The age of legolas...

That is, how old was the old boy? I've come to the conclusion that he was probably a very young elf, most likely no more than a few centuries old. I give my reasons at Suite101 in this week's essay, "Speaking of Legolas", but I thought I'd invite discussion of the essay here.

Heh, I thought you meant something else when I saw the title

I agree with your suggestion about his age.

And what was he doing during The Hobbit?

He was ether with the army of Thranduil, or he was left at home to govern the castle.

BTW: Hi Michael it's Maglor

Very nice! Just curious, why didn't you bring his memories of th sea into the argument? I think thsoe mitght be evidence of something, though I'm not nearly as much a scholar as you so I really wouldn't know

Legolas' knowledge of the sea, so far as I know, was all second-hand until he went down to the Mouths of Anduin (and, technically, he should not have seen the sea on his journey to Pelargir, though I suppose the gulls might still live that far inland on a great river).

Gulls absolutely can live far inland along a large river. I live in the Montreal area, which is on a large river and far inland. We have gulls around here.

We have gulls all over some parking lots by the Susquehanna River. Don't try driving through them when they're hanging out..

Orodreth was also apparently born and raised in Middle-earth, being the son of Angrod and a Sindarin Elf (according to the latest information published in The Peoples of Middle-earth). Orodreth's children were Gil-galad and Finduilas

... that quote has been a quake for my structures. At first i thought: "Michael is obviously wrong, he must be betrayed by his memory", but that was so odd that i made some research over the web, and i found (probably known for many of you) that there´s some controversy about elven genealogies, depending of the source.

I haven´t read anything of HOME nor Tolkien letters, so for me Sil. and Unfinished Tales were the only source to Tolkien´s first age. I´d heard there were different versions of some stories, but i never thought it may change a point so explicitly stated. But Sil. was published by Christopher, who had to choose among the existing versions. We´ll never know what changes would Tolkien want to do to those stories before they were published.

What version was truer? oh, no! that sounds as the ominous SW discussion about canon ...

I haven't read Peoples of ME yet, but there was an extensive discussion of Gil-Galad's parentage fairly recently on the newsgroups. Try going to www.deja.com and searching alt.fan.tolkien or rec.arts.books.tolkien for "Gil-Galad". That will bring you up to speed on the viewpoints. In a nutshell, the idea the Gil-Galad was Fingon's son was apparently considered by JRRT for a short time but rejected. I can't remember why Christopher chose to use this version in the published Sil, but he later admitted in Peoples that he made a mistake on this matter. But there are those who will argue that Gil-Galad mkes more sense as Fingon's son in spite of this evidence. (Not me, I'm waiting to get People's. But I really don't see what point there is arguing with the author's ultimate intentions.)

Give Christopher a few more years and..

He'll come up with a *Silmarillion, Edition II*..?

:rollin: ROTFLMAO!!! :rollin:

I wish he would do another SILMARILLION, but we're probably all going to have to wait until the copyrigts expire to see any attempts at "doing it right", so to speak. A number of people have tried to explain to me why Fingon should be Gil-galad's father, but none of the explanations have ever made sense to me. It's a purely arbitrary issue, and Tolkien definitely did not want Fingon to be Gil-galad's father. That's sufficient for me.

"This is the dawning of the Age o-of Legolas, Age of Legolaaaaas! Legolas! Legolas..."

oh wait, you guys are talking about something else aren't you? oops, my bad...