Cultural & Technological Continuity among common Northerners, Dunedain & Elves

For discussion of Dunedain culture, what it might have looked like and how it worked.

Moderators: caedmon, Greg

Post Reply
User avatar
caedmon
Balku'npâ
Posts: 962
Joined: Sat Feb 16, 2008 4:30 am
Location: Palmer Alaska

Cultural & Technological Continuity among common Northerners, Dunedain & Elves

Post by caedmon »

So I have been playing with Numenorean artistic motifs for a year, and trying to figure how they might have evolved over time. And it's hard, Man, just hard. On one hand you have a Numenorean Carpet. It really ties the room together.

But on The other, you have 3,500 year span. That's the more that 300 years longer than the time between the Trojan War to today. The proto-celts were still in Asia. The Hebrews were in Egypt, but weren't slaves yet.

Among the Celts you have art going from:

1500 bce Who knows?
800 bce Halstatt - (simple spirals)
500 bce La Tene - (complex spiral work)
100 bce Roman Gaul (mostly classical)
400 ce Sub Roman Britain (La Tene Revival early knotwork)
800 ce Celtic Renaissance (Book of Kells, knotwork, animal interlace, spirals)
1200 ce International Gothic style degenerate Native styles
1500 ce International renaissance style
1800 ce Celtic Twilight (Native style revival)


In that you have at least two times where the native art recedes/goes underground. When it's brought back it's different.

Now add to the mix an aristocrasy that lives for 400 years. Imagine if Alberech Durer and DaVince was still producing today? (Yeah, I know, 500 years. Gimme a break, it's rhetorical) What would that do to art? Now add to that, that they, but probably not you, go to Rivendell for summer vacation. Their tastes are being shaped by people that were old when Moses was fished out of the Nile. People who have to watch their language when talking to you... for fear of slipping into proto-IndoEuropean.

I have no idea how this tweaks art and culture. But I have a headache.
-Jack Horner

----------------------------
Impression: Cædmon Reedmace | bronze founder living in Archet, Breeland. c. 3017
User avatar
Elleth
êphal ki-*raznahê
Posts: 2932
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2010 5:26 am
Location: in the Angle; New England

Re: Cultural & Technological Continuity among common Northerners, Dunedain & Elves

Post by Elleth »

oh, I'm absolutely in the same boat. I can think of a couple things though....

... the Faithful linguistically evidently turned away from latter Adunaic to Sindarin in horror at what the late Numenoreans had done. I can only think their artistic sensibilities were similarly affected.

... at the same time, I suspect there would be trepidation at drawing too near the elves (and likewise the elves to men) for fear of stirring up anew the sins of the past.

Which is to say I suspect amongst the Dunedain there is a tendency to loosely emulate elven and early Numenorean forms, but a severe distaste for works of Ar-Pharazon's era. (given the carpet was treasured enough to bring over, presumably - might it not even be representative of late Numenorean aesthetics itself? It might itself have been deliberately archaic in its own day, if it was treasured by one of the Faithful)

I think contemporary Breelander motifs would have about the same cache as a Dale Earnhardt sweatshirt in an Anglican congregration - people you love, but Who Arent Quite Our Sort. While they themselves are no doubt influenced by Dunedain forms, I suspect their roots are Dunlendish.

FWIW, I tend to think these days of Dunlendish art as mostly somewhat Celtic, and think of Third Age Dunedain art as somewhere in the Anglo-Norman illumination / Tolkien flower drawing space with occasional elvish overtones, and little remaining "Mediterranean" influence.

edit - another good jumping off point might be the Elvish heraldry Tolkien did. I rather suspect at least some of post-Numenorean Dunedain art shares a similar relationship as Art Nouveau does to Japanese classical - more stylized/regimented and pared down, but with a similar sense of line and proportion. (yes I know WETA used Art Nouveau to inform their elvish aesthetic - I'm referring to the relationship, not to the style itself. )

lastly, I've a vague memory that Tolkien spoke of an "Egyptian" sensibility in the early Dunedain kingdoms in Middle Earth. This is something I think WETA got REALLY right: look at the eyes on the fallen statue head near Amon Hen, and compare it to early Egyptian monuments. A very nice touch.... though I suspect dated by the Third Age.
Last edited by Elleth on Sat Mar 04, 2017 5:14 am, edited 3 times in total.
Persona: Aerlinneth, Dúnedain of Amon Lendel c. TA 3010.
User avatar
SierraStrider
Silent Watcher over the Peaceful Lands
Posts: 289
Joined: Mon Jun 13, 2016 8:54 pm
Location: California
Contact:

Re: Cultural & Technological Continuity among common Northerners, Dunedain & Elves

Post by SierraStrider »

This is a really fascinating line of thinking. It's often occurred to me that it's really hard to make good educated guesses about how immortality would manifest in humanoid beings. A lot of authors make guesses when it comes to elves and vampires and such, but I'm not sure anyone has a good basis for their speculation. Would an immortal--or even just an extremely long-lived person--be a Luddite or a technophile? Would a 100-year-old with a life expectancy of 400 act more like a 25-year-old or a 100-year-old? How would they relate to humans with our timescale socially? Romantically? How well would someone remember the events of 300 years ago? Sure, major events would probably stand out, but that's a vast tract of time and the brain's storage capacity isn't infinite. What about 3,000 years ago?

The whole thing is especially bemusing when you couple it to Middle Earth's static technology. When I think of Really Old Things, I tend to think of the trees in this area--the sequoias and bristlecone pines. And yeah, historical events make up some of the way that I think about them--this redwood was here during the Norman Conquest, these trees were 1500 years old at the time period in which Exodus is set--but for me at least, the technology is more compelling. "This tree was standing here when someone came up with the novel idea of triangular sails." Chariots, written alphabets, glass--these have all been invented during the lifespan of this tree. Even whole species--Domesticated vanilla, for example--are younger than this single organism. This tree was standing here when someone on the other side of the world got really excited because they'd worked out how to make stuff out of iron for the first time.

But in Middle Earth, there's no real equivalent to that. A Numenorian Princeling could ask Uncle Elrond, older by a couple millennia than the oldest bristlecone pine, what things were like when he was a kid, and the answer would effectively be that they had more advanced technology back then.

Honestly...is it too much of a stretch to think that art would be similarly...well, if stagnant is too harsh a word, then enduring?
User avatar
Elleth
êphal ki-*raznahê
Posts: 2932
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2010 5:26 am
Location: in the Angle; New England

Re: Cultural & Technological Continuity among common Northerners, Dunedain & Elves

Post by Elleth »

caedmon has seen this already, but I thought I'd preview a decorative element I'm using as an experiment.
The flowers are loosely drawn from elvish heraldic designs and - of course - The Carpet; at the same time hopefully with a feel that wouldn't look too out of place in a NW European medieval context c. AD 1150.

I wouldn't call it definitive, but it's a decent stab at the problem I think.
merf-tolkien-inspired-dunedain-decorative-band.png
merf-tolkien-inspired-dunedain-decorative-band.png (18.63 KiB) Viewed 13684 times
Persona: Aerlinneth, Dúnedain of Amon Lendel c. TA 3010.
User avatar
caedmon
Balku'npâ
Posts: 962
Joined: Sat Feb 16, 2008 4:30 am
Location: Palmer Alaska

Re: Cultural & Technological Continuity among common Northerners, Dunedain & Elves

Post by caedmon »

Interesting ideas there Elleth.

So you have Elven influencing native traditions in the First Age.

The Second age finds it's own way until the Akallabeth

The remnant rediscovers Elven artistic roots.

Why Westron rather than Elvish?
But then why Sindarin rather that Quenya?
Why AR-agorn rather than Tar-agorn (or whatever agorn translates to in Sindarin)
-Jack Horner

----------------------------
Impression: Cædmon Reedmace | bronze founder living in Archet, Breeland. c. 3017
User avatar
Elleth
êphal ki-*raznahê
Posts: 2932
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2010 5:26 am
Location: in the Angle; New England

Re: Cultural & Technological Continuity among common Northerners, Dunedain & Elves

Post by Elleth »

Why Westron rather than Elvish?
But then why Sindarin rather that Quenya?
Why AR-agorn rather than Tar-agorn (or whatever agorn translates to in Sindarin)
My understanding - based primarily on that Words of Westernesse book mentioned in the newsletter - is that linguistically it goes something like this:

A. Men speaking a proto-Adunaic go to Numenor
B. Adunaic flowers in Numenor
C. In the corrupted days of Numenor, Adunaic drifts further (more ornamented? I don't know the details ).
D. After the destruction of Numenor, the faithful Dunedain in Middle-earth eschew the later form of Adunaic because of its cultural connotations. Westernesse/Westron develops in Middle Earth from a sort of pidgeon of colloquial Adunaic and the native speech of neighboring bands of Men.

Why Sindarin? I think because (1) it's how the Dunedain converse with the elves in Middle earth and (2) IIRC the evil kings of Numenor made the elf-speech illegal, and so the Faithful (the elf-friends) would naturally cling to it all the more.

Why not Quenya? Because Sindarin is still throughout the Third Age a living tongue in common use. Quenya exists, but more as a language of lore.


Quenya is known in our fan circles as "the Elvish Latin" and I think that's quite right.

That said - for an early modern Anglo-American analog that those of us who did colonial reenacting might follow, I think from the Dunedain perspective those languages might be thought of as having social connotations something like:

Westron: English- day to day speech with most people you meet.

Sindarin: Latin - fundamental part of basic education: most Dunedain know at least some phrases and fluent speech is not at all uncommon. "Everyone who's anyone" can converse in it. Also I suppose the added important wrinkle is that Caesar and his legions are still around, he's still your ally after 2000 years, and you need to talk with him.

Quenya: Greek -scholarly types know it, a decently-educated Dunedain may be able to read it, but it's much less common and never used in regular discourse. "It's all Quenya to me."



Finally, I find it helpful to think of the Dunedain-Elven relationship as not altogether unlike the relationship between native allies and European powers in the colonial era: with the elves playing the part of the Europeans, and the Dunedain perhaps Cherokee. The Men of the West adopt over time quite a bit of elven culture, but imperfectly and through the lens of their own heritage.
Persona: Aerlinneth, Dúnedain of Amon Lendel c. TA 3010.
Post Reply