What happened to Rivendell after the Elves all left for the West?
It had been there so long, and was so beautiful, it would depress me to think of it abandoned, dusty, leaves blowing around, with cobwebs in the corners.
Silly question, but if you can answer it feel free to use this thread to ask others.
That was where Fredegar Bolger wound up in the Fourth Age. (Everybody forgets about him.) He bought Rivendell as a fixer-upper and turned it into an Elf Museum and charged admission.
AFAIK, its final fate was never mentioned by Tolkien. When Elrond finally departed for the West, his sons Elrohir and Elladan remained behind, and maintained it for at least a while.
It was condemned and left in disrepair, became a pipe-weed den for a while, then got bulldozed over during the construction of the Bree-Dale interstate back in the '30s (Fifth Age).
Joke aside, it’s the age of man now and the elves all left, taking with them everything that made elven places magical. Lorien, Rivendell, the elven places in Mirkwood… all that stuff will eventually look like the ruins of Ithilien. For that matter, Rivendell itself is really one of the last remnants of a much bigger Noldor kingdom, and only kept on existing because it was protected by one of the three rings kept by the elves. The long agony of the elves and their magic is one of the themes of the books.
Good riddance, I say. Buncha no good tree-hugging slackers. Ever seen an elf do an honest day’s work, huh ?
Is it under the North Sea now, or is it perhaps still there?
Celeborn also resided there after Galadriel left. He was Merry and Pippin’s primary source of information when they put together the tale of years (two versions with different focuses.) When Celeborn departed, “…and with him went the last living memory of the elder days in middle earth.”
My interpretation is that elves might still be living there; those that never left, still taking their sweet time in going to the undying lands.
I don’t think Tolkien ever wrote anything about the World-Changing that must have occurred sometime between the Third/Fourth age and now, so there’s no easy way to match up Third Age locations with their modern equivalents.
They dammed the river, now it’s under a lake.
In one way that’s actually true. Here’s where they filmed the Warg/Radagast chase scene. Not too far away is the Cromwell Gorge which used to look like this, but now is underwater after the Clyde Dam was unnecessarily built.
I tell a lie, it was Braemar Station, near Lake Tekapo where they filmed the Warg chase, which isn’t near the Clutha at all.
ELROND: Ah wanna hear yew squeal lak a pig!
[Frodo does so]
They commercialized it and changed the name to Yosemite. Still pretty cool, check it out.
Cripes. Have you guys all been reading The Last Ringbearer?
^
If that’s true then Elrond settled there after the last VEI 8 volcanic eruption that formed the Yosemite caldera. Smart of him to vacate as another VEI 7-8 eruption is due within a few hundred thousand years.
Yosemite is glacially formed. You’re thinking of Yellowstone, where Yogi Bear lives.
I don’t think all the elves left. Not all of the elves completed the journey into the west (to Valinor) in the first place. The Teleri/Sindar are their decendants. They may not be comfortable leaving Middle Earth.
Though I believe they are still ALLOWED.
Also, Galadriel herself said something about the future of the elves when she was talking about the quest of the Ring - “…if you succeed, then our power is diminished, and Lothlorien will fade, and the tides of Time will sweep it away. We must depart into the West, or dwindle to a rustic folk of dell and cave, slowly to forget and to be forgotten.”
The elves slowly disappear, one way or the other. So do the dwarves, though in different ways. “Magic”, such as it is, slowly goes out of the world. The end of LotR is sad. =/
So yes, I’m afraid that yes, eventually, your idea of Rivendell dusty and neglected is most likely what eventually came to pass, however slowly.
Thank you for that. I’m about 1/4 of the way through now, and it’s quite good. Uneven at parts - the translator will start a sentence in classic Tolkeinian English and finish it with “those guys got their asses kicked”, but the whole anti-magic Industrial Revolution thing is great.
I wondered who was using all that site’s bandwidth.
I’ve never put too much thought into this. Why does the destruction of the One Ring cause the end of magic in Middle Earth? Melkor is only one of 14 Valar, after all, and certainly isn’t responsible for magic in Middle Earth.
Even if the destruction of the One Ring also destroys the magic of the other rings of power, I don’t see why that would matter.
Unless the idea is that without Sauron around, the rest of the Valar feel that their duty to Middle Earth is done and completely abandon it?
Johnny Bravo - my understanding was that the Fourth Age of Middle Earth was to be the Age of Men. Men who are mortals, without magic. Like us. It is our time to rule the Earth.
