Posted on 09/24/2006 4:02:42 AM PDT by MadIvan
OK, so that's where I had heard the connection previously. Sounds like "The Children of Hurin" is an expansion of the tale mentioned in "The Silmarillion", so that's where the connection to the "Kalevala" must be.
A lot of Silmarillion has Kalevala influences but "Turin Turambar" is the most obvious. It's a very close retelling of one part of the Kalevala.
We live in MA, and one year, our furnace for the downstairs went out in mid-January. We have a separate one for the bedrooms, upstairs, so that was good. It was a couple of weeks before the guy could get the part to fix it, so we relied heavily on our fireplace and I also baked a lot to help keep the heat up downstairs! We also kept the lights going a lot, and SirKit mentioned that was the most cheerful he'd ever felt during the winter since we'd moved here! LOL!
The dreariness is one of the main reasons we're looking forward to moving back to MS before this coming winter!!
Shades of the tale of King Arthur...
JRR Tolkien pingaroo
Loved his Legacy of the Aldenata sequence. Likewise the Prince Roger stories, and his "Fall" books are pretty good, too. Wasn't too fond of Cally's War, though. I don't mind romance in my SF, but I'm not too fond of blatant descriptive sex. (yeah, I'm an old fogie.) I'll probably stay away from his Ghost books, too, for the same reason. He's an excellent writer, IMHO. He's got a couple of others out I've not gotten a look at yet, also. I did just read Princess of Wands. Still haven't made up my mind about it, but I finished it in one sitting, so that must say something...
If that merits an "X" rating, so does Sophocles.
Yep. Just when you think your life is going badly, read deidre of the sorrows, and it puts everything in perspective. =^)
Anyone who's read the Silmarillion is already familiar with this.
I'm half Finnish, but have not read much of the Kalevala. I believe that Longfellow used the rhythm pattern of this poem for his 'Tales of Hiawatha' epic, which is a good way for non-Finns to get the feel of speaking Finnish.
This accidental incest plot of course goes back to the Greek myth of Oedipus Rex, who kills his father and marries his mother, all unknowingly, and in Wagner's Ring Sigemund commits accidental incest with Siegelinde, not knowing she is his sister. The Ring was based in part of the ancient tales of the Niebelungen, which itself is based on the history of the Germanic tribes at the time of the invasion by Attila the Hun. (since the Finns, like the Hungarian Magyars, are related to the Huns, this rather comes full circle.)
These themes are some of the most ancient and powerful themes in human culture. If you get to dwelling on them too much, you must move to the land of the Sun -- Florida.
You guys have your hobbitses mixed up! Pippin wasn't even present at that part of the battle.
Merry stabbed the Witch King - and then Eowyn did the actual killing. I don't believe Merry delivered the killing blow, though certainly he helped.
And I still rather wish Eowyn's dialog there hadn't been changed for the movie, though it still works OK, I guess.
IIRC it was Merry who rode with Eowyn and helped her slay him, not Pippin. Gandalf had taken Pippin with him to Minas Tirith to keep him out of trouble after he looked in the Palantir and left Merry behind with Theoden.
You're right. I keep mixing them up.
If you read the passage at the end of the chapter and parse it the way I did, Merry's thrust unbound the Witch King's spirit from the whatever held him together, all before Eowyn stabbed him. And Hobbits aren't men. Eowyn's weapon was an ordinary sword. So while she was a human female [but not a male], I can't see how she could kill the greatest sorceror of his age, and the greatest of the Nine [bearing in mind that none of the other other of the Nine fell to any agency but the dissolution of the Ring of Power, and the eruption of Mt. Doom].
Yep. As well as Unfinished Tales (which are some of my more treasured books)
Here is some info on the Witch-King:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch-king_of_Angmar
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