The Errantries (and Journeys?) of the King

[Otaku-sempai]

In the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien writes that Aragorn II embarked on his period of "great journeys and errantries, from the year TA 2957 to 2980. Prior to that, the young Ranger left Imladris at age twenty and wandered throughout Eriador and Wilderland, possibly as far as the Kingdom of Dale (or farther?). In 2956 he met and became friends with Gandalf the Grey, and they traveled together at times.

Now, what the Rivendell supplement for TOR tells us is:

From the year 2957 until 2980 Aragorn travels far in to the East and South, riding with the Riders of Rohan and fighting for Gondor.

The Horse-lords of Rohan supplement (which I just received in the mail today. Huzzah!) takes the timeline into more detail, telling us:

In the year 2957, an unknown adventurer arrives in Rohan from the North. He puts his sword to the service of King Thengel, who accepts it. From that day he rides with the Rohirrim, distinguishing himself as a great captain, only to leave in the year 2965 as unexpectedly as he arrived. As long as he remains in Edoras the unknown adventurer rides to the side of the Marshals of the Mark and sits to the right of the King. The Rohirrim call him "The Eagle" for his sharp grey gaze that misses little...

...Aragorn remains in Rohan for only eight years, leaving to go to Gondor and serve the Steward Ecthelion for fifteen years.

My question is about Aragorn's great journeys to the distant East and the far South, "where the stars are strange." Has TOR shifted the timeline so that all of this happens either before 2957 or after 2980? I know that the Appendices are inconsistent and suggest that at least some of these travels happened after his betrothal to Arwen, late in 2980. Has it been decided that this is when all of them will occur (with the exception of Aragorn's mission to Umbar in the service of Ecthelion)?

[zedturtle]

To my mind, it's pretty likely that some of Aragorn's journeys afar were at the behest of one of his lords (Ecthelion, especially). So the timelines are not mutually exclusive, he can be in the service of someone and in strange lands, all at the same time.

Those missions might have been ones of war, or of trade. But, most likely (to me), is that they would have been of subterfuge. I can easily imagine Ecthelion asking Thorongil to take another name, in order to slip among the peoples of the East or the South as an observant stranger. I bet Ecthelion might have even winked when he made the request.

[Otaku-sempai]

You bring up some interesting notions. At least a few of Aragorn's journeys might have been in the service of Rohan or (more likely?) Gondor. We do know about the raid on the Corsair fleet in Umbar in 2980. although that is still over one thousand miles north of the Girdle of Arda (the Equator). Fifteen years in Gondor could present several opportunities for covert missions. Even so, my impression is that most of Aragorn's greater travels should be unrelated to his errantries.

Addendum: I had forgotten that I've already touched upon this subject once within a more general Horse-lords of Rohan discussion: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4952&p=42899&hilit= ... ies#p42899. T.S. Luikart noted that the Rohirrim's actual name for Aragorn was probably 'Eärn'. which means 'eagle' in Rohirric.

[Earendil]

You bring up some interesting notions. At least a few of Aragorn's journeys might have been in the service of Rohan or (more likely?) Gondor. We do know about the raid on the Corsair fleet in Umbar in 2980. although that is still over one thousand miles north of the Girdle of Arda (the Equator).

Did Tolkien ever actually say that Aragorn travelled beyond the Equator, or is that just a supposition based on people's intepretation of his line about "where the stars are strange"?

Because the stars that can be seen in the sky change gradually as you travel south; they don't stay the same until you reach the Equator and then suddenly they're all different. So the line about the stars being strange doesn't necessarily mean that. He could just have meant that he travelled far enough that he saw strange stars and/or constellations (i.e. ones he had never seen at home). That wouldn't require travelling over the Equator; I'm not sure if Umbar would be far enough, but I'd certainly say it might. Do we have a figure for how far Umbar was south of Rivendell?

If you think he meant all the stars were different, I believe (from my slightly questionable knowledge of astronomy) that that would have required him to travel halfway around the Earth's circumference in a southerly direction, and I don't see any justification for thinking that.

[Otaku-sempai]

Did Tolkien ever actually say that Aragorn travelled beyond the Equator, or is that just a supposition based on people's intepretation of his line about "where the stars are strange"?

Well, most of the relevant passages all seem to be in "The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen" from Appendix A. First we have this, which includes Aragorn's first few years of wandering plus his period of great journeys and errantries:

'Then Aragorn took leave lovingly of Elrond; and the next day he said farewell to his mother, and to the house of Elrond, and to Arwen, and he went out into the wild. For nearly thirty years he laboured in he cause against Sauron; and he became a friend of Gandalf the Wise, from whom he gained much wisdom. With him he made many perilous journeys, but as the years wore on he went more often alone. His ways were hard and long, and he became somewhat grim to look upon, unless he chanced to smile; and yet he seemed to Men worthy of honour, as a king that is in exile, when he did not hide his true shape. For he went in many guises, and won renown under many names. He rode in the host of the Rohirrim, and fought for the Lord of Gondor by land and by sea; and then in the hour of victory he passed out of the knowledge of Men of the West, and went alone far into the East and deep into the South, exploring the hearts of Men, both evil and good, and uncovering the plots and devices of the servants of Sauron.'

What is especially interesting here is that it places his great journeys after his service to the Steward Ecthelion of Gondor, which would also place those journeys after the year 2980 unless, when he wrote this, Tolkien meant for Aragorn's errantry in Gondor to end earlier than indicated elsewhere. A couple of paragraphs later the Ranger comes to Lothlórien:

'It came to pass that when Aragorn was nine and forty years of age he returned from perils on the dark confines of Mordor, where Sauron now dwelt again and was busy with evil. He was weary and he wished to go back to Rivendell and rest there for a while ere he journeyed into the far countries; and on his way he came to the borders of Lórien and was admitted to the hidden land by the Lady Galadriel.'

This is when Aragorn is reunited with Arwen. They spend a season together before plighting their troth upon the hill of Cerin Amroth. Again, the implication is that he has not yet embarked upon the greatest of his early journeys, farther East than Rhovanion and beyond the borders of Umbar. The exact quote from Aragorn regarding the stars is from the Council of Elrond:

'I have had a hard life and a long; and the leagues that lie between here and Gondor are a small part in the count of my journeys. I have crossed many mountains and many rivers, and trodden many plains, even into the far countries of Rhûn and Harad where the stars are strange.'

So, as you say, we cannot say for certain that Aragorn ever crossed the Girdle of Arda, but we can guess that he at least came fairly near to it.

A final note: Both Appendix A and Appendix B (The Tale of Years) agree that the year 2980 saw both the end of Aragorn's service to Gondor (as Thorongil) and his reunion with Arwen, with some time in between scouting along the Mountains of Shadow. Missions for Gondor or Rohan might have taken Aragorn to distant lands, but it looks as though he still traveled extensively after that time before taking his place as the sixteenth and last Chieftain of the Dúnedain.

[Earendil]

Wow, that's a detailed reply! Thanks for that. I agree that reading the exact text, it seems that Aragorn went much further south than Umbar. But I still think those who interpret it as "crossed into the southern hemisphere" are either failing astronomy or reading too much into it.

Interesting that, as you say, it seems he met Arwen in Lothlorien in the same year as the attack on Umbar. This seems to contradict the statement that "in the hour of victory he passed out of the knowledge of Men of the West, and went alone far into the East and deep into the South" which implies that he made those journeys immediately after Umbar. It's not explicit on that point, though, and we could certainly say those journeys actually happened after 2980. My guess is that the game will go with that, as it seems the least problematic interpretation.

I also think that at least some of his travels to distant lands may have happened while in the service of Gondor, as zedturtle says (and as the quote from Rivendell seems to imply). But I think it's also clear that he does plenty of travelling in far lands after leaving Gondor's service.

[Otaku-sempai]

Our discussion further convinces me that Robert Foster, in The Complete Guide to Middle-earth, places the return of Gilraen (Aragorn's mother) to her own people too early. Foster writes:

Gilraen lived in Rivendell from the death of her husband in 2933 until 2954, when she returned to her family home somewhere in Eriador.

However, in my own reading of "The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen" it seems to me that the passage involving Gilraen's return to the Dúnedain takes place chronologically after her son becomes betrothed to Arwen and he returns to Rivendell either at the end of 2980 or the following year. That would put Gilraen's departure several years after that, perhaps in 2984--thirty years more than Foster's estimate.

[Glorelendil]

It may not be astronomically necessary to correlate "where the stars are strange" with the southern hemisphere, but I interpret it as a poetic version of the same thing, and I've always assumed that Tolkien wanted us to read it as the other hemisphere.

[Otaku-sempai]

It may not be astronomically necessary to correlate "where the stars are strange" with the southern hemisphere, but I interpret it as a poetic version of the same thing, and I've always assumed that Tolkien wanted us to read it as the other hemisphere.

We can't rule that out, we just can't confirm it either. At the very least, Aragorn's travels took him near to the southern hemisphere of Middle-earth, perhaps past the equator. Do you think that he ever saw the eastern sea, perhaps viewing a distant South Land on the horizon?

[Earendil]

Our discussion further convinces me that Robert Foster, in The Complete Guide to Middle-earth, places the return of Gilraen (Aragorn's mother) to her own people too early. Foster writes:

Gilraen lived in Rivendell from the death of her husband in 2933 until 2954, when she returned to her family home somewhere in Eriador.

However, in my own reading of "The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen" it seems to me that the passage involving Gilraen's return to the Dúnedain takes place chronologically after her son becomes betrothed to Arwen and he returns to Rivendell either at the end of 2980 or the following year. That would put Gilraen's departure several years after that, perhaps in 2984--thirty years more than Foster's estimate.

Yes, I agree completely. Indeed, I don't see how any other reading makes sense. An illustration, perhaps, of the danger of relying on other people's interpretations of Tolkien, including Foster!

It may not be astronomically necessary to correlate "where the stars are strange" with the southern hemisphere, but I interpret it as a poetic version of the same thing, and I've always assumed that Tolkien wanted us to read it as the other hemisphere.

Whereas I always assumed that he just meant a long way to the south, like a couple of thousand miles, which is quite enough to see strange stars. (As I said, if they were all strange, he'd need to be right on the other side of the Earth, unless my own astronomy knowledge has failed.)

It never occurred to me that it could mean anything at all about crossing the equator, until I saw other people drawing that conclusion (and the first time I saw it they seemed to be assuming that that was indeed what Tolkien meant). That doesn't make much sense to me, but I think it's much too vague to be sure exactly what he meant.