LOTR Elves, who do they represent?

[Lorik]

Were the Elves meant to depict certain races?

Tolkien's Elves in general went for the brown hair, but they had also noticeable amount of blondes.
This reminds me of some southern / southeastern European peoples, such as Albanian.

Albanian people are known for their beauty, at least this is what my father told me, so i think Tolkien based Elves on Albanian people.



Elves










Albanians

[Lorik]

Albanians

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/sho...7977-Albanians

[Lorik]

your opinions?

[johngaunt]

He based them on the swarthiest of Brits - the Welsh.
Elvish actually sounds like Welsh in the films

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-s...wales-13472344
- Study explores JRR Tolkien's Welsh influences

Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien was heavily influenced by Welsh when creating the Elvish language for his books, an academic says.

Dr Carl Phelpstead of Cardiff University said one language even sounded very Welsh.

He has just completed a study of Tolkien's debt to the language and literature of Wales.

It is being launched at a free public event on Saturday, celebrating Welsh scholarship on Tolkien.

For Tolkien and Wales: Language, Literature and Identity, Dr Phelpstead said he examined a wide range of his fictional and scholarly work.

He said: "He knew the Welsh language extremely well - both medieval and modern Welsh.

"He read a lot of medieval Welsh literature, taught medieval Welsh when he was working at Leeds University and you can see the influence of the language and the literature in his creative writing and his scholarly work."

Continue reading the main story
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Start Quote

This particular Elvish language is very like the sounds of Welsh and deliberately so”

Dr Carl Phelpstead
author of Tolkien study
He added: "Welsh is important as an influence particularly on one of the Elvish languages, Sindarin.

"It's not so much that he borrowed Welsh words, more the sounds.

"This particular Elvish language is very like the sounds of Welsh and deliberately so.

"I have a friend of mine who is a native Welsh speaker who went to see the Lord of the Rings films and when they started speaking Elvish in the film she turned to her daughter and said 'they are speaking Welsh' so people do see this relationship."

Dr Phelpstead said he also had access to Tolkien's unpublished manuscripts and the collection of Welsh books the author owned.

"The marginal comments, corrections and other notes provide interesting evidence of the depth of Tolkien's knowledge of medieval and modern Welsh."

His book will be launched at 1400 BST on Saturday at Cardiff University's Bute Building.

Dr Phelpstead said: "I thought that, given the wide interest in Tolkien's work, it would be worth combining the book launch with some talks explaining and celebrating the influences of Wales and Welsh on his fiction and scholarship."

[riverman]

don't know, don't care. they don't look celtic to me anyway

[Vasconcelos]

Just because he based the Elven languages on Welsh, it does not mean that the Elves themselves are based on them.

[Lorik]

don't know, don't care. they don't look celtic to me anyway

Exactly.

[Lobotomist]

Here's alot of information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R...9;s_influences

[Smaug]

I guess Elves were based on the Celtic peoples, with some Uralic influences, since Tolkien loved the Finnish language.

[johngaunt]

Here's alot of information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R...9;s_influences

Lol knew it - I thought that when watching the films

Tolkien based the people of Rohan, the Rohirrim, on the historical Anglo-Saxons, giving them Anglo-Saxon names, customs, and poetry.[33] This reference may explain how to pronounce Rohirric names, and suggests Tolkien may not have provided guidance, as he did for Elvish names, because he assumed readers would be familiar with Anglo-Saxon.

Moreover it seems his biggest influences were Anglo Saxon, Welsh, Arthurian and Norse.