Re: Crossing the Anduin
Posted: Thu Feb 20, 2014 2:38 pm
I agree that swimming across Anduin is meant to be very difficult, though not quite impossible. Tolkien himself wrote of Isildur's attempt to swim the river:
...in haste he cast off all his armour and weapons, save a short sword at his belt, and plunged into the water. He was a man of strength and endurance that few even of the Dúnedain of that age could equal, but he had little hope to gain the other shore. Before he had gone far he was forced to turn almost north against the current; and strive as he might he was ever swept down towards the tangles of the Gladden Fields.
— "The Disaster of the Gladden Fields", Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth