Have Island, Will Rebel - Page 3
© Michael Martinez
But these bands of colonists were not necessarily crude barbarians waiting to be culturally elevated by the Elves of Eressea. Tolkien notes in the essay on Numenor that "the Edain brought with them to Numenor the knowledge of many crafts, and many craftsmen who had learned from the Eldar, besides preserving lore and traditions of their own." Obviously there was plenty of opportunity for the Edain to learn from the Eldar during the War of Wrath and the years afterward, but the notion that they had preserved knowledge from before implies that their craftsmen must have been valued by the Easterlings.
And if the Easterlings had used slave craftsmen, then quite possibly Hurin did not lead all the men of Dor-lomin to war. We know from "The Wanderings of Hurin" that he was able to recruit a band of outlaws, some of whom had fought in the Nirnaeth. So the forces of Dor-lomin had been partially scattered. But older men and older boys too young to fight had to have been left behind. From these men would have emerged the craftsmen whom the Easterlings preserved as slaves.
One can imagine that a sort of master-apprentice schooling must have developed as the aged men passed on their knowledge. Edainic society, regardless of what it had been like before the Nirnaeth, had to be fundamentally altered by the generations of slavery. Hence, organized "schools" or "guilds" could not have existed, although perhaps the slaves would have maintained some secret groups for various purposes.
The idea of guilds may be a purely Numenorean convention, but was it necessarily developed along the same lines as medieval European guilds would have been? For inspiration they could have been exposed to or even tutored by the Eldarin "schools" (such as the Lambengolmor, the masters of tongues, the "school" of linguists established by Feanor in Aman). Elros, in particular, must have learned something of Noldorin culture from Maglor, his foster father, even though the Noldorin civilization had been destroyed. Elros could have prevailed upon all the craftsmen he found to come together to share knowledge and help build cities.
Hence, Romenna and Armenelos would have been founded quickly. Romenna with its great harbor would have received the ships of the Eldar and Armenelos would have become the center of exploration and colonization for the rest of Numenor. It must also have been a center of great learning, and though no mention is made of one Armenelos must have eventually (if not in Elros' time) have established a great library to preserve the lore of the Numenoreans. A road was built which ran from Romenna all the way to the haven of Andunie in northwestern Numenor, passing first through Ondosto, a region or city which Christopher Tolkien speculates was used for stone quarries.
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