Tolkien 3.0

[Lord Varys]

9 hours ago, Ran said:

And Aragorn shares part of the Lay in LotR for the Hobbits, so yeah, there's no real problem mentioning characters that are mentioned in LotR, near as I can tell. But the details of their story, since they generally don't appear in LotR, yeah, that requires rights to The Silmarillion.

There are rather detailed appendices to the LotR. Tolkien sold the rights to his book, not just the section that makes up the novel, one assumes. Meaning that Jackson certainly had the legal right to use all the characters mentioned in the appendices as well as the books, as well as those stories that are referenced/told in the appendices. And those are a lot of characters and events.

They don't need the rights to the Akallabêth or 'Of the Rings of Power' (i.e. the rights to 'The Silmarillion') to make movies or a TV series about the SA and the destruction of Númenor.

And the broad outline of the Beren and Lúthien story is definitely part of the LotR - both the novel as such as well as the appendices.

I don't know whether the makers of the biopic also had the rights to the Hobbit and LotR, but even if they didn't - it seems ridiculous that a movie biography about an author should not be allowed to mention crucial elements of said authors work. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

12 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

The names Beren and Luthien were mentioned by Aragorn in extrnded fotr cut

That's because Jackson had the rights to LOTR. and those names are in there. The biopic didn't have the rights to Rings either.

[Lord Varys]

21 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Oh, I definitely agree that they should have put in the Mythology for England stuff. That, and Kalevala, could have been dealt with in a short scene, and it would have improved things immeasurably.

Yeah, that the Kalevala thing is missing - and the language thing is essentially only mentioned in passing - really omits rather crucial parts.

And that talk with Edith in front of the house really makes it appear as if writing the Hobbit was getting him artistically to the place where he wanted to be - which is insane. That was one of many stories for his children which essentially got published due to a number of lucky accidents. This was nothing he really wanted to get out there. Especially not in relation to his dreams with the TCBS and the trenches.

21 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Using the names Beren and Luthien in a money-making venture (which this film is) would incur the wrath of the Estate. It's why Peter Jackson had to tiptoe around the Blue Wizards - if you don't have the rights to it, don't use the names.

See above. The LotR/Hobbit does include more content that just the novels. And the movies actually went to the appendices belatedly for all the Aragorn/Arwen stuff (not really properly adapting anything, of course, but they took things like Eldarion and Aragorn's death scene from there).

The introduction to appendix A is basically a short synopsis of the Quenta Silmarillion.

The blue wizards are actually never mentioned in LotR. Only that there were five wizards in total (the rods of the Five Wizards made it into Saruman's movie speech), not who they were and where they went. That's from UT and PoME.

21 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

The religion angle would make a genuinely fascinating film - Tolkien did remember how Mabel's family had disowned her - but it would be too dark and weird (and of course religious) for a mainstream audience. It'd also turn Tolkien into an anti-hero, between Edith, and then becoming a grumpy old man who still uses Latin during post-Vatican II Masses. 

Well, one would not have taken the story to the grumpy old man. But then, it would actually have been a movie about a real person having real issues, rather than some kind of fantasy author cliché - weirdo youth having 'visions'. And it could also have given Francis Morgan a more relevant role in the story - reinforcing Mabel's beliefs in talks with Tolkien.

On an artistic level the fantasy thing is also a problem. Tolkien wanted to/did write fake mythology, he did not write fantasy literature. That people take his Middle-earth as a fantasy world is an accident because the LotR is a sequel to a children's book taking place in an imagined world (or rather an imagined geography). And he also made a proper career for himself, writing was little more than a hobby.

[Werthead]

On 7/4/2019 at 1:36 AM, The Marquis de Leech said:

But here's the thing - the film didn't have the rights to any aspect of The Silmarillion stories (that's why they don't use the names Beren and Luthien), and of the viewers that are familiar with The Silmarillion, only a few would get the reference to mechanical dragons. People know Tolkien as the guy who wrote about hobbits and rings and dark lords. Presenting him as a guy who writes about mechanical dragons is going to elicit outright confusion.

A biographic film, under fair use, can certainly mention inarguable facts, like Tolkien was writing a book called The Silmarillion featuring characters xx and yy and zz, without any problem. That they chose not to might have been to avoid any kind of speculative legal challenge, but certainly they would have had that right. Dramatising scenes from the Sil was right out, of course, but mentioning them, especially in a very general way, should not have been problematic.

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They don't need the rights to the Akallabêth or 'Of the Rings of Power' (i.e. the rights to 'The Silmarillion') to make movies or a TV series about the SA and the destruction of Númenor.

 

This is correct in as far as they could make a very limited series based on what is solely in the LotR appendix, but that's quite limiting. We know they do have the rights to Unfinished Tales because they have the map of Numenor that exclusively only appears in UT, so presumably they have all of the Numenor info from UT as well, which is considerable.

[Lord Varys]

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

A biographic film, under fair use, can certainly mention inarguable facts, like Tolkien was writing a book called The Silmarillion featuring characters xx and yy and zz, without any problem. That they chose not to might have been to avoid any kind of speculative legal challenge, but certainly they would have had that right. Dramatising scenes from the Sil was right out, of course, but mentioning them, especially in a very general way, should not have been problematic.

Exactly. But there is nothing about that sort in the movie.

By the way, I reread the Carpenter biography last week and the TCBS story actually was not exactly accurately depicted. Tolkien was the oldest guy, and Gilson, the son of the headmaster, wasn't bullying him, nor was the father this kind of tyrant - but rather some kind of eccentric hobby inventor.

And Arthur, Tolkien's father, had attended King Edward's, too. This was not a boy who was put in a school where he didn't belong. Sure, he was an orphaned scion of an English middle-class family (and some German immigrants), and they had money problems, but he was no beggar.

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

This is correct in as far as they could make a very limited series based on what is solely in the LotR appendix, but that's quite limiting. We know they do have the rights to Unfinished Tales because they have the map of Numenor that exclusively only appears in UT, so presumably they have all of the Numenor info from UT as well, which is considerable.

Could be. I mean, there seems to have been a deal with the Estate right around the time Christopher dropped out shortly before the TV series was announced (although they could also have only bought things like the map) - but I was more speaking about the fact that Saul Zaentz could have long ago made his own version of the SA, Númenor, and the Rings of Power simply based on the information provided in the LotR. I mean, we all do recall that the appendices of the LotR do contain a list of all of the names of the kings of Númenor. Things only mentioned in the Akallabêth or UT could not be part of such an adaptation (what springs to mind would be the detail of Celebrimbor's corpse behind used as a banner by Sauron's troops) but the core story of Númenor and the Rings is actually told in appendix A and B.

And we would assume that such an adaptation wouldn't exactly be all that faithful - meaning that all the details they don't have the rights to could easily enough be filled with new ideas - and everything could still feel like Tolkien due to the fact that they would basically have all the important names and characters, anyway.

And everything Amazon is going to do is not exactly likely to have much to do with Tolkien's SA material, anyway. It is far too cursory to provide more than a background for a tantalizing story involving living, breathing characters. I guess one can do something with the idea that Celebrimbor is/was in love with Galadriel, but aside from that I really don't see interesting character content there that could be used as basis for a good TV show. They will have to invent a lot (I guess one could make a series about the forging of the Rings of Power and the war against Sauron, and then another about the downfall of Númenor, up until the Last Alliance - a combination of both could only work if they were to completely ignore Tolkien's time line).

[Aldarion]

Something I found, on how Gondor is modelled after Byzantine Empire:

https://bondwine.com/2010/03/13/gondor-byzantium-and-feudalism/

[Zorral]

One sees a great deal too of Middle Earth's previous history of warring groups, in Sultan Mehmed II's final, terrible, tragic battle - siege of Constantinople in 1453.  Incredible tales were recorded by the few who managed to survive from the besieged forces. Though, as usual, the Venetians were still parked nicely in the former capital, which they'd controlled since their Great Betrayal of the 4th Crusade, of the now forever defunct eastern empire of Rûm.

[The Marquis de Leech]

A look at why The Lord of the Rings would not be publishable in 2019:

https://phuulishfellow.wordpress.com/2019/08/05/why-the-lord-of-the-rings-would-not-be-published-in-2019/

[Werthead]

7 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

A look at why The Lord of the Rings would not be publishable in 2019:

https://phuulishfellow.wordpress.com/2019/08/05/why-the-lord-of-the-rings-would-not-be-published-in-2019/

I'd say your first point would not really be a problem. Debut epic fantasy books in the 150,000-200,000 word range are pretty common these days and if the book justified the length, the publisher would go for it. Fellowship even has the advantage of being split into two constituent parts, so the publisher could, at a push, recommend splitting the book in half and publishing Book I and Book II individually.

I also suspect that in the intervening decades, epic fantasy would have thrown up everyday heroes, so I don't see that being an issue either.

I find it instructive to look at those works of epic fantasy that predated The Lord of the Rings, including Fritz Leiber's early Fafhrd & Grey Mouser stories, Conan, The Dying Earth, Eddison, Morris, The Broken Sword, etc and you realise that Tolkien really nailed a movement that was underway in any case. Without LotR the genre develops differently, but I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't eventually drift back to something like we have anyway.

The point about LotR not automatically being a slam-drunk in 2019 is a good one though. It's a criticism I had of the film Yesterday, which presupposed that the Beatles would automatically be massive in 2019 if they just showed up out of nowhere, even though that kind of music is not ascendant these days and a lot of people would dismiss it as old-fashioned (and the Beatles did not exist in a vacuum either). I think LotR would face a bigger pushback from publishers who would ask for female characters with agency (taking Fellowship by itself, it has exactly zero female characters of significance apart from Galadriel, who shows up pretty late in the book) and would gently suggest deleting the poems.

[SeanF]

9 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

A look at why The Lord of the Rings would not be publishable in 2019:

https://phuulishfellow.wordpress.com/2019/08/05/why-the-lord-of-the-rings-would-not-be-published-in-2019/

However good you, sometimes you just have to be in the right place at the right time.  Fortunately, Tolkien was.

[The Marquis de Leech]

16 hours ago, Werthead said:

I'd say your first point would not really be a problem. Debut epic fantasy books in the 150,000-200,000 word range are pretty common these days and if the book justified the length, the publisher would go for it. Fellowship even has the advantage of being split into two constituent parts, so the publisher could, at a push, recommend splitting the book in half and publishing Book I and Book II individually.

I also suspect that in the intervening decades, epic fantasy would have thrown up everyday heroes, so I don't see that being an issue either.

I find it instructive to look at those works of epic fantasy that predated The Lord of the Rings, including Fritz Leiber's early Fafhrd & Grey Mouser stories, Conan, The Dying Earth, Eddison, Morris, The Broken Sword, etc and you realise that Tolkien really nailed a movement that was underway in any case. Without LotR the genre develops differently, but I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't eventually drift back to something like we have anyway.

The point about LotR not automatically being a slam-drunk in 2019 is a good one though. It's a criticism I had of the film Yesterday, which presupposed that the Beatles would automatically be massive in 2019 if they just showed up out of nowhere, even though that kind of music is not ascendant these days and a lot of people would dismiss it as old-fashioned (and the Beatles did not exist in a vacuum either). I think LotR would face a bigger pushback from publishers who would ask for female characters with agency (taking Fellowship by itself, it has exactly zero female characters of significance apart from Galadriel, who shows up pretty late in the book) and would gently suggest deleting the poems.

On the length: the standard medium of fantasy literature before Tolkien was the short story, and those novels that did exist (Morris, Dunsany's King of Elfland's Daughter, Eddison) were short by modern standards. I am sceptical about whether we would have had doorstopper fantasy without Tolkien, certainly for debut authors.

(And if we cut Fellowship in two, would the story from A Long Expected Party to the Ford of Bruinen be sell-able as a story? It's pretty meandering until they hit Strider).

[SeanF]

On 20 July 2019 at 4:48 PM, Zorral said:

One sees a great deal too of Middle Earth's previous history of warring groups, in Sultan Mehmed II's final, terrible, tragic battle - siege of Constantinople in 1453.  Incredible tales were recorded by the few who managed to survive from the besieged forces. Though, as usual, the Venetians were still parked nicely in the former capital, which they'd controlled since their Great Betrayal of the 4th Crusade, of the now forever defunct eastern empire of Rûm.

I think of Gondor as being like the Eastern Empire in about 1150, rather than 1453.  Gondor could still field substantial armies in LOTR.  The Siege of Vienna in 1683 is another parallel

[SeanF]

On 20 July 2019 at 8:36 AM, Aldarion said:

Something I found, on how Gondor is modelled after Byzantine Empire:

https://bondwine.com/2010/03/13/gondor-byzantium-and-feudalism/

Interesting article, but it understates how loyal many Germans were to the Western Empire.  Aetius' army was almost entirely .Germanic, and was one of the best armies that the Romans ever fielded.  Germanic tribrsmen took their oaths of loyalty to Emperors very seriously.  Valentinian III was as much an idiot as Honorius, when he murdered Aetius.

[The Marquis de Leech]

16 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Interesting article, but it understates how loyal many Germans were to the Western Empire.  Aetius' army was almost entirely .Germanic, and was one of the best armies that the Romans ever fielded.  Germanic tribrsmen took their oaths of loyalty to Emperors very seriously.  Valentinian III was as much an idiot as Honorius, when he murdered Aetius.

Honorius gets a bad rap. Some people just like chickens, and hate trousers.

[Vaughn]

I just read the Children of Hurin and reader, I did not care for it. Just endlessly grim and depressing and not really fleshing out the history in a more interesting way which was disappointing. I knew it was a tragedy from reading the Simarillion of course but it was a drag like reading 'the Pearl'.

 

My basic problem is the fact that all these sagas and deeds, all these heroes and kingdom are essentially pointless because in the end, only the Valar could defeat Morgoth, so the Noldor were just wasting everyone's time trying to get revenge and failing. And even then the Valar fuck up and let Sauron escape so the whole mess kicks off again on Numenor then Middle Earth until one plucky hobbit sorts it all out. All a bit fatalistic in the end. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

1 hour ago, Vaughn said:

My basic problem is the fact that all these sagas and deeds, all these heroes and kingdom are essentially pointless because in the end, only the Valar could defeat Morgoth, so the Noldor were just wasting everyone's time trying to get revenge and failing. And even then the Valar fuck up and let Sauron escape so the whole mess kicks off again on Numenor then Middle Earth until one plucky hobbit sorts it all out. All a bit fatalistic in the end. 

Feanor had something to say about that:

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Then turning to the herald he [Feanor] cried: "Say this to the Manwe Sulimo, High King of Arda: if Feanor cannot overthrow Morgoth at least he delays not to assail him, and sits not idle in grief. And it may be that Eru has set a greater fire in me than thou knowest. Such hurt at the least will I do to the Foe of the Valar that even the mighty in the Ring of Doom shall wonder to hear it. Yea, in the end they shall follow me. Farewell!"

Yes, the Noldor were going to lose. But, as per the Northern Theory of Courage, why the hell should that matter?

[SeanF]

1 hour ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Feanor had something to say about that:

Yes, the Noldor were going to lose. But, as per the Northern Theory of Courage, why the hell should that matter?

What I find intriguing is that Tolkien would write something that so fundamentally contradicted his own beliefs.

One of the key points of Catholic Just War theory is that there must be a reasonable prospect of success.  Throwing your own life away on the battlefield (and the lives of others) , for the sake of your own pride, is considered morally wrong.

The Elves had Just Cause to fight, and so far as we can tell, most of them prosecuted their war by Just Means,  but they had no hope of winning.

[The Marquis de Leech]

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

What I find intriguing is that Tolkien would write something that so fundamentally contradicted his own beliefs.

One of the key points of Catholic Just War theory is that there must be a reasonable prospect of success.  Throwing your own life away on the battlefield (and the lives of others) , for the sake of your own pride, is considered morally wrong.

The Elves had Just Cause to fight, and so far as we can tell, most of them prosecuted their war by Just Means,  but they had no hope of winning.

I think Tolkien found the idea as fascinating as it was repellent. He actually addresses it in his non-fiction too (http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Ofermod)

The borderline between such courage (Theoden) and outright despair (Denethor) also gets considered via Eowyn.

 

[SeanF]

11 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

I think Tolkien found the idea as fascinating as it was repellent. He actually addresses it in his non-fiction too (http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Ofermod)

The borderline between such courage (Theoden) and outright despair (Denethor) also gets considered via Eowyn.

 

I wonder what people would have thought of Eowyn if she hadn't killed the witch king.

Would the Rohirrim have viewed her as a heroine, or as someone who deserted her own duty (to rule Rohan) for basically selfish reasons.

Edit:  I've just read about the Soviet sniper Rosa Shanina, who reminds me of Eowyn.  She was certainly a heroine, but after the death of her boyfriend in battle, her last diary entries indicate that she was seeking a soldier's suicide, and she was duly killed in the battle for East Prussia in 1945.  

[Krishtotter]

On 3/11/2019 at 1:29 AM, Lord Varys said:

As for Númenor - if this is supposed to be an adaptation done as close to JRRT's vision as possible then the island should be an ethnically homogeneous paradise, i.e. predominantly dark-haired whites.

 

On 3/12/2019 at 9:22 AM, Ran said:

The Edain of Beleriand who went on to Númenor were all white in Tolkien's conception.

If I may proffer a few of my own thoughts here:

For the human populations it is important to remember something: we know that the Edain arrived in Beleriand in the First Age from somewhere in the Far East of Middle-Earth called Hildórien (beyond the Orocarni mountains of Rhun) which apparently had shores on the Eastern Sea, so whilst later Edain by the Third Age living in Arnor and northern provinces of Gondor are thought of as all being caucasian apart from the south-dwelling 'swarthy' Gondorians of Lebennin (having dwelt in these less humid climes for millennia by that time), that doesn't apply to the earlier generations of the Atani/Edain, such as those who populated Númenor.

After all, the immediate ancestors of the first generation of settlers at the beginning of the Second Age hailed from Far Eastern Hildórien (from which all the human populations everywhere in Middle-Earth whether Haradrim or Easterlings or Edain, hailed from) only a number of generations back - literally a couple of centuries by my reckoning (and Hildórien is further East than even Rhun, it would be akin to Japan perhaps), whilst Númenor itself is positioned much further south than any land we have ever seen depicted before in Middle-Earth - it is on the same latitude as Far Harad, really far south and lies on the equator (Girdle of Arda).

Neither Númenor itself, nor the houses of the Edain that were its primary overseas settlers in the early Second Age, are described by Tolkien as ethnically homogeneous in phenotype or skin colour.  

The High Elves of Valinor and Eriador were described by Tolkien as "fair of skin" (which is sometimes a descriptor for colouring) so whilst one would perhaps expect Galadriel and Gil-galad to be white-skinned as Noldor, the Númenóreans certainly exhibited racial diversity, at least so far as Tolkien described them.

While the majority of the population of Númenor were both white and caucasian-looking in phenotype, from HoME we learn: "There were fair-haired men and women among the Folk of Bëor, but...many were less fair in skin, some indeed being swarthy." (Peoples, p. 307–8).

Compare how the Southron Haradrim where described in Two Towers:

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For a moment he caught a glimpse of swarthy men in red running down the slope some way off with green-clad warriors leaping after them, hewing them down as they fled...His scarlet robes were tattered, his corslet of overlapping brazen plates was rent and hewn, his black plaits of hair braided with gold were drenched with blood. His brown hand still clutched the hilt of a broken sword.

The Two Towers - Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit

 

The Bëorians were Erendis's people, from Andustar (the Westlands) of Númenor who were closest in kinship to the Eldar. They were one of the tribes of Edain to settle Númenor and had darker-skinned people in their midst & even some 'swarthy' ones (exact same word Tolkien uses for Haradrim, Easterlings, Lebennin Gondorians etc. the darker-skinned, south-dwelling peoples of Middle-Earth).

There was also an ethnic minority of Drúedain living in Númenor (who are decidedly not caucasian in phenotype but for whom no skin colour is given) and whom Jackson had planned to portray using Maori actors (and they too were of the 'Edain').

Undoubtedly, the majority of the populace were descended from the House of Hador and so if one were striving for faithfulness to Tolkien in this regard, they should predominantly exhibit the blond-hair (although some Hadorians also had dark hair), fair skin and blue-grey eyes of their kindred i.e.
 

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“For the most part they were tall people, with flaxen or golden hair and blue-grey eyes, but there were not a few among them that had dark hair, though all were fair-skinned.”

The History of Middle-Earth: The Peoples of Middle-Earth,“Of Dwarves and Men”

 

 

 

We know that this would have been the conventional 'look' for many Númenóreans outside Andustar (the Westlands) because Erendis, of Bëorian stock from the West of the Isle, was considered to be of exceptional beauty and arresting physicality specifically owing to the fact that she did not conform with this 'fair-haired, fair-skinned, light-eyed' phenotype that was so commonplace in the Mittalmar and other inland regions of Númenor:

 

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"There Almarian the Queen observed her beauty, of a kind seldom seen in Númenor; for Beregar came of the House of Bëor by ancient descent, though not of the royal line of Elros, and Erendis was dark-haired and of slender grace.”

Unfinished Tales, “Aldarion and Erendis: The Mariner’s Wife”

 

Erendis' ethnic profile was of a kind of "exotic" beauty "seldom seen in Númenor" because she was of Bëorian rather than Hadorian heritage, and thus stood out. 

That being said, we also can't deny that substantial numbers of the Númenórean Edain (albeit the minority) belonged to the houses of Bëor and Haleth, which included many people with dark hair and less fair and even 'swarthy' skin tones. 

Now, this word "swarthy" and its meaning are important to one's interpretation of the racial homogeneity or heterogeneity of Númenórean society. For certain readers, there is an assumption made that Tolkien is using the word in a loose, almost colloquial sense that could be applied to people who are technically white but have a rather tanned or olive hue, like southern Europeans. 

While I could see this as a possibility, I don't think it's a very strong argument and we have evidence that strongly undermines this line of thought. 

Consider, for example, the usage of 'swarthy' as a descriptor in the Second Age story of Tal-Elmar in the Peoples of Middle Earth (HoME XII):

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They were indeed much as Hazad himself had been in the days of his youth: broad, swarthy, short, tough...Save one only, Tal-elmar. He was yet but eighteen years of age, and lived with his father, and the two of his brothers next elder. He was tall, and white-skinned... For Tal-elmar might seem, among that swart sturdy folk...

Here we have a tall, caucasian-looking white person standing out amongst a tribe of dark-skinned people living in the south of Middle-Earth. They have a clearly defined racial phenotype (broad, dark skinned. sturdy) as does Tal-Elmar (tall, white-skinned) because he has heritage from people akin to the fair-skinned contingent of the Edain. 

Later in the story, we learn that Tal-Elmar's grandmother was "white" in a discussion where her swarthy-skinned husband condemns her white-skinned people for conquering his people's native lands:

 

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"For our lands are ours from of old, which they would wrest from us with their bitter blades. White skins and bright eyes are no warrant for such deeds.'

'Are they not?' said she. 'Then neither are thick legs and wide shoulders."

 

 

This should make it perfectly clear to readers that Tolkien, at least in this instance, used "swarthy" in its accurate philological sense as meaning "dark skinned" and not merely tanned or sun-kissed white skin. And this is important for our understanding of the identity of the "swarthy" Númenóreans among the Beorians and Haladin, because these 'swarthy' native Middle-Earthers in Tal-Elmar who are expressly contrasted with the 'white-skinned' Elmar are not Haradrim or living in Tolkien's rough geographic analogue to our real life Africa but were surmised by Christopher Tolkien to be situated around the Mouth of the River Anduin or the Langstrand area, that is the Bay of Belfalas near Gondor's southery region of Lebennin (where similar "swarthy" people lived in the Third Age, who were later descendants of these Second Age natives interbred with Númenóreans) but north of Harad. 

Given that these people are not 'white', we know that properly dark-skinned, non-white peoples inhabited regions outside Harad. 

I don't think it likely at all that Tolkien - a linguist noted for archaisms in his writing - would have used it with any contemporary/colloquial parlance in mind.

LoTR (and the mythos more generally) was not written with modern, early-to-mid 20th century sensibilities in mind but with inspiration from the mythic/folkloric epics (i.e. Finnish Kalevala, Norse Eddas, Beowulf, Old Testament etc.) and medieval linguistics.

As a young student, Tolkien read and translated Old Norse (i.e. the Volsunga Saga) and this is reflected in a number of names in his legendarium, as well as characters (Olórin/Gandalf influenced by Odin in his Wanderer incarnation as an old man with white beard, hat and staff) and events. He was really, really deeply indebted to the Norse Prose Eddas (along with the Finnish Kalevala).

Both in the original Norse and in English translation, swarthy was a frequently used word - for instance the svartálfr - literally the "black/dark Elves" of Svartálfaheimr would have been one of Tolkien's first literary sources for his widespread use of this word in his own works.

For example, he used swart in places as an interchangeable term with swarthy (even using it in the Silmarillion as a more precise word to define just what he meant by "Swarthy Men from the East" settling Beleriand). 'Swart' is an expressly archaic word (the Norse svart as in the black Elves I just mentioned) with no currency in modern usage in the 20th century or today.

Here is its history of usage in English...

 

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8.11 swart 'black'. OE sweart. The word survived in poetic employment until the nineteenth century but was superseded by 'black' in prose before the English Renaissance.

 

This term is both undeniably archaic (i.e. not modern parlance) and means very dark, as evidenced by the fact that it was superseded in English prose by the word black before the 15th-17th centuries.

So we know that some 'swarthy' men in Tolkien's legendarium were dark enough to be swart (almost or effectively black, even if not as dark-skinned as, say, a sub-Saharan African), whereas others are described as dark brown (i.e. the dead Haradrim soldier Samwise encounters and describes both as swarthy and as having "brown hands") and thus would look like South Asians (i.e. Indians) or perhaps at a stretch Arabs/Middle-Easterners.

In Tal-Elmar he expressly, as noted before, contrasts the "white" skinned Elmar with the "swarthy" Hazad - clearly meaning here, therefore, that 'swarthy' is not a darker shade of white or tanned skin because Elmar is distinguished amongst the natives as the only person in their midst having white-skin.

Also see the Tolkien English Glossary which says in relation to Tolkien's use of swarthy and swart:

http://tolkienenglishglossary.com/index.html

 

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swart

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Meaning as used in The Lord of the Rings : Of a swart or blackish in color or hue, dark colored esp. as in skin, complexion.

Context of use, sentence used in His broad flat face was swart, his eyes were like coals, and his tongue was red; he wielded a great spear.

swarthy

Page 1st used: 166

Meaning as used in The Lord of the Rings: Of a swart or blackish in color or hue, dark colored esp. as in skin, complexion.

Context of use, sentence used in: You must have noticed him among the company: a swarthy sneering fellow.

 

 

Also, Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary By Peter Gilliver ( lexicographer and Associate Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary), Jeremy Marshall (Tolkien scholar), Edmund Weiner (Professor of Old English, Middle English and English linguistic history at Christ Church, Oxford).

They note as follows regarding the Common Speech term Swarthy Men and the Hobbits' cognate Swertmen:

 

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=bszM-uwEQOkC&pg=PA199&dq=tolkien+dark+skin+swart&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj1vI-S4ezjAhVXVBUIHUHZB-UQ6AEINDAC#v=onepage&q=tolkien dark skin swart&f=false

 

Quote

"The word is clearly derived from swart (Old English sweart), which means 'dark in colour', especially with reference to people's skin colour. This word appears, for example, in The Lord of the Rings, describing some dead goblin soldiers (LR III.i)...The related term Swartmen is used...for the Easterlings..."

The etymology of 'swarthy' came to Old English as sweart "black" from the same Proto-Germanic source that gave Dutch zwart and German its schwarz "black", from which Yiddish gets its shvarts (which refers expressly to a black person of African descent). The Proto-Indo-European root of this word is swordo- "black".

Tolkien was a philologist and so I think he knew perfectly well what he was doing in applying it as a technical term for many different kinds of non-white peoples. He was precise in every word he used, being an expert in linguistics.

The Harad is Tolkien's rough analogue to Africa & it had "swarthy-skinned" peoples as well as others described as decidedly 'black' from Far Harad (sub-saharan Africa?). 

I, therefore, personally view Númenor as an island-continent comprised of settlers from a range of Edainic peoples of Hildórien descent, with the vast majority being white but with a sizeable minority of dark-skinned/non-white/non-caucasian peoples (primarily the swarthy Beorians, the less than white Beorians and the Drúedain (who are undeniably non-caucasion in physiognomy even though their skin colour is left undefined as such, and they could perhaps be compared to Native Americans or aboriginals in cultural origins, a distinct ethnic group)).