Read The Silmarillion in 2025 » START HERE!

You can find a link in the show notes. The first episode is an overview of the Silmarillion in including its background, structure, and themes. To support our work here, please visit patreon dot com slash Tolkien Road Enjoy. Hey there, fellow travelers. Welcome to The Tolkien Road, Episode two seventy two. Greta, Hey, Hey, Greta, you ready to start a new journey?

about it if I let myself go on. But let's just say this is going to be extra fun this time. I think, even more fun than the first time through.

So we've got a plan for our patrons only to do a live stream Q and A with them, and in order to get access to that live you're gonna have to be a patron, so boom.

seemed I can remember it. That name just seeming so bizarre to me, like what is that? Right, and then reading Lord of the Rings, being like, still, what is this Silm million? So little? What little did I know? Right? Little did I know the destiny that the Selm realion, that that I was on a date, I was on a crash course with destiny when it came to the Silm Million.

do that. So here we go. I shall certainly now if I am allowed publish the parts of the great history that was written first and reject it. But the to me very surprising success of The Lord of the Rings will probably cause that rejection to be reconsidered, though I do not think it could have the appeal of the Lord of the Rings. No Hobbits. So we see here the Tolkien himself recognize one of the chief problems that The Selm Million would face when it came to

the general public, which is no Hobbits. So let's just say that from the very start, for those of you who are new to The Selm Million, you're not going to find any Hobbits in the Lord of the Ring and the Selm Million. Now, you will find them within the confines of this book, but not in the Selm Million itself, the Selm Million proper as you will, as we will come to refer to it. We'll explain why that's true here in just a few moments. Okay, So you want to read The Selm Million if you have

any interest in Middle Earth. It's only natural, especially for those who have completed The Lord of the Rings No small Feet in and of itself. It's the most logical next step. Right, You've read the hobbit. If you haven't read The Lord of the Rings, need to read Lord of the Rings. If you've read both, then need to

read the selm Million. Right, that's the next logical step. However, if you're expecting a story like The Lord of the Rings, you've probably already figured out that the Silmarrillion ain't it. In fact, you won't even encounter a familiar species until several chapters in, and when you do, it will likely be several more chapters until you finally get a grasp on what's actually happening.

and makes the experience of reading them both remarkably richer. Right, So, uh, Greta, I mean, would you would you concur with that, like, you know, having gone through the podcast the first time around yourself as a having and you never read the selm Marillion at that point, right right? Yeah? Yeah, So did you come to did you come to appreciate and understand the silm Million through that journey? Would you say, through the journey of the podcast?

And I can remember picking this very book right here, this copy right here, taking it off of my parents' bookshelf after reading Lord of the Rings. This is probably back in two thousand and one, and starting out and just being like getting into idol Ndola and just being like, first of all, what is the I knew Lindale and what is going on? This is all about some music? Like there's nothing here that is relatable to me from a Lord of the Rings or Hobbit perspective, right, I

don't recognize. I even was like, okay, maybe I'll look at the map and maybe this will help me get get it all figured out here. And I open up the map and it's just like, that's not Middle Earth. I don't know what this Belrian place is, but this that's not Middle Earth, you know, I don't know what's

going on here? So it's all you know, You're like, oh great, I want to read the you know, this prequel to Lord of the Rings, and you very quickly find out that this is this is not like watching the prequels for Star Wars, right, where you know you immediately meet a younger version of Obi Wan Kenobi. Right, there's literally nobody who you even recognize, no place names

that you tend to recognize for a long time. There are a couple of very minor exceptions in Valaquinta, the second section of the book, but even there, it's brief. It's just brief, right, It's very brief. Uh, and you don't actually, you know, see some of those characters come back until much later. Okay, So this is a challenge, right,

it's a challenge. I know it. I've been there, Greta's been there, and together we're gonna make it through and we're really gonna enjoy reading this and you guys are gonna love it. Right, there's so much good stuff in the summarion. So it's a challenge, but it's so worth it, and you get bragging rights, yeah you will.

So for those of you who are here for the very noble and virtuous reason that you want to beef up on all of this before Latron Prime hits, right, you want to understand the background of that show before it hits the screen. Welcome, right, this will be a very worthwhile endeavor as we journey towards September two, twenty twenty two. So and for those of you who will be journeying through the Silm Million again, we're glad you're back, right,

absolutely glad you're back. Or if this I mean this may be the first time listening to the podcast, but you're reading it again. Right. You know, there's some of you who may have read it dozens of times. We have plenty of listeners who have done that, right, you know, this is you know they they told us like they listened to our podcast even though they'd read the Selm million many times, and they really enjoy just kind of

having our perspective and the discussion. Right. And that's one thing that we're all about on this show, right is we want discussion, we want conversation. Most of our episodes are going to be us talking to the microphone having a conversation about these things together. But we love the correspondence.

And that's partly why we're doing this livestream Q and A once a month now is we want to open it up for those, you know, for those who are patrons to really join in the conversation with us right live. So yeah, and we're going to structure it those conversations that way where we're going to kind of look back at the previous month's episodes and we're gonna that's gonna be the focus right now. Not to say we won't maybe bring up some other interesting letters, but that's going

to be the focus for us. Awesome, all right, So let's talk about some background of the Selm Million. So the Selm Million was published in nineteen seventy seven, four years after Tolkien's death and over two decades after The Lord of the Rings and four decades after The Hobbit. However, its genesis predates both works, going all the way back

to World War One and perhaps even before that. Right, what we have with the Silm Million is not so much one cohesive epic as it is a loosely connected collection of stories taking place within the same secondary world, the world that we know as Middle Earth. Though Tolkien had hoped to publish The Selm Million during his lifetime, he was not able to see it to completion, and after his death in nineteen seventy three, his son Christopher

worked to complete The Selm Million. And what we hold in our hands as the selm Merillion is the result of that editorial process. All right, So let's break that down a little bit, kind of rehash, just rehashed that briefly, all right. The Silm Million published after Tolkien's death in nineteen seventy seven, but it is actually the earliest of

all the Middle Earth works, right, It's the earliest. It's the beginnings of it actually go back to twenty years before the publication of The Hobbit, right, and predate the publication of Lord of the Rings by close to four decades. Right. So the Silmarillion is really this collection of stories that book ends Tolkien's creative life, right, it's the early stories, but it is the stories. What we see here is

the stories he came up with. Is he was working out the background mythology for this thing called Middle Earth, right, And you know when you read Lord of the Rings, when you read The Hobbit, and it feels like there's like this incredible background, there's this incredible history to it

all that goes way back. That's why, right, he had because there was like he had worked out all of these legends, the details of all of these legends, you know, as he was creating before he created the stories, as he was creating The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, and he continued to work them out afterwards. Right. He did hope to have it published in his lifetime. It just never happened. And so Christopher, who is one of his children, Christopher Tolkien, published The silm Marillion in nineteen

seventy seven. He had to do this very heavy duty work of going through his father's papers and really compiling them. And he knew the stories pretty well already, right he was, you know, he and his father had talked about these stories. He had grown up with these stories. But he was able to take them with the help of a writer named Guy Gabriel Kay and a young writer at that time. He was still a fantasy writer in his own right. He was able to take those stories and kind of

edit them into what we have in the Selm Mirillion. Okay, so that's some background, published in nineteen seventy seven, after Tolkien died in nineteen seventy three. That's what we have with this book, the Selm Marillion. How we got it? All right? Any questions on that, Gretor No, I'm good, all right, thanks. So let's talk about the contents now. It's important to note that we are going to be working from the second edition of The Selm Merillion, which

is the most recent. So this is the first edition right here, all right, that I have right here, the one originally published in nineteen seventy seven. However, there is a second edition, and that is the one that you probably have unless you've been lucky enough to come across a first edition copy. The second edition, however, has some you know, some minor some changes to it, nothing too

major in terms of the content. But there is one very important thing that's added into the second edition, and that is the Waldman Letter. More on that in just a bit. All right, So you're looking at the table of contents, Greta, let's maybe open it up on the table right here, if we can make some room here, watch out for that microphone. All right, So our table of contents, and.

pages worth that we're looking at. Now. I want you all to think about the table of contents in terms of kind of three groups. All right, we have the introductory material that includes these forwards right, so forward, and then the preface to the second edition, and then this from a letter by J. R. R. Tolkien. All right, So that's the introductory material in this edition right here, because it has illustrations. There's also a list of illustrations in it. That's not going to be in the ones

if it doesn't have illustrations, obviously the next section. So that's so we have. First section would be the introductory material. The second section would be the stories, and so that's going to be everything, starting where it says I know Linda lay right, and that's how you say that word.

That's how you hear me say it, although there are people who would say it differently, but I say, I know de lay and then you go all the way through, and let's jump down all the way to of the rings of power and the third Age, all right, So that is kind of the main chunk of the main narrative chunk, right, of the story the content all right, of the Selm million I know, lind delay all the way through of the Rings of Power in the third Age.

So we'll just call that the stories, all right, And so that's gonna be the main focus over the next several months of this podcast, right, We're going to go through those those chapter by chapter and really dig in deep and have fun exploring them. And then we've got supporting materials, right, So supporting materials. So after that where it says tables, you have genealogies, you have five different genealogies. We'll talk about those on this episode and how to

understand and how those are useful. Then we have this table called the Sundering of the Elves. That one is really useful. Actually, that's that's probably the one that I referred to the most and when I was first reading this and kind of trying to get my mind wrapped around this as really helpful for understanding elves, right, really

helpful table for understanding just the basics about elves. And then we have notes on pronunciation or note on pronunciation index of names, and then appendix elements and Quinya and Sindarn names. Okay, so that's all supporting materials, right. All that stuff from tables on to the end is what i'd refer to as supporting materials. So we got group one or section one, introduction material section two, the stories,

Section three supporting material Yeah, makes sense. That makes sense, all right, So we're gonna spend the rest of this episode dealing with the introductory supporting materials. Kind of ground ourselves with those, understand how they're helpful, get them out of the way. But let's take a few minutes real quick just to consider the meat of the book. Right,

what's in section two the stories? All right, So in most pred editions I've seen, you'll see things organize such that I know, Linda Lay, valaquina A Kalabeate and the Rinks of Power and the Third Age stand apart from the rest of the text with this thing called Quintus Silmarilion headlining twenty four distinct chapters. All right, so let's talk about what those are. The first thing I know, Linda de Lay, all right, I know Linda Lay is the creation story of Middle Earth. That's what we're going

to discuss on the next episode. Okay. It is truly one of my favorite things Tolkien wrote, and it is very fascinating. Okay. The basic idea there is that middle Earth is made of music. A right, Middle Earth is made.

Then jumping down, we'll come back to Quentin Silm Million, jumping down a calibath. This tells the story of middle ER's second age and the downfall of Numer. So heads up to all of you folks who are here because you're excited about Lord of the Rings on Prime. Okay, A Klabath is a must read, right, you have to read a Klibeth to understand the story of the Second Age and the Rings of Power. I'm sorry of Lord

of the Rings on Prime. Okay, that is the main text for understanding the history of Numen or we won't beginning to really diving into a Calibath until much later, you know, in terms of our reading schedule, because it does come very late in the book.

on the Second Age in general. We we actually did a Calibath reread a few years ago where it was four parts, and we've done lots of other episodes on the Second Age and the lore of the Second Age and the history of the Second Age. So we've got plenty of content back from the past on on this topic. If you want to beef up on that.

that and you'll probably come up. And then of the Rings of Power in the Third Age, this is this is a pretty interesting one. It gives a relatively short account of the creation of the Rings of Power all the way through the destruction of the one ring at the end of the Third Age. So this is like almost like a bird's eye view of the entire story of the Rings from when the rings were created all

the way to to the one rings destruction at Mount Doom, right. So, and it's and it's the kind of thing you can read in one or two sittings. It's a pretty short version of it. So that one's pretty fun, especially, you know, especially if you're coming to the Selmer Million having just read The Lord of the Rings, you're probably really going to enjoy reading of the Rings of Power in the Third Age. So all right, now, let's go back to this thing, quinta Silm Million right where we've got twenty

four chapters. All right, So quinta silm Merillion is basically that that's really what the Selm Million is. Right when we talk about when when Tolkien would have been talking about the Silm Million, that's that's the main thing he would have been referring to. Is this. It's this saga. It's this collection of stories that kind of presents this

history of these things called the silm Merells. It it's gonna tell everything from the first awakening of the elves Uh to the creation of the three Selmer Ells, the numerous wars that result over them, and the coming of men into the world and really so much more. I mean, it's it's not just one story, but it's kind of a collection of many stories that are part of a

larger saga, all right. And you know, the comparison has been made to the Old Testament before, because it's that same kind of thing, right, some of these you know, different characters can be involved. It covers a long period of history, but you know, it's all really telling. It's all part of kind of one big story, right, It's just not always necessarily easy to see how it all connects until later, right. The the Silmariles, let's define that

real quick, all right, The Silmarills. There's three of them, and they are these holy jewels. We're gonna learn a lot more about them. But they are essentially these three jewels that contain a blessed light. And at some point, this blessed light becomes something that's no longer available, right, and so the three Silmarills are the only way of

getting access to this holy light. Right. So that might seem all very like hard to understand if you're coming to this new like, what what's this big deal about holy light? But we'll understand that, right, we're gonna get into all that and what that's all about once we get into these stories.

He he loved language. Literally, he was a philologist in terms of loving language, and literally he was a philologist in terms of that was his profession, right, so, uh he he loved language, and uh so I'm not sure if that's the exact translation of the Silmarillion, but I think that's a good way of referring to it, right, It's like of the soil Marles or the tale the Tale of the Silmrles, Right, Yeah, so yeah, good question things.

first to this introduction to our forwards. Right, so, our forward to the first edition, our forward to the second edition. The forward from the first edition is written by Christopher. I want to read this opening paragraph from actual I'm gonna read it over here. I want it. This is a better place to read it. Here we go, all right, this is from the first edition.

so Christopher says. The silm Million, now published four years after the death of its author, is an account of the Elder Days, or the First Age of the world, and the Lord of the Rings were narrated the great events at the end of the Third Age, but the tales of the Silmarillion are legends deriving from a much deeper past, when more Goth, the first dark Lord, dwelt in Middle Earth and the high Elves made war upon him for the rec recovery of the selmer El's all right,

so break down a little bit of that for you. That's a really good little summary of the selmar Million. Okay. Lord of the Rings hobbit take place at the end of the Third Age of Middle Earth. Okay, this three thousand year period called the Third Age. New minor the history of neumenor that is going to be the focus of Lord of the Rings. That's the second age. That's when the Rings of power were created. Okay, and the end of this so the beginning of the second age

is the creation of New Minor, right. The end of the second age is the downfall of New Minor along with the last alliance of men. And L's right, So that the first defeat, the first defeat of Souron really not the first defeat, but one of the defeats of Souron where he loses the one ring, right, he loses the one ring and we think he's vanquished, and the one ring comes into the possession of of is seal door. Right, So you know that bit of legend, from that bit

of the legend from Lord of the Rings. Okay, So third age into third Age, Lord of the Rings, end of second age, kind of the inciting action of the Lord of the Rings. First age is what the selm me million is all about. Okay, More Goth? All right, who's this guy? More Goth? Because you thought Sururn was the bad guy, right, you thought Suron was the bad guy of Middle Earth. Suron is a we'll show up in the selm Merillion, but he is a lieutenant of more Goth. Right, he is, he is a He learned

everything he knows from more Goth. Okay, more Goth will not be known as more Goth until well into the Selm me Million. Before that, he is going to be known as Melcore. All Right, you're gonna we're gonna meet him at Idol and Delay as melcoor okay, Melcor slash more Goth is the chief bad guy of the Selm Million. Okay, makes sense?

So this is kind of interesting from a textual history, not something you need to spend any time on or get tripped up by unless you're super curious, Okay, But basically he explains that putting this thing together was no easy feat. All right. What you'll learn about Tolkien as you learn more about him is that he was incredible. He was an incredible genius, and like many incredible geniuses,

he was extremely disorganized, right he was. He was kind of like, maybe not extremely disorganized, because he was organized enough to have these papers in a place where his son could work with him. Right. But he wrote a lot, right, He wrote a lot, and he wrote many different versions of these stories, and so Christopher had to like go back and put together in some cases like the best

versions of the stories. Right. So, but one thing to note is that everything that's included in here is according to his father's explicit intention. Right. Christopher says that that all works included are according to jerr Or Tolkien's explicit intention. So it wasn't like he was just throwing things in Like. It wasn't like he decided to throw in a kalabath because he felt like, you know, it belonged in there was that was his father's intention. So second edition forward

really very short. Basically, he just gives a little background on why this introduction was added this Waltman letter, as we're going to discuss the basic story. In nineteen fifty one, as Tolkien was finalizing Lord of the Rings, he was hoping to find a publisher who would agree to issue both Lord of the Rings and the Selm Million, and so he basically told the entire history of Middle Earth from the very beginning all the way to the end

in this letter and the Waldman Letter. Yeah. Now, what we have in the Waldman Letter is not the entire Waldman Letter, all right, So what we have in this introduction right here is not the entire Waldman Letter. You can read the entire Waldman Letter if you get letters the Letters of Jered are Tolkien. This bad boy right here, which I highly recommend. Okay, one of my favorite Tolkien books. For sure. It's more than just a reference. There's some

just so so good, so good. If you want to understand the mind of Tolkien, you need the Letters of Jared Orre Tolkien. But the Waldman Letter contained in its entirety there and here, it's really just focused on the first and second ages, all right, So it stops when he gets to the third age. Okay. Waldman was worked for Collins Publishers, who was one of the publishers that he was talking to about publishing Lord of the Rings, and and so he was hoping to say, hey, you know,

here's my Hobbit sequel. By the way, I'd really like it if you'd published the Selm Million along with it. And here's why you should. Right. Obviously it didn't work out. Now publishers might look back and say, well, kind of wish I kind of wish I had done that, right, But yeah, roll the dice. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. So the whole letter is quite worthwhile. But let's talk about Let's talk about something that I think is really

important in this letter, and that's the themes. Okay, the themes that he calls out in this letter. There are three themes, three key themes of the Selm Million. The first theme is fall. Tolkien says that fall occurs in several modes, so we should understand this as having to do with a fall from grace or from an exalted state or a happy moral state. There are numerous instances of characters falling. Sometimes the fall is from goodness into

a state of evil. Sometimes it's an impatient presumption, perhaps more understandable and defensible, yet with real consequences. Nevertheless, always we find Tolkien exploring how even the fall can be worked by good powers to bring about a happy outcome. Right. So,

Tolkien's universe, although very dark, is not a fundamentally pessimistic universe. Okay. This, this is something I really want to emphasize because I think there's a lot of a lot of the popular fantasy of our time tends to be very pessimistic, right, it tends to be very like focused on the violent,

on the nihilistic. And I will say it, I'm looking at you, Game of Thrones, although I will say I don't know much about Game of Thrones, but everything I understand about it and what I've been told by others, is that it is very nihilistic and pessimistic. And I'm not there to put it down. I'm not there to say that there's no like you know that that's that we're not We're not getting to do an ethical discussion

or a moralistic discussion about that. All I'm saying is that you need to understand that Tolkien's universe is not like that. Okay. Tolkien's universe, though often very dark, though often very violent, they often very brutal, is a fundamentally hopeful universe. Okay.

come right. The good will come all right. And in some ways that's kind of the challenge, I'd say, Tolti might even have seen it this way, that the challenge of the fantasy writer in his mind, the writer of the fairy tale, the challenge is to get their protagonists into such a mess that it's like, how can they possibly escape from this? Right? And when you're just like, well, they're done, they're toast, right.

creatures that are so similar? Is immortality really the favorite gift that we mortals often think it would be. So there's a couple of aspects to this with what Tolkien says. First of all, we have elves and men. Elves immortal by nature. Now that doesn't mean they can't die. It just means that they won't naturally die, right, men, not so much as we all know, right, Tolkien. There's a bit of a speculative idea in this, right, like what would it be like if we did live forever? Right,

if we were immortal creatures? Okay? And Tolkien explores that idea, and he finds that well, actually, in a fallen world, it may not be the blessing that you think it is, right, and the fallen world, it may not be the blessing that you think it is. So there's a lot of that tension that Tolkien is exploring with this. And then under this subject, under this theme of mortality, is this question, this question of like the creative desire? Right, why do

we have this impulse to create? And I think Tolkien's getting it maybe a few things with this right he wants to he wants us to understand, like, first of all, where does the like kind of creative desire come? From right, if we live in a universe, it's like brutal and just kind of beholden to nature, right, just just purely beholden to like the kind of nature and death and the rule of death. Then why do we have this

desire to create? Right? Why do we have this impulse to want to leave behind beautiful things, to want to make the world a more beautiful place? And why does that often seem to lead to a spirit of possessiveness? Right? Why does that cause us to have this like selfish desire as a result the impulse of creativity? That The philosophy of creativity is a very important one to Tolkien. He lived it because he because he was incredibly creative.

He lived it throughout his life. But he also just wondered about why we have this and where it came from. One of the easiest things, one of the easiest ways to start with understanding his view on that is to understand that he viewed human beings as subcreators. Right, that we make because we are because we are made by the ultimate creator. Right, we are made to do so

by the ultimate creator. Right, So we are made right by God and he made us human beings specifically to have this similar creative desire that he has right, that the that that God, that that the ultimate deity has right. So we'll talk about that a lot, and it actually works its way into the legendarium itself. There's a lot about creativity within the story of the Selm Marilli in itself.

opposed to true art. So you know, when you think of true art, think of like elvish, like what the elves do, right, Like the elves, the elves seek to take the natural world and to develop it further in like to develop its nature further, right in a very organic way that doesn't violate what what we've been given, right,

like what what we've kind of found there. Okay, Whereas you think of like you know, just think of like what Suron does, right, or Saramon when he's creating you know, he's creating the Roukai, right, He's he's.

the idea here. We might also take this one step further and understand that Salon, in creating the One Ring, right, creating his rings of power, that he was creating these machines. He was creating these magic machines that he could use

to manipulate and rule over people. Right, So tools of domination. Okay, so the machine is the falsification of true art, right, and that it seeks to dominate, doesn't seem to beautify, It doesn't seem to glorify and to bring to further bring out the natural essence of a thing and beautify it, but to dominate it and to use it for a means to further power, right yep. So so those are the three themes that we're really looking at when we

look at the Silm Rellion. There's a whole lot more in this introduction if you're up for it, I highly recommend reading it before you dive into Inolindela, though, don't feel like you have to. It can actually be a really good introduction to the history of the Silm Million and kind of ground yourself in it. But again, if you're just the type of person who doesn't want to spend your time with an essay before you dive into this,

you can always come back to it later too. We will be referring to it frequently, like just different parts parts of it throughout because there's some clarifying statements that you know that that Tolkien makes throughout it, that the Waldman letter. Y yeah, so you know, do what you will with it. If you're the type of person just wants to dive right into the stories, go for it. If you want to read the Waldman letter, it's worth your time.

So let's jump ahead here, and these are on the back. These are in the back after the main chunk of the stories. Catcha, all right, we gotta kind of turn it this way, Greta, Yes, we do. All right. So the first table that you're gonna see is Fenway, right, the House of Fenway and the Noldoran descent of l Rond and l Ros. Okay, hey, you recognize the name there, l Rond, Right, you see l Rond Yep, by the way, look up where it says l Rond at the bottom of the page, bottom right of the page there go

up about ten to maybe one o'clock from there. Follow it up and you see another name you're going to recognize, Gladrail. Right, So two names you recognize right there. Okay, we have l Rond and Gladrail on this table. So this shows that both l Rond and Gladrail are descended from an individual named Fenway. All right. Fenway is the king of is the high king of a group of elves called the Noldor. All right, he's the high king of a

group of elves called the Noldor. And we're gonna learn a lot about the old or then Old Door kind of the main group of elves along with the Sindarron that we're going to be very focused on in this story. We're gonna learn where the Nooldor come from, what their tendencies are, and we're gonna learn a lot about many Noldor. Okay, all right. The next table we have here is the descendants of Oldway and Elway. All right, So these are what a group of elves called the Tillary. Okay, The

Tillary at some point split into the Tillary and the Sindarn. Okay. You will also see here that el Rond is in this table as well as is glad rail. Okay, and you'll look down a little further and who do we see? There are Wind and what boom? We know them, yeah, we know them. Okay, So starting to see how okay, okay, I can see this. This is like an ancient history of like actual characters that I already do know. All right, So yep, there you go, all right? Table three here

move your h I know is headphone cord? Here?

l Rond is half Elvin. L Rond is half elf, half human, half man, right, So that shows his descent from the men's side.

You can actually get a copy of that if you sign up at the five dollars level on Patreon, and or you can buy a copy of it from trumanspress dot com, or it's available on Amazon.

is another table of men here as well. All right, This last table we have is uh, is kind of different from the other tables, and that it's not like a direct assent. But what this does is it shows all of the different names of the groups of elves and how they look like to one another. It is very helpful. It's going to look like gibberish at first, but let's break it down, all right. The Quindy Quindy is the overall name for the elves, right, they are

the Quindi all elves. They're broken out into two main groups, the Eldar on the left and the Avari on the right. They Avari and the Eldar are distinguished by what happens in one of the early chapters of the Selmer Million. The basic question do they accept the summons to Valenore or do they reject the summons to Valin or? Okay, the Eldar accept the summons. The Avari reject the summons, right,

so they are the unwilling. The Avari are the unwilling, and you can kind of see there's not a whole lot more said about them, right, Not not that there won't be more set about them, and there's not stuff said about them otherwise, but that's that's kind of where they're left behind. It's all. It's all defined by what happens in terms of the journey to valleen Or. Early in the book, the Eldar are broken out into three main groups. So these are the people that do that

do accept the journey. They're broken out into the Vanyard, the Noldor, and the Tillary. Okay, the Vanyard and the Noldor all eventually complete the journey to Valinor. The Tillary end up breaking into some different groups, Okay, the Tillary, and they're actually a very large group of elves. Some of the Tillary do make the journey, right, They make the journey on along with the Vanyard and the Noldor,

and they arrive in the Blessed realm. The groups of elves together that become that arrive in the Blessed realm are the Calaquindi, right, That's why the Vonnyard, the Noldor and part of the Tillary kind of add up to that. Elves of light, that's what that means, literally, elves of light, the high eleves. They came to Aman in the days of the Two Trees. Now let's go back up to the Tilary. The Tilary break up into those who become the Calaquindi part of the Calaquiniti, and then we have

the Sindar, the gray elves. These are the elves that remain balariond Okay, They're gonna play a big part in the story of the Summarillion. And then we have the non Door, those that left the march of the Tillarry east of the Misty Mountains. Misty Mountains. Hey, that's also something from that we recognize from the Lord of the Rings and some million. Yes, but the non Door are they're they're left further behind, right, so, and and the Misty Mountains do not show up on that map right

of Valerions, Okay, yep. So they will come back into the story because they feed into it much later on, because they feed into the la Quindy, the green elves of Assyrian Okay, and then the oman Yar the Elder who were not of Aman Okay. So the non Door are kind of interesting because we can think of them as you know, the source for some of like many of the elves that maybe we don't like. So so when we think of like Legolists, for example, I'm kind

of throwing this out there. I want to double check this because I didn't look this up beforehand, but I'm pretty sure Legolists and his father thron du Will are non Door, right. That would make sense because they live east of the Misty Mountains and the Third Age. So I'm double checking it here using trustee resource of Lord of the Rings wiki. Let's see here they might They're

sometimes referred to as the Sylvan elves. Right, and looking for Legolis's name, not seeing him there, let's look up less.

correct me. You're gonna hear me say that a lot, because there's so much there's so much lore. There's so much to this legendarium that there's often things that even I knew at one point and I've forgotten or I'm just not sure if I'm getting that quite right. So and it's important to me to make sure we get it right. So help me out if if I'm wrong about that. All right, So that is the table of the Elves.

but it's actually cure done. Whenever you see a ce by itself like that, it is pronounced as a heart is a k sound right, kuh kredn of the Grey Havens. So there's a lot of examples in here like that. It's worth just taking a few minutes and reading through this so you can understand how to pronounce the names that you that you see throughout the story.

appendix elements in Quinya and Sindar in names. So this is if you really want to nerd out on languages, this is a good place to go. Right. So, no book by Tolkien would be complete without something like this, right without a philology reference. So there you go. Boom awesome, boom awesome, awesome. All right. Maps, maps, all right, So we've talked about the map already a little bit. Here's

the deal. This map is of bealariond. You're Bellarion is Middle Earth, okay, but it's not the Middle Earth you're familiar with. You'll understand how bil Areon relates to the rest of Middle Earth. As you get into the story. You can see my map of the Third Age of Middle Earth behind me. Right here, Bellarion lies to the west of what you see of Middle Earth. Right now, you're like, how can that be right because it looks

like it's continuous. Well, we'll find out why that is, all right, Stay tuned, stay tuned, all right, And it's in the map of Belarion. Is not even going to be relevant until it's not going to be relevant in the first ten chapters. Right. There's a couple of parts where it actually is a little relevant early on, but it's not for very long. Most of the action in the first ten chapter happens in this place called the Blessed Realm, and we don't have a map for that.

We don't have an official map for that. However, we will provide some links in the show notes to show some other artists renderings of the Blessed Realm and maybe just kind of how the whole world looks at that point. And don't forget, there's this great reference called the Atlas of Metal Earth by Karen Wynn Fonstad, And this thing

is extremely useful. It's really well put together. I think it had Christopher Tolkien's blessing, but it's regardless, it is pretty accurate it and it does a great job of like showing lots of locations throughout the first age. It's great even if you're just a fan of the Third Age. I mean, there's like so many great maps in this thing, so I highly recommend picking up a copy. We'll also put a link to that in the show notes. So, Greta, that's it for the That's it for this introduction to

this film. Million all your questions answered.

I want to kind of set the haiku tone. So here you go. You ready for this credit? All right? The silm Million not an easy book to read challenge scripture.

Even if you're not sure, still try to get it in and we'll you know it could we might not record that soon, and then our deadline for Valaquenta is January ninth, twenty twenty two, and we'll keep you posted as other deadlines them up, so just kind of stagger

it based on a week after that. So probably the next one after that is January sixteenth, and even if we don't get them in on that particular episode, we'll probably get him in on our live Q and A. Right, we'll probably try and do a you know, go back and look at some haiku on our live Q and a Q and a later cool, cool, live high Q and a nice All right, y'all, so leave us a rating and review, subscribe, rate and review us on iTunes

or the platform of your choice. If you are a five star fan of The Tolkien Road, you can really help us out by heading over to iTunes or your preferred source for the show and dropping us a rating and review. When you do that, it helps get the word out about The Tolkien Road, which helps us to keep on everring on and correspondence. So we're gonna save our correspondence. You know, in the past, we've done correspondents at the end of most episodes in order to make

sure we get these episodes really right. We have a time time for we don't feel rushed. I want to save our correspondence, and you know, I'm gonna to be like picking the best correspondence that we receive and you know, really saving that for our monthly discussions, right, So our monthly Q and A, and we're going to respond to notes who receive and that kind of thing on the episode. I'm also going to do a better job of just keeping up with the shorter nice notes that you guys

send us and everything. You might make it on the air, you might not, but no matter what, we always appreciate it. And I you know, Greta will tell you we get awesome notes from people all the time that I just forward to her and I'm just like, this is an awesome note. Yeah, right, yeah, because it puts the wind in our sales.

So let's let's make the correspondence awesome, folks, let's do it all right, Yes, okay, So this most livestream I think right now if I to go and put this out there, so I believe we have it scheduled for uh let's see here the nineteenth, So Wednesday, the nineteenth of January at seven pm Central Time, at eight pm Eastern, five pm Pacific. And that's going to be our plan.

Become a if you want to join in that, make sure you become a patron of time and we will be sending out the link for that to our patrons. So sound good.