Talk:Misconceptions

I salvaged some non-trivial examples from an recent version of fanon article. Since we have already other debates liked "mistakes in Tolkien's works", we can tolerate this article too. This I consider also useful because I have also fallen victim to such misconceptions. Sage 20:46, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree. I simply removed all of it from fanon for the sake of ease. An article is good (maybe rename it though to have some consistency.

Now I'm off. Happy new year, all. -- Ederchil ^{(Talk/Contribs/Edits)} 22:35, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

I think if this article gets a bit more polished, it might be useful to link to this on the main page.

Happy new year, Ederchil~& Sage. Grond 22:39, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Maybe we can add also something about Lurtz, Orodreth and Gil-Galad ancestery...and uhm...the location of Dorwinion.

Midden-Aarde Essays (a book of essays from Tolkien's work, made by a friend of my, what he is soon gonna publish in Dutch) says something about that in the chapter "Mysteries van de Hobbit, Dorwinion" ("Engimas of the Hobbit, Dorwinion") --Amroth 15:54, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually, Dorwinion's location is not really a mystery - Tolkien placed it on the Western bank of the Sea of Rhûn. How is Lurtz a misconception? -- Ederchil ^{(Talk/Contribs/Edits)} 16:00, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

About your ½ rigth. It was only not Tolkien who placed there but his illustrator, latter Tolkien agreed with it. Many people think that it was Lurtz who killed Boromir while many Uruks did it.

This comes from the chapter "Dorwinion":

Uit de tekst van ‘De Hobbit’ is dan ook niet te achterhalen waar Dorwinion juist lag en wie er woonde. Desondanks is de ligging van het land op een andere manier duidelijk geworden. Pauline Baynes, de favoriete illustrator van Tolkien , zette Dorwinion in 1969 op de landkaart. Ze plaatste het land aan de monding van de Running, aan de noordwestelijke oevers van de Zee van Rhûn (zie kaart).

Hoewel Tolkien bezwaar had tegen sommige andere plaatsen die Pauline Baynes op de kaart gezet had, verklaarde hij zich wel akkoord met de ligging van Dorwinion. En ondanks het feit dat de Zee van Rhûn niet de locatie was die Tolkien oorspronkelijk in gedachten had, is het land sindsdien wel op die plaats blijven liggen. Christopher Tolkien merkt hetzelfde op in ‘The Lays of Beleriand’:

“Dorwinion is marked on the decorated map by Pauline Baynes, as a region on the North-western shores of the Sea of Rhun. It must be presumed that this, like other names on that map, was communicated to her by my father, but its placing seems surprising.”

--Amroth 16:12, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Dorwinion dan maar wel. Maar Lurtz komt alleen maar uit de film. -- Ederchil ^{(Talk/Contribs/Edits)} 16:24, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Cleanup/Rewrite

Going through the different "misconceptions":

1. Definition of First Age; Third Age "of the Sun": keep.
2. The Arkenstone was a Silmaril: keep
3. Elrond visits Elros in Númenor: what part of the text implies such a thing? With the current wording it seems the "misconception" is created to highlight a trivial abandoned concept.
4. Arwen, the lastborn of the Elves: keep. It was portrayed sort of like that in the movies
5. Legolas's age: omit, already at Legolas
6. Legolas hair color: see previous
7. Names of the Nazgûl: remove or rewrite
8. A female Nazgûl: remove or merge with 7.
9. Mrs. Thranduil: there are so many characters whose mother's name is unknown, it's pointless to single out Legolas. Also, if this stays, can we at least tell the reader what the name is?
10. The War in the North: pointless. Maybe inspired by BfMeII, but I'm pretty sure the promotional material for the game explicitly mentioned it was fiction.
11. The shape of Middle-earth: we can keep this, but with a rewrite
12. Pointed ears: why is it under misconceptions if it's pointed out (npi) that it's true?
13. Hobbit feet: huge? rephrase
14. Déagol/Sméagol relationship: keep. Maybe also point out that they weren't Hobbits, but ancestors of Hobbits.
15. Gollum's age: pointless. Nothing in the text suggests such a thing.
16. Tengwar on Sting: pointless. We might change this to "Bilbo named Sting when he found it", because that's what happened in the RB movie, the 2003 game and I believe the radio plays too.
17. Saruman, the creator of Uruk-hai: rewrite.
18. Dorwinion: keep

1. Add: in light of Last Waterbender's recent edit to Bregalad, we should also explain here that "beam" means "tree" here (cf. German baum, Dutch boom, Frisian beam), not "a beam of light", and note something about translators messing up (Schuchart, for one, did).

Any other ideas? -- Ederchil ^{(Talk/Contribs/Edits)} 17:52, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

As I agree that most of your points are not really misconceptions, I removed some of them (and left others). I also removed the "shape of middle-earth" thing since it doesn't seem as a misconception to me. The map was drawn by Tolkien; it is not said that it was replaced by another map; nor it is contradicted by the Silmarillion. I also collected some more from other articles. Sage 08:45, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Legolas' hair?

The article: "However, in The Fellowship of the Ring it is stated that Legolas' hair was "dark", and dark brown or black hair was most common among the Sindar."

Is it so? Here I would like to see the sources, so that the misconceptions would not be replaced by other misconceptions. What it comes to Legolas' dark hair, I suppose the source in the Fellowship is this: "His head was dark, crowned with sharp white stars that glittered in the black pools of the sky behind." (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, "The Great River"). But does this really tell anything about the colour of his hair or even of his skin? I suppose that we can only say, that when Frodo saw Legolas standing above him, the figure of the Elf was dark against the sky. – The source for the dark hair among the Sindar in general would also be nice to have. --Tik 11:47, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Buckland

I'd suggest taking out the reference to Buckland or changing it. Early editions stated explicitly that Buckland was added to the Shire, and I'm not sure it's clear that the change in recent editions is the one Tolkien would have made, so I wouldn't call it a misconception. Spearwielder 20:15, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

The semicolon was present already in the second edition (1966). -- Ar-Zigûr (talk) 08:41, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Sex of Nazgul

The current text says <<with their consistent references as "Men" and "kings", although it could be argued that "Men" includes women>>. The part about "men" including women can be pretty much assumed - that term is usually used in place of "humankind", not as a plural of "man" in the sense of "male". Like in https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Men. Would emphasize that, as to make clear that Tolkien hasn't given us any information about gender here. Given how the civilizations feel, a woman is not that likely, but not impossible either, but if we don't want to speculate, the fact is that no information in that regard is given.

Honestly while we cannot definitively say that all of the Nazgul were men, we cannot definitively say they weren't either. Furthermore, in the case of the Numenorians cited in the article, the three Ruling Queens are specifically referred to as such in the text. I think if Tolkien had wanted there to be a woman among the Ringwraiths, he would have included an explicit mention of a queen or sorceress or whatever among their ranks. I'm tempted to remove that part from the article, but I admit we can't 100% say one way or the other. --Turiannerevarine 10:47, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm actually not sure if this part of the article should even be here. I do not know what exactly I would label this part as, to be honest, but I do acknowledge that it is a least a valid point, so I want other people to weigh in on this. Personally I think at the very least break it out from the names of the Nazgul to its own section for better page formatting.--Turiannerevarine 23:12, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

The part about the sex of the Nazgul should stay. In Middle-earth Role Playing (MERP) publications there is a female numenorean nazgul called Adunaphel and the names and the Sex of these nazgul exist on several sites on the internet. A lot of older Tolkien Fans are familiar with those names. Tolkien legt the question open. Tolkien also explicitly mentions the Rings for the elven "Kings" in the Ring verse in The Lord of the Rings, but Galadriel is one of the bearers of the Rings for the elves and she is female and is the de facto queen of Lorien although she does not call herself so according to The History of Galadriel and Celeborn in UT. --Akhorahil 14:20, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Order

I can't judge the rewriting, but this needs some kind of order, isn't it? Also, maybe a subsection for misconceptions created by the movies? --LorenzoCB 21:25, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

It probably does, but I am not sure what kind of order it would need. Maybe by book?Turiannerevarine 23:01, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

I'd vote for alphabetical order. --LorenzoCB 17:08, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

I think that if we separated the misconceptions by book or movie, it would be easier for people to find what they are looking for. --Ancalagon the Black 18:11, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Page has been reordered according to book/adapation (includes Jackson movies as well as other adaptations) and then alphabetically within the individual sections.Turiannerevarine 22:30, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Perfect! --LorenzoCB 08:02, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

"Age of the Sun"

What about adding the new section about the common misconception that the First Age as if began with the first sunrise? -- Ar-Zigûr (talk) 07:59, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Great idea! Hyarion (talk) 03:52, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Do We Need This Article?

The entire point of this wiki is to provide information on Tolkien's lore, so I am not sure how important this is. Also, I've never met anyone who claimed definitively that the Arkenstone is a Silmaril, and it seems firmly in the fan-theory category (albeit, I admit, a rather weak one). Also, I am not sure if we can fairly place Gil-Galad son of Fingon in here. Yes, the final version has Orodreth as his father, but that does not change the fact that a version had Fingon (I believe one also had Finrod, if I remember correctly). Gil-Galad's parentage is not mentioned in any writing published in Tolkien's lifetime, so I am not convinced it needs to be present. Following this pattern, we might add "Galadriel was involved in the Noldorin rebellion", since it is fairly clear Tolkien intended to rewrite her history so that she was not. Also, this article states, "The Ring that Celebrimbor gave to Durin was a notable exception, being the only one of the Seven or the Nine purposely intended for a non-Elf." I am not sure this is entirely true. In the Unfinished Tales, it is stated, "There Sauron took the Nine Rings and other lesser works of the Mírdain; but the Seven and the Three he could not find", which seems to suggest that at least one point, Tolkien considered Celebrimbor himself to have given out all Seven to the different Dwarf lords himself, nor, as far as I can tell, does Appendix A "On Dúrin's Folk" ever go against this idea.

SingingOrc (talk) SingingOrc (talk) 18:40, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Deletion of "Merging Buckland"

This is not a misconception. Foster and others based it on the original text of the first and second editions. Hammond and Scull added a semicolon to remove the inconsistency. See Possible_inconsistencies_in_the_legendarium#Addition_of_the_Westmarch_(and_Buckland)_to_the_Shire. Spearwielder (talk) 15:40, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Are you sure that it was indeed Hammond & Scull who added a semicolon in the sentence? Just check out the second edition (1966) by yourself: https://archive.org/details/fellowshipofring0000unse_l5a0 -- Ar-Zigûr (talk) 16:32, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Or https://archive.org/details/lordofrings0000unse_y8h4/ -- Ar-Zigûr (talk) 16:35, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Very interesting! Thanks for pointing that out. Here are two from Houghton Mifflin with no semicolon: [1] [2]

So clearly I was wrong to say Hammond and Scull added the semicolon. Do you know the history? Was it lost in the American editions or added at some point to the British ones?

Anyway, I'd say the article should make it clear that the belief was caused by the lack of a semicolon. Whether it was a misconception depends on whether Tolkien put the semicolon there, which seems likely. Spearwielder (talk) 18:38, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Tom Bombadil in the Old Forest

While I'm here, how about a section on the misconception that Tom Bombadil lives in the Old Forest and even that it constitutes his entire country?  I see that now and then on Quora (where I’ve been correcting it).  Here are some examples from a long article on Tom.  “His realm is not just the Old Forest (though he lives in it by choice). His realm is Arda, where he was placed first before all other entities, creations and things.” And “If Tom and his domain in the Old Forest is more secure than even Doriath under Melian's protection and more secret or unassailable than Gondolin, either way, Tom further demonstrates he is more powerful than Morgoth.” [https://thenine1.quora.com/On-the-Entity-of-Tom-Bombadil-Ea-s-Deus-Ex-Terra]

By the way, I don't agree with that writer's conclusions either. Spearwielder (talk) 21:02, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't understand. Tom Bombadil obviously does live in the Old Forest. What is the misconception here? --Pachyderminator 17:45, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

See the paragraph starting "Just as they felt their feet slowing down" near the end of the chapter "The Old Forest" and the following paragraph, which make it explicit that the hobbits left the forest and still have considerable walking to do to get to Tom's house. Spearwielder (talk) 19:35, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Hmm, you're right, the house is on a bare hill just outside the forest. I didn't remember that. The lede of Tom Bombadil needs to be corrected too (it says "in the depths of the Old Forest"). --Pachyderminator 04:35, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

OK, I think we've got enough reason to add this topic. I just fixed the lead of Tom Bombadil, by the way. What do people think of adding the previous version as a reference to how widespread the misconception is? Spearwielder (talk) 17:12, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

I added the location of his house to the article. There are also Web sites that say LOTRO and Minecraft: Middle-earth put Tom's house in the Old Forest. If people who can check those games or others want to add them to the references, I think that would be good. Spearwielder (talk) 18:42, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

And you're right, of course, that Bombadil's realm comprises the Barrow-Downs as well as the forest, and apparently the surrounding country as far north as the East Road. --Pachyderminator 04:38, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

And if you believe "Bombadil Goes Boating" (which I do), it extends west and a little south to parts of Buckland and the Marish at least as far as Farmer Maggot's farm. Spearwielder (talk) 17:12, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Bombadil Goes Boating is not Canon, IMO, but we know from FOTR that Bombadil knows Maggot and has talked to him, so he presumably comes to the Marish sometimes. --Pachyderminator 03:26, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Well, you could imagine that Maggot visited Tom's house or something.

To clarify what I wrote, I don't believe that the events in "Bombadil Goes Boating" necessarily occurred, but I am willing to rely on the implication that Tom visited Maggot, especially with the corroboration that he knows Maggot. Spearwielder (talk) 21:39, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Another one, which I believe Robert Foster believed, is that Tom in "The Stone Troll" is based on Tom Bombadil, though they have nothing in common but the name. Spearwielder (talk) 04:56, 6 April 2024 (UTC)