Alan Sisto]

Vardhariana. Well, then Tanakhulase is another one that should sound vaguely familiar. The elements are there, right? The first three syllables are shared with taniquetil, after all, which means high snow peak. With the lasse ending, it's high snow leaf, with lasse being the Quenya word for leaf. Laurier, Lanter. Lass si surnen includes the plural, like gold, fall, the leaves in the wind. Now, lasse is cognate with cinder and las, which we see in Athelas, Legolas, and many more. It's just leaf. So, following in the pattern of Vardariana and Nessa, Melda is the last name in the list of fragrant trees, Yavanna Mire. Now, we've talked about this one before, but the mire element means jewel. We do see it in a few places. The Elendil Mir, which is the star of Elendil. Miriel, which is jewel daughter. And one other line from Galadriel's Lament, which I quoted earlier, where we see its plurale. Now, that means and mist covers Kalakiria's jewels forever. So that last little bit, Calacirio Miri. Miri is the plural of mire. So this last tree is simply the jewel of Yavanna.

[Don Marshall]

This is absolutely wild. And also, I just want to give a little bit of a behind the scenes look to our listeners, because the script notes say something that I. I never actually thought I'd get the chance to say or do. It just says in brackets, banter about Quenya or something. That's not something that you'll find in most podcasts. I'm just letting you know.

[Alan Sisto]

Banter about Quenya or something. Yeah.

[Don Marshall]

So, Alan, what do you feel about the difference when Saruman the White was speaking Quen, whereas Gandalf was speaking Sindarin in the Peter Jackson adaptation? Do you think that ruined the entire movie?

[Alan Sisto]

Actually, I barely remember that. In fact, I don't remember that. I really don't. I'm trying to recall if that happened.

[Don Marshall]

Our mutual friend, New Beta Dubetta, pointed out that within the subtitles of the Fellowship of the Ring, it says in Quenya for Saruman, but in Sindarin for Gambit.

[Alan Sisto]

That's interesting. It's been a long time since I've watched the Jackson films. The last time I watched them was in preparation for writing the book. So I think the book was sent to the publishers in June of 23, so probably in March of 23. So it's been a year and a half since I've watched the Jackson films. I've become a lot more of a word nerd since then, partly because, you know, I'd always deferred to Sean and that. That was his expertise. Still is. He's just not here to do it. And I've sort of had to grow in my. My word nerdery, partly for that reason and also partly because of today's Tolkien times. But I haven't gone back to watch it since then, so maybe I should. Sounds like I should. I know I pay attention to the Quenya and Sindarin in Rings of Power, for sure.

[Don Marshall]

Oh, yeah. And they also mention it in Rings of Power. They specify in Quenya.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. But then they don't give you the translation of it when it's in Quenya. It's very interesting. You know, the. The stranger speaks Quenya.

[Don Marshall]

Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

But there's no subtitles of what he says. But Wizard Way Chris has done a really fantastic job of providing us with an ad hoc transcript. So. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, that's a whole nother story.

[Don Marshall]

And that was your banter about Quenya, the fictional Elvish language created by JRR Tolkien. All right, so those are the fragrant trees themselves.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[Don Marshall]

But what about Nissamaldar, which sounds too much like Nessa Melda for me, but, you know, they're not the same.

[Alan Sisto]

No, not at all.

[Don Marshall]

The text says it's fragrant trees. You've got a little bit more on this, Alan.

[Alan Sisto]

Looking over this one, it seems to be the only use of nissima, meaning fragrant. However, Alda is something that I looked at several weeks ago in a Word Nerd Wednesday in Aldarian's name, Alda. So that element means son of trees. Well, his name means son of trees. Alda, of course, just means tree. At that time, I could only find one other appearance of that element, and it was in the name of Aldamir, the 23rd king of Gondar, whose name means tree jewel. But I was clearly not paying attention because we also see it in Cullimalda. That's the laburnum. It literally translates as orange tree. But that kullamalda is what makes up the trees at the Field of Cormalin. After the destruction of the Ring, we also see that same malda or alda element, I should say, in the line from Galadriel's Laments, which I've now gone to several times, that reads yeni unotime viramaldoron. And that means long years, numberless as the wings of trees. Alderon trees. Now, there's one other place that we see the alda element, and it's in another of the names for Laurelin, one of the two trees that we looked at last week. One of the other names of Laurelin is Malinalda, which means tree of gold. So alda is trees. Nisima is fragrant. There you go.

[Don Marshall]

Personally, I'm just wondering how these trees grow the wings and fly off to find the entwives.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, longears number that says the wings of trees.

[Don Marshall]

Wings of trees, Alan?

[Alan Sisto]

Well, they're numberless as the wings of trees. That's how many wings the trees have. Numberless. Zero. Oh, I don't know what it means.

[Don Marshall]

You could have had me going there.

[Alan Sisto]

I mean, you know, I'm just thinking there are no wings of trees, but.

[Don Marshall]

Okay, I guess not.

[Alan Sisto]

It's long ears. Numberless as the wings of Balrogs. Haha.

[Don Marshall]

Now, now I'm just imagining every leaf on the tree starting to vibrate intensely and it rising up into the air as we rise up into the beginning of this chapter discussion. Not my best segue, but we will.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, it will certainly do. All right, I'm going to go ahead and bring us then into the description of the island of Numenor. The land of Numenor resembled in outline a five pointed star or pentangle, with a central portion some 250 miles across, north and south and east and west, from which extended five large peninsular promontories. These promontories were regarded as separate regions, and they were named Forostar, Andustar, Hyarnustar, Hyaro Star and Orostar. The central portion was called Mittalmar, and it had no coast except the land about Romenna and the head of its firth. A small part of the Mittalmar was, however, separated from the rest and called Arandor, the King's land. In Arandor were the haven of Romenna, the Meneltarma, and Armenelos, the city of the Kings. And it was at all times the most populous region of Numenor. The Mittelmar was raised above the promontories, not reckoning the height of their mountains and hills. It was a region of grasslands and low downs and few trees. Grew there. Near to the center of the Mittalmar stood the tall mountain called Meneltarma, Pillar of the Heavens, sacred to the worship of ERU Iluvatar. Though the lower slopes of the mountain were gentle and grass covered, it grew ever steeper, and towards the summit it could not be scaled, but a winding spiral road was made upon it, beginning at its foot upon the south and ending below the lip of the summit upon the north. For the summit was somewhat flattened and depressed and could contain a great multitude, but it remained untouched by hands throughout the the history of no building, no raised altar, not even a pile of undressed stones ever stood there, and no other likeness of a temple did the Numenoreans possess in all the days of their grace, until the coming of Sauron. There no tool or weapon had ever been born, and there none might speak any word save the king. Only thrice, only in each year the king spoke, offering prayer for the coming year at the Erukierme in the first days of spring, praise of ERU Iluvatar at the Erulitele in midsummer, and thanksgiving to him at the Eruhantele at the end of autumn. At these times the king ascended the mountain on foot, followed by a great concourse of the people, clad in white and garlanded, but silent. At other times the people were free to climb to the summit alone or in company. But it is said that the silence was so great that even a stranger, ignorant of Numenor and all its history, if he were transported thither, would not have dared to speak aloud. No bird ever came there, save only eagles. If anyone approached the summit at once, three eagles would appear and alight upon three rocks near to the western edge. But at the times of the three prayers they did not descend, remaining in the sky and hovering above the people. They were called the witnesses of Manwe, and they were believed to be sent by him from Ammon to keep watch upon the holy mountain and upon all the land. The base of the Meneltarma sloped gently into the surrounding plain, but it extended, after the fashion of roots, five long low ridges outwards in the direction of the five promontories of the land, and these were called Tarmasundar, the roots of the pillar. Along the crest of the southwestern ridge, the climbing road approached the mountain, and between this ridge and that on the southeast, the land went down into a shallow valley that was named Noir Inan, the valley of the Tombs. For at its head chambers were cut in the rock at the base of the mountain, in which were the tombs of the kings and queens of Numenor. But for the most part the Mittalmar was a region of pastures. In the southwest there were rolling downs of grass. And there in the America was the chief region of the shepherds.

[Don Marshall]

Now in the part we did not read there. Wonderful pronunciation, by the way. Yeah. We do get an explanation about sources, just like we did last week when we looked at the appendices.

[Alan Sisto]

Right. Or to be more precise, and I guess we should, the Annals of the Kings and Rulers.

[Don Marshall]

Yeah. We learned that this description we'll be looking at tonight is based on descriptions and basic maps that had been retained by the Gondorian kings.

[Alan Sisto]

Right. Now that's because the more thorough information, many natural histories and geographies composed by learned men and Numenor were lost when the island itself sank beneath the sea.

[Don Marshall]

That does tend to happen when you try to steal the gods immortality. It's a real shame.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, yeah, that's true. I mean, the continent goes under and all the documents go with it. Yeah, they needed an off site backup, didn't they?

[Don Marshall]

Yeah, you know what, maybe they just needed it to be put up in the Cloud Eagles. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. We do, however, read the following in the Akala Beth. And while Middle Earth went backward and the light and wisdom faded, the Dunedain dwelt under the protection of the Valar and in the friendship of the Eldar. And they increased in stature both of mind and body. For though this people used still their own speech, their kings and lords knew and spoke also the Elven tongue which they had learned in the days of their alliance. And thus they held converse still with the Eldar, whether of Eressea or of the Westlands of Middle Earth. And the loremasters among them learned also the High Eldrin Tongue of the Blessed Realm, in which much story and song was preserved from the beginnings of the world. And they made letters and scrolls and books, and wrote in them many things of wisdom and wonder in the high tide of their realm, of which all is now forgot.

[Alan Sisto]

That's right. So that is some of that knowledge that was lost. And we actually get a bit more of this in the Nature of Middle Earth, edited by Carl F. Hostetter, where we read in the chapter of the Land and Beasts of Numenor. Accurate charts of Numenor were made at various periods before its downfall, but none of these survived the disaster. They were deposited in the Guildhouse of the Venturers, and this was confiscated by the kings and removed to the western Haven of Andunie. All its Records perished. Maps of Numenor were long preserved in the archives of the kings of Gondor in Middle Earth. But these appear to have been derived in part from old drawings made from memory by early settlers, and the better ones from a single chart with little detail beyond sea soundings along the coast and descriptions of the ports and their approaches. That was originally in the ship of Elendil, leader of those who escaped the downfall. Descriptions of the land and of its flora and fauna were also preserved in Gondor, but they were not accurate or detailed, nor did they distinguish clearly between the state of the land at different periods, being vague about its condition at the time of the first settlements. Since all such matters were the study of men of lore in Numenor, and many accurate natural histories and geographies must have been composed, it would appear that, like nearly all else of the arts and sciences of Numenor at its high tide, they disappeared in the Downfall.

[Don Marshall]

The high tide thing. High tide. Just phrasing Tolkien. Too soon, Too soon.

[Alan Sisto]

We may be speculating about some of that wisdom and wonder in the postscript. I think that'd be a lot of fun.

[Don Marshall]

I have so many thoughts about that. I'm ready to get started right now. But we have to keep going. We also learn that the documents that this chapter is based on were themselves limited in sort of the scope because Gondor eventually stopped really caring about this history and didn't preserve it because, after all, they were at first exiles, and only after a time did they accept that, you know, Numenor was actually gone Forever.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, forever. And at that point, they. They stopped really studying that early history because it only led to regret. I mean, it was understandable because their history would be filled with moments like, why do the Lords of the west sit there in peace, unending, while we must die and go we know not wither, leaving our home and all that we have made. Sorry, that's one of the bad kids.

[Don Marshall]

No, it was a great voice. Yeah. Or why should we not envy the Valar, or even at least of the deathless? For of us is required a blind trust and a hope without assurance, knowing not what lies before us in a little while. And yet we also love the Earth and would not lose it. In a way, it makes sense that the only story to sort of remain in the general knowledge later was on the story of our Farazan and his blasphemy and his assault on. On Valinor, which we will spend a lot of time on next.

[Alan Sisto]

We will. That's correct. I mean, I think that's pretty much the bulk of next week's episode. By the way, both of those quotes that we read were spoken by Tar Atanamir, who was the king who spoke to the messengers from the Valar at that time. Now, picking up where we did read, can you believe all of that was just on the part we didn't read? We get an overall description of the island, which is roughly a five pointed star. The middle body of the island itself, that just the middle section, it's about 250 miles in diameter. That's about 400 kilometers. That's like Boston to Philly, Chicago to Detroit, Louisiana to Vegas, or for our UK listeners, Birmingham to Edinburgh.

[Don Marshall]

All right, now, of course, that's just the middle part of the island. The five arms extend well beyond that central portion. Yes, because in the nature of Middle Earth, we get to see a little bit more of this. Tolkien wrote that the promontories, though these were not all of precisely the same size or shape, were roughly 100 miles across and rather more than 200 miles long. A line drawn from the northernmost point of the Forestar to the southernmost point of the Haarnu Star lay more or less directly north and south. At the period of the maps. This line was somewhat more than 700 miles long. And each line drawn from the end of one promontory to the end of another and passing through the land along the borders of the Mittelmar was more or less the same length.

[Alan Sisto]

Okay, now that gives us a really good idea of the size of the island. That's 700 miles. That's like New York to Chicago, almost LA to Denver or London to Venice. So it's a big island. Big island.

[Don Marshall]

Oh, my gosh. Okay. Yeah. So we've got a lot of space to work. We do. And those promontories we're talking about, each of those are considered to be a region. So here given is a list of names that Alan would like to do some word nerdery on, despite Tolkien giving us translations of each right there in the text.

[Alan Sisto]

Of course, of course. We got to take a look at the construction. Right. So aside from the central region known as Mittalmar, all the promontories of this five pointed star end with the suffix star. Let's start with that. I'm sorry, not sorry. The suffix sta s T a means part. Don's just getting it now.

[Don Marshall]

It took me a second.

[Alan Sisto]

Sta. That suffix does mean part, but it's a singular part, as in part of a close group or a collection. So star is going to be the plural version. So let's look at the various prefixes, some of which we've seen elsewhere. So forostar's first element, foro, is the prefix form of formen, meaning north, as in formenas or its cinder incognate, forod, as in forodwaeth or foroshel. Andistar's first element is the prefix andu, meaning west. You know this one anduril, flame of the west and love that one, andune, which is just the west. And it's cognate with sindarin, anun, as in henneth, anun, window on the west, west. So west high ar. New star's first element is a bit more complicated that higher new. It begins with the prefix higher, meaning south, but it also includes the prefix nu, meaning west. And that's a shortened version of andu. So it's sort of like they could have said hi nandu, but that's why they don't do that, right? I mean, it's a shortened version because it's being combined. So it's south and west. So it means southwest. Interestingly, though, that hi r element, which does mean south, it literally means left hand. But remember, elves look to the west as their primary direction. So if you're looking to the west, the south is to your left hand. Now, the other place that that hyar prefix shows up is in the next promontory, hierostar. Now, not surprisingly, the rho prefix is east. So this is the southeast promontory. You'll probably recognize that rho prefix for east from the name of a couple of Gondorian kings, Brahmendakil, meaning east victor, or east slayer. Now, that last promontory is oro star. The prefix oro means east. It literally means uprising, sunrise, east. And it would appear that the oro prefix is simply the full version of the ro element that we saw in the last word. So, you know, ro is east, but oro is like the full version of it. And then finally, the part of the island that isn't a promontory, the inlands called mittalmar. According to what I was able to find, mitta is an element meaning between. The second element, mar, though, is far more familiar. And it means home. Think Eldamar, elvenhome, valimar, dwelling of the valar, or vinyamar, new dwelling. So it's the home that's between.

[Don Marshall]

Did you guys ever have a teacher that got really excited about the thing he was talking about, and you could just kind of tell, so you sat there and soaked it all up. I think we just witnessed that. That was lovely.

[Alan Sisto]

Thank you, Dawn. I appreciate it. It's so much fun digging into this stuff.

[Don Marshall]

Yeah, yeah. We carry on, though, because even with these five promontories, most people lived not just in Mittalmar, but in a smaller area called Arandor, meaning the King's Land, as you said. That included the capital city of Armenelos, the harbor of Romena, and the central peak, Meneltarma.

[Alan Sisto]

Right. And now that we've looked at those promontories and the island as a whole, we get to look at the Mittelmar itself. Now, it is a central highland, not surprising, given the central Meneltarma. And it's composed mostly of grasslands with very few forests.

[Don Marshall]

The main geological feature that we're looking at here is the central peak of the island. This is the Pillar of Heavens. The mountain goes sort of from a gentle, grassy slope to a very steep summit with winding roads. The peak can be described as flat, even having a little, like a shallow bowl. It sounds like a caldera. Caldera, yeah. At the top of one of those stratovolcanoes, honestly.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[Don Marshall]

And going back to the nature of Middle Earth, Tolkien later wrote that it was about 3,000ft high above the plane, with the last 500ft being unscalable, except by that spiral road.

[Alan Sisto]

And, you know, I have to admit that that's not as tall as I would have imagined it to be. I mean, 3,000ft is not particularly tall, but maybe what they mean is. Well, he does say this 3,000ft high above the plain. So it might be an elevation of closer to 4,000ft by the time we get to the actual peak, but still, it's not a particularly tall volcano. I say volcano, but hint. It is.

[Don Marshall]

I mean, yeah, yeah, it very clearly. Numenor is clearly an island volcano. This is Tolkien's version of Atlantis, basically.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, it really is. And we'll definitely get to that. Now, the Meneltarma itself, the mountain was sacred ground, and I love this. The Numenoreans never built any structure on the summit, not even a pile of undressed stones. So they didn't put, like, you know, amphitheater seating up there. They didn't put benches up there. There's no rest stop up there. There's no visitor center. There is nothing at the top of this summit. It is totally pure empty.

[Don Marshall]

Yeah, no, this is the real deal of barren. So they also did not ever carry a tool or a weapon to the summit. No one was allowed to speak there except for the King, and even then, only three times a year. So let's look at these festivities. The first one held at the beginning of spring, that was the erukiarme. That means the prayer to eru.

[Alan Sisto]

Right. And then on midsummer, the erulitele was held. Now, this name means praise of eru. You probably recognize Laetele. The verb laeta shows up in the field of Kermalin chapter in the Lord of the Rings. Alaita teita velitevalmet korma kalindor alaita tariena. Praise them, the ring bearers. Praise them with great praise. So that's the same word right there. And then we'd get the one at the end of autumn. The. That's the Thanksgiving to eru. The. The harvest festival, if you will.

[Don Marshall]

Yeah. So whether they are praying to eru, praising him, thanking him, they are all ascended to Men al Tarma wearing these white clothing and garlands, but they are utterly silent.

[Alan Sisto]

That's correct. Now, anytime anybody got near the top, and people were allowed to go there, you know, anytime they wanted. Right. All throughout the year, they just couldn't talk. And the only time speaking was done was with the king three times a year. But anybody taking a hike up the Meneltarma, three eagles are going to show up and sit on rocks on the western edge of the rim. A little intimidating, I got to admit. I mean, if I'm saying, hey, let's do a hike to the Meneltarma on Saturday, you're like, you know, the eagles are going to watch us, man. But at the festivals, these Witnesses of Manway. And by the way, I have to say, I think that's a great name for a rock band. Oh, the Witnesses of Manwe.

[Don Marshall]

The Witnesses of Manway. It works.

[Alan Sisto]

Did you see the Witnesses of Manway? Oh, what a set, man. That was fantastic.

[Don Marshall]

Oh, my God, I can't wait to go see, you know, the watchers in the water. Oh, wow, we carry up.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, we do indeed. So these witnesses of Manway would hover over the crowd during the festivals instead, I suppose, ready to dive down on anybody who spoke.

[Don Marshall]

That's why they didn't take the eagles to Mordor. They wouldn't have been able to talk.

[Alan Sisto]

That's right. I'm going to give you directions. Just turn left here. Shut up.

[Don Marshall]

Yeah. So geographically speaking, the Men al Tarma put roots down towards each of these promontories, these regions, and then between two of those routes was a valley the Numenoreans called Neurinan, the valley of the tombs, where they bury their dead monarchs. The rest of the region of Middlemar was was mostly pasture lands, including the Ameriae, which features heavily in the story of Aldarien and Arendes as the homeland of Orendus.

[Alan Sisto]

That's right now. We'll come back and take a look at the promontories after the break. It's the new year and it's time to start tackling those things you've been putting off for too long. You've been kicking around a business idea for a while now and you're wondering how you're going to make 2025 different. Look, it's time to do this and Shopify is how you're going to get it done. Shopify makes it easy to create your own brand, open up your business and get that all important first sale. You can get your store up without any coding skills. Man, I couldn't code my way out of a paper sack. You just drag and drop with thousands of customizable templates. Shopify handles all the details that would bog you down. Things like shipping, taxes, payments, all from one easy to use dashboard so that you can focus on the important stuff growing your business. Speaking of which, Shopify has really powerful social media tools to connect all of your channels and create posts so that you can sell where people scroll. Don't kick yourself when you hear this again in a year because you spent 2025 still thinking about it with Shopify. Your first sale is closer than you think. Established in 2025. Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com pony all lowercase go to shopify.com pony to start selling with Shopify today. Shopify.com pony it's the new year, so it's time to start turning your resolutions into reality. Now I know for me that means getting back to the gym after a rough year, fitness wise and, well, without getting too blunt. That also means trying to smell better. And there's a resolution we could all use. I've been using Mando. It's a whole body deodorant. I've been using it for a few weeks now and I've really been happy with, well, with smelling better. Mando is a whole body deodorant. So you don't just use it on your armpits. Any place on your body that could use a bit of odor control. You can use Mando there. Yes, there too. It's proven to block and control odors all day, even in this tiny podcast booth. And it's available in solid stick spray or even cream. Personally, I like the Pro Sport scent, but Bourbon leather is pretty nice too. Now, as a special offer for our listeners, new customers get $5 off a starter pack with our exclusive code that equates to over 40% off your starter pack. Use code pony@shop mando.com s h o p m a n d o.com Please support our show and tell them we sent you smell fresher, stay drier and boost your confidence with Mando. Now, soon we'll get back to looking at the map of Numenor, but before we do, we want to remind you that there's a lot more talk going on at the Prancing Pony Podcast than just us.

[Don Marshall]

The PPP has an amazing listener community that's always coming up with great questions and discussions across all of our social media spaces. Check out our Common room on Facebook, our dedicated subreddit, Twitter and more now on Facebook.

[Alan Sisto]

Just look for the Prancing Pony podcast. Yeah, follow the page, get the news, episode drops. But really, if you haven't done it yet, please join the group and get involved in some great discussions.

[Don Marshall]

Or if you prefer places like Reddit, find us there at R prancingponypod. On Twitter and Instagram, we are simply rancingponypod.

[Alan Sisto]

And if you want daily Tolkien content, check out today's Tolkien times on YouTube and all your favorite podcast apps. It's my short format daily show with everything from Middle Earth Mondays to Second Age Saturdays. Be sure to check it out at YouTube.comtimes and follow TolkienTimes on all your social media. Now let's go and get back in the chapter. Don, can you pick up telling us a little bit about the Phorostar and Andu Star?

[Don Marshall]

I would love, love to tell you about these Pokemon.

[Alan Sisto]

Gotta catch them all. Well, there's only five, so it's easy.

[Don Marshall]

Yeah, it's pretty easy. These just sound like Pokemon to me. All right, so now I can get.

[Alan Sisto]

That out of my head. Thanks, Don.

[Don Marshall]

You're welcome. The forestar was the least fertile part, stony, with few trees, save that on the westward slopes of the high heathered covered moors, there were woods of fur and larch. Towards the North Cape the land rose to rocky heights, and there the great Sorontil rose sheer from the sea in tremendous cliffs. Here was the abode of many eagles, and in this region Tar Meneldor Elentirmo built a tall tower from which he could observe the motion of the stars. The Andu Star was also rocky in its northern parts with high fir woods looking out upon the sea. Three small bays it had facing west, cut back into the highlands, but here the cliffs were in many places not at the sea's edge, and there was a shelving land at their feet. The northmost of these was called the Bay of Andunie, for there was the great haven of Andunie, Sunset, with its town beside the shore and many other dwellings climbing up the steep slopes behind. But much of the southerly lands of the Andustar was fertile, and there also were great woods of birch and beech upon the upper ground, and in the lower vales of oaks and elms. Between the promontories of the Andustar and the Hyarnustar was the great bay called the Eldana, because it faced towards Eressea, and the lands about it being sheltered from the north and open to the western seas, were warm, and the most rain fell there. At the center of the Bay of Eldana was the most beautiful of all havens of Eldonde the green and hither in the earlier days, the swift white ships of the Eldar of Eressea came most often all about that place. Up the seaward slopes and far into the land grew the evergreen and fragrant trees that they brought out of the west. And so throve there that the Eldar said that almost it was fair as a haven in Eressea. They were the greatest delight of Numenor, and they were remembered in many songs long after they had perished forever. For few ever flowered east of the land of gifts. I will now be attempting to pronounce. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Yeah, Quenya words.

[Alan Sisto]

Go for it.

[Don Marshall]

Don oil, say nessa, melda, vardariana, taniquelosse and yovana mire.

[Alan Sisto]

Nicely done.

[Don Marshall]

Thank you.

[Alan Sisto]

Nicely.

[Don Marshall]

Thank you.

[Alan Sisto]

Thank you.

[Don Marshall]

With its globed and scarlet fruit. There's still more of the sentence there.

[Alan Sisto]

If you can imagine it. I just had to interrupt to say you dud the Quenya, so I have to give you some props. All right.

[Don Marshall]

This is beautiful.

[Alan Sisto]

Tell us about these beautiful, fresh, fragrant trees.

[Don Marshall]

I would love to. So they are flower and leaf and Rhine, for those trees exuded sweet scents. And all that country was full of blended fragrance. This is dawn here. I just imagine it smells like whatever it smells like when you walk into a smoothie shop. Just lots of blended fruits and flowers and stuff. We carry on with more Tolkien. Therefore it was called Nissimaldar, the fragrant trees. Many of them were planted and grew, though far less abundantly in other regions of Numenor. But only here grew the mighty golden tree Malinorne reaching, after five centuries a height scarce less than it achieved in Eressea itself. Its bark was silver and smooth and its boughs somewhat upswept after the manner of the beech. But it never grew save with a single trunk. Its leaves, like those of the beech but greater, were pale green above and beneath were silver, glistering in the sun. In the autumn they did not fall, but turned to pale gold. In the spring it bore golden blossom in clusters like a cherry, which bloomed on during the summer. And as soon as the flowers opened, the leaves fell. So that through spring and summer a grove of Malinorni was carpeted and roofed with gold. But its pillars were of grey silver. Its fruit was a nut with a silver shale. And some were given as a gift by Tar Aldarien, the sixth king of Numenor, to King Gil Galad of Lindon. They did not take root in that land, but Gil Galad gave some to his kinswoman, Galadriel. And under her power they grew and flourished in the guarded lands of Lothlorien beside the river Onduin until the High Elves at last left Middle Earth. But they did not reach the height or girth of the great groves of Numenor.

[Alan Sisto]

Thank you. That was really. Folks, I gotta say, Don is a champ for reading what was a very difficult passage.

[Don Marshall]

I don't smoke, but I feel as though I should say I need a cigarette after that anyway.

[Alan Sisto]

That did a number to you. It's true. We get a very brief description of the forestar first, the northern promontory. And since it was described as the least fertile, might reasonably be guessed to also be the least populous. It's very rocky land with some, but not many trees other than the woods of fir and the larch. The larch that were on the west faces of some of the hills. You knew I had to make a large joke.

[Don Marshall]

I knew you were going there, and I respect you. Yeah, of course.

[Alan Sisto]

You'd be disappointed in me if I didn't.

[Don Marshall]

I would have. It is also home to the only other named peak on the island, Saurontil, which means Eagle peak.

[Alan Sisto]

That's right. Sauron is the Quenya word for eagle. And it's cognate with Sindarin. Thoron, as in Thorondor, king of eagles. And Thorongil, Aragorn's incognito name which meant eagle of the star with the tyl element meaning point or horn. And we see that in Taniquetil, which means high White Peak. Yeah.

[Don Marshall]

This is where the king Meneldor, father of Eldarion, built the observatory.

[Alan Sisto]

Right. Now, the rest of this entire section that Don read is all about the Andu Star, the western promontory. And it has some of the most beautiful Quenya words. So let's dive in.

[Don Marshall]

Let's do it. While it is similar to the Forestar on the northern side, rocky with some fir woods, the southern side of it is quite different. Large birch and beech forests, valleys filled with oaks and elms.

[Alan Sisto]

Of course, that's going to be because of the. The weather patterns, the fact that it's on that side, going to be open to the warmer seas from the west. It's. I thought Tolkien did a fantastic job here talking about why it's different because all the rains fall there and things like that. Now, at the western edge of this promontory are three large bays. We're only given the name of the northernmost of those three. It's the Bay of Andunier, which means sunset. We've talked about the Andu prefix before. Andoril, flame of the west, cinder incognate anun, as in Henath anun.

[Don Marshall]

But between the south side of the Andu Star and the northwest edge of the Hyarnustar, the south, this is the southwest promontory, was the huge Bay of Eldana. And if you've been paying attention to your word nerdery, Alan, I know you have, you might already know what this means.

[Alan Sisto]

That's right. You remember last week when we explained that Elena is the allative form of the Quenya word Ellen, meaning star, so that the name Elena means towards star. Okay. If you remember that nna, that's what indicates the allative form or movement towards. And of course, Elda is just elf, literally means one of the star folk. Thus the name of the bay Eldana means towards the Eldar. And of course, because that's where it faces.

[Don Marshall]

Exactly, yeah. This part of the island was fully sheltered from the north, but also open to that western sea. So you're literally towards the Eldar. The waters that came here were warm. Most of the rain fell here. Think like the west side of a mountain range compared to the east. Not surprisingly, then, the area was beautiful and home to what the text says is the most beautiful of all the havens of Numenor El Donde, the green, where ships from Tol Erasea would often come.

[Alan Sisto]

Right. So El Donde means haven of the Eldar. We get that same Elda element that we get in the Bay of Eldana. And then Lande, which we've already explained before, means Haven, as in Alqualande, Swan Haven, or Vignalande, New Haven, which just makes me think there needs to be a town called Vignolande, Connecticut, instead of New Haven, Connecticut. But that's just me.

[Don Marshall]

Petition to rename it. Honestly, you could get it on the ballot, probably. It's very easy to do that.

[Alan Sisto]

Vignolande, Connecticut. I might actually want to live. Well, no, I probably wouldn't want to live there. I could afford to live there. Let's be honest. We get that utterly gorgeous description of the region surrounding El Delande, the green with the fragrant trees of Numenor that we talked about earlier in this episode in the Philology Fair.

[Don Marshall]

Yeah. And this is described as almost. It was fair as a haven in ea. Great way to.

[Alan Sisto]

That's.

[Don Marshall]

Oh, I love that kind of description. And for the most part, they only grew here in Numenor, or perhaps just in Amon, just not anywhere in the east, like, you know, the Middle Earth area. The trees also gave off such a sweet smell that the entire area was named after it. Nissimaldar, the fragrant trees.

[Alan Sisto]

I love that. And of course, these, a lot of them are evergreen trees. And so you can imagine what this smells like. But better, right? I mean, imagine yourself in a forest with fir and spruce and pine. But now you're getting trees that are so beautiful, they're named after the Valier, you know, I mean, it's gotta be.

[Don Marshall]

Love it.

[Alan Sisto]

Absolutely gorgeous. Now, while some of these other trees grew in other regions of Numenor, this was the only place or the Malinorne, the mallorn grew. And I really want to talk about this description of the mallorn. It's even richer than what we read in Fellowship of the Ring.

[Don Marshall]

And I love this kind of callback because it. It enriches the actual trilogy so much, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah, it's so great. So the leaves were pale green on top, silver beneath that turned to gold in the fall, but didn't come off.

[Alan Sisto]

Then, not in the fall like you'd imagine leaves to do.

[Don Marshall]

The golden blossoms in the clusters that would keep blooming even during the summer, with the leaves falling only when the flowers opened. So we have these silver gray trees with the bark on a sort of single trunk. It's. It's like. It enhances my imagining of Galadriel's land so much more. It's. It's amazing.

[Alan Sisto]

It would have been stunning. And then we get a little bit on the further history of The Malar right seeds were given to Gil Galad by Aldarion, but they couldn't grow in Lindon, so he ended up giving them to Galadriel, where they did manage to grow in her land of Lothlorien. But even there, and we're told those trees are very tall, when the fellowship gets to Lothlorien, they still didn't grow to the height of the ones on Numenor. Now, in the nature of Middle Earth, we actually read that the mallorn grew to a height of almost 600ft. Now that is the height, folks, of a 55 story building. Building. And for reference, the tallest tree on Earth is a coast redwood known as Hyperion, measured at 381ft. So this is significantly taller. More than 200ft taller. Almost 50% taller.

[Don Marshall]

Jack and the Beanstalk is just sitting there getting really jealous right now of Galadriel. This is.

[Alan Sisto]

How big must they be around at the base? I mean, because.

[Don Marshall]

Oh my gosh.

[Alan Sisto]

Have you ever been to the redwoods.

[Don Marshall]

And you see, you can drive cars through.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, there's.

[Don Marshall]

Yeah, I have not been. But like, if you can drive, let's say quick math, 300ft tall, you double that. Essentially, you probably want to double the base as well. So you can drive two SUVs through it. Oh, man.

[Alan Sisto]

Okay, picture this tree, don't picture it. Well, trying to picture its size vertically is difficult. Not a lot of us have references that are 600ft. I mean, that's why I referenced the 55 story building. But not all of us live in an area where we can see a 55 story building. If you were to imagine the tree on its side, which I don't want to imagine, because who would chop down a Malinone that's the length of two football fields end to end? That is insane. That is huge. So, yeah, big, big, big, big trees.

[Don Marshall]

Yeah, love that. Finally, we get a quick line about one of only two rivers on the island. Nunduin, probably meaning western river. Nun, western and Duine, like the Anduin river and the Lake of Nisenen. Fragrant water using the same Nissi element as we saw in Nissimaldar. Fragrant trees.

[Alan Sisto]

Right. And that must have been a beautiful place. Can you imagine hiking on the island of Numenor? This would be a fantastic place to go and explore and backpack for a few months.

[Don Marshall]

Like a paradise almost. It's basically New Zealand, but rounder.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. Or more star shaped. Yeah, true.

[Don Marshall]

All right, Alan, would you like to kick us off for the next part of the Reading?

[Alan Sisto]

I think I would. I'm going to go ahead and read about the next three promontories. The Hyarnu Star was in its western part, a mountainous region with great cliffs on the western and southern coasts. But eastwards were great vineyards in a wood warm and fertile land. The promontories of the Hyarnustar and Hierostar were splayed wide apart, and on those long shores, sea and land came gently together as nowhere else in Numenor. Here flowed down Cyril, the chief river of the land. For all others, save for the Nunduinae in the west were short and swift torrents hurrying to the sea that rose in springs under the Meneltarma in the valley of Neurinan, and running through the Mittalmar southwards, became in its lower course a slow and winding stream. It issued at last into the sea amid wide marshes and reedy flats, and its many small mouths found their changing paths through great sands for many miles. On either side were wide white beaches and gray shingles. And here the fisher folk mostly dwelt in villages upon the hards among the marshes and meres of which the chief was Nindamos. In the Hierostar grew an abundance of trees of many kinds, and among them the Lorinque, in which the people delighted for its flowers, for it had no other use. This name they gave it because of its long hanging clusters of yellow flowers. And some who had heard from the Eldar of Laurelin, the golden tree of Valinor, believed that it came from that great tree being brought in seed thither by the Eldar. But it was not so. From the days of Tar Eldarien there were great plantations in the high Arostar to furnish timber for shipbuilding. The Orostar was a cooler land, but it was protected from the cold northeast winds by highlands that rose towards the end of the promontory and the inner regions of the Orostar. Much grain was grown, especially in those parts near to the borders of Arandor.

[Don Marshall]

So we get three sort of quick paragraphs, one on each of these regions. The Hayarnustar, the Hyara Star and the Orostar. And we will start with the Hyar new Star. This is the southwest promontory. To the west end, it's mountainous. It's got cliffs on the west and the south coast. But towards the Metalmar it's. It's more warm and fertile, where the vineyards are, where they grow wines.

[Alan Sisto]

Exactly. Now picture these two, right? The Hiarnu Star is the southwest, and the one we talked about previously was the Hiatus Star, that's the southeast. So these are the two on the southern end of Numenor. Instead of coming together at a really acute angle, they're at a more obtuse angle. And it creates a more traditional coastline here, a southern coast, and we get the traditional beaches. The rest of the coastlines of the promontories are mostly cliffs, but here we get long white beaches.

[Don Marshall]

Yeah, we need a place to relax and work on your tan while you're basking in the glory of the Eldar's, you know, second helpings. So this particular area where the two meet, this is the more south central portion. This is where the Cyril flows.

[Alan Sisto]

Right. Now, according to the etymologies, that's in the Lost Road and other writings, 5th volume of history of Middle Earth. Cyril is Quenya for rivulet.

[Don Marshall]

Its source is in some springs under the Meneltarma, in the Valley of Tombs that we talked about before. That is the literal meaning of the Norinan.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[Don Marshall]

So since the land here is sort of flatter, it became a much slower river, exiting into the sea at a sort of marshy, flat area.

[Alan Sisto]

Now, not surprisingly, given all that, plus the long sandy beach, this is where the fishermen of Numenor mostly live, most of them in a village called Nindamos, which comes from Nenda, meaning wet. That's cognate with Sindarin, Nin, as in Nindalf, which means wetwang, and Niniak, meaning rainbow, as well as osto. That's where the, the os comes from. Under Ninda, the osto means fortress or stronghold. We see that in places like Armenalas.

[Don Marshall]

Formanos, etc, Then there's the Hiatus Star, the southeastern promontory.

[Alan Sisto]

Right now the land here is more wooded and we get the mention of the Lorinque, a tree that is described here as having long hanging clusters of yellow flowers.

[Don Marshall]

Yeah, and some people thought that it was descended from Laurelin. So why do they think that? Because in of the beginning of days, we see that laurelin bore leaves of a young green, like the new opened beach. Their edges were of glittering gold. Flowers swung upon her branches in clusters of yellow flame formed, each to a glowing horn that spilled a golden rain upon the ground. And from the blossom of that tree came forth warmth and a great light.

[Alan Sisto]

And if this sounds familiar, it's because we talked about a similar Tree in episode 319 last year. We mentioned this earlier, the cool Kulumalda tree, which showed up at the field of Cormalin in Tolkien's unfinished index to the Lord of the Rings. He defined Kormalin, which means golden circle, from cor meaning ring and malen, meaning golden, as a region in Ithilien, originally called after the laburnum that grew there. So the larynque sounds a lot like the laburnum, which is called the Kullumalda tree, giving its name to the golden circle of Cormalin. Come full circle, full golden search.

[Don Marshall]

There it is. And this is great because we have a little bit of an interesting extra, because in the Nature of Middle Earth, we read that there were also walnut trees in the Hiara Star. If you can.

[Alan Sisto]

The Nature of Middle Earth is a really interesting section. There's two or three chapters on Numenor that are really worth it. We're going to come back to it for sure later on in this episode. Now we get the very brief paragraph on the Orostar. That's the eastern promontory. Like the Forestar, it gets sort of short shrift. It's colder. It's protected from the worst of the cold weather by highlands that are located at the end of the peninsula, and that enabled them to grow grain in the inner portion.

[Don Marshall]

Now, going back to the nature of Middle Earth, we actually read that those highlands grew to a height of 2100ft near the northeastern edge. So definitely very high, given that the Men Al Tarma itself is only 3,000ft high. So you're very close there.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, not bad at all. Now, speaking of the nature of Middle Earth, this is as good a place as any to go back to it and talk about a lot more trees in Numenor. In general, I just had you mention the walnut trees, because the only place they're mentioned is in the Hayatostar. But here we're going to read from the Nature of Middle Earth of the native trees and plants. Little is recorded, though some trees were brought in seed or scion from Middle Earth, and others, as has been said, came from Eressea. There seems to have been an abundance of timber when the Edain landed of trees already known to them. It is said that they missed the hornbeam, the small maple and the flowering chestnut, but found others that were new to them. The wych elm, the holm oak, tall maples, and the sweet chestnut. In the Hierostar, they found also walnuts and the lorinque, which we talked about earlier. Wild apples, apple, cherry and pear also grew in Numenor, but those that they grew in their orchards came from Middle Earth gifts from the Eldar. In the Hyarnustar, the vine grew wild, but the grapevines of the Numenoreans seem also to have come from the Eldar. Of the many plants and flowers of field and wood, little is now recorded or remembered. But old songs speak often of the lilies, the many kinds of which, some small, some tall and fair, some single bloomed, some hung with many bells and trumpets, and all fragrant were the delight of the edain. All those lilies. That sounds beautiful.

[Don Marshall]

I'm getting a lot of the. I'm seeing a lot of the inspiration for that Rings of Power scene in season one when they're sending Galadriel on the boat back and these flowers are just everywhere and everyone's hair and blowing through the wind and it, it feels as if you're walking through a forest when you read stuff like this.

[Alan Sisto]

It's really, really lovely. And we're going to come back and talk more. Probably not so much about flowers, but about birds, horses and dancing bears after the break. Now, folks, if you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the PPP by joining the Fellowship of the Podcast. It's what gives me the ability to work on making this show better every year. And when you join, you get the best discord community around, and that includes live episode recordings, hangouts with the hosts every month. You also get episode post scripts, you can get ad free episodes, free merch and more.

[Don Marshall]

You can also become part of our, or my favorite part of this whole thing, questions after nightfall. Or you can even join us as a guest in the north wing. So Please go to patreon.com prancingponypod to show your support and join the Fellowship of the Podcast.

[Alan Sisto]

Thank you. And you can always help us out by giving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts rating on Spotify. And please recommend us to your friends. All right, well, Don, would you go ahead and read the next passage for us?

[Don Marshall]

I would love to. The whole land of Numenor was so posed, as if it had been thrust upward out of the sea, but tilted southward and a little eastward, and save upon the south. The land in nearly all places fell towards the sea in steep cliffs in Numenor. Birds that dwelt near the sea and swim or dive in it, abode in multitudes beyond reckoning. The mariners said that were they blind, they would still know that their ship was drawing near to Numenor because of the great clamor of the birds of the shore. And when any ship approached the land, sea birds in great flocks would arise and fly above it in welcome and gladness, for they were never killed or molested by intent Some would accompany ships on their voyages, even those that went to Middle Earth. Likewise, within the lands, the birds of Numenor were beyond count. From the Kirinki that was no bigger than Arryn, but all scarlet with piping voice on the edge of human hearing, to the great eagles that were held sacred to Manwe and never afflicted until the days of evil and the hatred of the Valar began. For 2,000 years, from the days of Elros Tar Minyatar until the time of Tar Ankaliman, son of Tar Atanamir, there was an eyrie in the summit of the tower of the king's palace in Armenelos, and there one pair ever dwelt and lived on the bounty of the king in Numenor all journeyed from place to place on horseback, for in riding the Numenoreans, both men and women took delight. And all the people of the land loved horses, treating them honorably and housing them nobly. They were trained to hear and answer calls from a great distance. And it is said in old tales that where there was great love between men and women and their favorite steeds, they could be summoned at need by thought alone. Therefore the roads of Numenor were for the most part unpaved, made and tended for riding, since coaches and carriages were little used in the earlier centuries, and the heavy cargoes were borne by sea. The chief and most ancient road suitable for wheels ran from the greatest port, Romenna in the east, to the royal city of Armenelos, and thence to the Valley of the Tombs and the Meneltarma. And this road was early extended to Ondosto, within the border of the Phorostar, and thence to Andunie in the west. Along it passed Wanes, bearing stones from the Northlands that was most esteemed for building and timber, in which the Westlands were rich. The Edain brought with them from Numenor the knowledge of many crafts and many craftsmen who had learned from the Eldar, besides preserving lore and traditions of their own. But they could bring with them few materials, save for the tools of their craft, and for long all metals in Numenor were precious metals. They brought with them many treasures of gold and silver and gems also. But they did not find these things in Numenor. They loved them for their beauty, and it was this love that first aroused in them cupidity in later days, when they fell under the shadow and became proud and unjust in their dealings with the lesser folk of Middle Earth, of the elves of Eressea, in the days of Their friendship. They had at times gifts of gold and silver and jewels, but such things were rare and prized in all the earlier centuries, until the power of the kings was spread to the coasts of the East.

[Alan Sisto]

Thank you, Don. So at the beginning of that, we get a recap of how the coastline is mostly cliffs, except for that southern coast we talked about earlier with the long white beaches. And then we're told about the seabirds, how they abode in multitudes beyond reckoning. There were so many that even a blind mariner would know they were approaching Numenor because of the sound of the birds. And all I can think of is the seagulls from Finding Nemo and worse. Just billions of these things.

[Don Marshall]

Oh, I need someone to draw that or Photoshop it together. With just Rings of Power on the boat, there's Elendil and Miriel and then just a bunch of Pixar seagulls.

[Alan Sisto]

Or we could redo season one. That shot when Galadriel jumps off the boat and there are birds that accompany the ship to. Yeah.

[Don Marshall]

Oh, stay tuned for my re edit of Rings of Power, where I just add in a bunch of memes if.

[Alan Sisto]

You want to live. Get in my mouth.

[Don Marshall]

No, that's the monster that ate that raft thing.

[Alan Sisto]

Right?

[Don Marshall]

Right, yeah, exactly. All right, we carry on about the birds. The birds would approach the ships because no one killed them or bothered them. Some even come on them to the voyages to Middle Earth, which, you know, good on you. The birds of the inland were also so numerous, we get one breed name as well. We get the Kirinki.

[Alan Sisto]

That's right. Now, Tolkien doesn't give us the meaning of Karinki, but it has been suggested that it could be based on the root kir, which means cut or cleave it. It's actually the same root as in Kirith, like a cleft or a pass. But it also means shave, skim, or glide quickly and follow that with the ink diminutive ending. So something like little cutter or little skimmer. Something like that.

[Don Marshall]

We of course get the eagles mentioned sacred to Manwe. They're a big deal. And the Numenoreans were smart enough until much later when the evil days were there. Smart enough to leave them alone for the most part. We also learn about the eagles nests on top of the tower of the king's palace until the days of of Tar an Kaliman. This is the 14th king of Numenor under whose reign that was the rift between the king's men and the faithful. It grew much wider and they eventually stopped using The Elvish Quenya.

[Alan Sisto]

That's correct. Now, then there's the horses. Everybody on this island was an equestrian. I mean, this was, you know, just. Everybody rode horses.

[Don Marshall]

Yeah. It's a cultural thing. And I think I'll give props to the visual representations of Tolkien. Horses always play a huge part in any adaptation of Middle Earth. And they're treated well. They're trained to respond from great distances. Apparently, being able to be summoned by thought alone kind of brings to mind a little bit Gandalf and Shadowfax, certainly from the text.

[Alan Sisto]

I know in the movie, everybody's familiar with Gandalf's sort of bizarre whistle, that thing. And then Shadowfax shows up. But, you know, in the text, we know that they're separated by some 300 miles. I don't care how loud Gandalf can whistle. It's not an audible thing.

[Don Marshall]

You know, it's a magical kind of whistle that blows through the wind and the trees and the mountains and the forests.

[Alan Sisto]

And the decibel level is so high that anybody within 100 yards of the initial sound is blown to smithereens. Yeah, yeah.

[Don Marshall]

Treebeard needs hearing aids now. Actually, I don't know if you heard.

[Alan Sisto]

Now, speaking of horses being treated well, I'm going to look at a quote from the Nature of Middle Earth. I really like this. Just a little simple line. The stables of a great man were often as large and as fair to look upon as his own house. That definitely tells you horses were very, very important.

[Don Marshall]

Yep.

[Alan Sisto]

This does bring me, though, to a footnote in the disaster of the Gladden Fields, where we are reminded about how the Numenoreans esteemed their horses but didn't necessarily use them in what? War, in fact, specifically, we're told that. But they did not use them in war, for all their wars were overseas. I'm just now picturing the idea of actually Numenorean cavalry being shipped over to rings of Power, but I'm gonna leave that alone. The text in the disaster, the Gladdenfields footnote adds, in war in Middle Earth, horses were used only by couriers and by bodies of light, armed archers, often not of Numenorean race. So sort of like Allied forces and, you know. Yeah, agile.

[Don Marshall]

So we've got the equestrian country. This countryside road.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, yeah.

[Don Marshall]

Stays a dirt road for riding because, you know, they. They shipped all of their heavy stuff by boat.

[Alan Sisto]

Right. Why not?

[Don Marshall]

So we. We don't even need it. But then there was a road basically fit for wheels and carts running from the eastern port of the Ronna to the capital of Armenelos, then past the mountains to a city on the northern promontory called On Dosto before turning west to Adun.

[Alan Sisto]

Right now, this road is how they moved building materials around, mostly by wagon. You'd have stone coming from Rocky Forostar, you'd have timber coming from the Andussar and High Arnustar. So just a commercial trucking road, really, in a way.

[Don Marshall]

Basically. Basically. Before we move on to the crafts portion, though, I want to bring in just some more from the nature of Middle Earth on animals. Yes. First, just like men get along with the seabirds, it is the same with a lot of other animals. Beasts and birds had no fear of men, and the relations of men and animals remained more friendly in Numenor than anywhere else in the world. It is said that even those that the Numenoreans classed as predatory, by which they mean those that would at need raid their crops and tame cattle, remained on honorable terms with the newcomers, seeking their food so far as they could in the wild and showing no hostility towards men.

[Alan Sisto]

I love this, and I love what this reveals about Tolkien. I mean, yeah, he was such a nature guy and the fact that he was sort of describing this almost as a paradise. Right? I mean, it was mankind as it should have been, you know, in the sense that, yeah, this is the ideal. Now, of course, the ideal gets destroyed because man has fallen. But it's so interesting to see that for a time at least, they were able to live in peace with all the animals here. Speaking of the animals, we learned that there were no native dogs, hounds or wolves. Now, they did bring dogs with them, and that's a later point, but there were wild cats. Now, there were no large cats like mountain lions or anything. I'm thinking maybe something as large as a lynx. It just says wild cats, but no large cats. So I can't imagine anything particularly big, but that there were foxes, and the foxes hunted creatures called Lopoldi. And that's where I'm going to read from the text. These existed in large numbers and multiplied swiftly and were voracious herbivores. I'm sorry, herbivores. So that the foxes were esteemed as the best and most natural way of keeping them in order. And foxes were seldom hunted or molested in return or because their food supply was otherwise abundant. The foxes seem never to have acquired the habit of preying upon the domestic fowl of the Numenoreans. The Leopoldi would appear to have been rabbits, animals which had been quite unknown before in the northwestern regions of Middle Earth. And I just want to say before we go on, from a country that historically had fox hunts as a big thing, as a cultural and, and sort of status symbol sort of thing, I love that he made the explicit point that foxes were seldom hunted or molested.

[Don Marshall]

Yeah. And it's, it's cool to see Tolkien just sort of say, well, how does everybody eat? Is everybody a vegetarian? No, no, no. I have these sort of made up ones, these, these, you know, creatures because, you know, what do, what do foxes eat? Well, tiny little creatures. And then the squirrels.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[Don Marshall]

Rabbits. And the squirrels, though, are said to have abounded in the woods. Badgers were numerous. Black swine lived in the forest. There were herds of wild cows as well as deer. We've got plenty of animals filling out this Disney Princess Island.

[Alan Sisto]

Plenty of game for people to eat, Correct.

[Don Marshall]

Exactly. We even read about the presence of beavers and seals and some sort of. Yeah, yeah. Also. Right.

[Alan Sisto]

All the cliffs, I mean, I can see them kind of, especially along the northern and eastern ones that are sort of more remote and rugged. I can see a bunch of sea.

[Don Marshall]

Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

Seal and sea lion, you know, places for them to hang out. Yeah.

[Don Marshall]

All that kind of craziness. Yeah. We do get a sort of almost hedgehog like creature called the E, along with some wild goats and small horses that the children would use for riding.

[Alan Sisto]

Now that's interesting. I, I, that makes me think that the horses that the Numenoreans had would have been horses that they brought over and that the native horses were the smaller brood breed.

[Don Marshall]

Oh, see, I, I took that as the Eldar bringing horses.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, maybe.

[Don Marshall]

I don't know if that's. Yeah, that's possible. Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

Either way, we all know what you're here for. You're not here for the wild goats. You're not even here for the Achilles. Though all of us love hedgehog creatures, so why wouldn't we? You're here for the dancing bears. So let's get to it. Right. There were a large number of bears in the rockier portions of the island, with black bears living mostly in the forestar. Now, these bears showed a curiosity towards men and a friendship. There was never hostility between them.

[Don Marshall]

We read that quote. Many of the bears were quite tame. They never dwelt in or near the homes of men. But they would often visit them in a casual manner of one householder calling upon another. At such times, they were often offered honey to their delight.

[Alan Sisto]

Isn't it funny how a bear likes honey? Buzz, buzz, buzz. I wonder why he Does. Well, then of course, we get the dancing bears. It's what you're all here for. It's the. The information from the nature of Middle Earth. And this is where we read. Most strange of all were the bear dances. The bears, the black bears especially, had curious dances of their own, but these seem to have become improved and elaborated by the instruction of men. At times, the bears would perform dances for the entertainment of their human friends. The most famous was the great bear dance, Roxuale of Tompole in the Forest Star, to which every year in the autumn, many would come from all parts of the island, since it occurred not long after the Eruhantele, at which a great concourse was assembled to those not accustomed to the bears. The slow but dignified motions of the bears, sometimes as many as 50 or more together, appeared astonishing and comic. But it was understood by all, admitted to the spectacle, that there should be no open laughter. The laughter of men was a sound that the bears could not understand. It alarmed and angered them. And that makes me wonder just how ugly was the first time they discovered this fact.

[Don Marshall]

Here's what I'm thinking.

[Alan Sisto]

Got eaten up because he got laughed. He's laughing at the bears. Oh, no. I guess we better put up a sign.

[Don Marshall]

I'm picturing. I'm Picturing Tolkien and C.S. lewis and the rest of the Inkling sitting down at the pub. Yeah, Just really drunk one night, just hit the ale a little too hard.

[Alan Sisto]

Dancing bears.

[Don Marshall]

Tolkien goes up to C.S. lewis and goes, clive, Clive, listen, listen, I have an idea. Listen to me. Hear me out, hear me out, hear me out. You know how you've got the whole Narnia thing, I want that a little bit. And they go back and forth and they have this argument about should Tolkien include dance. You know what? I'm gonna make a TikTok about it. It might already be published by the time you're listening to this.

[Alan Sisto]

There you go.

[Don Marshall]

The dancing bears. This is as pure Tolkien, C.S. lewis shenanigans as I have ever heard it before.

[Alan Sisto]

It is great. Yeah. I love this and I love that it is. The bears put on this dance for their friends. This isn't like men training bears in a circus setting and, you know, imprisoning them and forcing them to perform this in order to get food. These are bears who willingly put on a performance for their friends. Just don't laugh at us.

[Don Marshall]

Yeah, that's the idea.

[Alan Sisto]

Never laugh at a live bear.

[Don Marshall]

Yeah, don't laugh at a bear. I do want to get your take on this though, Alan, because I have for a while. I have very little evidence to back this up other than this passage in my mind. These bears are somewhat more sentient. And it could potentially be argued that just like Noah from the Bible, if you bring some animals with you when you're fleeing your island nation, would those somewhat sentient bears possibly shape shifting people that just weren't quite with the.

[Alan Sisto]

I see. Could these bears be related in some way to.

[Don Marshall]

I'm just saying we've got, we've got a track record of sentient bear like people that can shape shift. I just wonder if these are maybe the ancestors of.

[Alan Sisto]

Evolved into the ability to. Actually, the thing is though, I think the Beornings are humans who can shapeshift into bears, not bears who can shapeshift into humans. I do think it is definitely representative of Tolkien's really sort of admiration and sort of almost respect for or love of bears. I mean, I think.

[Don Marshall]

Oh yeah, it's like a reverence.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, reverence is a great word for it. And I think that this is symbolic of that. I don't know if the two are directly connected. I like that Headcanon. I don't know if I can subscribe it, but I like it. How's that? Fair, Fair.

[Don Marshall]

Fair enough. I appreciate it. I don't. Don't take my head cannons too seriously. I've written far too many what if scenarios.

[Alan Sisto]

I mean, this is your third stint on the show. I know better by now.

[Don Marshall]

Now, yeah, yeah, yeah. At a certain point we do have to stop, but we go back to unfinished tales because we do learn a little bit about the crafts of the men of Numenor. Many of them were learned from the elves, kind of as apprentices almost. Still, they couldn't bring much with them beyond the tools of their craft. So all of the metals on the island became very precious.

[Alan Sisto]

And that makes sense. I mean, again, they're not going to be able to load up their ships with a bunch of copper and tin and, you know, iron and all of this. They're only going to be able to access what they find there. They did have some treasures of gold and silver, jewels and things like that, but there were none of these in Numenor. And I want to talk a little bit about how the island seem to be so perfect in so many ways. We talked about animals getting along with people. We've talked about all the beautiful trees, the weather being perfect in the sense that there are places of the island that can grow vineyard vines, places that can grow wheat, places that grow all these trees all the arable land, and yet not a lot of what we might say, purely economic resources. You know, there's not a lot of ore, there's not a lot of metals. I'm thinking almost in Sid Meier civilization terms, right?

[Don Marshall]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

There's no place to mine or quarry. There are forests and there are lots of farmlands, but there's not a lot of things that you could than trade with others, you know?

[Don Marshall]

Yeah. I definitely think that Tolkien gets a lot of his inspiration from the natural world and the respect of that and the sort of economics of it all. You know, we don't really care about Aragorn's tax plan, George R.R. martin. But we do. We do kind of see, like, all right, what is it like when humans do quite literally just live in harmony with nature? And for Tolkien, you know, this is great. This is awesome. We don't need capitalism here. Of course, that exists. There's trade and back and forth and all that.

[Alan Sisto]

I mean, we find out about the various guilds that I have to say, Rings of Power did a good job kind of drawing on that. Yeah. It's interesting because, of course, Tolkien does talk about the value of these metals. You know, we. We read a lot about the Smiths and how important they were. We're talking about like, you know, the First Age Smiths or even. Even Aule, of course, the. Essentially the God of the Smiths. So it's just interesting to me that Numenor doesn't have a lot of these, at least not in this particular version or vision of Numenor that he. He drew at the stage that we were writing in nature. Middle Earth.

[Don Marshall]

Yeah, we, we have so much that is. That is readily available, but we don't have, you know, these treasures that were rare and valuable. This, the. The metals that were there. All of these things are so valuable. And they do eventually lead to the greed.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[Don Marshall]

Of it all, once they fell sort of under the shadow.

[Alan Sisto]

I do want to say one thing. I like the word that he used for that. He said that this first aroused in them cupidity. That is a really interesting word. It is, of course, greed. That's what it means. But it's an interesting word because I think to us, many of us, when we, we hear cupidity, we hear cupid and we think of, you know, the silly little cherub on Valentine's Day cards. That's not at all what we're talking about here. We are talking about greed. And the presence of these things did lead to greed once they fell into the shadow.

[Don Marshall]

All right. Speaking of medals, Allan, do you want to discuss some medals in the next portion of the read?

[Alan Sisto]

I do, I do. I want to talk about some heavy metals. No, we'll talk about, you know, the. That's actually maybe the genre of music that the witnesses of Manwe play. I think they're shredding. Yeah, all right.

[Don Marshall]

Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

Some metals they found in Numenor. And as they're cunning in mining and in smelting and smithying swiftly grew. Goodness, I didn't notice this until just now. Did you catch that alliteration?

[Don Marshall]

Yeah. Smelting and smithing and smithying swiftly grew.

[Alan Sisto]

Things of iron and copper became common. Among the rights of the Edain were weaponsmiths, and they had, with the teaching of the Noldor, acquired great skill in the forging of swords, of axe blades, and of spearheads and knives. Swords the guild of weaponsmiths still made for the preservation of the craft, though most of their labor was spent on the fashioning of tools for the uses of peace. The king and most of the great chieftains possessed swords as heirlooms of their fathers, and at times they would still give a sword as a gift to their heirs. A new sword was made for the king's heir to be given to him on the day on which this title was conferred. But no man wore a sword in Numenor, and for long years. Few indeed were the weapons of warlike intent that were made in the land. Axes and spears and bows they had. And shooting with bows on foot and on horseback was a chief sport and pastime of the Numenoreans. In later days, in the wars upon Middle Earth, it was the bows of the Numenoreans that were most greatly feared. The men of the sea, it was said, send before them a great cloud, and as a rain turned to serpents, or a black hail tipped with steel. And in those days, the great cohorts of the king's archers used bows made of hollow steel with black feathered arrows a full ell long from point to notch. But for long the crews of the great Numenorean ships came unarmed among the men of Middle Earth. And though they had axes and bows aboard, reward for the felling of timber and the hunting for food upon wild shores owned by no man, they did not bear these when they sought out the men of the lands. It was indeed their grievance when the shadow crept along the coasts and men whom they had befriended became afraid or hostile, that iron was used against them by those to whom they had revealed. It beyond all other pursuits. The strong men of Numenor took delight in the sea, in swimming, in diving, or in small craft, for contests of speed, in rowing or sailing. The hardiest of the people were the fisherfolk. Fish were abundant all about the coasts and were at all times a chief source of food in Numenor. And all the towns where many people congregated were set by the shores. From the fisher folk were mostly drawn the mariners, who, as the years passed, grew greatly in importance and esteem. It is said that when the Edain first set sail upon the great sea following the star to Numenor, the elvish ships that bore them were each steered and captained by one of the Eldar, deputed by Cirdan, and after the Elvish steersmen departed and took with them the most part of their ships. It was long before the Numenoreans themselves ventured far to sea. But there were shipwrights among them who had been instructed by the Eldar, and by their own study and devices they improved their art until they dared to sail ever further into the deep waters. When 600 years had passed from the beginning of the second age, Veantur, Captain of the king's ships under Tar Elendil, first achieved the voyage to Middle Earth. He brought his ship Entulese, which signifies return, into Mithlond on the spring winds blowing from the west, and he returned in the autumn of the following year. Thereafter, seafaring became the chief enterprise for daring and hardihood among the men of Numenor. And Aldarion, son of Meneldor, whose wife was Vaantor's daughter, formed the Guild of Venturers, in which were joined all the tried mariners of Numenor, as is told in the tale that follows.

[Don Marshall]

Here attached a little to the bit about crafts from the previous section. We learn that they did find some medals in Numenor, even if they didn't have a lot of gold and silver. So iron and copper were at least common, leading to weaponsmiths crafting with great skill the swords and the other weapons.

[Alan Sisto]

I love the mention here of the Guild of Weaponsmiths. And like I said earlier, I just want to give a little shout out to Rings of Power to choosing to go with the idea of guilds in Numenor.

[Don Marshall]

And even though this guild made weapons, most of their time was spent making tools for times of peace.

[Alan Sisto]

Right now, of course, the king and the lords would possess heirloom quality swords and would give swords as gifts to their heirs, including a new sword forged for the king's heir. Every time that they were going to be getting their title. So on the day that he or she, the king's heir was sometimes, you know, would be one of the ruling queens, later would earn that title, they would get a sword. But nobody wore a sword in the land. I thought that was very interesting. You're given a sword, you have that sword, but you don't wear wear it around. It's just, there's no point to that. You don't carry a weapon of war in your city, in your town. There's just no reason for it. So nobody wears a sword in the land. And weapons of war at least, were the exception rather than the rule. The weapons that they had were for hunting, you know, axes and spears and bows.

[Don Marshall]

Exactly. And in the nature of Middle Earth we read a bit more. But no man wore a sword in Numenor, not even in the days of the wars in Middle Earth, unless he was actually armed for battle. Thus for long there were practically no weapons of warlike intent made in Numenor. Many things made could of course be so used. Axes and spears and bows. The bowyers were a great craft. They made bows of many kinds, long bows and smaller bows, especially those used for shooting from horseback. And they also devised crossbows, at first used mainly against predatory birds. Shooting with bows was one of the great sports and pastimes of men and one in which young women also took part.

[Alan Sisto]

I love that. So we're about to talk about those famous Numenorean bows. But before we do, I want to go back to this bit about the king and his sword. We read in a footnote that the king of Numenor's sword quote was indeed Aronruth, the sword of Elu Thingol of Doriath in Belerian that had descended to Elros from Elwing his mother. I love that. That his sword was Thingol's sword, Aronruth. Remember when he. When he says, I'll give you anything you. Any sword you want, except for Arinruth, my own. And he ends up taking Guru Thang, though I don't remember that it was named that at the time. I can't recall off the top of my head what it was called then. But that same footnote gives us a list of other incredible heirlooms that the men of Numenor once held. I mean, it's mind blowing. You've got the Ring of Baada here. The great acts of Tuar Dramboleg, which means Thuddershot. I love that ax.

[Don Marshall]

It's a great name.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. I mean, just amazing. And of course, they had the axe of Tuor, because Tuor was the father of Ayl Rendell. And then we also have the Bow of Bregor of the House of Beor. Such a cool collection of artifacts. Yeah.

[Don Marshall]

And it's really just like a who's who of everything they have in the armor. Marie. And of course, only the Ring of Barahir would survive the downfall here because it was given by Tar Elendil to his daughter Silmarian, who founded the line of the Lords of Andunier. And Elendil was the last of those lords. We talked a little bit about that during the questions after nightfall. Just a couple.

[Alan Sisto]

That's right. I remember you asking, didn't the acts of tour survive? And we had to look it up, like, nope, nope, it did not survive. Dramberleg went down with Numenor itself.

[Don Marshall]

Sorry, I know.

[Alan Sisto]

Let's get back to those bows. Right. We're told that the bowmen of the Numenoreans were most greatly feared because they could shoot these massive arrows a full ell long. Now, I looked up what an l is. It's 45 inches. We're talking about an arrow that's nearly four feet long. And it's being shot from bows made out of hollow steel. No wonder people.

[Don Marshall]

Sorry, Bard the Bowman. We've got some actual arrows.

[Alan Sisto]

Seriously, these are massive bows and massive arrows. But that makes some sense. Remember, a lot of these Numenorean men are going to be six and a half, seven foot tall. I mean, Elendil was over eight foot tall. Elendil. Because he was also named Elendil the Tall. So. Yeah, but, but still six and a half, seven foot. I think the average man. The average man was something like six foot four. Four, six foot five. So you're going to have a lot of seven footers. Of course they're going to have super long arrows. This makes sense.

[Don Marshall]

Yeah, yeah. It works within the lore that Tolkien has built. And there is also a bit of. In the Disaster of the Gladden Fields, about the Orcs coming in a wide front, being silent, and then keeping out of the range of the dreaded steel bows of Numenor. And the footnote to that brings us right back to this passage here. So in the nature of Middle Earth, we read even more about these mighty bows. The Numenorean men, being tall and powerful, could shoot with speed and accuracy upon foot from great longbows whose shafts would carry a great distance, some 600 yards or more, and at lesser range were of great penetration in the later days in the wars upon Middle Earth, it was the bows of the Numenoreans that were most greatly feared.

[Alan Sisto]

I can understand why. I mean, what a range advantage that would give you in battle. 600 yards. Now that's a long way. At first I have to admit I thought that seemed totally impossible. Almost like the 600 foot tall trees. Almost like a violation of the laws of physics. That's six football field. That's more than a third of a mile, more than half a kilometer. But it turns out I. That's actually quite possible. The world record for a bow shot is over 1800 meters. Now that was shot with a foot bow. So they're able to use their legs to pull this thing back. The longest for a recurve bow is over 1200 meters. Same with a compound bow, also over 1200 meters. In my research though, I found that late medieval composite Mongol war bows could shoot 550 meters, which is 600 yards. So it is certainly conceivable that these Numenorean steel bows could shoot that distance. Now accuracy at that range is questionable in, in terms of like one archer hitting one target at 600 yards. But if you've got an entire unit of archers shooting 4 foot long steel tipped arrows over that distance, accuracy isn't super important. You just don't want to be anywhere near where those arrows land.

[Don Marshall]

Yeah, just be on the opposite side of the battlefield to where those arrows are.

[Alan Sisto]

That is terrifying. Ra rain like they said. What was it? Hail, Black hail or something like that. I mean that's absolutely terrifying. The black hail tipped with steel. Yeah, yeah.

[Don Marshall]

Don't like it at all. We return to the text and we see that at first, at least, the men of Numenor came to Middle Earth unarmed.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[Don Marshall]

But you know, equipped with axes to fell timber and bows to kill game for food. But, but when Sauron stirred and the Shadow moved north, the inhabitants of that land got a little bit hostile and used weapons against the Numenoreans.

[Alan Sisto]

And you know, we will cover a lot more on that and the whole kind of interaction between the Numenoreans and the residents, you know, the, the native men of Middle Earth at that point. Next season when we go more in depth to Aldarian and Arendus and things like that, but we're going to move on for now to the water activities because that's what the text tells us. We get into things like the swimming, the diving, the rowing, sailing and fishing. Surprised?

[Don Marshall]

So am I. No, not really. Not really a shock for an island country to be focused on these kinds of activities. We learn about things like the fishermen and how the coastal towns were populated and then ended up providing the bulk of the mariners of Numenor.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, tough guys. And also not afraid of the water. We also get a brief insight into the history of the seamanship of the Numenoreans. Now, originally they came over on ships captained by the Eldar, trained by Cirdan, of course. Because the coolest Elf would be involved in this.

[Don Marshall]

Yeah, yeah, of course he would. I mean, the.

[Alan Sisto]

The.

[Don Marshall]

The Elf's been involved in. In so much, he can't say.

[Alan Sisto]

Cirdan is just beyond cool. Yeah.

[Don Marshall]

After they get to Numenor and the Elvis shifts are left, the men of Numenor didn't venture far to sea for quite some time. Takes about 600 years before they make their first first voyage back to Middle Earth under Vantor.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. Now, after that, sailing became the thing for men. So much so that Aldarian, the grandson of Veontur, formed the guild of Venturers, as I spent so much time talking about in Aldarian and Arendus on today's Tolkien Times. Long run of Second Age Saturday episodes.

[Don Marshall]

Yes. Back to how they got there, though. On these Elvis ships were captained by elves. We had a really cool bit in the nature of Middle Earth that we want to share. The legends of the foundation of Numenor often speak as if all the Adain that accepted the gift set sail at one time and in one fleet. But this is only due to the brevity of the narrative. In more detailed histories, it is related, as might be deduced from the events and numbers concerned, that after the first expedition led by Elros, many other ships alone or in small fleets came west bearing others of the Edain. Either those who were at first reluctant to dare the great sea, but could not endure to be parted from those that had gone, or some who were far scattered and could not be assembled to go with the first sailing. Since the boats that were used were of Elvish model fleet, but small, and each steered and captained by one of the Eldar deputed by Cirdon, it would have taken a great navy to transport all the people and goods that were eventually brought from Middle Earth to Numenor.

[Alan Sisto]

Great navy indeed. Well, how great the text in nature Middle Earth continues. The legends make no guess at the numbers, and the histories say little. The fleet of Elros is said to have contained many ships, according to some 150 vessels, to others two or 300, and to have brought thousands of the men, women and Children of the edain, probably between 5,000 or at the most 10,000. But the whole process of migration appears, in fact, to have occupied at least 50 years, possibly longer, and finally ended only when Ciridan, no doubt instructed by the Valar, would provide no more ships or guides. In that time, the number of the Edain that crossed the sea must have been very great, though small in proportion. Proportion to the extent of the island, probably some 180,000 square miles. Guesses vary between 200,000 and 350,000 people.

[Don Marshall]

Wow. By the way, that's 180,000 square miles. It's really close to the one that Karen Win Fonstad estimated long before this text would have been available. This is way back in 1981. She estimated that Numenor was 167,691 square miles, which is just about 7% off. So props to you, Karen Winfonstadt. That's great, man.

[Alan Sisto]

That Atlas of Middle Earth, super helpful. Now, that number, by the way, the 180,000 square miles would make Numenor 40 times larger than the Big island of Hawaii, almost five times the size of Iceland, and actually bigger in land area than the combined size of the British Isles, which make up about 122,000 square miles. So actually a full third larger, or actually 50% larger. You take the 122 square. 122,000 square miles of the British Isles, what's half of that? About 60,000. Add that, you got 180,000. That's how big Numenor was. Huge.

[Don Marshall]

Good Lord.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[Don Marshall]

That's insane that someone can just do that based on the math. Sorry, I'm just having a. I'm just having a freak out.

[Alan Sisto]

This is how long they were. Like, if you know that there's a line that if you draw lines from the end of one peninsula to the end of another, and crossing the middle, you've got 700 miles. And you know how big the middle section is. It really is just a math exercise. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Don Marshall]

It's amazing what folks can do. Tolkien goes on to write that the original 200 to 350,000 folks become not much more than 2 million even after a thousand years.

[Alan Sisto]

That is slow growth. I mean, when you think about a thousand years and you're talking about anywhere from six to 10 times the population, writing in a footnote that this growth was slow even though there wasn't much disease and they rarely died by misadventure because of the long lives of the Numenoreans, in which they produced few children, or specifically less than 4 to each possible marriageable pair. That's why the growth was slow.

[Don Marshall]

Yep. So that population grew later, though, as by the time of the down fall, which would have been second age year 3319, or more than 2000 years after, the population was 2 million. Tolkien says that the population of Numenor itself may have been as many as 15 million. That is a lot of people.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, it is a lot of people to lose in the downfall of Numenor. Yeah, the pace sounds right. I mean, if you go from, let's say it was 200,000, becomes 2 million people in a thousand years, then that's a tenfold increase in a thousand years. Then 2,000 years later, you go from 2 million to 15 million. That's only an 8, not even an 8 times growth. So, yeah, I mean, that's just how it's going to work. But at 15 million people, it is a lot of people to lose in the downfall of Numenor thanks to Pharazon's foolishness and pride. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Don Marshall]

All right.

[Alan Sisto]

Well, thereafter, seafaring became the chief enterprise, enterprise for daring and hardihood among the men of Numenor, just like tending bar became the chief enterprise for fat innkeepers who only remember their own names because they're shouted at them all day. Don, what does Barliman have for us tonight?

[Don Marshall]

All right, so today's question is rightly about Numenor. This one comes to us from James in Iowa. With so much going on in Numenor, do you think that Numenor falls to corruption even without Sauron's influence? Does the strife of the Civil war and Tolkien's human character, characters so easily falling to darkness, make it so that Numenor falls no matter what happens?

[Alan Sisto]

You know, that's the thing. I did just talk about Ar Pharazon's foolishness and pride, and obviously that was the trigger. But it does appear that after the. Certainly after Tara Tanamir, that with the split in the Kingsmen and the faithful and the, you know, persecution of the faithful, it was always going to end that way. It was always going to end that way. The question is when? And, you know, sort of how. How steeply that fall would come. Right. Do I believe that they would have built a temple to Morgoth, burned the White Tree, and sacrificed humans to essentially the devil? No, probably not. But they still would have ended up. I mean, Tara Tonamir himself was the one who said to the messengers from the Valar, is this not our Right. You know, should we not be able to go do this? This is, you know, what about my forefather, Earendil? He's over there. You know, I mean, they already believed that immortality was theirs by right, that it was their thing to take. They just none of them had the guts to do it until Sauron came along and kept poking Pharazon. You know, what does he say? Something about, you know, a king takes what's his right.

[Don Marshall]

Yes.

[Alan Sisto]

Eventually that's going to happen, whether it's our Farazan or whether it's his sons or his son's sons. Probably not Kevin. Yeah, probably not Kevin. I mean, he's got so much cowardice that the only way he can kill Valandil is to stab him in the back. Spoilers. But come on, by the time this episode airs, if you haven't seen the season of Rings of Power, I, I can't even apologize because this episode comes out October 20th and the show ended quite, quite some weeks ago sometime. Yeah, no, I, I, I do think eventually, in a way, in a way the fact that it happened when it did. I mean, I'm just going to come back to shall prove. But mine instrument. Right. I mean, this is the thing. If it had happened later and they had just kept persecuting the faithful, persecuting the faithful until there weren't any left and the ones that were had made it to the coast of Middle Earth, as many of them had done, would they have been able to establish a kingdom there of Gondor and Arnor? No, they wouldn't have because there were already men of Numenor there that would have been loyal to the king's men. The fact that all of those people, with the exception of the ones that ended up basically in Harad or at Umbar, I should say not in Harad, but in Umbar, that all of those guys died in the downfall is what enabled Elendil and his sons Isildur and Anarion to establish the realms in exile. And the timing was such that they were then able to defeat Sauron. Sauron would have been able to establish more strongholds in Middle Earth had it just happened even a thousand years later or 500 years later, he would have taken everybody apart piecemeal. So I, I don't know. It, it's one of those situations where, yeah, it would have happened eventually, but the fact that it happened when it did might actually have been a good thing coming from an evil thing. Right. Shall prove. But mine instrument, another, another example of, yeah, sort of the, the storylines of Middle Earth coming together even though this terrible thing has happened. Right?

[Don Marshall]

Awesome. Awesome. I love that take. I was gonna see if I could find anything else to, like, pull from this, but you summarized it perfectly. That was. No, because it truly is. It's. It's humanity and the sort of fall into corruption that we're exploring. Even if Morgoth's not there, even if Sauron's not poking the bear. Not the dancing bear Pharaoh.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, goodness, don't poke the dancing bear, because that's as bad as laughing at it. It'll just eat you.

[Don Marshall]

Yeah, can't do it. I think there's a little bit of a coming full circle moment where we have to acknowledge, oh, yeah. Humans are inherently drawn to power. And it is not that power corrupts, but to borrow a phrase from Frank Herbert, someone that Tolkien didn't quite enjoy the Dune series, but something along the lines of power attracts the corruptible, those that are able to, you know, I want that immortality. Well, anybody that wants that immortality is going to do some shady stuff to maybe get it. And that maybe Farazan just sped up the process a little bit. Maybe Sauron's the good guy here.

[Alan Sisto]

No, no, no, no. And it's another one of those, not even close, using the actions of evil to still accomplish good. Because the establishment of the realms in exile is what enabled the defeat of Sauron at the end of the Second Age, giving the Third Age, you know, a couple thousand years apiece before things started going sideways. And then that, of course, also enabled the. The lines of the faithful. Right. If you want to go back and make the argument that only those descended from the Lords of Andunie would have been the rightful kings, then, you know, you could make the argument our Pharazon was never the rightful king. Nobody, you know, because Silmarion would have been the line of descent had she been allowed to be the ruling queen. And then all of her descendants were the Lords of Andunie, which include Elendil. And then all the way down the line to. To Isildur and then to Aragorn. So, huh, what happens, you know, with that line, if instead of trying to attack the Valar and sort of paying attention to the Valar as the big enemy you've got to face, if instead you're just pouring all your resources into persecuting and eliminating the Faithful, then those people don't even exist anymore. Wow. Maybe the White Tree isn't even salvaged because the only reason that it got saved is because Isildur went in risking his life, took you know, took a cutting off of the tree, brought it back, but where was he going to plant it? He couldn't do anything with it until he takes it to Middle Earth. Until he escapes the downfall and plants that white tree. There's no king to return in. Return of the King if Numenor hadn't fallen is kind of the way I'm feeling. Wow.

[Don Marshall]

Spabimi strikes again.

[Alan Sisto]

I think so.

[Don Marshall]

All right. I think that is the best possible way we could wrap up this mailbag portion for sure.

[Alan Sisto]

Of fun. Definitely. Well, folks, that does wrap it up then for another episode of the Prancing Pony Podcast. But please be sure to come back next week when we see the men of Numenor lose their way. We're going to look at it a lot more closely in the second half of Appendix A. One little I. Numinor.

[Don Marshall]

I'm just going to start calling it Electric Boogaloo. We got to come up with a better name than that.

[Alan Sisto]

Anything but that.

[Don Marshall]

Alan. Alan. And I want to thank the members of Team PPP and editor Jordan Rannells, who I can only apologize to so much for my terrible pronunciations and multiple takes for this episode. In particular, Jordan, hats off to you as a great editor. We have Barleyman Becca Davis, social media manager Casey Hilsey, Event and Patreon community coordinator Katie McKenna, graphic artist Megan Collins, and website guru Phil Dean.

[Alan Sisto]

Now, please take a minute to check out the prancingpony podcast dot com. It's where you're going to find show notes, outtakes, Prancing Pony Ponderings, our online storefront where you can get PPP merch, including all the great episode artwork that Megan's done for the PPP over the last two seasons.

[Don Marshall]

You'll also want to visit our library page. The Prancing Pony Podcast is, after all, a podcast about books. So if you are interested in a book that we've mentioned on the show, you'll find a link for it in our library. We do get a small amount of compensation when you make a purchase. Do thank you for that.

[Alan Sisto]

Indeed we do. And we also want to thank our patrons at the Kirdan's contribution tier. I'll start with Demay in Alaska, Chad in Texas, Lance in New Jersey, Paul in Colorado, Joseph in Michigan, Kathy from North Carolina, Carlos in California, Brian in the uk, Jerry from Washington, Joe in Washington, Irwin from the Netherlands, Ben in Minnesota, Anthony in Texas, Karen in the uk, June in Ireland, Zaksu in Illinois, Sarah in New Jersey, Joshua in Massachusetts, Lucy in Texas, and Keith in Alabama.

[Don Marshall]

There's Also Erica in Texas, Carson in Oklahoma, Vivian from California, James in Massachusetts, Ann in Kentucky, Sean in New Jersey, Mason in California, Maureen from Massachusetts, Olivia in London, Robert in Arizona, Nick in Wisconsin, Lewis in South Carolina, Thomas in Germany, Craig in California, Bailey in Texas, Kevin in Massachusetts, Julie in Washington, Bruce in California and Joe in Maryland. I didn't pronounce a single one there incorrectly. Jordan, you can keep this one in.

[Alan Sisto]

It's because they're not Quenya names.

[Don Marshall]

Thank you all very much for the support indeed.

[Alan Sisto]

Thank you.

[Don Marshall]

Also, make sure you don't miss an episode of the Prancing Pony podcast. Subscribe now through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music Music, or your favorite podcasting app.

[Alan Sisto]

And one last thing. As always, don't forget to send your thoughts, comments, and most of all, your hollow steel bows. No, seriously, that would be really cool to bartleman@the prancingponypodcast.com and if you want.

[Don Marshall]

Your voice literally heard, well, just send us your audio of your question. Visit podinbox.com prancingponypod and record your questions for us. Please be sure to though to still email the questions to Barliman.

[Alan Sisto]

Now, even though Barliman's been a lot more reliable lately, there is still a lot of mail to sort through. We'll try to get to you just as soon as we can. As always though, this has been far too short a time to spend among such excellent and admirable listeners. But until next time, I have been.

[Don Marshall]

Don Marshall, the obscure Lord of the Rings Facts guy, along with the man that really wants a steel bow for Christmas. But we can't because you'll shoot your eye out kid. Alan Sisto I love it. Hello, it is Ryan and I was on a flight the other day playing one of my favorite social spin slot games on chumbacasino.com I looked over the person sitting next to me and you know what they were doing? They were also playing Chumba Casino. Everybody's loving having fun with it. Chumba Casino is home to hundreds of casino style games that you can play for free anytime, anywhere. So sign up [e-mail] to claim your free welcome bonus. That's chumbacasino.com and live the Chumba Life. Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group Void where prohibited by law, 18 plus terms and conditions apply.