Who is the tallest? More Heat than Light on Height in Tolkien’s World by oshun

Fanwork Information

Summary:

I beg your indulgence for this, my entry for the "Solve a problem" challenge. I realize the problem is all mine. Who IS the tallest? Or does it matter? What was Tolkien thinking?

Major Characters: Ancalagon, Aredhel, Azaghâl, Beleg, Celeborn, Dwarves, Edain, Elendil, Elves, Fëanor, Galadriel, Galdor (Edain), Glaurung, Húrin, Indis, Legendary/Mythical Character(s), Maedhros, Melkor, Nerdanel, Noldor, Númenóreans, Other Fictional Character(s), Real Person(s), Turgon, Túrin

Major Relationships:

Artwork Type: No artwork type listed

Genre: Nonfiction/Meta

Challenges: Solve a Problem

Rating: General

Warnings:

Chapters: 1 Word Count: 3, 446
Posted on 15 August 2019 Updated on 15 August 2019

This fanwork is complete.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

I owe a great debt of gratitude to IgnobleBard again for providing Beta services on this essay. He's a hero. He should be seven feet tall at least!

Comments

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I wish I was that tall! If height is an indicator of leadership and nobility my moniker is well earned indeed. lol

Your ability to pull off something this interesting and educational so quickly with all the citations and such is impressive. I laughed out loud at the image of the Elves riding these huge horses and having tiny little pin heads. Also, the Dwarves must have been in the neighborhood of five foot nine!

"Tall" is such a vague term where there's nothing to really compare it to.

Now I'm going to bait you by saying I'm going to write a story where Turgon is so tall he can pat Maedhros and Fingon on the head like three year olds.

Don't you dare, you wicked person! You know I have no sense of humor when it comes to them.

OMG! Thanks so much for your patience! I cannot even look at that thing right now. I am not a naturally fast writer. I need time. I never understand people you dash off thousands of words a day regularly.

Ha, I see I'm not the only one squeaking in at the deadline with an essay! (Or the only one somewhat skeptical about the extreme heights!) I got the giggles at the image of the tall elves having to crouch down to talk to Men and dwarves, and their feet dragging on the ground as they ride on a horse that looks almost comically small compared to them. :)

Enjoyed your (as usual) well-written and considered essay. I agree with Grundy -- I snickered at your image of elves riding massive Clydesdale type beasts with their feet a draggin'.  lol. and agree that no way do I want to contemplate 8' elves or Numenoreans for that matter. The subject of who is the tallest and actually putting characters on a graph line (which I've seen done) is another one of those fandom things i can't get into.  As you say, I figure that tall is a standard Tolkien marker, his go-to in describing a noble, worthy being -- both men and women -- putting his characters in the realm of mythology where all heroes are noble, pure, and yes, altitude-gifted. 

Thanks for reading, Elfscribe. I am glad it entertained you. I do recall some art which had all of the major character lined up with heights noted. I tried to find it yesterday and couldn't. 

I think you are right that the Silmarillion and other early works are written in a more epic mode in the sense of indicating character by dropping epithets instead of developing through more modern methods of dialog and action. Perhaps me having had decades of knowing only LotR it becomes a stumbling block because I entered into the reading of the material in the HoMe with different expectations. I can handle it well enough in the Iliad or Gilgamesh.

 

I know some fans actually relish the idea of Elves as creatures from the uncanny valley (or "eldritch horrors" as they would say), but like you, I prefer them more human. Which includes height and proportions! Mind you, I'm one of those smallish people who always feel vaguely resentful of very tall people (-> my father's side of the family, for example), so of course my beloved Elves mustn't be even taller than that. ;)

I remember getting into fandom fights because I felt that Maedhros should be the tallest - he's called the Tall (TM), and Turgon isn't, right! - and that obscure quote gives me both satisfaction (it really is very obscure, you can barely find it unless you really want to) and regret (it is an actual quote...)
My excuse is that we all know there are different narrators, and naturally Pengolodh would say that Turgon is the tallest! Safe Thingol. :P

Anyway, this essay speaks to me a lot. I, too, draw the line somewhere around 7 feet. I suppose it's possible that due to ~Elven magic~ the proportions of an even taller Elf (or Númenórean, even) might not actually get stretched, but would still be pleasing to the (human) eye... but I prefer to keep Elven magic out of my inner vision. XD Thank you for this essay! As a vaguely amusing end note, I love that you brought up Liam Neeson as an example for a very tall (but not that tall) human, since he used to be my faceclaim for Elendil (also the Tall (TM)) for a long time. And now, I stop rambling!

Oh, thanks so much for reading! And for commenting!

I choked on my coffee when I read:

"...we all know there are different narrators, and naturally Pengolodh would say that Turgon is the tallest!"

Oh. Yes! And I tend to forget the following:

I know some fans actually relish the idea of Elves as creatures from the uncanny valley (or "eldritch horrors" as they would say)

Peter Jackson verges on that for any Elf without a speaking part. 

I love that you brought up Liam Neeson as an example for a very tall (but not that tall) human, since he used to be my face-claim for Elendil (also the Tall (TM)) for a long time.

He would have been perfect for Elendil!

Short grandparents and very tall grandchildren was a U.S. phenomenon when I was growing up. Someone did a study a few decades ago, which I unsuccessfully searched for and did not find, that showed dramatic increases in height among second and third-generation Japanese Americans. Their conclusion was some of this was caused by the U.S. practice of giving kids milk as a beverage at every meal and in between meals well into their teenage years. (I think that has declined a bit now--but the replacements are gross--highly processed fruit beverages and soda and more junk-food snacks. Now kids are getting fatter.)

I think the trick for me of getting these things right is for the author not to throw in too much weirdness least the reader gets overwhelmed and but still enough not to lose the magic and wonder of fantasy. I found people in the early-2000s LotR fandom who did not like it when I introduced telepathic communication (Ósanwe-kenta) into a novel I was writing. They thought I made it up. So I had to insert extensive references in a footnote in an Eomer/Lothiriel romance to get them to stop bothering me.

There was a whole segment of LotR writers for a while who preferred fanfiction with an absolute minimum of fantasy elements--focused on Men and Hobbits, and light on Elves or any history reaching before the Third Age and the fewer references to fantasy elements the better. That always annoyed the hell out of me. My early character bios hammer away at the importance of The Silmarillion to Tolkien! LotR was the afterthought for him! (Although I do not deny some of the best writing might be in LotR--but writing for immediate publication does cause one to stretch.)

Sorry for writing too much. Thank you again for your comments!

It was fun to get height thing off my chest in a context where I did not have to reasonable as a quasi-representative of the SWG (even though the bios are all signed, I still feel the need to keep control of my quirkiest personal opinions and preferences). In this essay I just let my weirdness flow freely!

I agree, Oshun!

My impression, too, is that when Tolkien is in mythological mode he uses "tall" as an epithet that suggests the outer equivalent of some kind of inner quality, although I don't find it easy to easy to pin down what that inner quality is. Sometimes it seems to be more about leadership, sometimes more about knowledge? I think you are right that it probably has partly to do with not wanting his fairies to be little and pretty and Victorian.

That idea doesn't transfer easily into a more realistic mode, does it? Even though Tolkien tries.

I think I saw you, somewhere, trying to track down an artist's height chart in this context. Here is one by Houkakyou:

https://www.deviantart.com/houkakyou/art/LotR-S-Silmarillion-Height-Chart-546857444

Oh, you found a height chart! Yay! Thank you so much. Whenever I see one I find them terribly entertaining, but also do not find they satisfy me in terms of characterization. 

It does transfer more into a more realistic model and it does not satisfy my personal story-verse in which I try to write that way. Real emotional, real struggles, epic tragedy, which actually real-world history is like that. Great people historically were not without out their flaws and yet still could be amazing (will being violent, crazy, or terribly wrong by today's standards). Edward IV (the terrific military genius of the War of the Roses) was 6 feet 4 inches, while his brother Richard III is said from his bones to be about 5 feet 6 inches--contemporary accounts describe him as short but nice looking (not the hump-backed monster). So I enjoy thinking about physical descriptions. I like to weave characterization from a starting place of giving the reader a vivid visual image. Tolkien often does also, but them sometimes veers off by contradicting himself or going too far. (Combination of literary tropes and in-world ever-shifting narrators over time. Those narrators not always being first-hand or even same historical period or place.) 

I've imagined Gil-galad and Elendil has both very tall. Elendil being noticeably taller. That is far as my puny imagination can take me. But still can visualize Fingon holding Maedhros on the back of Thorondor. So I can ditch realism when it suits me!!

Thanks so much for reading and finding the drawing.