Seeking the Wayward Children of Numenor - Page 8
© Michael Martinez
It's doubtful Elendil's people broke many new lands or felt the desire to. If the Dunedain of Gondor took Isildur and Anarion as their lords because they were brave and ambitious, the people of Arnor must have accepted Elendil because he was noble and represented the last of a great heritage from Numenor. There should have been few if any Elrosians in Middle-earth. If the immigrants had mostly settled near Pelargir the northern Dunedain may have retained a greater reverence for Numenor, and Elendil and his companions would be their only link with the past. They would, furthermore, be reminders of what was great about Numenor, and not what had become dark and forbidding.
Great changes must have been wrought upon the northern lands as well as in the south. Lond Daer Ened seems to have been abandoned, and Tharbad became the chief port of the north. How many people were displaced along the coast and driven inland? These may have constituted the bulk of Elendil's colonists, and if they came from Lond Daer Ened they probably were mostly of Numenorean descent.
The conservative values of the north survived long into the Third Age. Although Arnor may have fought one or more wars under the High Kings, it did not embark upon wars of conquest and was generally safe from invasion. Gondor on the other hand remained in many ways a frontier society, or at least retained the vigor of a frontier society which enabled it to continue expanding for a thousand years. The Gondorians moved west and north along the coasts, and they clashed with Umbar and the Haradrim and pushed their borders south.
The difference in outlooks and military advances between the two kingdoms may stem from initial differences in colonization patterns, which in turn were influenced by the events occurring in Numenor. A bolder, more arrogant people may have arisen in Gondor because its history reflected a greater degree of instability, arising from Numenor's restlessness. Arnor's people seem to have forgotten the restlessness, and to have become less ambitious. They were Numenoreans living peacefully beside other Men.
It may be worthwhile to ask if, during the violent storm which drove the ships of the Faithful eastward, whether a moment of choice came upon the captains, and if the more conservative captains steered closer to Elendil's ship and the more adventurous captains stayed with Isildur and Anarion. The older generations sailed away northward toward Lindon and a life much like that their ancestors had known. And the younger generations forged a path toward the frontier around Pelargir, and a grander destiny than the old families could conceive of.
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