Where is Valinor?
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- čas přidán 21. 01. 2024
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Finally a reasonable explanation for the Bermuda Triangle - its that bloomin straight road and all of our missing ships are washing up ashore in Elf Land
Bermuda doesnt even have any statistically noticeable excess of lost air-or sea vehicles.
Its really all just storytelling heaped onto earlier storytelling.
But a fun story it is to imgagine WW2-aircrews staggering onto the jewel-strewn white shores of aman. Being reluctantly greeted by teleri fishermen who remember Ar-Pharazôn´s armies.
They don’t have the hallowed boats, though. If the journey can be attempted in boats that are different, I’d wager that they are not washing up on the shore of Valinor, but are getting lost somewhere in between, but I’m not sure what that would look like.
No wonder Elves don't like humans in every lore, we littered all over their aftrrlife
Nah. I figured this out in a different post about mimics in D&D. The post was joking about the players wondering if the entire ship they were on was a mimic. I said "no, the ship isn't a mimic...but the ocean is." Someone replied that the Bermuda Triangle is its mouth, and we decided that's canon now.
My impression was when Eru Illuvatar made Arda a spherical world, Valinor was seemingly sealed in its own realm or dimension and only reachable by permission of the Valar and Eru, to prevent another maritime invasion as when Ar-Pharazon’s armada stormed Valinor.
The spiritual realm being reachable by sea yet separated from the mortal world was similar to Avalon of Arthurian mythology, especially for how a mortally wounded King Arthur is borne west to be healed and rest until Britain’s hour of need.
My view is that Valinor is on the Unseen dimension, the one that the Nazgul existed in. Glorfindel and the Ainur have a presence in the Unseen, so I argue that while before the Akkalabêth Valinor was in both Realms after it the Land of the Valar was fully submerged in the Unseen.
Could use Arthur about now..
Sounds right to me - don't they say that Valinor can only be reached in a straight line? I mean, that's hard to do on the surface of a sphere. Eru could make that happen, though.
03:33 I shoula waited.
@@igorlopes7589 the unseen realm? Cannot be, as the landscape is identical in both the seen and unseen, thus if humans were sailing and the unseen world just magically had a different landscape, this wouldn't make sense.
Elves always exist in the seen and unseen realm, and if the landscape were different, this would be disastrous. This isn't another 'realm' with different geography and landscapes and such; it is literally just the same world but the spirit is shifted into its own 'wavelength,' so to speak, so people not in this attuned world cannot see such spirit.
When Frodo saw GlorFindel in his full glory, that was because he was seeing him in the unseen and seen 'worlds.'
Calling it a 'world' is what is confusing people, as the seen and unseen world are not two separate worlds (they are in the actual sense, but not in the modern definition of world, of what most people think of when they think of world), but, rather, are in two separate phases; and if you are phase shifted into this dimension, you likewise see beings in this same phase; if you are not in the same phase, you do not see them.
The ground, the actual Earth itself (Arda), is not something that is in a different phase; its phase locked to all phases, so everyone sees the same actual/physical earth
Never would I expect to hear "geosynchronous orbit" in a video about Tolkien. :)
The metaphysics of Tolkien’s world are at once thought-provoking, emotionally fulfilling, and extremely beautiful. Another wonderful video, Robert! Thank you for all you do.
When I was a kid, in my hometown in Croatia there was a dance club called Valinor. It was famous for being a venue for techno, trance and mainstream pop events. It was the home of pop culture coming from, incidentally, the West.
Unfortunately, in its later years it became a home for Serbian turbofolk music and scene. So, in our world, there is a Valinor that fell to the forces of the dark. Well, actually, forces of kitsch and glitter, but you get what I mean.
This is fuckin hilarious. Thank you for sharing
This is funny... man, I understand that Serbs and Croats are not friends, but we as Slavs and white race as whole must stand together to protect our legacy, DNA and culture (including Tolkien's books).
Ala si se iskenjo sad hahahaha,
They're taking the hobbits to Isengard
@@AlexanderVasilyev-cf4ec "the white race" lol Tolkien would've hated you.
You really have a way with words, Robert. I knew all the info presented in this video, and knew the answer in its entirety, but the way you present it is really evocative of Tolkien himself, and reminds me of why I adore his world so much.
Now we finally know where Amelia Earhart went lmao
What a beautiful close you made. I have not yet finished reading the red book, but the way you described being able to glimpse only a bit of valinor, right before dying, makes me feel that this is what I would want to experience as my last moment.
"The grey rain-curtain turned to silver and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores, and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise." In the movie this is how Gandalf described the afterlife to Pippin in the midst of the battle for Minas Tirith.
In Tom's house Frodo "either in his dreams or out... heard a sweet singing in his mind: a song that seemed to come like pale light behind a grey rain-curtain, and growing stronger to turn the veil all to glass, until at last it was rolled back, and a far green country opened before him under a swift sunrise." [Fog on the Barrow Downs]
He wasn't describing the afterlife; he was describing his faint memories of Valinor, which is not the afterlife.
@@pyropulseIXXI Even among the Valar only Mandos and Manwë know the afterlife of mortals: men and hobbits. Tom is not Valar but, being First, he knows too, & the vision comes to Frodo in Tom's house
(Gandalf doesn't meet Bombadil, to compare visions, until his own mission is complete).
This is Gandalfs description of the afterlife in the films to Pippin during the battle at minas tirith in film 3. However, it is Tolkiens description of Valinor in the books. If I remember correctly, the description is used during Frodo's vision of it in Tom Bombadil's abode in book 1 and also when he actually sails there at the end of book 3.
@@pyropulseIXXI I'm inclined to agree, as we know who and what Gandalf is and where he comes from, but the movie makes the glaring error of portraying this dialogue as such, as an "afterlife" for those who don't know Tolkien's work at least.
Which has always been funny to me, as Pippin talks about an end, Gandalf says no, not an end and goes on to describe a place in which Pippin can actually never set his feet on or get too XD. Quite in fact the Destiny of mortal creatures, only Eru would know.
So I just head canon movie Gandalf is just absolutely trolling that fool of a Took before his potential imminent death XD
Valinor is what we call the moon. Tol eressea is the international space station. Neil Armstrong was actually earendil. Yuri gargarin was actually Tuor.
West of middle earth
As I clicked on the video I was snarkily saying "it's West, of course" to myself lmaoo
The west is the best.
Thanks….🤣
Nothing else need be said.
Some heroes don't wear a cape xd
Very poetic writing and narration by In Deep Geek.
My first new In geek deep video.
And I must say, cant get enough. My love for Middle earth and lotr has been rekindled.
Thanks so much.
Always happy to see a new IDG video!
I like how poetic you get with this one. Bravo!
I love your voice. It's so calming and peaceful. You are a true bard
So here's a theoretical question. You have two ships. One full of Elves bound for Valinor. The other not bound for Valinor. However, they sail parallel to each other. From the viewpoint of the people on the 2nd ship, what happens with the 1st ship? I think, based on what Tolkien wrote, that it would slowly appear to rise into the sky as it follows the Straight Road while the 2nd ship falls away beneath the 1st one as it follows the curvature of the world.
Maybe. This reminds me of Special Relativity thought experiments with travelling spaceships.
I must say this Channel is the best Channel which covers Tolkien. Especially because of your voice. It's perfect for narrating. I like others too, but yours is without a doubt on another level. Thanks for doing what you do Robert!
What a wonderful video, you never cease to impress! Your closing thoughts were particularly beautiful and reminded me of one of my favorite literary quotes which is ironically about beginnings and not endings. It comes from "The Magician's Nephew" (Chronicles of Narnia) when Frank the Cabby is witnessing the creation of Narnia:
‘Glory be!’ said the Cabby. ‘I’d ha’ been a better man all my life if I’d known there were things like this.’
I hope everyone is able to find something that inspires them to be better no matter their current circumstances ...
I always liked Frank the Cabby, when he was accidently brought into the newly created Narnia, Aslan made his horse into the first Pegasus, and also brought Frank's wife to join him.
They were both clearly good people, as Aslan made them the first King & Queen of Narnia.
Sometimes, when either reading Tolkien's work, or reading/watching something about him and the legendarium, it actually feels real.
I’ve been there and they want you to make longer videos 😮
That quote at the end is my favorite from all of Tolkien's work. Actually made me tear up the first time I read it.
Is the east coast of Valinor cluttered with abandoned ships?
That or the ship's material are reused in buildings.
Marvelously said. The straight road that we can only glimpse just for a second.
And is so hard to stay on...
I'm 64 now but since I first read the Rings trilogy as a teen I have always been moved by Frodo's description of the Far West much more than the description of any afterlife in any scripture from the "real world". I've read them all and if Heaven, Nirvana, Zion, Elysium, and the various and sundry descriptions of enlightenment had half the hold on me as Tolkien's far green country, you might find me in church more often.
Tara's Turquoise Pureland of Yurlod Kurpa is described as such: "Covered with manifold trees and creepers, resounding with the sound of many birds, And with murmur of waterfalls, thronged with wild beasts of many kinds; Many species of flowers grow everywhere." It's a mountainous land covered completely in forests, with opulent palaces embedded in the high cliffs. Closest thing I know of.
Thank you, Robert!
Your videos are very well done, and if you'd sell a coffee mug with your logo and the background scene on it, like your channel banner, I'd get one!
The way you describe humans getting one last glimpse of Valinor before dying is how I think you would approach a Black Hole. A great unknown that we can't return from, but if you were on your way out and you had that chance to see inside before the end...
When I picture the halls of Mandos, all I can think is that they’ve got a special place where Feanor is still sitting facing a corner wearing a dunce hat
Hehehehehehehehehehe, naughty boys get a time-out in the shame corner.
I knew all that was said in the video, but I watched it all the way through nonetheless. You have a very eloquent way of putting it all into words that makes these videos very nice to watch.
Okay but the REAL question is where was Valinor when Westfold fell??
Robert, you've left me yearning for a place I cannot go.
Same...
Have always been so intrigued by this place. Thank you for this video Robert.
Glorfindel is the definition of how a good employee gets "rewarded" with more work
Marvellous. One of your best. Thank you.
Beautifully written, TY
Surprised you didn’t mention Ælfwine, the only human that ever traveled to Eressea and back. He was Tolkien’s original framing device, a human that would slip away to Eressea as described in the Silmarillion and be permitted to come back with a book of lore - essentially the Red Book. Tolkien abandoned the idea in favor of the Red Book of Westmarch framing narrative, so he isn’t ‘canon,’ but it’s interesting that this metaphysics was developed quite early.
Well, when you are building a world for a story, you really should build the world first and the laws that govern it (physics, magic/faith systems, etc.), before you even start writing the plot. Maybe not yet in detail, so that you have still room for storyrelated changes, but the more efford you spend at this stage, the more consistent and full your story will feel and the easier it becomes to write the plot, once you have defined the setting. Building a world like Tolkien did might very well take more time than writing the actual story, but you have the advantage, that once that world is created, you can write any number of stories for this world, while you only have to do the world building part once.
There is no canon, and using this word needs to die. Yes, there is a Legendarium, but there is not "this isn't canon, but this is!" nonsense. it is a real historical and mythological narrative being told via Tolkien after he found the book and translated it into English. Thus, the 'canon' is not known by anyone, not even Tolkien.
Also, do you describe actual history as 'canon?' "This isn't in the historical canon" just sounds like people arbitrarily decide what is and is not a real past event; thus, real history does not have an 'canon.'
@@Daniel-rd6st Tolkien created the languages first, then created the world of his languages to 'live in.'
Id consider languages as part of the worldbuilding aspect, basically everything that isnt strictly storyrelated 🙂 @@pyropulseIXXI
@@pyropulseIXXI agreed, 'canon' is a sloppy word. Given that the entire concept of Ælfwine was dropped from the Legendarium in favor of the Red Book of Westmarch mechanic, I wanted to make clear that he was not part of Tolkien's ultimate vision.
Tolkien putting in a nice Arthurian link there with Avallone. King Arthur, dying after the Battle of Camlann was taken to the Isle of Avalon by boat.
It's like Avalon or Tir Na Nog. Existing in parallel, needing the right magic to slip through the mists between the worlds and sail on.
You are a poet. Thank you.
That was a truly beautiful closure for this video!
Your prose are beautiful, I don't like anyone messing with Tolkien but you do it very well and are lovely to listen to. 💗
My own theory is that Tolkien had basically antedated Arthur C. Clark. His ships to the west were sufficiently advanced technology to seem magical to those unaware. It would satisfy his urge for steampunk (see Roberts video on that) and fit the description of the consequences of not beeing on a boat while arriving.
I know the original ships only had to go by sea. But now I imagine Saruman teaching new shipbuilding and navigation to Earandil, to travel the sky, and to Cirdan, to resume the voyages after the changing of the shape of Arda.
Tolkien didn't have an urge for steampunk...
Mentioning the steampunk, I wonder if the flying ship of Earendil, the presumed flying ships of Numenor and now these presumably flying ships to Valinor are pretty much the same technology/magic. Maybe Numenorians discovered the secret and could potentially go to Valinor on their own, without the Elves' help - assuming they weren't all but destroyed. Eru, being all powerful, could probably make Arda round without completely wiping out Numenorians, but he probably needed to send a message to anyone who would potentially discover the "flying ship" secret again.
That said, the flying ships of Numenor were a scratched idea, if I remember correctly, so it doesn't really come into the actual story. It's a fun thought, though.
South America in pre-historic times. We're finding all the temples with LIDAR presently. There are tens of thousands.
Valinor when Arda was reshaped became a land orbiting the Sun in Earth's orbit but as it is to the West it precedes Earth. There are many such objects in the solar system and they are called Trojans. It was not known whether Earth had any Trojans until 2010 when 2010TK7 was discovered oscillating around the L4 Lagrangian point which puts it around 60 degrees, ahead of Earth. Every time naming is raised as a topic, I suggest that 2010TK7 be renamed Valinor.
Bravo. So well done. Thank you.
Wonderfully well said. Thank you!
I wasn't sure myself before this video that Valinor was among the realm of the living and was possibly a realm of the dead much like the concept of Heaven. As usual, your video was very insightful and informative. Your documentary-like format and impeccable detailed explanations are always a treat.
Reminds me very much of Narnia and the other Ring worlds in the work of CSLewis. A real place, physically accessible, but only by magic, or invitation, or chance.
There is a poem by Tolkien about the voyage of Saint Brendan the Navigator which seems to describe the Saint and his companions arriving in Valinor, rather than the east coast or North America.
So what happens with orcs when they die? If they are some kind of perturbed elves, do they also go to the Halls of Mandos? (Also, dwarves, trolls, ents?)
My personal guess would be that likely they go to Halls of Mandos. On the other hand, apparently Uruk-hai were supposed to Orc/Human hybrids so maybe they might have the Gift of Men. I remember it being said that Dwarves at least believed that they have their own section in the Halls of Mandos.
i like to think that tolkien made this straight road to incorporate arthur and his passing into avalon into his mythos. makes sense as, just like frodo, arthur went to avalon to heal his wounds.
“It seems then that the Arthurian Avalon, the Fortunate Isle, Insula Pomorum, the dominion of Morgan La Feé, has now been in some mysterious sense identified with Tol Eressëa, the Lonely Island. But the name Avallon entered, as a name of Tol Eressëa, at the time when the Fall of Númenor and the Change of the world entered also, with the concept of the Straight Path out of the Round World that still led to Tol Eressëa and Valinor, a road that was denied to mortals, and yet found, in a mystery, by Ælfwine of England. How my father saw this conjuncture I am wholly unable to say.”
-Christopher Tolkien, ‘The Fall of Arthur’
Your guess is pretty much confirmed as correct
Great vid, thanks
Plz just keep this up. Awesome content!
So… Cirdan was making spaceships all along
The lidless eye flashed violently and Frodo could hear a voice inside his head, as clearly as if its source was right in front of him: "Curvature!? What curvature? Arda is flat, you witless worm!"
Sam shook Frodo out of his trance and gave him time to recover. Surprisingly, Frodo calmed down very quickly and smiled blissfully. Sam was obviously bewildered by this reaction, but Frodo explained what he had just learnt: "Sauron's a fucking moron. Let's get this over with, EZ GG!"
The way i read it, the world was flat in the beginning and Valinor was an island in the West. But after the war with Morgoth, the world was bent to a sphere except for Valinor. It stayed in the same place and became a sort of moon. That's why it's hard to sail there. The Valar have to make your ship go perfectly straight, above the water and into the sky. The early flat earth is how the two trees could light the whole world.
So Valinor is in the Unseen Realm, the same dimension where the bodies of the Nazgul existed. Not immaterial as in how angels work but a material dimension more connected to the spiritual, for good and for bad.
Evidence for this would be that the Calaquendi, who saw the Light of the Trees, existed in the Unseen too.
So the Straight Road is part of the Unseen and is a path not only between Arda and Aman but between the Seen and the Unseen worlds.
Those who pass through the Straight Road are fully immersed in the Unseen, not in an unnatural way like the Nazgul but in a Divine way.
saruman, in his dispair declares that the ships sailing west will be 'full of ghosts'
Another great treatment of an interesting topic, thank you Robert.
A completely unrelated question has occurred to me, in case you'd care to address it in a future video: How did Gollum know that Frodo was a Baggins? He knew Frodo had the Ring of course, because he sensed it. But Frodo never "introduces himself" - indeed Gandalf had mentioned to him how foolish it had been for Bilbo to tell Gollum his name.
Frodo introduces Gollum to something Bilbo had:
"This is Sting. You have seen it before once upon a time.
Let go, or you'll feel it this time." [The Taming of Smeagol]
Gollum followed the Fellowship in Moria and beyond for some time before Frodo and Sam caught him, so he may have heard it mentioned at some point that Frodo was a Baggins. Merry and Pippin, especially, were not exactly models of discretion and Gollum had very sharp ears. However, you do raise a good point.
Interesting video as always
Good video as always. It’s worth mentioning that Roverandom gets a glimpse of Valinor on his way back from the Moon.
Thank you Robert, that was quite prophetic there at the end, about humans and corners of eyes and perhaps we will get there. Evoked thoughts of the fall of man and eternal life in me.
That was one of the better vids that In Deep Geek has done.
Right down the road!
I know Middle Earth is the translation of MidGard and there are elements of Norse Mythology in Tolkien, but it was meant to be a new mythology for England and is a meant to be a mix of Norse/Anglo-Saxon and the Welsh/Celtic, and Greco-Roman Myths of the other occupants of the island of England. In Celtic mythology most accessible in Irish myth now, there was Tir Na Nog, Hy Brasil and in tales of King Arthur, Avalon. These are lands to the west where immortal beings lived. Great heroes can visit at the invitation of the Sidhe. It is Faerie, or the otherworld. The otherworld is also everywhere and can be accessed by going into a lake, down a well or opening a door into a fairy mound. The Sidhe (elves) live in palaces under the mounds like Brugh Na Boyne or Emain Macha or, in England, Glastonbury Tor.
Something cool I only just learned about recently was a kind of mirage Italians call Fata Morgana, which appears to be a hazy object on the horizon when the Sun is just right. Possibly inspired many of these myths, and the Morgana name is directly taken from Morgan le Fey!
I think those elves living in England, Ireland and the rest of Europe would have been the Avari, who never went to Valinor
It is meant to be a real mythology of our real world, but of a true English saved descent; what this means is it is a purely Germanic myth, in all its full senses. Also, King Arthur is a French myth, which is not English at all (at least in its latest incarnations, perhaps not orally; the French picked up the oral tradition of the King Authur myth from the Welsh, and Francophoned it).
Thus, The Legendarium is 'real' shrouded in mythological trappings; just like in other myths that have corresponding elements, the myth Tolkien discovered has corresponding elements as well, and they all mesh together.
@@pyropulseIXXI if it was supposed to be purely Germanic, why not just lift Norse mythology word for word? England the country and English the language is a blend of traditions and people and Tolkien, a philologist knew this. His mythology reflects this. The original stories, the Book of Lost Tales was supposed to have a Anglo-Saxon inhabitant of England brought over seas to “the West” by Elves and told the “Lost Tales” of the time before the Anglo-Saxons, the non-Anglo-Saxon myths. Sindarin, one of the Elvish languages is meant to resemble and sound like Welsh, the original “Britons”. The Elves (originally called Gnomes in the oldest versions of Tolkiens stories) were the older race with an older more Celtic history and “Men” were the newer race with more Germanic stories and history. Layer in elements of Greco-Roman history (Gondor and Anor resemble the split between the Eastern and Western Roman Empire), Catholic/Christian Apocryphal “mythology” such as “Paradise Lost” where you get the fallen Angel Lucifer story of Melkor/Morgoth and add in elements like Finnish mythology like the Kalevala from Finland and others and then you get the rest of the mythology. To say it is purely Germanic is simplistic. That is one element, a substrate, just like English is “Germanic” as a base but has huge borrowings from French, Latin, Greek and words from many other languages as well.
@@pyropulseIXXI I wouldn't say the Arthurian mythology is French. It's British, and by that I mean it originated with the Celtic British who lived in the UK before the Anglo-Saxons, and persist in Wales. The History is that unlike the rest of the Western Roman Empire which quickly got taken over by Germanic tribes (for example Gaul being taken by the Franks, to give us present day France), the Britons resisted for many centuries. And not only resisted, they pushed the invaders back, and took over part of northern Gaul, the present day Brittany, where they created a number of kingdoms. Later when the Normans invaded Britain he took with him many followers from the Bretons, who reimported the tales of Arther back to England.
That was beautiful
I put "valinor" into google maps and it is apparantly a lodge 10km north of Hull in England. If you travel West to get to it then that would seem to imply Middle earth is a small village on the coast called Mappleton. We should have an annual event dressed as LOTR characters in Mappleton to confuse the crap out of the locals
That ending may be the most powerful yet, I'm on the verge of tears :')
It's tales like this and how Tolkien left his story that make me wish that someone would be allowed to develop new stories in the Universe. I'm sure many readers and fans of his writing have imagined a modern story, set in our own world where the Old Magic is re-awakened by something dark and foreboding.
Beautiful.
Thanks!
Wow! That was good.
It has echoes of the Irish myths of Hy Brasil and Tir na Nog, supernatural island realms of everlasting youth and beauty, reached by sailing to the west over the ninth wave magical barrier.
Home to the very elf-like Tuatha De Danaan and occasionally visited by mortal heroes like Ossian.
Turns out Hy Brasil wasn't mythical but a very old remembering, there is a small landmass in the right area that would've been exposed when sea levels were far lower
@@ThailandOutsider Is that something that's known with high confidence or is it an uncertain hypothesis?
@@seneca983 relatively high confidence, given it's appearance on older source maps that also show other supposedly mythical islands that turned out to be real but now submerged by raising sea levels, and that various sea mounts exist in roughly the right place off of Ireland's coast, I'm confident enough to say it was also real. The main point of contention is that there shouldn't have been anyone around able to map it at the time, though that paradigm is beginning to crumble pretty hard these days.
@@ThailandOutsider I'd say just appearance on maps is still very weak evidence. Many old maps have shown landmasses that have been completely non-existent, such as Frisland.
Presumably this Hy Brasil wouldn't have existed anymore when the maps you mention were drawn. Thus they weren't drawn based on actual geographic info in the case of Hy Brasil but just what the cartographers had heard from somewhere. What they have heard can easily be either old stories that originally have some basis in truth or just complete legends with no such basis.
If the only evidence is what you've mentioned so far I would still call it speculative.
@@seneca983 it's not so much that they were just on any old map, the maps some (and I definitely mean some but not all mythical places) of these places show up on maps that date back to the 1400s if not older and have been used as reference for other map makers, these source maps show Antarctica's landmass accurately, 400years before it was discovered and shown as it would have been 10/12000 years ago, along with other now submerged land masses, when sea levels were far lower, hence the mythical folk memory of an island that if sea levels were as low as they were near the end of the ice age, would be there. Like I said the main contention is that it shouldn't have been possible to make maps like that at that time but the maps exist and are authentic so it kinda suggests that someone did. So in my opinion, yes Hy Brasil was a real place and still is, it's just now a submerged sea mont that after alot of time gathered fairytales around it.
Bit obscure of a suggestion but what kind of alcohol beverages do they drink in lord of the rings? I've herd the beers and ales described as good but not much else as for a description. the elfs have mead and that smells like many flowers and that is pretty straight farward. There is also a fragrant liquor that Gandalf passes around when they are all freezing on the mountain side. Tom bombadill had something at his table but I forgot what that was.
Kinda spooky. We just rewatched the trilogy during our snow induced lockdown, and I was explaining to the wife what the west was, and realized I didn't have a really good handle on it.
And here we are.
You reading my mail? Lol👍
Good stuff as always.
Great video as always! I’m wondering about Penguluin and Aelvine (probably misremembering exact names)…. I think in Morgoth’s Ring it suggests a man went to Tol Eressea in the modern Middle Ages, spoke with Elves, learned of the deep history and then sailed back to Middle Earth and his accounts effectively became the legenderium.
Easy
It's in our minds and hearts 🥰
Hear me out: If the key to getting to Valinor is using one of the ships that is capable of the journey, what's to stop a stowaway from simply hiding below decks? If I knew that an Elven ship was heading West at a certain time, you bet your last flagon of mead that I'm swimming up the opposite side of the dock and sneaking into the cargo hold.
Wonderful ❤
8:48 this is the key IMO. I'm sure we could construct a theory involving another dimension such that as you move west you also move on a new, 4th, axis that goes "straight" in a higher dimensional geodesic while all of our ordinary physical space curves. But there's no need to, and we're not called on to do so. That the metaphysics is different from that of reality is the point, it should be outside our understanding. Let's not forget that this was all constructed from a Christian theological view point where that things don't make sense and can't be fully understood by mere mortals is a feature, not a bug.
For me Valinor before the Arkansas existed in both Seen and Unseen, and after it was fully submerged in the Unseen.
Evidence for this is Glorfindel and the Ainur having a presence in the Unseen.
I'm relistening to The Hobbit and LOTR and the Silmarillion. The new readings by Andy Serkis are amazing, he's a wizard of voices. I've just reached the point where Merry and Pippin meet Treebeard, and it made me wonder... Did i miss something in the lore all these years, or do we actually have no account of how hobbits came to be?! I know about elves, men, dwarves, ents, orcs, trolls, dragons and so on, but i can't remember anything about hobbits... 😅
The amount of mental gymnastics you have to perform to keep accepting we live on a plane is mind boggling. Heliocentard.
great vid and descriptions reminds me one of my favorite fan fictions on lord of the rings where middle earth was our earth and the hidden world of Valinor and Aman still exist in the present day only after so much time being long forgotten yet still corrupted by their connection to our world and all of its vices has become dark and twisted where once was Valinor now is lost Carcosa and all great magic beings of the old world have grown into eldritch horrors Manwë himself now beyond all recognition twisted and malformed into The King in Yellow :)
I take 'Faerie" in "Smith of Wooton Major" as Valinor. It can only be entered by one guarded and guided. The book is free to download, judge for yourselves.
I wrote something similar to that concept in my own vast universe; that there was a sort of flat aspect of the world, but only under a perception of special conditions, and in such conditions one could pass over the mythical ice wall and into a mysterious eternal realm many have called Valhalla.
Of course it makes you wonder where Andilar is and it’s silver ships? (That is a deep cut for those Townes Van Zandt fans)
I had always thought of the straight road as being a path that only those immortal beings such as Elves and Maia could navigate. Something along the lines of beings linked through the Song to the very concept of Arda's existence meaning they can still perceive the way West as it originally was, rather than the new shape of Arda after the Sinking of Numenor.
The way I see it, Arda is essentially a planet, and the undying lands are a bit like a realm that isn't "constrained" to the planet of Arda but is still connected to it, and isn't strictly round, like Arda is. If you can see a round planet with a rectangular addition that can be reached by going true west in a specific kind of boat, that's pretty much how I picture it. There's kind of like a "sea bridge" that isn't "specifically" constrained to typical physics
After reading the silmarillion as a kid, I always imagined that middle earth used to be flat and then everything got rolled up into a sphere except the path to Valinor
Thats my understanding too, it’s only after the destruction of numenor that the world is made round and aman is removed. Until that point the world seems to have been flat, so that the path to aman was flat, and when the world was made round the path to aman remained flat thus the straight road and ships disappearing into the horizon rather than drifting down over it.
A video on the role of fate in Middle-earth would be a cool topic
Wow, this puts a dark spin on Gandalf's speech to Pippen when they were trapped in Minas Tirith.
It's on Venus if you like the Tolkien crossover in Lewis' Space Trilogy. It hints at that strongly at the end and calls it Avallone. People have to be taken there by the eldil/angels.
I feel the urge to nitpick on Norse hyphenation. It's not bi-frost (as in two-reallycold), but bif-rost or biv-rost, and it meant "the shimmering way".
It seems to be part here and part other side…white shores and a swift sunrise.
The beautiful thing about Toliens writings is that there are things that aren't just clear and open to interpretation, just like Tom Bombadil or the Watcher. Some things just are, like the place Valinor is located.
Beatiful
So the ships of the Grey Havens were space ships? 😳
I'm surprised you didnt mention Earendil in any way, isnt he the one who found Valinor by luck and sheer determination to find the Valar and ask for aid?
yes, lol. This is super essential to any ponderings, and it is simply ignored
I think Eärendil also had one of the Silmarils and wore it on his brow when he sailed to Aman. I suspect it was instrumental in him being able to reach Aman.
Sounds a lot like heaven
Cirdan, space-shipwright.