The Glade 4.0

Who's Glorfindel?

The movies were better than the books. Due in large part to their omissions, be they pointless characters, or dry, useless descriptions.

No, no, Lonedar -- that was Arwen. It's like you're some kind of chauvinist, trying to deny the strong warrior female role model heroine Arwen her due!

/movieapologist

You're shiznitting me?!!???!

Only the elf that slew a balrog, though mortally wounded, in the battle of Gondolin, allowing Earendil, who would be indirectly responsible for saving Middle Earth from Morgoth (to whom Sauron was but a lieutenant), to escape. Was allowed by the Valar to return to Middle Earth, confronted and drove off the Witch King of Angmar and prophesied that no man would slay said Witch King. The one who found Aragorn and the hobbits in the wild and drove off the Nazgul. And then was decided wasn't a good choice to go with the fellowship of the ring.

That's Bad Muthufu...err...Glorfindel.

No, he was the dude that rode the sick Frodo out of reach of the Ringwraiths, and then called down the fury of the river when they tried to ford it to follow him into Elrond's vale.

The Problem of the Two Glorfindels
With the possible exception of Tom Bombadil's identity (and - of course - the wingedness or otherwise of Balrogs), there is no more hotly debated topic than the ultimate fate of Glorfindel. Were Glorfindel of Gondolin and Glorfindel of Rivendell the same person?

The only real resource we have to answer this question is in The Peoples of Middle-earth (The History of Middle-earth Vol. 12): XIII Last Writings, Glorfindel. Christopher Tolkien dates the notes he gives here at 1972, the year before his father's death.

These notes clear up one question immediately: at the time of the writing of The Lord of the Rings, Glorfindel of Rivendell was not conceived as the same character as Glorfindel of Gondolin. Tolkien says, 'Its use [i.e. the name 'Glorfindel'] in The Lord of the Rings is one of the cases of the somewhat random use of the names found in the older legends ... which escaped reconsideration in the final published form...'.

Tolkien was far from happy with this state of affairs, however, and it seems that he intended to reconcile the problem by uniting the two strands of the story. In summary, the notes tell us that Glorfindel's spirit returned to the Halls of Waiting, but was after a time re-embodied by the Valar. He then returned to Middle-earth (either in the mid-Second Age, or as a companion of the Istari in the Third). For the full story of his return, refer to The Peoples of Middle-earth.

The question of Glorfindel's identity, then, brings us to a much wider, and highly relevant, question. Can we accept a writer's personal notes, whether written in preparation for a published work, or simply for personal satisfaction, as part of that writer's 'canon'?

The importance of this question is highlighted by the essay entitled The Problem of Ros in the same volume of The History of Middle-earth. This is an extensive disposition on the origins and meaning of the syllable ros in names such as Elros. The details need not concern us here: what is relevant is the fact that, after its composition, Tolkien noticed a detail in the published Lord of the Rings that essentially negated the discussion. He dismissed the body of The Problem of Ros with four words; 'most of this fails'.

But what if he had not noticed this inconvenient fact (that Cair Andros had already been interpreted, and disagreed with his conclusions)? What if he had noticed, but had failed to record the fact? Would The Problem of Ros now be considered part of the 'Tolkienian' canon in the way that many regard the notes on Glorfindel? Questions like this show that we cannot simply take such notes on immediate face value.

Despite this, the Glorfindel notes lead many to see his re-embodiment and return to Middle-earth as 'fact' (and not a few have e-mailed us to remind us of this!) The purpose of this rather lengthy aside, though, is to show that we cannot view these 'events' in such concrete terms. This is the reason that the 'two Glorfindels' have separate entries on this site. This is not because we do not believe that Tolkien saw them as different embodiments of the same character (as we have seen, there are strong indications that he did), but simply because there is no definitive, published, proof of this.

Which means the old one never existed, or Tolkien didn't proofread his work, since unlike a certain popular Maiar, elves are not sent back from the dead in any writing Tolkien himself ever made.

Considering that The Silmarillion (and, thus, the source of the second appearance of Glorfindel, and all pre-Third Age knowledge of Middle Earth to begin with) was published posthumously with a lot of editing and organization to clean Tolkien's notes up performed by his son, Christopher, Talya, I think your question is pretty moot.

My beef with PJ's treatment of Glorfindel's scene isn't that Glorfindel is missing, it's that Arwen replaces him, though.

It's an instance in a trend where PJ goes out of his way to build up Arwen as some kind of heroic figure, when she's not; she's part of the quest reward for Aragorn, and her job is to look pretty. Eowyn is the strong female heroic character in the story, and Galadriel is the strong background supporting character. PJ elevates Arwen to their prominence, and diminishes both of them by doing so.

And that's where my beef lies.

My beef with PJ's treatment of Glorfindel's scene isn't that Glorfindel is missing, it's that Arwen replaces him, though.

It's an instance in a trend where PJ goes out of his way to build up Arwen as some kind of heroic figure, when she's not; she's part of the quest reward for Aragorn, and her job is to look pretty. Eowyn is the strong female heroic character in the story, and Galadriel is the strong background supporting character. PJ elevates Arwen to their prominence, and diminishes both of them by doing so.

And that's where my beef lies.

You don't go replacing characters just because there aren't enough female characters for your liking.

Well, in that case, The Illiad is even more of a sausagefest, too. We should clearly replace Patrocles with a girl. In fact, instead of just making Patrocles a girl, we should have Briseis be the one to put on Achilles' armor and lead the Greeks to battle, 'cause she's already connected to Achilles.

Wolfgang Peterson's a hack for not having done so in Troy.

That's just because you hate Faramir, Glorfindel, and Radagast.

Exactly what I would suspect of a dirty shadow knight who's jealous that rangers, paladins, and druids got heroes in the series, and not a decent SK in sight.