Home » Reading & Literature » J.R.R. Tolkien » Speaking of Legolas... - Page 2

Speaking of Legolas... - Page 2

© Michael Martinez

Such a growth in Legolas' character is good, but it reminds me of the silly premise that went into Lieutenant Commander Data in the "Encounter at Farpoint" storyline. Supposedly, he had been serving in Starfleet for something like 27 years. In all that time he had learned virtually nothing about humans and human emotion. What did they do, assign him to serve only with Vulcans until Captain Picard signed him up on the Enterprise? Legolas refers to his companions as children, and when he, Gimli, Aragorn, and Gandalf are approaching Meduseld he says that the leaves have fallen five hundred times in Mirkwood since the Rohirrim came out of the north. He also makes it sound as though he had lived through all five hundred years. Elsewhere he says he has watched many an acorn grow up and die as a hoary old oak tree. As Elves go Legolas is probably not ancient, but he seems to have been around for a while. And yet, Lorien is a mysterious place to him. Legolas has never visited there. It seems strange that he should not know anything about a land of Silvan Elves. We may thus suggest that Legolas may have been born after his father left the Emyn Duir (the Mountains of Mirkwood) and led his people north to settle along the Forest River. That would have been shortly after Sauron rose again and established himself on the hill of Amon Lanc, building the fortress of Dol Guldur. And yet, one of the peculiar inconsistencies in Legolas' character is that he knows the Lay of Nimrodel. The lay itself had to have been composed sometime after 1981, the year in which Nimrodel and Amroth left Lorien. Who wrote it? How did the story get back up to Mirkwood so that Legolas could learn it? The most likely answer seems to be that during Sauron's absence from Dol Guldur (the years of the Watchful Peace, TA 2063 - 2460) the Elves of Mirkwood went abroad and travelled as far as Gondor. Calenardhon's population was declining in these years but Gondor was still able to hold the Anduin against its enemies. Celeborn and Galadriel took up rule in Lorien after Amroth's departure and it may be they did not enact their policy of secrecy right away. So some of Thranduil's people may indeed have travelled to Lorien in those years and learned the lay. Legolas says merely, "It is long since any of my own folk journeyed hither back to the land whence we wandered in ages long ago, but we hear that Lorien is not yet deserted."

The copyright of the article Speaking of Legolas... - Page 2 in J.R.R. Tolkien is owned by Michael Martinez. Permission to republish Speaking of Legolas... - Page 2 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.