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Comment by belval | Hacker News Reader

While I never read Tolkien's notes and letters, I did read the Silmarillion and it does not consider Gandalf/Olorin/Mithrandir to be an elf. He is a maia which is not the same thing.

We do know that whatever Maiar are, they can have children with elves, from Melian and Thingol. Deducing that maia = elf from that is quite a leap in logic.

EDIT: Author was referring to Gandalf being mistaken for an elf, as per this excerpt of the unfinished tales:

"Mostly he journeyed tirelessly on foot, leaning on a staff, and so he was called among Men of the North Gandalf 'the Elf of the Wand'. For they deemed him (though in error) to be of Elven-kind, since he would at times work wonders among them."

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I think the author is saying that characters in Tolkein's world, who gave him the name 'Gandalf'='Wand Elf' must have thought him to be an elf, which would be evidence that those characters don't think it strange for an elf to have a beard.

In that case that would make sense. From the other post on that website, it seems clear that the author is too knowledgeable to make that kind of mistake.

I wonder if that author supposes the Malaysians, or whoever, thought orangutans (reported to mean "men of the forest") were humans? Or that those naming sea-cows thought that manatee were actually cows?

Surely his name having "modifier+elf" in it shows that he's recognised as distinctly not an elf, nor recognisable as one, but is considered to have elf-like characteristics. I don't think it tells you anything about whether it's strange for an elf to have a beard.

To be fair, there's also wood/east-elves, fair/light-elves, grey-elves, green-elves, all of whom are bona fide elves.

So just because he's called "modifier+elf" doesn't mean they didn't think he's a proper elf.

Cirdan the Shipwright has a beard as he is described in the last chapter of LotR.

I know so many people that have read the book multiple times but seem to have somehow missed the fact that Cirdan has a beard.

It’s like they have a blind spot and just can’t see it

Is it a case of mistaken identity, or a nickname based on demeanor or skills or other attributes? (I haven't read much Tolkien, and not in decades.) Tarzan is sometimes called the "King of the Jungle" but not because anyone looked at him and mistook him for an actual king.

The article doesn't say anywhere that Gandalf is an elf. It only claims that the people who initially called him Gandalf thought he was an elf.

The article uses the fact that people thought Gandalf was an elf to justify the idea that elves can heave beards, which implies that the author thinks that they were correct in their belief.

Well, no – if Gandalf had a beard and was mistaken for an elf, then clearly people making that mistake thought that elves can have beards!

Yeah, that does indeed make sense now that you point it out. I obviously misunderstood it on the first pass.

Because people think elves can have beard, they are correct to thing Gandalf is an elf? That's some twisted inside-out logic.

Obviously they wouldn't think that Gandalf was an elf if they thought elves never had beards, so yeah, they probably thought elves had beards. And they were probably correct about that, considering we know of a real elf who had a beard.

But if elves can have beards, that doesn't mean everybody with a beard is an elf. That just makes no sense.

> But if elves can have beards, that doesn't mean everybody with a beard is an elf. That just makes no sense.

That's not what was said, though. The point is that having a beard is not a show-stopper when suspecting that someone is an elf. People could have suspected that Gandalf was an elf for any number of unmentioned reasons having nothing to do with his beard, it's just that his beard did not get in the way of that, so beards are clearly not considered outside of the elvish phenotype.

Exactly. That's what I'm saying. That's not what 0xffff2 is saying, though. The fact that Gandalf could be an elf because Gandalf's beard doesn't rule it out, on account of some elves having beards, does not imply that Gandalf really is an elf. Elves having beards does in no way imply that the people were correct in their belief that Gandalf is an elf.

The claim is if a bearded Maia is commonly taken for an elf; people did not think of elves as beardless.

For anyone who's confused by this comment - the article said that Gandalf was called Elf of the Wand by men. Meaning men confused Gandalf with an elf, implying that beards on elves couldn't have been all that uncommon if Gandalf had one and was confused for an elf by men.

The implication doesn't really work; you need to assume the men are familiar with elves. But that's not true when Gandalf is active.

Yeah, that struck me as well, especially considering that I'm pretty sure OP has read way more Tolkien material that I have ever did. There must be something we are missing.

Yeah, any assertion that Gandalf and his peers are elves is just bizarrely wrong and makes clear the author basically hasn't done the reading.

Not the author, and I did read the Silmarillion a long time ago, but I had assumed until now that Gandalf was an elf because he carried one of the elven rings.

Gandalf's existence is actually quite interesting, he's certainly at least a Maia but may in fact be a bit more. There are some murky points about whether he's a devoted servant of Manwe and one of the eldest Maiar - or whether he is actually just an avatar of Manwe.

Do you have a source on which you are basing this conclusion?

From my perspective, it is pretty well established that Gandalf is Olorin, a Maia distinct from Manwe. The non-interference of the Valar in the Third Age is also well known so it is doubtful Manwe himself would appear physically in Middle-Earth.

Also, all Maiar (or rather, Ainur) are the same age or, more accurately, ageless, since they existed before the world.

IIRC he was given the ring by Cirdan, who was an elven lord.

That's correct. Cirdan gave Narya, the ring of fire, to Mithrandir when he arrived.

"Take this ring, Master," he said, "for your labours will be heavy; but it will support you in the weariness that you have taken upon yourself. For this is the Ring of Fire, and with it you may rekindle hearts in a world that grows chill. But as for me, my heart is with the Sea, and I will dwell by the grey shores until the last ship sails. I will await you."

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