Tag: galadriel

joyfullynervouscreator:

cycas:

“Then suddenly… [Sam] remembered the gift of Galadriel.  He brought the box out and showed it to the other Travellers… and asked their advice.  Inside, it was filled with a grey dust, soft and fine, in the middle of which was a seed, like a small nut with a silver shale…

So Sam planted saplings in all the places where specially beautiful or beloved trees had been destroyed, and he put a grain of the precious dust in the soil at the root of each… And at the end he found that he still had a little of the dust left; so he went to the Three-farthing Stone, which is as near the centre of the Shire as no matter, and cast it in the air with his blessing…

Spring surpassed his wildest hopes. His trees began to sprout and grow, as if time was in a hurry and wished to make one year do for twenty…

Altogether 1420 in the Shire was a marvellous year. Not only was there wonderful sunshine and delicious rain, in due times and perfect measure, but there seemed something more: an air of richness and growth, and a gleam of a beauty beyond that of mortal summers that flicker and pass upon this Middle-earth. All the children born or begotten in that year, and there were many, were fair to see and strong, and most of them had a rich golden hair that had before been rare among hobbits.”  Return of the King p367-368

What I’m getting from this is that Galadriel didn’t only give three of her hairs to Gimli, she also gave her hair to half the baby hobbits of the Shire… 

Imagine when Celeborn does arrive, telling his wife ALL about the goldenhaired Hobbits… and one of her brothers jokingly asks if she will claim them as her children.

Just.

Imagine.

The.

Look.

On.

Celeborn’s.

FACE.

Meanwhile Finarfin would be all over the cuteness of it, forcing anyone who’s ever seen a Hobbit to draw him pictures of his “Grandkids”.

finarfiniel:

elfmaidens:

quietblogoflurk:

There are lots of passages in LOTR that I love, but my uncontested favorite is this sentence by Galadriel:

‘Dark are the waters of Khaled-zaram and cold are the springs of Kibil-Nala and fair were the many-pillared halls of Khazad-dum in elder days before the fall of mighty kings beneath the stone.’

This is the moment Gimli gets her, or at least he gets that she gets him. In this one sentence, 

  • She acknowledges that Gandalf (and Gimli) was not wrong to pass through Moria.
  • She shows empathy for Gimli’s wish to see Moria again, even if it is ruined or unsafe.
  • She deliberately uses the Dwarven names of places – endonyms instead of exonyms, Khazad-Dum instead of Moria, Dwarrowdelf instead of Black Pit.
  • She doesn’t only show respect and understanding, she shows knowledge – in addition to knowing dwarven names, she seems to know dwarven culture, since the descriptions she uses are very similar to the ones in Gimli’s song.
  • Knowing Galadriel’s past, it seems like her understanding of Gimli’s grief for Khazad-Dum stems from her experiences with losing… well, she lost a lot of people and places over the eras. She stood witness to the losses of various paradises, she gets it. But the fall of Gondolin is the most obvious parallel, or maybe Doriath, and the knowledge that Lothlórien can only be a faint echo of its glories.
  • Knowing Galadriel’s future, it seems like her grief for losing Middle-Earth forever also shines through the sentence. The world is changing and beautiful things fade or die or must be left behind, and she knows this probably best of everyone on Middle-Earth.
  • And in this one utterance of knowledge and compassion, where she acknowledges the beauty of dwarven lands and the grief of their loss, she uses one-syllable adjectives, which, as @thearrogantemu pointed out, are Tolkien’s favorite mode of signaling beauty, age and gravitas. Dark. Cold. Fair.

the respect and understanding she shows for the lost glory and lost beauty of the Dwarvish kingdoms  #I think for Gimli that’s like the moment where you realize someone has read the same book and loves it like you do  #not just a willingness to be generous  #but the mutual recognition of shared values  #and especially coming from someone whose people have historically been dismissive or antagonistic (thearrogantemu)

Let’s not forget that also, sadly unlike Gimli, Galadriel HAS seen Khazad-dum in all of its glory; she & Celebrían travelled through it when escaping Ost-in-Edhil in the 2nd Age on their way to Lorien.