Mithril in Moria only!

[geoffrey]

Gandalf said to Sam in Moria, "For here alone in the world was found Moria-silver, or true-silver as some have called it: mithril is the Elvish name. The Dwarves have a name they do not tell."

I vaguely recall that in some of Tolkien's posthumously-published writings that mithril was also found elsewhere. But I prefer Tolkien's definitive word on this in The Lord of the Rings to possibilities jotted down on scraps of paper. I'd hate to have anyone go through my unpublished stuff. Urgh. Cast it into the fire!

[jamesmishler]

I think the other sources were all in Beleriand, and so lost at the end of the First Age? Maybe in Belegost or Nogrod? My exact memory fails me. But that must be it, or there would have been no mithril in the Elder Days, as Khazad-Dum was founded later.

[Falconer]

It was found in Valinor, in Númenor, and in Moria.

“the world” here means Middle-earth (=Afro-Eurasia). Cf. Germanic mythology’s nine worlds.

[Falconer]

Also, I believe the reference to Mithril in Valinor was is The Lord of the Rings, in Bilbo’s poem about Eärendil. Too lazy to check tho.

[geoffrey]

Mar 5, 2023 13:51:05 GMT -6 Falconer said:

Also, I believe the reference to Mithril in Valinor was is The Lord of the Rings, in Bilbo’s poem about Eärendil. Too lazy to check tho.

"A ship then new they built for him
of mithril and of elven-glass..."

Good catch!

I still prefer mithril in Moria only, though.

Hold! An old memory resurfaces:

I seem to remember reading (perhaps in The Return of the Shadow [the sixth volume of The History of Middle-Earth], or maybe in The Treason of Isengard) that the version of this song that is printed in The Fellowship of the Ring was not Tolkien's final version, but that through a series of errors an earlier draft of the song was printed instead. Can anyone confirm that? And if my memory is correct, could someone check to see if mithril is mentioned in the final version of the song?

[Falconer]

You know, I… don’t hate the Amazon Fanfic TV idea of the Silmaril/Mithril connection. I didn’t see the show, so I’m sure it suffered in execution, but the fact that the three Silmarils (canonically) ended up in the Sky, the Sea, and the depths of the Earth, well, that just happens to match up with the three places Mithril can (canonically) be found: Eärendil’s spaceship, the island of Númenor, and the Mines of Khazad-dûm. It seems like the sort of thing Tolkien would have pondered (if ultimately likely rejected). And anyway it’s a fun parallel, the sort that you often find in Tolkien.

And that’s rubbish about “scraps of paper,” but I chalk it up to your general love of minimalism. Everything the man wrote is heartbreakingly beautiful, to me, and the sum incomparably more than its parts. A life spent mythmaking. Part of me regrets that any of it was published in his lifetime at all!

[geoffrey]

Mar 5, 2023 16:28:50 GMT -6 Falconer said:

And that’s rubbish about “scraps of paper,” but I chalk it up to your general love of minimalism. Everything the man wrote is heartbreakingly beautiful, to me, and the sum incomparably more than its parts. A life spent mythmaking. Part of me regrets that any of it was published in his lifetime at all!

In general, you are right.

I wish only to make a distinction between:

1. The material that Tolkien was so sure of that he finalized it and had it published for all the world to see, and...

2. The various ideas, inspirations, thoughts, etc. that Tolkien jotted down over the course of 60 years: Stuff that he most certainly did not consider ready to be placed before the world at large.

When one considers how critical Tolkien himself was of The Hobbit (which he wished to rewrite and later gave up) and The Lord of the Rings ("good in parts" is how I believe he described the latter), one can only imagine how critical he would be of his sloppily (as in, Christopher would sometimes stare for a long time at it through a magnifying glass to try to decipher it) hand-written, erased, crossed-out, etc. writings that he had stuffed in his desk drawers.

Or, in a nutshell, finalized creations vs. ideas that might be heavily revised or even discarded altogether.

I hope that makes sense!

[verhaden]

Gandalf isn't omniscient.

[Falconer]

FWIW, the reason he didn’t “approve” of The Hobbit is that when he wrote it he didn’t intend it to be part of the Legendarium — i.e., the First Age writings. The Lord of the Rings goes a long way toward bridging those two worlds, but The Hobbit with its frivolous elves is necessarily incongruous with the more solidly Legendarium-esque writings, The Lord of the Rings and (especially) the Legendarium proper.

The Hobbit is a very excellent piece of fiction in its own right, of course.

[geoffrey]

Funny enough, my favorite two portrayals of elves are the Ilkorins of Mirkwood in The Hobbit and the Gnomes in 1930's "The Quenta" (in the fourth volume of The History of Middle-Earth): drunken, angry, scary, traitorous, obsessive, blasphemous, lusty, greedy, lying, murderous elves. But not craven. (As Feanor said, "He saith not that we shall suffer from cowardice, from cravens or the fear of cravens.")

[tkdco2]

Perhaps there are small pockets of mithril around Middle-earth, but vast quantities are found only in Moria.