Subject: Oh, good.
Author:
Posted on: 2020-05-28 17:14:37 UTC

I was basically going on the assumption of endemic racism typical of the time period, what with the well-known criticism of Tolkien's evil races all being dark-skinned; therefore the most pure beings, the elves, must be light-skinned. That's a great point about the House of Bëor resembling the Noldor, though—I did turn up that quote about them ranging to swarthy when I was poking around the wikis for help.

I wonder about the Northmen, though (Rohirrim, Dunlendings, Men of Dale and their descendants). The Rohirrim are sort of half Norse, half Asian Steppe nomads in inspiration, right? ... And now I've actually looked up the Dunlendings, who are said to be dark of skin and hair (shocker), but their ancestors were kin to the folk of Haleth (noted elf-friends) and the folk of Bree (basically normal people), and the Númenóreans kinda treated them like crap, so their enmity toward the usurpers is pretty justified. And they're not fans of orcs, either.

So like... are the critics basically just wrong about this? {= O

~Neshomeh

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