Primary Sources: What can we learn about the 2nd Age Men of southern Eriador?

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Primary Sources: What can we learn about the 2nd Age Men of southern Eriador?

Post by Udwin »

As I said earlier, while we have some information on several pre-Númenórean and/or related or descended groups, we do not have a compete view of any one of these cultures. Furthermore, our datapoints are extremely distant (chronologically) from each other, spread across more than 7,000 years of the First, Second, and Third Ages.

As I’m sure Amazon’s writers quickly became aware, while Tolkien actually wrote a decent amount of Second Age material, the majority of these sources (especially the ones they have rights to use!) take the form of annals and historical overviews written in the impersonal, Silmarillion-style 'legendary register'. Heck, his most complete and properly ‘zoomed-in’ story of the Second Age (The Mariner's Wife) takes place entirely on Númenór and only vaguely refers to events on the continent!
If you are—like they are (as far as I know)—limited to the Hobbit, LR, and the Appendices, you will have your work cut out for you because those sources contain very few concrete, usable details (as related to our pursuits) on the 2A. However, as we here are thankfully not restrained by ‘rights’ and have all of Tolkien’s writings to draw and synthesize from, there is actually a decent amount out there – little of which it seems is legally available to the showrunners, much to their detriment.
Last edited by Udwin on Tue Oct 25, 2022 1:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Personae: Aistan son of Ansteig, common Beorning of Wilderland; Tungo Brandybuck, Eastfarthing Bounder, 3018 TA; a native Man of the Greyflood, c.850 SA
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Re: Primary Sources: What can we learn about the 2nd Age Men of southern Eriador?

Post by Udwin »

I. Economy:
Our clearest view of the livelihoods of early Men comes from the First Age:
"There [in the woodlands south of Teiglin] before the Nirnaeth many Men had dwelt in scattered homesteads; they were of Haleth’s folk for the most part, but owned no lord, and they lived both by hunting and by husbandry, keeping swine in the mast-lands, and tilling clearings in the forest which were fenced from the wild."
"...they were saved rather by their dogs and their fences. For each homestead had great hedges about its cleared land, and about the houses was a ditch and a stockade; and there were paths from stead to stead, and men could summon help and need by horn-calls." (Unfinished Tales, Narn I Hin Hurin: Turin Among the Outlaws)

This gives us a good idea of what a Haladin ‘homestead network’ would look like; the question is, how representative is this of the later Gwathuirim in Eriador? We might expect the defensive efforts of the Haladin was due to their location in Beleriand and the constant threat of attack by the Enemy’s forces; would there be similar pressures on the woodland dwellers living along the Gwathló in the early Second Age?

We also know that the Swarthy Men of Bor were ‘tillers of the soil’ when they arrived in Beleriand. Presumably, the way to be both agriculturalists and nomadic is similar to what Tolkien laid out in the Elvish generations on the Great March – not being constantly on the move but instead migrating for a season, staying for a year or two to raise children, build up foodstores, make clothing, before continuing on. Would the three Edain houses have done something similar? Or were they more standard ‘foraging westward nomads on the move’?

From the essay on the Drúedain in Unfinished Tales, we can infer that while the Drúedain were at first a lithic people, they gained the use of metal tools when they encountered and joined the pre-Haladin, possibly in the northern White Mountains (MeSBtB), and as the Númenóreans are said to have introduced iron to Middle-earth, we can surmise then that the pre-Númenóreans and more northern Middle Men were limited to red metals (copper or various copper alloys):
"And coming among them the Númenóreans taught them many things. Corn and wine they brought, and they instructed Men in the sowing of seed and the grinding of grain, in the hewing of wood and the shaping of stone, and in the ordering of their life..."
"It was indeed their grievance, when the Shadow crept along the coasts and men whom they had befriended became afraid or hostile, that iron was used against them by those to whom they had revealed it." (Silmarillion: Akallabêth)

We know the Haladin in Brethil had homesteads and tilled clearings in the forest...did they come by this agriculture knowledge on their own, or due to meeting Elves while in Beleriand? We are told that they are hesitant to try new things, and of the three Edain houses they had the least contact with elves… If—as the passage above (penned by Elendil himself (UT: Line of Elros) implies—the Númenóreans taught agriculture to the natives (suggesting they hadn't been farming Haladin-style already), should we picture the pre-Contact Gwathuirim as 'Mesolithic' foragers? Knowing the pre-Haladin had some (apparently) red metals, would that make them...Copper or Bronze Age foragers???

This seems to align with Tolkien's description of the societies of pre-Numenorean Eriador, which make it quite easy to imagine a 'Bronze Age' land governed by local chieftains only (there is no ‘King of Eriador’):
"In the...North-West...Men in those parts remain more or less uncorrupted if ignorant. The better and nobler sort of Men … remain in a simple 'Homeric' state of patriarchal and tribal life." (Letters, No. 131).
“They heard of the Great Barrows, and the green mounds, and the stone-rings upon the hills and in the hollows among the hills. Sheep were bleating in flocks. Green walls and white walls rose. There were fortresses on the heights. Kings of little kingdoms fought together, and the young Sun shone like fire on the red metal of their new and greedy swords.” (LR I:7)
In light of the ‘timeline’ view Tom gives the hobbits in this passage combined with ‘the young Sun’ and our knowledge that the Edain “pastured their flocks in Eriador long ago” (UT: Mariner’s Wife—the Further Course of the Narrative), it seems clear he is showing them a much earlier period – First Age or earlier, and these are pre-Beorian, Marachian, and Haladin populations in Eriador, which fits well with the previous comment.
In their Reader’s Companion, Hammond & Scull agree that this passage refers “to the ‘forefathers of the Edain’ mentioned above, supported by reference to the ‘young Sun’. “Red metal suggests the use of copper or bronze in an early period similar to the Bronze Age of our history.” (RC 136). “Fortresses on the heights” very much brings to mind ‘hill-fort’.

As a further wrinkle, while Tal-Elmar's village has knowledge of agriculture (we are told that many of them are ‘working in the fields’), they seem to still be a lithic society even at the tail-end of the Second Age. Did the Númenóreans only share their knowledge of iron with the Men of Eriador where first they landed? (in the period between 600 and ~850 SA)
Or perhaps we are seeing Númenórean ethnocentricity in Elendil’s words – that the natives had developed agriculture on their own, and the Dúnedain didn’t recognize it and/or were just so pleased with the idea that they were ‘civilizing’ the savages?
Personae: Aistan son of Ansteig, common Beorning of Wilderland; Tungo Brandybuck, Eastfarthing Bounder, 3018 TA; a native Man of the Greyflood, c.850 SA
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Re: Primary Sources: What can we learn about the 2nd Age Men of southern Eriador?

Post by Udwin »

II. SOCIETY:
"Now the Haladin did not live under the rule of lords or many together, but each homestead was set apart and governed its own affairs, and they were slow to unite." (Quenta Silmarillion, Chapter 17: Of the Coming of Men into the West)

“The Folk of Haleth were strangers to the other Atani, speaking an alien language; and though later united with them … they remained a people apart. Among themselves they adhered to their own language, and though of necessity they learned Sindarin for communication with the Eldar and the other Atani, many spoke it haltingly, and some of those who seldom went beyond the borders of their own woods did not use it at all. They did not willingly adopt new things or customs, and retained many practices that seemed strange to the Eldar and the other Atani, with whom they had few dealings except in war. Nonetheless they were esteemed as loyal allies and redoubtable warriors, though the companies that they sent to battle beyond their borders were small. For they were and remained to their end a small people, chiefly concerned to protect their own woodlands, and they excelled in forest warfare” (HoMe Volume XII – The Peoples of Middle-earth, Chapter X: Of Dwarves and Men, II – The Atani and their Languages).

"The native people [of the Gwathló] were fairly numerous and warlike, but they were forest dwellers, scattered communities without central leadership." (Unfinished Tales: Galadriel & Celeborn – the Port of Lond Daer)

The Port goes on to describe how the Gwathuirim would “attack and ambush” Númenórean loggers when they could, and we read that Tal-Elmar’s people “slaughtered” a large group of Númenórean colonists by ambushing them “in a narrow place”; knowing their use of these tactics and that their mother-group "excelled at forest warfare", it seems the Gwathuirim were early practitioners of irregular or guerrilla fighting to defend their homeland.


Language:
"Alien, too, or only remotely akin, was the language of the Dunlendings." (LR Appendix F)
“ ‘…it is only the scream of birds and the bellowing of beasts to my ears.’” Eomer, speaking of Dunlendings (LR V:7)

The "vaguely ‘Celtic’ style" of the names of the Bucklanders (Meriadoc, Gorhendad, Gorbadoc, Seredic, Madoc, etc) is said to derive from their southern Stoorish forebears’ adoption of “a language related to Dunlendish” prior to coming to the Shire (LR Appendix F: Of Hobbits). Thus, if we desire an analogue to what one of the Gwathuirim would speak, we might look for an older language from the Celtic family. This is not to say that the Gwathuirim would actually speak Manx, Old Irish, or a relative – simply that it reflects the relationship between the tongues, similar to the way in which the Rohirrim are shown speaking Anglo-Saxon—though there is no way they actually would have done so. To add a bit of flair to this impression, I have spent much of the last year getting back into learning Welsh (not having studied it for some 15 years). Welsh, while still an Indo-European language, is nearly incomprehensible when compared to English; it takes a linguist to recognize their relationship, similar to how the Haladin-descended forest-dwellers of southern Eriador “were as later historians recognized the kin of the Folk of Haleth…” (Of Dwarves and Men: II – The Atani and their Languages)
Fun fact: the language of the Folk of Haleth died out in Beleriand by the end of the First Age. Presumably it retained its vigor in Eriador in later Ages.

Funeral customs:
"And Haleth dwelt in Brethil until she died; and her people raised a green mound over her in the heights of the forest..." (Quenta Silmarillion, chapter 17).
Our other main evidence for funeral customs of early Men is the existence of the Barrow-downs, which were also constructed (by pre-Bëorrim or pre-Marachrim) in early Eriador. With these two pieces of of evidence, it would seem that mound-building as a funeral practice was common to all Atani, and presumably was practiced by their descendant groups as well.

Attitudes:
"... the woodland folk of Haleth... used few words, and did not love great concourse of men; and many among them delighted in solitude, wandering free in the greenwoods while the wonder of the lands of the Eldar was new upon them." (Quenta, ch17)
"They did not willingly adopt new things or customs, and retained many practices that seemed strange to the Eldar and the other Atani…" (UT: The Drúedain)
"The native people were fairly numerous and warlike… They were in awe of the Numenoreans, but they did not become hostile until the tree felling became devastating." (UTPort of Lond Daer).

I include these passages simply because as a laconic, solitary, woodsy Luddite, I clearly see myself reflected in the pre-Númenórean worldview. ; )
Personae: Aistan son of Ansteig, common Beorning of Wilderland; Tungo Brandybuck, Eastfarthing Bounder, 3018 TA; a native Man of the Greyflood, c.850 SA
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Re: Primary Sources: What can we learn about the 2nd Age Men of southern Eriador?

Post by Udwin »

III. ENVIRONMENT:
To help our mental imagings, it is useful to be able to visualize the landscape defended by the Gwathuirim. When it comes to Enedwaith, Minhiriath, and the great forests of the Gwathló in the Second Age, a few fragments give us a view into the changes wrought by the Númenóreans.

-“The river Gwathló is translated "Greyflood." But gwath is a Sindarin word for "shadow," in the sense of dim light, owing to cloud or mist, or in deep valleys. This does not seem to fit the geography. The wide lands divided by the Gwathló into the regions called by the Númenóreans Minhiriath … and Enedwaith … were mainly plains, open and mountainless. At the point of the confluence of Glanduin and Mitheithel [Hoarwell] the land was almost flat…” We are also told that the river was navigable by “ships of smaller draught” which could be rowed or sail upstream all the way to Tharbad.
“At the time of the first explorations of the Númenóreans … Minhiriath and Enedwaith were occupied by vast and almost continuous forests, except in the central region of the Great Fens”
-“As soon as the seaward region of salt airs and great winds was passed the forest drew down to the river-banks, and wide though the waters were the huge trees cast great shadows on the [Gwathló]”.
“When Sauron was at last defeated [SA 1701] most of the old forests had been destroyed. The Gwathló flowed through a land that was far and wide on either bank a desert, treeless but untilled.” In the 47 intervening centuries between the War of the Elves and Sauron and the War of the Ring, the Greyflood watershed appears to have at least partially reforested: “the lands were still in places well-wooded, especially in Minhiriath and in the south-east of Enedwaith; but most of the plains were grassland.” (UT: Port of Lond Daer)

We can further our visualization by examining this forests’ surviving remnant in the late Third Age:
"...of the Old Forest many tales have been told: all that now remains is but an outlier of its northern march. Time was when a squirrel could go from tree to tree from what is now the Shire to Dunland west of Isengard." (LR II:2)
"Looking ahead they could see only tree-trunks of innumerable sizes and shapes: straight or bent, twisted, leaning, squat or slender, smooth or gnarled and branched; and all the stems were green or grey with moss and slimy, shaggy growths. ... They picked a way among the trees, and their ponies plodded along, carefully avoiding the many writhing and interlacing roots. There was no undergrowth." (LR I:6)
Personae: Aistan son of Ansteig, common Beorning of Wilderland; Tungo Brandybuck, Eastfarthing Bounder, 3018 TA; a native Man of the Greyflood, c.850 SA
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