Not Just Another History Text
A relative newcomer's impressions of "Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth."
With the success of The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien’s publisher Stanley Unwin asked for a sequel. Tolkien had him covered, or so he thought; his proposal of a vast, sweeping history of Middle Earth was rejected by Unwin for being still somewhat incomplete and too “Celtic.” So Tolkien had to go back to the drawing board, and and the result would be The Lord of the Rings trilogy. But he never forgot his epic origin story for Middle Earth, and would be constantly reworking and revising it almost until the moment he died in 1973. It would fall to his son Christopher to bring order out of his father’s sprawling notes on Middle-earth, which he would accomplish by 1976 with the publication of The Silmarillion, a single chronicle of Middle Earth that told its story with a tonal and thematic symmetry to the original trilogy. But even when this volume was completed, there was still so much left that Tolkien had written, and the success of The Silmarillion showed that there was still a thriving market for the professor’s writings. The result would be Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth, first published in 1980.
I knew from various videos from the likes of Nerd of the Rings, reading The Children of Hurin many years ago, and visits to Tolkien Gateway that there was much more that Tolkien had written which hadn’t made it into the published trilogy and The Silmarillion. But until February of 2022 I’m not even sure I knew this book even existed as a completed volume available to anyone. That is, until Vanity Fair’s first look at The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power came out, and among its images was one of the Elven lady Galadriel in a full suit of Gothic plate armor with a sword slung across her back. As the online discussion heated up, various quotes started popping up that seemed to lend support to this interpretation of the character, and many of them had their source in a book called Unfinished Tales. And this book stayed in my mind for other aspects of the show as well, such as various characteristics of Numenor, the complex version of Sauron that the show gave us, even regarding the Harfoots and the Wizards. So, although The Fall of Numenor was equally tempting, I made the choice to pick up Unfinished Tales first.
This…turned out not to be exactly the case. There are perhaps two cases in the whole book in which this true is: “The Disaster of the Gladden Fields” where the full story of how Isildur was slain and the One Ring Lost is recounted; and “The Battle of the Fords of Isen”, a fairly straightforward account of how the Rohirrim tried to defend the strategic fords of the Isen River from Saruman’s armies while the main events of The Two Towers were happening. The rest of the book is a mixture of various sorts of content. One textbook example of an actual “unfinished tale” is the very first entry of the book, “Of Tuor and His Coming to Gondolin” where Tolkien’s attempt at revising his very first story, an account of the fall of Gondolin, ends with Tuor just having arrived at the hidden city. There’s also “The Children of Hurin”, where several gaps appear and the reader is instructed to refer to The Silmarillion for an account of the relevant events. “Aldarion and Erendis” and “Cirion and Eorl” are in a somewhat more complete state (indeed the former is the only fully fleshed-out story we have from the second age) but both stories have sections where Christopher was unable to interpret his father’s handwriting so has to editorialize and interpret. In two cases, “The Hunt for the Ring” and “The Quest for Erebor” we have two or three complete stories, thus presenting an incomplete mini narrative. And then there are essays about the geography of Numenor, Galadriel and Celeborn, the Istari or Wizards, the wild men of Druedain Forest, and the Palantiri; all of them richly informative, and in some cases containing actual stories, but first and foremost they are essays. And no matter what type of content is in the book, it comes with a thorough and exhaustive collection of endnotes and references.
Now you might be thinking, “So Unfinished Tales is even more of an academic book than The Silmarillion, and The Silmarillion is already infamously hard to get through.” Rest assured, Unfinished Tales is well worth your time. And I would be saying this even if I wasn’t already a history major who enjoys academic works. There is so much for everyone to enjoy and to learn, so long as you already have some familiarity with Tolkien’s work and world.
When we read about Turin, we’re not just reading the same story from The Silmarillion. We learn about the difficulties faced by a young Turin Turambar and his tragic and all-too-brief childhood, which would set him on a dark path even before Morgoth cursed Hurin and his family. Tuor is no longer just a name in a history book, but now has an actual personality; we see him in awe at the beauty of the sea and the might of Ulmo, angry at the Easterlings who have taken over his homeland, driven to fulfill his mandate and dare all hazards to find the hidden kingdom of Gondolin. The story of Aldarion and Erendis is not just a tragic and doomed love story, but is also a window into Numenor itself: its maritime customs, laws and dynastic policies, class and language differences, Not only does this mighty empire come to life in ways only hinted at by The Silmarillion, we also see how the seeds are sown that will lead to its destruction by Sauron. “The Hunt for the Ring” and “The Quest for Erebor” give us valuable insights into the characters of Saruman and Gandalf respectively, a Saruman who wavers tantalizingly close to making the right choice even if only out of fear and a Gandalf who makes mistakes and has to be bailed out by sheer luck (this latter point is even driven home by something that comes up in the essay on the Palantiri). And those strange wild men of Druedan Forest who appear in The Return of the King and guide the Rohirrim to safe paths to the Pelennor Fields? We meet them for the first time in an essay, where we learn about their good nature, their skill in the woods, and their implacable hatred of the orcs; all of which show why they would aid the Rohirrim despite only meeting them just now.
But perhaps the two characters who benefit the most from Unfinished Tales are Galadriel and Isildur. This is because of the long shadow that other forms of media have cast in shaping our understanding of these characters. Thanks to the Peter Jackson trilogy, for 22 years we have seen Galadriel as a distant, angelic, ethereal figure, in the story and the world but not really part of it; meanwhile, thanks to the prologue of The Fellowship of the Ring, Isildur has gone down as something of a failure, perhaps a good man at one time but turned to darkness by his possession of the Ring, so that only his descendent Aragorn can redeem the bloodline. What we learn about these important characters from UT…should completely change our understanding of them. “The History of Galadriel and Celeborn” may be an essay containing at least three distinct versions of this story, but we learn so much about the character of Galadriel. Not just a distant figure of wisdom, she was a real character who won her wisdom the hard way; not just a vision of long-lost beauty, we learn just how close she was to it; not just a person who rejects the temptation of the Ring, we learn just how dangerous this temptation this was for her, and how sweet her triumph over it really was. And as for Isildur…no longer the fallen hero who evilly says “No” to destroying the Ring, flees like a coward from danger under influence, and earns a just fate for it, here is an actual hero who knows that he has sinned in holding onto the Ring, whose last campaign is to try and make things right, who only abandons his comrades when he has no other choice and has to be begged to do so, and who knows a true and real joy when the Ring chooses to abandon him. To hearken back to Rings of Power, for all the condemnation dumped upon that show’s interpretations of these characters, Unfinished Tales shows that there is so much more to recommend them than might be expected.
Would I recommend Unfinished Tales? Absolutely, and not just because it looks pretty in a collection. Perhaps not right away. DEFINITELY not as one’s first exposure to Tolkien; for that, The Hobbit and the Trilogy are still one’s best bet. But I would dare to say that it should be approached simultaneously with The Silmarillion. Tolkien’s world is best experienced in total, as much as possible. One can only truly fall in love with his world if you understand it entirely. And for all the better-known books, Unfinished Tales fills in the gaps, adds context, and makes this world so much deeper, so much richer, and so much more beautiful.
The prologue to Fellowship of the Ring (movie) is supposed to be told from the POV of Galadriel. So, really from a narrative and in-universe viewpoint, we have her to blame for the negative perception of Isildur because she lied about him. The only other account we have to go on in said movie is Elrond's perspective, so again, they are to blame for presenting him in a negative light.
Amusing that you think Amazon are going to bring Isildur into line with Tolkien's depiction from a book they *explicitly don't have the rights to*. Wonder how they're going to go from making him a cowardly and idiotic school dropout who repeatedly shames his father with his failures, then about the treachery of Pharazon's son to a great hero who risked his life to save a fruit from the tree of Nimloth.
They probably won't: I predict it will be his sister who does that, and Galadriel will cut the ring off Sauron's hand. Isildur willl then take credit for it.
The Disaster of the Gladden Fields is probably my favorite Middle-earth short story, for all the reasons you say. The book (to say nothing of the movie) did Isildur wrong.