It's All in the Family: The Finweans - Page 14
© Michael Martinez
A further difficulty arising from connecting Gildor with Finrod is that, if he were alive in Middle-earth when Gil-galad perished, should he not have been eligible to claim the High Kingship over the Noldor? It may be that such a claim would be deemed invalid, since the kingship had passed to the Orodreth's line (just as it had passed from Feanor's line to Fingolfin's and then to Finarfin's). The kingship could go down but not up. Yet that is unsatisfying. It could also be that Gildor would have arrived with one of the Istari, although only Glorfindel is said to have ever arrived in Middle-earth after the Downfall of Numenor. In fact, there is a associated with the Shibboleth which states that "little has been ever heard in Middle-earth of Aman after the departure of the Noldor. Those who returned thither have never come back, since the change of the world. To Numenor in its first days they went often, but small part of the lore and histories of Numenor survived its Downfall."
Here again we have a frustratingly ambiguous statement. "Those who returned [to Aman] have never come back, since the change of the world." What is the change of the world, however, if not the event where Iluvatar made the world round, removing Aman from the circles and destroying Numenor? The following sentence seems to imply that the Noldor (of Tol Eressea) only sailed as far east as Numenor in its early years. Still, the passage does not completely rule out the possibility of an eastward passage by someone of a younger generation. In fact, in one of his final notes on Glorfindel, Tolkien decided that he had indeed returned to Middle-earth by way of Numenor in the middle of the Second Age, when Gil-galad was preparing for Sauron's assault in the 17th century (the War of the Elves and Sauron lasted from 1695 to 1701).
Whatever Gildor's true relationship to the Finweans may be, he cannot be a descendant of Finwe who passed into exile with Feanor and Fingolfin. Nor can he be a son of Finrod born in Middle-earth. If he is a descendant of Finrod, though he might originally have been a son of Finrod, his name as preserved in the canon of The Lord of the Rings implies there must be an Inglor, who could perhaps be a son of Finrod and Amarie born in Valinor after Finrod was restored to life. But such speculations, lacking any textual support, go no further.
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