Eol the Nando

[Arvegil145]

Is Eol technically a Nando?

Judging from these lines:

To the passage "But Eöl... was no Dwarf, but a tall Elf of a high kin of the Teleri" my father wrote on the manuscript A (only) a note beginning with the words "Not in revision" - which probably means that what follows is not in the corrections made to the copies of the typescript ('the revision'). In this note my father was copying a very faint and illegible form of it on the same page, and trying to interpret his own writing; I give it exactly as it stands:

"Eöl should not be one of Thingol's kin, but one of the Teleri who refused to cross the Hithaeglir. But [later] he and a few others of like mood, averse to concourse of people, ... [had] crossed the [Mts] long ago and come to Beleriand."

Against this note he wrote "but the relationship to Thingol would have point", and the date 1971.

- The War of the Jewels, 'Maeglin', §9, p. 322

It does seem to me that Tolkien's last point about Eol's kinship with Thingol being important raises doubts about the validity of his previous statement that Eol was one of the Teleri that refused to cross the Hithaeglir/Misty Mountains (i.e. the folk who later became known as the Nandor).

Nonetheless, I'm not completely convinced that these two ideas are mutually exclusive - since (and I can't remember the exact source) it wasn't unheard of later Elvish immigrants to Beleriand, such as the Nandor and even Avari, becoming (in effect) 'Sindar'.


Of course, even if Eol really was a Nando, this fact alone doesn't invalidate any kinship to Thingol per se, since the Nandor are of course a subgroup of Teleri!


P.S. Before someone inevitably comments about Eol being a Tatyarin Avar: that idea was scrapped altogether.




Anyway, I'd really like some input from people more familiar with the dating/interpretation of the various Eol/Maeglin texts.