Lady Haleth of Brethil is in rarified company among mortals. Not only is she, alongside Tar-Ancalimë, Tar-Telperiën, Tar-Vanimeldë, and Tar-Míriel, one of only five known female leaders of Mannish nations (and in both of the latter two cases, their power was weilded by their husbands), she is also, with Emeldir the Manhearted and Eowyn of Rohan, one of only three mortal warrior-women in Tolkien's writings.

But how did she end up that way? The Second House of Men crossed into Beleriand around the year 311 of the First Age, but refused to move with the people of Bëor and Marach into Estolad, nor to continue westward. Instead, they settled in southern Thargelion, between the rivers Gelion and Ascar. The land was nominally owned by Caranthir, son of Feanor, but he lived far to the north, part of the Siege of Angband.

Haleth was born around 341, with her twin brother Haldar. Her people lived a spread-out existence, and for the first 35 years of Haleth's life, a peaceful one. At this point she was 'no-one special': the Haladin had no lord, so her father would simply have been a farmer, a hunter, a parent.

Except it isn't quite so simple. In 375, orcs swarmed out of the Blue Mountains to assault the Haladin, and Haldad, Haleth's father, was chosen to be their leader. At the southern tip of Thargelion, between two rivers, he built a stockade, and the orcs laid siege.

But how did Haldad know what to do? Where did Haleth learn the leadership skills she used when, after the death of both her father and her twin, she rallied the people and defended the fortress through another week of starvation, until Caranthir came to their rescue? The Edain would not have used such fortifications on their trek into the west, nor in their pastoral life in Thargelion. The Nandor of Ossiriand, to the south, would never make such forts.

There are only two possibilities. Haldad and his family could have travelled north and visited the Leaguer - but it is explicitly said that Caranthir ignored them, which would be difficult if they were paying him regular visits. More likely, a look at the map tells us that the dwarf-road from Nogrod and Belegost followed the north bank of the Ascar. Could Haleth have journeyed with her father to their ancient halls and high fortresses, and seen their skirmishes with the orcs? An architect who could design a stockade to hold off an entire army of orcs would be a wise choice for leader - and the gruff mannerisms of the dwarf-lords of the Blue Mountains would go down well with the wild woodsmen of the Haladin, whether weilded by Haldad or his daughter. And in after years, after Haleth dragged them through spider-infested valleys to Brethil, the Haladin famously went into battle armed with axes...

One further point: there were not, in fact, three Houses of the Edain. There were four - the fourth being the Drúedain, the Wild Men of the Wood who the Rohirrim named Woses. The distant kin of Ghân-buri-Ghân travelled west with the Haladin, and lived alongside them in Brethil - and in Thargelion. Haldad would surely have gathered these squat, dwarf-like Men into his fold when he built the stockade - and when he fell, with the best of his people's fighters, could Haleth's final bitter defence have been augmented by the disturbingly magical watch-stones of the Drûgs?

... the Lady Haleth (like Tar-Miriel, she always gets her title from me ;)) is already on my list of Strong Women. I'll take another look at her and see if I can find more to say.

Once I finish putting off Finduilas of Dol Amroth, that is.

hS

(What, no-one you wanted me to discourse on? What am I going to do for the rest of the day?!)

hS

No Avari ever appear in the stories of Middle-earth.

Actually, that's not strictly true.

In the true meaning of the word - those elves who refused the Great March, and thus never left Cuivienen - their only named characters appear in late writings discussing the departure. Here we learn that the Avari were made up of equal parts of the second and third kindreds (the Tatyar and Nelyar - among the Eldar, these kindreds became the Noldor and the Teleri), with two leaders: Morwë and Nurwë. Even further back in time, we come across the tale of the original 144 elves who awakened at Cuivienen, including the named couples: Imin and Iminyë, Tata and Tatië, Enel and Enelyë. Of course, their names literally translate as 'One', 'Two', 'Three' - so these may not be historical persons. If they are, any of the latter four could be Avari.

After the departure of the Eldar, the Avari lived in a very dark place. In part this was literal - the only natural light in Middle-earth was starlight - but in part it was the result of the war the Valar had waged against Melkor. Yet again, Middle-earth had been shattered and broken, and the Avari were now living in an ecosystem which was in a state of rapid change. Worse, as part of the war effort, Melkor had created the orcs - by corrupting some of the elves of Cuivienen. We know that some of these survived the war, and after the Valar retreated, taking Melkor with them, his creatures would have come crawling out. In those early days, the horror of the orcs would have been similar to that of zombies: they may well have been people the remaining Avari once knew and loved, now twisted and turned to evil.

And so, despite their mistrust of the Valar, the Avari slowly spread out from Cuivienen. We know there were at least six tribes, widely sundered, because we are told their names - six wildly different versions of the word 'Quendi'. Some of the Avari, indeed, made their way along the route of the Great March, where they joined up with the various stragglers: east of the Blue Mountains, they lived in the wild woods of Eriador and Rhovanion with the Nandor/Silvan elves (who later became the isolated populations in Mirkwood and Lorien, though at the time there was no distinction between the two forests), while others reached Beleriand and joined the Laiquendi of Ossiriand. Still mistrusting the Valar, very few of them would have lived in Doriath, with its Maiarin queen - and it is said that the Avarin Tatyar were extremely unfriendly to their kin, the Noldor, once they returned.

The Avari make one other major contribution to the history of Middle-earth: when Men awoke in Hildorien on the east coast, with the first rising of the sun, they learnt language from the Avari and the eastern Dwarves. It was from the Avari that Men first heard of the Valar, and Valinor - and as a result of their words, the three kindreds of the Edain began to seek the West. Without the Avari, there would have been no Beren, no Earendil - and no Aragorn.

hS

PS: So no, in the technical sense, no Avari serve as principal characters - you may be thinking of the various peoples (the Nandor and Laiquendi) who turned aside from the March.

Or is there just no other information on the Avari, and nothing that can be surmised?

Feanor beat his wife.

The first point in this argument is Feanor's personality as a whole. He is a man who resorts to violence almost every time something goes wrong. He threatened his half-brother at swordpoint over an imagined slight. He and his sons threatened 'fierce vengeance' on anyone who should so much as find a Silmaril by the roadside and not return it - and his sons demonstrated multiple times that this was no idle threat. Feanor rallied the Noldor to form a military expidition to find Morgoth - and when the Teleri refused to help, he attacked them without mercy. Even when abandoning the host of Fingolfin, he chose to utterly destroy the ships, rather than keeping them for potential later use.

Secondly, we have Feanor's attitude towards women. His mother died when he was young, which led to one of the messiest breakups in history: first Finwe spent an age pestering Miriel to come back to life, and then, when she refused to do so in what he considered good time, he found a new bride, and switched to convincing Miriel to never come back. In all of Finwe's actions - the efforts Feanor would have been watching closely - there was no consideration of Miriel's desires. To Finwe - at least as seen by young Feanor - she was an object to be possessed, or discarded when she could be replaced.

It didn't help that Finwe's new wife, Indis, was of the Vanyar. Unlike the craft-working Noldor, the Vanyar spent their time singing, dancing - or as Feanor might have put it, looking pretty and doing nothing of value. To his eyes, although he didn't have the phrase available, Finwe's second bride was a trophy wife. Feanor, naturally, shunned her.

We also see Feanor's opinion of his own wife, Nerdanel. "Were you a true wife, as you had been till cozened by Aule," he tells her, "you would keep all of [our children], for you would come with us." A 'true wife', in Feanor's eyes, is one who obediently does everything her husband desires. He goes on to make this even more abundandly clear: "If you desert me, you desert also all of our children." Not 'if you choose not to travel to Middle-earth' - no, to Feanor, Nerdanel's options were between being a proper wife (and doing what he said), or being a bad wife (and going off by herself). He didn't even consider she might have opinions beyond himself.

And like father, like sons. In the story of Luthien, we meet Celegorm and Curufin, who - despite Curufin being married himself (and we never hear anything about his wife) - attempt to claim Luthien as a prize. Regardless of her wishes, they want to marry her to Celegorm, and thereby claim kinship to her father. When it becomes clear that they can't have the object they desire - when their second abduction fails - they switch to trying to flat-out kill her, with only Beren and Huan stopping them from succeeding. These are not elves with the faintest degree of respect for women - and in this, they follow their father.

This lack of respect also comes out in another way. Feanor and Nerdanel had seven sons, a massive number unequalled among the Eldar. Tolkien explains that elves saw conceiving a child as something of a craft project, with the result being a person who was a being in his or her own right, but also a product of their craftsmanship. While Nerdanel was also a crafter - as all the Noldor were - Feanor was the perfectionist. He is the one who would insist on having more and more sons, in order to ensure he had created the best possible product - just as he continued to craft gemstones until he had perfected the Silmarils. We know Nerdanel wasn't actively unwilling - in Valinor, that degree of coercion would never fly - but it seems unlikely she was as eager as Feanor to just keep popping out kids.

The third, and strongest, argument lies in Nerdanel's own reactions to her husband. We know she loved him at first, when he was learning smithying from Mahtan, her father. We know that for a time, she tried to moderate his temper with wisdom. But we also know that, by the time their last two sons were born, Nerdanel had completely shut herself off, emotionally, from her husband:

The two twins were both red-haired. Nerdanel gave them both the name Amburassa - for they were much alike and remained so while they lived. When Feanor begged that their names should at least be different Nerdanel looked strange, and after a while said: ‘Then let one be Umbarto, but which, time will decide.’

Feanor was disturbed by this ominous name (‘Fated’), and changed it to Ambarto (‘Exalted head’). But Nerdanel said: ‘Umbarto I spoke; yet do as you wish. It will make no difference.’

That is Nerdanel saying 'One of these children is going to die; if you don't care, then fine, leave me alone.' She is still trying to reason with Feanor - but she refuses to allow him to touch her emotions.

Later, after the death of the Trees, this becomes even more abundantly clear:

She retired to her father’s house; but when it became clear that Feanor and his sons would leave Valinor for ever, she came to him before the host started on its northward march, and begged that Feanor should leave her the two youngest, the twins, or at least one of them.

He replied: ‘Were you a true wife, as you had been till cozened by Aule, you would keep all of them, for you would come with us. If you desert me, you desert also all of our children. For they are determined to go with their father.’

Then Nerdanel was angry and she answered: ‘You will not keep all of them. One at least will never set foot on Middle-earth.’

Nerdanel does show her emotions here, perhaps in a final effort to get Feanor to listen - but at the same time she cuts herself off entirely from her family. Tolkien said that the Eldar would never speak of 'having' children - they would say 'two children are added to my house', for instance - but here Nerdanel reduces her sons to the status of objects: 'You will not keep all of them', she tells Feanor, and even as she pronounces a sentence of death on one of the twins, we hear her unspoken words: 'Just as you cannot keep me.'

Nerdanel was abused by her husband, who saw her as little more than a tool - or, later, an obstacle. Is it certain that the abuse was physical? No - but knowing what we do of Feanor, it seems a safe, if tragic, bet.

hS

The thing is, in all of Tolkien's writings, there are... um... two words of Haradrim origin:

-Mûmakil, singular Mûmak, the giant elephants of Harad. This at least tells us how you form plurals in Haradrim (add -il).

-Incánus, said to be derived from Haradrim 'North-Spy', as Inkā-nūsh. That means one of those words is either an adjective ('Northern') or a genitive ('of the North')... but we have no way of knowing which.

Oh, I beg your pardon:

-Variag is a Haradrim word for some or all of the people of...

-Khand, a nearby country, so the name may at least be related.

-Umbar is apparently a Haradrim loanword, though its meaning is unknown. We might hypothesise 'Haven', and stick a circumflex over the U, but we'd be stabbing in the dark.

We can draw a few conclusions about phonetics - they were fond of the hard K sound, and can modify at least some vowels with accents - but other than that (and the -il ending), there is nothing to go on.

Nothing from Tolkien, at any rate. The Middle-earth Role Playing series contains about half a dozen supplements on Harad, but the MERP Wiki suggests that its 'Haradaic' was basically a mashup of 'serbo-croatian, arabic, persian and fantasy-forms'. As far as I can tell, there is no Haradrim language.

In fact, the only Tolkien languages it's possible to learn to any significant degree are the various Elvish tongues - Quenya, Sindarin, Telerin, and Primitive Eldarin - Adunaic, and with a lot of effort, Westron. Even the Black Speech, if assumed to be identical with Orcish, has only three sentences associated with it. Ardalambion is a good place to find out what's available. (Tolkien apparently wrote a grammar for Taliska, Beren's mother-tongue - but it's never been released. Sad face)

hS

Now that is a tricky one. So tricky, in fact, that I have two answers.

In all the recorded history of Middle-earth, there are eight ships whose names we are told:

-Eärrámë (Q. 'Sea-Wing'), the ship of Tuor and Idril.
-Vingilótë (Q. 'Foam-Flower')/Vingilot (S.)/Rothinzil (Ad.), Eärendil's ship.
-Entulessë (Q. 'The Return'), the first Numenorean ship to return to Middle-earth.
-Númerrámar (Q. 'West-Wings'), a ship of Numenor.
-Palarran (Q. 'Far-Wanderer'), ditto.
-Hirilondë (Q. 'Haven-Finder')/Turuphanto (Q. 'Wooden Whale'), ditto.
-Eämbar (Q. 'Sea-Home'), a floating Numenorean headquarters.
-Alcarondas (Q., meaning unclear)/Aglarrâma (Ad.), the 'Castle of the Sea', Ar-Pharazon's great ship. Its name contains 'alcar', glory (and in Adunaic, 'aglar').

Every one of these ships is named in Quenya - right down to the one built by the biggest elf-hater of them all. Clearly, that's just how ships are named; since Tuor and Eärendil both learnt the art from Cirdan, they probably picked the habit up from him, as well.

Further, we can point out that every name has meaning. You don't name your ship after your mother or what have you - you name it after its role (as Entulessë), or as a description (Alcarondas, probably), or in one case after your house (Eärrámë - Tuor was the Lord of the House of the Wing in Gondolin). So that's answer number one.

But... every one of those ships was built by men - six of them, in fact, by Numenoreans, and the other two by the father and grandfather of Elros Tar-Minyatur, first King of Numenor. We know that the elves built ships, too - at Alqualonde, on the Falas, on Balar, at Mithlond and Edhellond. But of all those ships - the Swan-Ships of the Teleri, the ship of Amroth - we are never given a personal name. The only Elf-built ship which does have a name is the ship that bears the Ringbearers West - and it's known simply as 'The White Ship'. Tolkien could certainly have slipped in the Quenya form, Lossecirya or Ciryalosse, but he chose not to.

So do the Eldar actually name their ships? Given how the Teleri thought of theirs - as practically alive - I'm tempted to wonder whether they believed that each ship had its own name, intrinsic to it - and not discoverable by them (at least, not yet). On the other hand, these are elves we're talking about; their whole thing, right from the start, was assigning names to things, and awakening them.

I don't know. But I'm reminded of Philosopher at Large's comment on the fact that the Silmarillion doesn't bother to name the Ten who stood by Finrod when he left Nargothrond - because it is the elven history of Middle-earth, and they already know who they are. Could it be that the individually-crafted ships of Cirdan and the Teleri are so unique that they don't need names - that the Eldar can tell which ship they're seeing at a glance, and know which one you're talking about just by the character you describe.

It would be incredibly tricky to write - but at the same time fascinating.

You're right that we know very little about Celebrian, apart from the tale of her capture and departure into the West. But still, there's a little to go on.

We don't actually know when Celebrian was born - but we can make a few guesses. The first time she is mentioned is way back in 1300 S.A., living in Eregion with her parents, shortly before they moved to Lorien. Eregion was founded around 700 S.A. - and I think that marks a good candidate for Celebrian's birth.

We know that elves didn't have children in times of war and upheaval. What better time to start a family than when you've just founded a nice, safe kingdom? The turmoils that marked the end of the First Age are over. You have Lindon as an ally in the west, Moria to the east - you're safe.

And then there's her name. 'Celeb-' is silver, while 'Rian' apparently derives from 'Crown-gift'. There's an obvious reference there to her hair (if, indeed, she had silver hair), as well as to her parents' names - Celeborn, and Galadriel (and yes, that is the same element - 'Maiden crowned with a festive garland'). So... if there's two meanings to her name already, why not assume a third? A silver crown or circlet seems a perfect ornament for the Lord and Lady of Eregion (Galadriel and Celeborn ruled there before Celebrimbor did); could 'Celebrian' also mean 'A gift from the silver crown'? It's speculative, but I think a birthdate of around 700 S.A. is plausible.

Around 1350-1400 S.A., Galadriel and Celeborn moved to Lorinand, the later Lothlorien. Since we know Celebrian didn't die in Eregion four hundred years later, it seems likely that she moved with her parents - and thus watched from afar as her childhood home was destroyed by Sauron's orcs. I can't imagine that was a very pleasant experience.

And then... nearly two thousand years pass before the next major event: the War of the Last Alliance. We know that Celebrian met Elrond at some point (she married him, after all) - could this have been when, with him as Gil-Galad's herald, her as part of the forces of Amdir of Lorinand? We don't know what role she took - elves didn't forbid women from becoming fighters, but she could equally have been a healer - but given what happened to Eregion, we can be certain she did take part. Amdir's forces were caught in the Dead Marshes during the Battle of Dagorlad - should we picture Celebrian anxiously waiting for news of her parents (remember, Galadriel's mother named her Nerwen, 'Man-maid' - she was a fighter, too!), or should we picture her clawing her way out of the swamp, fending off orcs with a mud-caked sword? Either is possible.

Celebrian spent the next couple of millennia with her husband (they married in 109 T.A.). Like most elves, they had their children fairly quickly, and fairly close together - the twins in 130, Arwen in 241. This isn't to say that Rivendell was perfectly safe - it sat in the eastern marches of Rhudaur, the first province of Arnor to fall to the Witch-King. Angmar rose in 1300 T.A., and for the next six hundred years Rivendell would have been in a state of tension. They were allied with Arthedain, and with Lindon - but the road between was owned by the hill-men of Rhudaur, and a dangerous route indeed. Although further away, Lorien would have been a closer friend.

And then, nearly 2000 years after her own children had been born, Celebrian found herself as a foster-mother to Arahael, son of the chieftain of the Dunedain. In fact, this was a role she continued in for the next five hundred years, fostering (with her husband, of course) a full eight future chieftains. Did she know, with some inkling of her mother's foresight, that her daughter would be bound to a future member of the line of Elendil - one of the descendents of the little mortal boys she cared for, watched grow up, grow old, and die? I don't know. Perhaps. Certainly she would have seen in them the likeness of their forefathers - both the ones she helped raise, the ones she had seen from afar as rulers of Arthedain and Arnor (and remember, Valandil son of Isildur was also raised in Rivendell), and even all the way back to their first ancestor: Elros, her husband's mortal brother.

Celebrian's injury happened in 2509 of the Third Age, while she was travelling to visit her parents in Lorien. This is not a happy time in Middle-earth: Sauron had returned from the East some 50 years earlier as the Necromancer, prompting the formation of the White Council. The Ring had just been discovered by Deagol, and in 2480, Sauron had sent orcs to fill the caves of the Misty Mountains (and reoccupy Moria). We say that Celebrian was just going to visit her parents - but given the new danger of the journey, how likely is that? Of course, she'd made the trip hundreds of times before, but she wasn't stupid: she knew that the High Pass was dangerous.

Far more likely, then, is that she was travelling as part of a messenger party, from Elrond (of the White Council) to Galadriel (ditto). Yes, she likely went along in order to see her family - but the trip as a whole had a different purpose. Given the surrounding events, I think I even know what:

In 2509 - the same year Celebrian was captured - Gondor was under siege. Cirion the Steward called for help - specifically, from the Éothéod of the northern vale of Anduin. In 2510, Eorl rode south, won the Battle of the Field of Celebrant, and founded Rohan. I can't imagine Galadriel would have let Cirion's messengers pass by without remarking on it - and sending messages to the rest of the White Council. When Elrond wanted to reply, Celebrian asked to travel with the messengers - and so the story unfolded.

So yeah... not a lot to say, really. ;)

hS