Thorondor's Rescue of Maedhros - Realistic or Not? by Grundy

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Fanwork Notes


I chose the prompt

Anything to do with the logistics around the anatomical and aerodynamic likelihood of a bird big enough to carry two men on its back. (Also what that might say about the bird poop issue around Gondolin.)


Also, I am running up against the challenge deadline so I am posting a 'mostly complete' draft and reserve the right to re-visit/edit later.

Fanwork Information

Summary:

How realistic are Thorondor and the eagles of Manwë? Could eagles of such size actually fly, much less carry people on their backs?

Major Characters:

Major Relationships:

Genre: Nonfiction/Meta

Challenges: Solve a Problem

Rating: General

Warnings:

Chapters: 1 Word Count: 1, 316
Posted on 16 August 2019 Updated on 16 August 2019

This fanwork is a work in progress.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Comments on Thorondor's Rescue of Maedhros - Realistic or Not?

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Ha! See, that business about giant-sized Elves and Man interferes with all kinds of canon stuff.

I loved this! A lot of fun to read.

Thorondor is larger than any living bird, and dwarfs even larger extinct species such as Haast’s Eagle, Argentavis magnificens, or Pelagornis sandersi. He would moreover be several times the size of the largest pterosaur.

Hell, yes! 

You threw in another bit of shady canon that drives me nuts! Legolas being tall and sturdy and weighing next to nothing. Just leave that out next time JRRT!

One of the most entertaining museum exhibitions I ever went to was the American Museum of Natural History's Mythic Creatures exhibition (2007-8). They had suspended in the air above one's head an 11 ft. Roc with a wingspan of 20 feet. Sadly too small to carry Maedhros and Fingon, but really fun to look at. (I pretended it would work! Named it Thorondor anyway! https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/mythic-creatures/air) It doesn't take much to make me happy. I can suspend my disbelief about eagle rescue if we reduce the size of the elves and men to closer to those walking around NYC today (or even Amsterdam where apparently they grow them taller).

 

Thank you!

Yes, the Legolas being tall and sturdy but being able to walk on top of snow makes very little sense, unless the implication is that elves don't interact with the mortal dimension in quite the same way as Men. (He's solid enough to be able to lift, climb, etc, but not solid enough to sink into snow when his weight is concentrated on normal size feet? This could be a whole 'nother meta.) I also suspect Tolkien didn't really consider the scaling of his oversized elves much!

I didn't touch on it in the essay (mostly because I ran out of time) but I still have the pressing question of how on Middle Earth eagles this size didn't wreak havoc on the local ecosystem. The energy requirements must have been enormous, yet we don't hear of any super-size prey animals for them to hunt...

You know that 'tears of joy' emoji? That's me right now. This was my contribution and you have answered it perfectly (except I do wonder how well that ginormous thing would do at hovering beside the cliff while Fingon did his surigical bit?). I am now convinced as to the possibility of GIANT eagles. Also that I would not want to live near one. Thank you for taking this on :D

Well, now we know why Gondolin remained hidden for so long: Nobody dared to venture too close to the Mountains of Eagle Poop (as the more prosaically minded called them)... XD

Thank you for doing the maths and drawing analogies! And I laughed out loud at the cruising speed of a laden Eagle. I conclude that Thorondor would have been more likely to carry Maedhros (even if possibly underweight, due to the "hospitality" of Angband) and Fingon in his talons than on his back, but either way, Fingon must have brought protective clothing as well as his harp on that rescue mission! That, or ~Elven magic~...

Really enjoyed your research, and your tongue-in-cheek tone in this essay! Thank you again!

Thank you!

I'm glad you appreciated the airspeed of a laden eagle. :)

I hadn't thought of that, but if the eagles were nesting in the mountains around Gondolin, that would certainly explain why no one ever stumbled across the valley/city...

An eagle carrying people on its back does seem much more awkward than in its talons, but I supposed the image of an airplane sized eagle dangling Fingon and Maedhros underneath him wasn't quite as stirring or heroic!

<i>I didn't touch on it in the essay (mostly because I ran out of time) but I still have the pressing question of how on Middle Earth eagles this size didn't wreak havoc on the local ecosystem.</i>

That is a huge one!

I always desperately wanted my own horse when I was a kid, but I as soon as I was earning money I did the math. Beyond my means on many levels. 

Not saying I am dying to read about giant eagle droppings! I don't even want to own a parakeet because of cleaning the cage. But I would read the "wreak havoc on the ecosystem" essay if you wrote it.

 

I was thinking less about the droppings than about how such large predators would feed themselves - an eagle Thorondor's size is going to have a sizable calorie requirement. (Calorie requirement scales by weight.) And a raptor large enough to carry full grown men is probably also large enough to consider animals the size of horses or cows prey...I don't see these eagles eating rabbits.

I enjoyed this consideration of eagle aerodynamics a lot!

I never did think this sounded like a comfortable ride, but had not considered the lack of goggles and ear muffs, etc.

 

(I realize that it's more a rhetorical flourish, but since you say this is a draft: Hurin seems to be the exception to "all the men are described as tall". Hurin, apparently, wasn't, by Hadorian standards. But I'm sure he was no lightweight either!)

Thank you!

No, I don't think it can have been a very comfortable ride, especially since I suspect Thorondor needs a higher speed than 30mph to stay airborne - it would probably have been unpleasantly windy even at low altitude, and temperature would be an issue if they were at higher altitude.

Hurin I wasn't necessarily including in the 'tall' or attempting a weight estimate as he was still a teenager at the time of his rescue. (I believe Huor and Hurin were ~14 and 16? At 16, many males are not quite at their adult height yet and almost none are at their adult weight. So I stuck to the adults as trying to figure height or weight for either of the teens would have been a straight up WAG.)

Yes, I feel like Tolkien overshot just a little with his dimensions. He could have made Thorondor half the size and still had a superlative bird!

As we don't have a satisfactory answer to the weight of these eagles, it's hard to say what the proportion of elf weight ends up at. From what I can find, it looks like one ounce on an average carrier pigeon is roughly 5.5% of its body weight. To achieve the same proprotion with elves and eagles, you're looking at a bird that's 11,000 pounds or more.