I also have many library-related questions! (And I am hoping suzll will weigh in with her answers to yours.)
I wonder if the custom of including dead people's letters in libraries was established before or after Glorfindel returned from over the Sea...before that happened, wouldn't people have generally assumed there was no coming back? Not to mention doubt about the fate of those who had died in Exile and thus might not be allowed out of Mandos?
Also, I wonder about elvish record-keeping even before the parties concerned have died in the first place. How much attachment do you think they have to a piece of paper they wrote (or received) a few hundred years ago? To take the Fingon/Maedhros example, even if they only wrote to each other once a month, and the Seige of Angband lasted about 450 years, that is thousands of letters (and that is just between two people). Even sentimental types like Fingon must have destroyed a lot, just to avoid getting buried in memorabilia... So I wonder how many frivolous documents an elvish library, assembled hundreds of years after the era being studied, would even have in the first place.
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ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2014-04-19 08:26 am (UTC)I wonder if the custom of including dead people's letters in libraries was established before or after Glorfindel returned from over the Sea...before that happened, wouldn't people have generally assumed there was no coming back? Not to mention doubt about the fate of those who had died in Exile and thus might not be allowed out of Mandos?
Also, I wonder about elvish record-keeping even before the parties concerned have died in the first place. How much attachment do you think they have to a piece of paper they wrote (or received) a few hundred years ago? To take the Fingon/Maedhros example, even if they only wrote to each other once a month, and the Seige of Angband lasted about 450 years, that is thousands of letters (and that is just between two people). Even sentimental types like Fingon must have destroyed a lot, just to avoid getting buried in memorabilia... So I wonder how many frivolous documents an elvish library, assembled hundreds of years after the era being studied, would even have in the first place.