Editing Noldor (section)

== Analysis ==

=== Tuatha Dé Danaan ===

[[File:"The Riders of the Sidhe" John Duncan 1911 McManus Galleries, Dundee.jpg|thumb|The [[Tuatha Dé Danann]] depicted in [[John Duncan (painter)|John Duncan]]'s 1911 ''Riders of the Sidhe'']]

Scholars including [[Dimitra Fimi]], Anne Kinniburgh, and [[John Garth (author)|John Garth]] have connected the Noldor with the Irish [[Tuatha Dé Danaan]] as a possible influence. The parallels are both thematic and direct. In Irish mythology, the Tuatha Dé Danaan invade Ireland as a tall pale fair-haired race of immortal warriors and sorcerers. They have godlike attributes but human social organisation. They enter Ireland with what Kinniburgh calls a "historical trajectory", entering in triumph, living with a high status, and leaving diminished, just as the Noldor do in [[Middle-earth]]. They are semi-divine as Sons of Danu, just as the Noldor are counted among the first of the sentient races, the Children of [[Ilúvatar]]. Their immortality keeps them from disease and the frailty of age, but not from death in battle, an exact parallel with the Noldor. [[Nuada Airgetlám]], the Tuatha Dé Danaan's first high king, is killed by [[Balor]] of the Evil Eye; [[Fëanor]] is killed by Gothmog, Lord of Balrogs.<ref name="Fimi 2006">{{cite journal |last=Fimi |first=Dimitra |author-link=Dimitra Fimi |s2cid=162292626 |title="Mad" Elves and "elusive beauty": some Celtic strands of Tolkien's mythology |journal=[[Folklore (journal)|Folklore]] |volume=117 |issue=2 |date=August 2006 |pages=156–170 |doi=10.1080/00155870600707847}}</ref><ref name="Kinniburgh 2009">{{cite journal |last=Kinniburgh |first=Anne |title=The Noldor and the Tuatha Dé Danaan: J.R.R. Tolkien's Irish Influences |journal=[[Mythlore]] |date=2009 |volume=28 |issue=1 |at=article 3 |url=https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol28/iss1/3}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Garth |first=John |author-link=John Garth (author) |title=[[Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth]] | publisher=Houghton Mifflin | year=2003 |page=222 |isbn=0-618-33129-8}}</ref> [[Celebrimbor]]'s{{efn|Celebrimbor is a Noldo in some of Tolkien's versions, a [[Sindar|Sinda]] in others.}} name means "Silver Hand" in [[Sindarin]], the same meaning as Nuada's epithet Airgetlám in Irish Gaelic. Celebrimbor's making of powerful but dangerous rings, too, has been linked with the finding of a curse on a ring at the temple of [[Nodens]], a Roman god whom Tolkien in his work as a philologist identified with Nuada.<ref name="Anger 2013">{{cite encyclopedia |last=Anger |first=Don N. |editor-last=Drout |editor-first=Michael D. C. |editor-link=Michael D. C. Drout |title=Report on the Excavation of the Prehistoric, Roman and Post-Roman Site in Lydney Park, Gloucestershire |encyclopedia=[[J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia]] |year=2013 |orig-year=2007 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-0-415-86511-1 |pages=563–564}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Armstrong |first=Helen |title=And Have an Eye to That Dwarf |journal=[[Amon Hen (journal)|Amon Hen: The Bulletin of the Tolkien Society]] |date=May 1997 |issue=145 |pages=13–14}}</ref><ref name="Bowers 2019">{{cite book |last=Bowers |first=John M. |title=Tolkien's Lost Chaucer |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eGOtDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA132 |date=2019 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-884267-5 |pages=131–132}}</ref> Like Nuada, Maedhros loses a hand.<ref name="Fimi 2006"/><ref name="Kinniburgh 2009"/>

=== Germanic influence ===
[[File:Baldisholteppet 2.jpg|thumb|The Noldor have skill in weaving and needlework through [[Finwë and Míriel|Finwë's marriage to Míriel]]. Tolkien was aware that Germanic women were called weavers or embroiderers. [[Baldishol Tapestry]] pictured.<ref name="Solopova 2014"/>]]

The Tolkien scholar Leslie A. Donovan notes that Tolkien's concept of exile, as principally exemplified by the Noldor, derives in part from [[Anglo-Saxon]] culture, in which he was an expert.<ref name="Donovan 2013">{{cite encyclopedia |last=Donovan |first=Leslie A. |editor-last=Drout |editor-first=Michael D. C. |editor-link=Michael D. C. Drout |title=Exile |encyclopedia=[[The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia]] |year=2013 |orig-year=2007 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-0-415-86511-1 |page=178}}</ref>

The medievalist [[Elizabeth Solopova]] makes a connection between [[Middle English]] and Tolkien's description of Finwë's first wife Míriel as the most skilful of the Noldor at weaving and needlework; Solopova notes that Tolkien had proposed an etymology for the Middle English term ''burde'', meaning lady or damsel, linking it to [[Old English]] ''borde'', embroidery, and that he had given examples from both Old English and [[Old Norse]] where women were called weavers or embroiderers.<ref name="Solopova 2014">{{cite book |last=Solopova |first=Elizabeth |title=[[A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien]] |date=2014 |publisher=[[John Wiley & Sons]] |isbn=978-0-470-65982-3 |editor-last=Lee |editor-first=Stuart D. |editor-link=Stuart D. Lee |page=231 |chapter=Middle English |author-link=Elizabeth Solopova |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vsPXDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA231}}</ref>

=== Sub-creation ===
{{further|Christianity in Middle-earth}}

Shippey writes that Tolkien was himself fascinated with artefacts and their "[[sub-creation]]". He comments that in ''The Hobbit'', ''The Lord of the Rings'', and ''The Silmarillion'', Tolkien consistently chooses to write about the "restless desire to make things". This is not quite, he notes, the same as the Christian sin of [[avarice]] or possessiveness. This made sense in the case of the Noldor, as for consistency their besetting sin ought not to be the same as [[Adam and Eve]]'s, which was [[Seven deadly sins#Pride|pride]]. In Valinor, Shippey writes, the equivalent of the [[Fall of man|Fall]] "came when conscious creatures became 'more interested in their own creations than in God's'", with Fëanor's forging of the Silmarils.<ref name="Shippey 2005 p273">{{harvnb|Shippey|2005|pp=273–274}}</ref> He adds that the smith-Vala Aulë is not only the patron of all craftsmen but the Vala most like Melkor, the first Dark Lord. The kinds of craftsmanship he encouraged among the Noldor was not only of physical things, but "'those that make not, but seek only for the understanding of what is' — the [[Philology|philologists]], one might say", writes Shippey, including Tolkien's profession along with the Noldor's skill with letters and poetry.<ref name="Shippey 2005 p273"/> 

=== Decline and fall ===
{{further|Decline and fall in Middle-earth}}

The Tolkien scholar [[Bradford Lee Eden]] states that in ''The Silmarillion'', Tolkien focused on the Noldor as their history is "filled with the doom and fate so typical of medieval literature that determines the entire history of Middle-earth from the First Age to the time of ''The Lord of the Rings''."<ref name="Eden 2013">{{cite encyclopedia |last=Eden |first=Bradford Lee |author-link=Bradford Lee Eden |editor-last=Drout |editor-first=Michael D. C. |editor-link=Michael D. C. Drout |title=Elves |encyclopedia=[[The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia]] |year=2013 |orig-year=2007 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-0-415-86511-1 |pages=150–152}}</ref> He notes that in many "parallel stories and tales" the fates of Elves and Men are tightly interwoven, leading inexorably to the [[Decline and fall in Middle-earth|decline and fading]] of the Elves and the rise of Men as the dominant race in the modern Earth.<ref name="Eden 2013"/> The Tolkien scholar [[Matthew Dickerson]] writes that the theft of the Silmarils by Morgoth leads Fëanor and his sons into swearing their dreadful oath and leading the Noldor out of Valinor back to Middle-earth. This is, he comments, at once a free choice and a self-imposed exile.<ref name="Dickerson 2013">{{cite encyclopedia |last=Dickerson |first=Matthew |author-link=Matthew Dickerson |editor-last=Drout |editor-first=Michael D. C. |editor-link=Michael D. C. Drout |title=Elves: Kindreds and Migrations |encyclopedia=[[The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia]] |year=2013 |orig-year=2007 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-0-415-86511-1 |pages=152–154}}</ref>

=== Colonialism ===
{{further|Tolkien and race}}

The Swedish archaeologist [[Martin Rundkvist]] writes that Tolkien's account of Finrod Felagund includes "a transparently [[Colonialism|colonial]] passage" where the Elf, having arrived in a new country, "immediately takes up [[the White Man's Burden]] and spends a year educating the humans about his religious beliefs ('true knowledge'). They think this is great and become his feudal subjects. Then to avoid conflict with the Green-elves he re-settles the new arrivals in a thinly populated area ruled by some of his relatives."<ref name="Rundkvist 2023">{{cite web |last=Rundkvist |first=Martin |author-link=Martin Rundkvist |title=Finrod Felagund Takes Up The White Man's Burden |url=https://aardvarchaeology.wordpress.com/2023/03/26/finrod-felagund-takes-up-the-white-mans-burden/ |website=Aardvarchaeology – by Dr. Martin Rundkvist<!--well-known public figure--> |access-date=30 March 2023 |date=26 March 2023}}</ref>