The Forever War

The Forever War is a great novel by Joe Haldeman, but it's also what several national security professionals have come to call either the US war in Afghanistan, or the "war on terror" in general. And for good reason: the US went to war with the Taleban on October 7 2001, almost seventeen years ago as I write this. Depending on which casualty estimates you want, tens to hundreds of thousands of people have been killed. President Trump has escalated the war, increasing air strikes and sending in more troops. With no clear strategy, there's no end in sight.

The other forever war is in the Middle East proper, and it's been going on a lot longer than the War on Terror. Now that US foreign secretary, oligarch Rex Tillerson seemed to commit US forces indefinitely to Syria, it seems like it would be a good idea to look back on how long the US has been fighting in the Middle East.

**

A century ago, the Middle East, with the exception of what is now Iran, was ruled by the Ottoman Empire. The Empire took the side of the Central Powers in World War I, and collapsed at the end of the war. The Allies had made contradictory promises to the Arab and Jewish subjects of the Empire during the war, and eventuallu decided to take over the Empire's territories in the Middle East as colonial protectorates. Eventually these protectorates gained their independence, leading to the map of the Middle East that we know today.

As British and French influence declined, the Americans stepped in. Saudi Arabia actively cultivated ties with the United States, and during World War II, the Americans came to believe that Saudi oil was of vital strategic importance. There has been a US military presence in Saudi Arabia ever since.

During the Cold War, the Middle East was a battleground for US and Soviet interests, with the Americans supporting Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Shah of Iran, and the Soviets backing Arab socialism in Egypt, Iraq and Syria. Neither side prevailed: Israel was never destroyed but didn't rout its opponents, and the incredibly bloody Iran-Iraq war ended indecisively. No one state or superpower could control the region.

In 1990, with the Cold War coming to a close, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded the tiny neighboring emirate of Kuwait. A US-led alliance kicked him out the next year, with coalition ground forces crossing the Saudi border on February 24. The poorly led and motivated Iraqi conscript forces were swept aside with ease, and Kuwait was restored.

Saddam, however, stayed in power. To stop him from oppressing Iraq's Shi'ite and Kurd minorities, no-fly zones were set up in north and south Iraq, monitored by US, British and French aircraft, the French later withdrawing. These no-fly zones were enforced until the 2003 invasion of Iraq, accompanied by cruise missile strikes in 1993 and 1996, and a sustained four-day bombing campaign in 1998.

So by the time the Americans invaded Iraq in 2003, the US military had been operating in Iraq non-stop for twelve years already. As we know, the US-led invasion of 2003 led to the death of Saddam Hussein and the collapse of the Iraqi state, ushering in a thoroughly unstable situation where a US-supported regime is faced with a massive insurgency. Militarily, the invasion was a success; the decision to destroy the Iraqi state without any kind of realistic nation-building strategy to replace it was a disaster. American combat troops stayed in the country until 2011, when they declared "mission accomplished" and withdrew, marking 20 years of continuous operations in Iraq. The insurgency simply continued as before.

2011 was also the year of the Arab Spring: regimes were overthrown in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, protests crushed with Saudi help in Bahrain, and Libya collapsed into civil war. Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad tried to suppress protests with force, triggering the Syrian civil war. A Sunni extremist group calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant took advantage of the US withdrawal from Iraq to launch a full-scale offensive on the Iraqi government, and also became a participant in the Syrian Civil War. The Americans are intervening in the still-ongoing Syrian Civil War, along with the Russians and the Turks, and returned to Iraq in 2014. Meanwhile, a civil war also broke out in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia is carrying out air strikes to support one side. And I haven't even mentioned Israel's continuing occupation of Palestine and its ongoing violence.

So from the 1991 Gulf war to several wars still being fought in 2018, the Middle East is nearing a full thirty years of war.

**

To put all this into some kind of context, I see two major developments. First, obviously, the Arab spring exposed the unusustainability of the Cold War order. Arab socialism had atrophied into venal despotism, and with money and military aid no longer pouring in from competing superpowers, the edifices began to collapse.

Secondly, the US destruction of Iraq shattered the geopolitical balance of the Middle East. In the short term, it created the power vacuum in which ISIS was born. In the longer term, the region will be looking for a new power balance. Iran is expanding its influence, but its capabilities are being massively overhyped. Iran is not an expansionist power outside the fever dreams of American islamophobes.

Saudi Arabia, however, is taking a very different approach, which Wikipedia is already calling the Iran-Saudi Arabia proxy conflict. The Saudi intervention in Yemen and the diplomatic offensive on Qatar are the most visible tips of this iceberg, but the Saudis' growing rapprochement with Israel and their bizarre orb ceremonies with Egypt and Trump certainly make it look like Saudi Arabia intends to flex its muscles. This is the essential background to the war drums being beaten against Iran in so many places today.

In the longer run, what we're seeing is the realignment of the Middle East from a superpower battleground to an area under a US quasicolonial hegemony. The extent of the conflicts, and the number of the dead, will depend on how far the US and its allies push their advantage. A war on Iran would be the ultimate exercise in remaking the whole Middle East, which is the only actual rationale of such a war. It's particularly absurd that such a pivotal time in the history of the region is being presided over by Donald Trump, a true idiot in the classical sense: completely ignorant and seemingly unable to hold a foreign policy opinion for as long as a week, but given to random, blustering fits of childish rage. It verges on impossible to decipher whether the US actually has some kind of strategy for the Middle East, let alone what it could be. Simply because he is president, Trump's idiocy and unpredictability make every global crisis more dangerous.

In retrospect, it's difficult to overstate how catastrophically bad the US decision to invade Iraq and Afghanistan without a proper exit strategy was. There's a ton of strategic literature by various American thinkers and pundits penned after Vietnam on how the US must never again be drawn into such a quagmire again, but it was all a waste of time, because American combat troops have been in Afghanistan for twice as long as they ever spent in Vietnam, and they show no signs of getting out. Whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria, there are no signs that the Americans have any kind of credible strategy for resolving the conflicts they have become involved in, let alone the ones they started.

The only thing that seems certain is that the forever war shows no signs of ending.

Let's Read Tolkien 40: The Great River

Frodo was roused by Sam.

The Fellowship drifts down the Great River. On their left, the Brown Lands stretch out; on the right, grass grows between the river and the Misty Mountains. They all gradually become more uneasy as they float through the barren landscape, with Boromir muttering to himself and occasionally glaring at Frodo. He's not the only problem, either: Gollum has found the Fellowship's trail again.

Soon the landscape starts becoming steeper and rockier: the Fellowship is approaching the rapids of Sarn Gebir. Traveling by night, they almost ends up in the rapids, and gets shot at by orcs before they make it to safety on the western shore.

Ashore, Sam tries to work out how long they spent in Lórien, because by his reckoning, the moon was the same when they left as when they arrived, but he remembers spending several days there. There is debate on the nature of time and its passage in Lórien, and Aragorn maintains an entire month passed outside while the Fellowship spent maybe a week inside.

Boromir argues that the Fellowship should abandon their boats and head for Gondor, but no-one agrees with him. Instead they portage the boats and their supplies past the rapids, and carry on downstream. The river narrows into a gorge, which takes them past the pillars of Argonath: stone statues of Aragorn's ancestors, the brothers Isildur and Anárion. Aragorn is delighted to see them and return to his kingdom - and torn by his responsibility to Frodo in Gandalf's absence.

Beyond the Pillars is Nen Hithoel, a long lake beyond which lie the falls of Rauros. To the south stands the peak of Tol Brandir, with two tall hilltops below it: Amon Hen and Amon Lhaw, the Hills of Sight and Hearing. Here the Fellowship stops. The falls are impassable, and a decision has to be made: where do they go next?

**

This chapter is another excellent Tolkien travelogue, and one of my favorites - which probably explains my improbable liking for the Hills of Emyn Muil quest in the Lord of the Rings living card game. But I continue to maintain that travel and geography are Tolkien's strengths, and they're on display here in the parallel journey from the desolate Brown Lands to the northern reaches of Gondor, and from uncertainty to decision. The pillars of Argonath bring history into geography, and connect the Fellowship and especially Aragorn to the land around them.

The conversation on time in Lórien pretty much seals its status as Faerie: we've hit most of the other tropes, and now we also get accelerated time.

Other than that, though, we're still busy building up to the end of the book and volume. Next time: decisions.

Tenth anniversary

I can't believe I've had this blog for ten years.

It just seems like such a ridiculous amount of time. Of course, some things have happened. Back in 2007, I had a job occasionally writing things for a Finnish defence magazine, but that was kinda it; my studies at university had ground to a halt, and I had pretty much dropped out of everything. I barely even remember anything I was doing in 2007 or 2008 - likely because I was in the grip of a fairly serious depression and wasn't actually doing much of anything. As I've said before, I decided to start a blog to stay in practice with writing English, and it's served that purpose excellently by giving me something to do that felt at least a little bit meaningful. Since 2013, I've been running my Let's Read Tolkien series, which will keep on going for several years more.

In a sense, I've come full circle in these ten years, because earlier this month, I learned that I've once again failed to secure any funding for my PhD, and my attempt at an academic career is now pretty much over. So ten years ago, I started writing a blog because I didn't really have a whole lot else to do. Now, I'm in a depressingly similar situation, because I don't really know what to do with myself.

Keep on blogging about Tolkien, I suppose.

Cities: Skyrim and the Mass Transit DLC

Last time, I was building freeways and wondering about the rise and fall of commercial zones in Cities: Skylines.

I've taken to using a couple of mods: All Spaces Unlockable does just that, with costs scaling up as you unlock more map squares, and Infinite Oil & Ore Redux, which makes the ore and oil industries a reasonable proposition. The latter was since rendered obsolete by a mod bundled with the game itself, but All Spaces Unlockable is definitely worth it.

I also wanted my city to look a bit more diverse, so I trawled through the Steam workshop looking for more vehicles and growable buildings. I especially wanted more delivery vehicles; donut vans are all well and good, but too many of them start to look a little ridiculous. In case anyone's interested, I put together a collection of assets on Steam that includes all the vehicles and buildings I use. They all work, and as far as I can tell, they haven't slowed my laptop down at all.

Finally, I also tried a couple of custom maps. There's one of Tamriel that's kinda fun, but I really enjoyed this map of Skyrim, so that's definitely one I'd recommend.

**

Since I last blogged about Cities: Skylines, the Mass Transit DLC came out. So far, it's the only DLC I've bought, because come on, mass transit. In practice, it's kind of a mixed bag.

To start with the bad, most of the exchange hubs are nuts. The ferry-bus exchange has a regular ferry pier and like ten bus platforms. Same with the monorail-bus exchange, which is also huge. We finally got multi-platform train stations - with platforms for six sets of double track. Six. Who has six sets of tracks? Multi-platform subway stations though? Not included.

Frankly, the only useful transit hub is the metro-monorail-train hub. It takes two sets of train tracks, so for 70 000 cash, it already costs less than two train stations and keeps the intercity trains with like six passengers on them from clogging up your whole intracity train network. You effectively get a metro station and two monorail stations for free.

As for the new kinds of transit, I have to say I'm kind of torn on the monorails. They have the same passenger capacity as trains and you can run the tracks over roads, so it's really handy for areas where you don't have space for rails; but this is kind of countered by the fact that the stations are massively noisy. Also, annoyingly, the roads with stations on them won't snap to your roads but only to the global grid, so that sometimes makes your streets irritatingly wonky. I'm currently mostly using them because the train-monorail hub is the only reasonable multi-platform train station.

Cable cars are very niche, but if you've got steep inclines on your map, they can be darn useful. Blimps I'm still sort of struggling to find a use for; they only take as many passengers as a bus and are darn slow. But really, who cares, because the reason you build a blimp depot and set up a route is to see blimps floating majestically over your city. So I love them.

Finally: boats! Ferries are wonderful. I remember playing on the Black Woods map and desperately wishing I could connect passenger harbors, but ferries are even better. The ferry piers are cheap and fairly unobtrusive, and the ferries take 50 passengers each, which means they can handle more volume that you might expect. I'd say they're almost worth the price of the expansion on their own, but I guess you do really have to like boats for that to be true.

Some of the stuff we got for free with the accompanying patch, and I'm extremely grateful for the opportunity to add and remove traffic lights. However, the stop signs aren't exactly ideal. In one of the developer diaries, Colossal Order intimated that they were originally considering yield signs rather than stop signs, which is disappointing because yield signs would have been so much better. Stop signs are useful for small roads with low traffic joining bigger roads, but any time there's a larger volume of traffic, they'll just create a massive traffic jam. The specific instance given in the dev diary is roundabouts, which are a great example of why stop signs are bad. Yes, if only one road has moderate or heavy traffic, putting stop signs on all the others gives it priority. But if there are two or more roads with real traffic feeding into the roundabout, stop signs are useless as they'll just create a massive backlog of traffic. Yield signs might actually work, but stop signs turn moderate traffic into a total logjam.

On the whole, though, Mass Transit is a pretty good expansion. The weirdest thing is how impractical the transit hubs are, and the absence of multi-platform metro stations is inexcusable, but the boats and blimps are good. I'm happy with my purchase; as with everything on Steam, this too will be on sale, and unless you're some kind of revolting monster that doesn't like boats and mass transit, I'd recommend picking it up.

**

As I was writing this, Green Cities was announced as the next expansion. I'm cautiously optimistic; leveling specializations sounds good, and I'm intrigued by the promise of road modding. Might we finally get to place zebra crossings? Apparently we are getting a non-polluting alternative for garbage disposal; frankly, it'd be about time! I do wonder what "sustainable cities" means, though. You can have a city with no polluting industry right now; because you'll then be importing all your goods, that just means you're having someone else do your polluting for you - not exactly sustainable.

Nonetheless, I remain very happy with Cities: Skylines.

Let's Read Tolkien 39: Farewell to Lórien

That night the Company was again summoned to the chamber of Celeborn, and there the Lord and Lady greeted them with fair words.

Celeborn and Galadriel tell the Fellowship that it's about time they cleared out, and offer each of them the choice of heading onward or going back home. It's a good point: in War of the Ring, this can be a good moment to split off some companions from the Fellowship, especially if you've got an event card like There and Back Again. This time, however, everyone stays with the Company.

But where will they go? The Great River, Anduin, flows south past Lórien: on its west bank is Minas Tirith, Boromir's home; to the east, Mordor and the Cracks of Doom. Boromir is for Gondor, but no-one else can decide. Celeborn saves them from their dilemma by offering to give them boats, which the Fellowship gladly accept.

On their last night in Lórien, they briefly debate the road ahead. Most of the Company want to go to Minas Tirith, where they could at least be safe for a while. This was also Aragorn's original plan, but with Gandalf gone, he doesn't know what to do, and Frodo doesn't say anything. Boromir almost straight up says that it's madness to throw away the Ring by going to Mordor, but checks himself. The debate adjourns, with nothing decided.

The next day, the Companions are given lembas, elven waybread, and hooded cloaks woven by Galadriel and her maidens. They head southeast, to the shores of the Great River, where they practice boating and, to Sam's delight, receive a gift of elven ropes.

After a song and a ceremonial meal with Celeborn and Galadriel, the first lays out their options on the trip to come. The River flows through barren lands until it comes to Tol Brandir and the falls of Rauros. To the west of there is the way to Minas Tirith, where Celeborn warns against venturing into the forest of Fangorn. To the east of Rauros are the Dead Marshes, and Mordor.

Finally, Galadriel gives them all gifts. Aragorn gets a sheath for his sword and a special green stone; Merry and Pippin get silver belts with golden clasps. Sam the gardener gets a box of earth from Galadriel's orchard, Legolas a bow and Boromir a golden belt. She asks Gimli what he wants as a gift, and Gimli says that seeing her has been gift enough. When pressed, he requests a lock of her hair, to be treasured as an heirloom of his house. He gets his wish, and finally Frodo is presented with a phial of water, which will give him light in dark places.

After this ceremony of gifts, the Fellowship get in their boats and leave. They seem to perceive Lórien floating away from them, and after one last song by Galadriel, it's gone, and the Fellowship ride the river into the barren, brown lands.

**

This is kind of a brief chapter, very focused on the road ahead. After a breather of sorts in Lórien, the Fellowship has to move on, but it's become painfully obvious that no-one really knows where. Maybe Gandalf had a plan, maybe he didn't; at any rate, he never told anyone, which isn't great leadership. Maybe he was planning to use the Eagles. Who knows?

For now, the boats provided by Celeborn and Galadriel postpone the decision, but the choice is clear: Minas Tirith or Mordor. Boromir is beginning to speak his doubts, Aragorn is indecisive and no-one else is saying anything. The stage is being set for the end of the first volume.

Also, Lórien is truly Faerie here: rather than the Fellowship boating away from it, Lórien withdraws from them, and leaves them weeping in the desert of the real. We've had epic river crossings before, but this is kind of an epic river navigation, leaving Faerie behind and drifting down the river of time.

Next time: boating.

The most beautiful Magic: the Gathering cards

Now that I've returned to Magic, I want to take a moment to talk about the cards. Especially in an era of digital entertainment, part of the appeal of any card game is having the actual physical cards to handle, shuffle and look at. With Magic, this is what my high school history teacher would have called a double-barreled sword. On the one hand, I have to be honest: in terms of overall looks and design, getting back to Magic has strongly reminded me of how well-designed the cards of the Lord of the Rings living card game are. They are just lovely in a way that I think Magic cards have never been. But what Magic has going for it is sheer scale. With over 15 000 different cards, several with multiple versions, there's a huge library of cards to discover and rediscover, and whole boatloads of art. Some of it is, frankly, incredibly good.

To start with, here are some of our favorite contemporary(ish) Magic cards. We're great fans of Magali Villeneuve from her work on the Lord of the Rings card game; Arwen and Éowyn are staples of our decks and simply gorgeous cards. She's been doing more work for Magic lately, like the spectacular Wildfire Eternal for Hour of Devastation:

Her women are on another level altogether, though; Dulcet Sirens and Scrapper Champion are particular favorites of mine, but the best of the lot is surely Titania, Protector of Argoth.

Another fantastic current artist is Cynthia Sheppard, whose Shadow Alley Denizen is simply beautiful.

Dark Salvation is also a favorite of mine.

Mike Lim aka Daarken is another prominent exponent of these darker themes, with lovely cards like Shipwreck Singer and Bloodhusk Ritualist:

Looking at these images, it might not be entirely unfair to guess that he's a bit of a Luis Royo fan. That's okay, though, so are we. Here's a Barony Vampire:

For whatever reason, vampires seem to get some of the best art, but so do their opposite numbers, so to speak; as a theologian I'd be remiss if I didn't post at least one angel, so here's Avacyn, the Purifier by James Ryman.

**

The above, I think, are fair examples of some of the best of the current line of Magic cards: almost hyperrealistic contemporary fantasy art of fairly uniform quality. Of course, this wasn't always the case. In older Magic sets, the quality and nature of the art varied wildly. You could get comic book art or an impressionist painting; it might be brilliant, and it might be awful. This is where you find the ugliest cards, but in my opinion, also the most beautiful. Rather than giving you a practically photorealistic depiction of what the card was supposed to represent, the older art often left you with a lot more room for imagination.

I talked about my enduring love for lands in my last post on Magic, and I think this is why I'm so fond of them. There are lots of great examples, but one that particularly stuck with me was Academy Ruins by Zoltan Boros and Gabor Szikszai.

There are lots of other lands I could mention, like Brian Snoddy's take on Urza's Power Plant, John Avon's Lantern-lit Graveyard and Submerged Boneyard by Chris Childs, and many others. Of the two-color lands that are a prominent feature of Magic Duels, I think my favorite is Highland Lake, by Florian de Gesincourt.

While I think these lands are very beautiful, none of them really stop me in my tracks. For that, we have to go back all the way to Urza's Saga, which came out in the fall of 1998, when I was starting high school. It included what I genuinely think is one of the most beautiful and evocative cards of all time, Lingering Mirage by Jerry Tiritilli.

This card has everything for me: the boat, the dramatic swell of the ocean and the wonderful range of blues in the water, from the greenish water in the distance to the dramatic dark blue in the foreground. The massively exaggerated curve of the horizon gives the picture an air of unreality, reminding you that this isn't just a painting of a boat, but a Magic card. And it really is a painting printed onto a collectible card.

Of course, this isn't a feature restricted to older cards: one of the most beautiful Magic cards ever, Seek the Wilds by Anna Steinbauer, is from the Battle for Zendikar block.

This is where my bias in favor of the older cards really shows up, though. I think Seek the Wilds is a fantastic card with wonderful art. But compared to some of the older art like Lingering Mirage, Seek the Wilds leaves less room for the imagination. It feels, perhaps paradoxically, like a more direct representation of its subject than the older, more organic images. Lingering Mirage invites me to stop and look at it closely and think about it. Seek the Wilds is just a really cool picture.

While we're on the subject of old cards, by the way, I do have to mention a card that may not be the most beautiful piece of art you'll ever see, but is by far the most kickass depiction of a badger ever: Rysorian Badger by Heather Hudson.

That is literally a badger playing a drum solo on someone's skull with their bones. You just don't get art that awesome any more. Heather Hudson also did the art for Lonely Sandbar, an amazingly beautiful card which returns us to our nautical theme.

I make no apologies for featuring ships and the sea so prominently here; having grown up by the seaside, I love them, but I also genuinely feel that for whatever reason, disproportionately many of the most beautiful Magic cards I've ever seen have featured both. A case in point is what I'd nominate as the second-most beautiful card in all of Magic: Exploration, by Brian Snoddy.

One of the particular charms of Magic has always been that it isn't tied to a particular setting. Not only does this mean that designers have a very free hand in inventing new settings and themes, but also that cards don't necessarily have to be in any way tied to any of them. They can even represent completely abstract concepts, like Exploration does. Here the combination of the title and image, but also just the image alone, suggest a story, but they leave it to your imagination. In my opinion, that's what makes truly great card art.

Finally, it's time for what I believe is the most beautiful card ever created for Magic: the Gathering. All the way from Fifth Edition, it's Reef Pirates by Tom Wänerstrand.

Everything I said about Exploration is true here, and then some. The flavor text is also pretty good, and works with the image and title to give you the idea that this is a snapshot from a much bigger story that you're free to fill in on your own. But the art itself is simply wonderful. The sky is simply amazing, and a perfect contrast with the brilliant emerald water. And the sails! Look at the sails! For me, this card has everything, from story to craftsmanship.

So yeah, I still feel that the Lord of the Rings living card game has better quality cards in general. But when it comes to individual cards that make you stop and think and feel, you'll find them in Magic.

Let's Read Tolkien 38: The Mirror of Galadriel

The sun was sinking behind the mountains, and the shadows were deepening in the woods, when they went on again.

The Fellowship of the Ring arrives in Caras Galadhon, the City of the Trees. Haldir leads them through the city, to a really big tree topped by a platform, on which stands the hall of Celeborn and Galadriel, the Lord and Lady of Lórien. The Fellowship is taken up to meet them, and they tell the story of Gandalf's fall in Moria. Celeborn and Galadriel know what the Fellowship's mission is, and Galadriel tests each member of the Company by having a staring contest with them. Only Aragorn and Legolas distinguish themselves.

The Fellowship hang out in Lórien, and the elves sing about Gandalf. As Frodo and Sam are talking about him, Galadriel finds them and invites them to look into her Mirror. It's basically a silver birdbath, but you can see stuff in it; in her words, "things that were, things that are, and things that yet may be".

Sam looks, and sees some unclear flashes of vision, and then a longer sequence where trees are being cut down in the Shire, and his dad is hauling his possessions on a barrow. Sam is furious and wants to set off home immediately, but is dissuaded by Galadriel.

Frodo also looks in the Mirror. He sees a wizard in white - either Gandalf or Saruman - and a brief glimpse of Bilbo at Rivendell, followed by a sort of credit-sequence version of the history of Gondor. Eventually, though, the Mirror is completely dominated by the Eye of Sauron.

After the vision, Galadriel reveals that she bears one of the elven-rings: Nenya, the Ring of Adamant. She spells out the fate of the elves: if Frodo fails, everything is lost, but even if he succeeds, the elves will dwindle and disappear with time. "We must depart into the West, or dwindle to a rustic folk of dell and cave, slowly to forget and to be forgotten." This is one of the clearest statements of how Tolkien saw his elves becoming the fairies and elves of folklore.

Frodo then straight up offers to give Galadriel the One Ring. She presents a vision of herself as a terrible queen, but refuses. Frodo also wonders why the Ring doesn't grant him more powers, and Galadriel explains that he would need to train his mind to use it. Nonetheless he already sees more than most, including of her thoughts. With that, they leave the Mirror.

**

I have to say that in Lórien, Tolkien's powers of exposition and geography seem to fail him. It's possible that the failure is mine: I wrote these posts at a time when I was under quite a bit of stress, which is also why this blog is so abysmally late, so maybe I just completely missed all the good stuff. But Lórien never really made that much of an impression on me. There's just like a bunch of trees. Both Rivendell and the Elven-king's halls were much more memorable.

The focus of the chapter is Galadriel. One of Tolkien's ethereal faerie women, of whom Lúthien is the archetype, she embodies Tolkien's version of the Madonna-whore complex, which in his case might better be called the Madonna-invisibility complex: women in Tolkien's world tend to be either elfin, otherworldly creatures whose feet never quite touch the ground, or not there at all. There are vanishingly few exceptions. Of the women we've met so far, Goldberry and Arwen are Midgard Madonnas, while the lone delightful exception is Lobelia Sackville-Baggins.

Galadriel, though, gets to be a character, if not nearly as much as Lobelia. I've always read this chapter as presenting Celeborn as nominally in charge in Lórien, but Galadriel as the actual brains of the operation. Which, now that I think about it, might also fairly characterize Otho and Lobelia Sackville-Baggins. Galadriel speaks for Celeborn; she tests the Fellowship, and it's she who wears the Elven-ring, and shows Frodo the Mirror - which isn't the Mirror of Celeborn, after all. Although she's an example of the ethereal Madonna archetype, Galadriel is also a very strong female character, one of the most powerful beings in Middle-earth. She's part of the White Council with Gandalf, Saruman and Elrond, and if you know her history from the Silmarillion, that hardly makes her any less impressive.

She's also a foil for Frodo in the introduction of one of the most crucial themes of the Lord of the Rings: the Fall of Frodo. In their conversation by the Mirror, it's significant that we don't get any insight into what Frodo's actually thinking. Galadriel speaks of herself quite openly, but Frodo says little. When he offers her the Ring, she says: "Gently are you revenged for my testing of your heart at our first meeting. You begin to see with a keen eye." She may be joking, but I think she's more than half serious. Especially in the context of his questions about the Ring, I think Frodo is beginning to realize that as the Ringbearer, he too has power, and he's beginning to test it. Maybe Gandalf's absence also plays a part here.

But in any case, we're left to guess Frodo's sincerity in offering Galadriel the Ring, and his intentions. Whereas Sam responds vocally and emotionally to his vision, Frodo keeps his thoughts to himself, even from the reader. I think there's at least an element of mischief, if not malice, in Frodo's offer. He's feeling his power as the Ringbearer.

Next time: leaving Lórien.