Tumblr crosspost (12 January 2021)

[anghraine]

Anyway, thinking about LOTR as usual, and IMO one of the most intriguing things we hear about Gondor is that the hardy and strong people of Lebennin are a) considered citizens of Gondor, and b) descended from both Númenóreans and “the forgotten men who housed in the shadow of the hills in the Dark Years ere the coming of the kings,” and in fact, some of them are primarily descended from the forgotten men.

Of course, that raises an obvious question: Who were the forgotten men?

And clearly there was some degree of intermarriage, but what were the conditions of it? What happened to them, anyway, that they’re so wholly forgotten—even by their own descendants, even by ones who have little other ancestry? Are they really completely forgotten in Lebennin or …?

Almost the only thing we hear about them in this passage is that the people who are mainly descended from them are short and “swarthy” (um) by contrast to the primarily Númenórean people of Belfalas and it’s like—uhhhh, clearly questionable, but I’m just really curious about the forgotten men of Lebennin and what happened to them. We know that Tar-Aldarion’s ecologically destructive colonization efforts drove off some of the indigenous people of Gondor, so—are the ancestors of the Lebenninians the people who stayed in the face of Númenórean imperialism? And if so, what happened?

It feels like there’s a really major story there and we just know very little about it.

Tagged: #tolkien has quite a few essays about various things in gondor but just drops 'forgotten men' with NO explanation #why are they forgotten. who were they. what happened. what place do their descendants occupy #what do they say about them in lebennin (if anything) #it's also ... interesting that the southern army that aragorn brings to minas tirith is strongly associated with lebennin #(legolas sings about it!) #so the forgotten men's descendants were instrumental in the salvation of gondor and middle-earth #yet there's like... nothing

Comments

[chestnut_pod]

I could not agree more. Who are these people?!

[anghraine]

Right? It's like ... okay, so these "forgotten men" lived in Lebennin before "the coming of the kings"—is that a reference to the kings of Númenor, the kings of Gondor, or Númenóreans in general? What period of time is he even referring to? There was obviously colonization and intermarriage with Númenórean colonizers, but to go by the reference to some groups of these descendants having little Númenórean ancestry, it seems like there are some areas where intermarriage was largely avoided over Gondor's multi-millennia-long history and communities that persist into the Fourth Age. Yet their pre-Númenórean history has been almost entirely forgotten or eradicated while Gondor is simultaneously one of the main repositories of ancient history relevant to Númenórean interests.

On Tumblr, some people tried to argue that this was just a natural result of the lengths of time involved and comparable to Celts in Britain, but I don't think so. The fact that their descendants are still clearly recognized as such, and that there are distinctions made between Númenóreans in Gondor, biracial Lebenninians descended from Númenóreans+forgotten men, and the (visibly distinct) Lebenninians whose heritage is primarily from the forgotten men, makes it quite difficult to think this history disappeared by coincidence unrelated to the active colonialism of the Númenóreans. I'm just like, what happened??? Also the explicit comparison between the very heavily Númenórean population of Belfalas and the much more racialized population of Lebennin makes it hard not to wonder what exactly happened in Belfalas as well.

I wish we knew more about the various groups of forgotten men, had any sense of their cultures or architecture or languages or anything. It's not like I would actually trust Tolkien to write about them without running straight into a bunch of imperialist and racist tropes, but... yeah. :\

[chestnut_pod]

I agree completely; if there is persistent separation after that many generations, there is very clearly Something Else going on than mutual transculturation!

[anghraine]

Right!