Talk:Círdan

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OMG someone changed the years of Cirdans age to 36,000! we really need to reach a consensus on the age of Cirdan. For now i've reverted this change. But we need several people working on this to reach a conclusion. -Frosty_King April 15th 2007

Ok, you have to give me some time, i'm rather swamped with work, school, and other projects. I'll begin by redoing sections at a time. If you want to make changes thats fine, its best to get a hold of me by emailing me btw. frosty.king@gmail.com .

Frosty, I think we are beginning to see some consensus here, and we should either take user:Eggishorn up on his surgery offer, or you should take a stab at this. I think as a template we should look at the Galadriel page. She is a character of similar importance and age. Her biography section is 1200 words, which ought to be ample for Cirdan. So a intro paragraph or two describing who he is at a high level (you have this pretty well).
Then a Biography which would have the following content:
- He was one of the first elves who awakened at Cuiviénen.
- He was originally called Nowe
- He travelled with the main group of Elves when the chiefs promoted a move to Valinor
- He arrived at the shore 3 years after the Noldor and Vanyar and built ships
- After a message from the Valar in a dream he decided not to go.
- Took the name Cirdan as lord of the Falathrim
- Fought at Dagor Bragollach
- The Havens are destoyed by Morgoth
- retreat to Balar, but eventually returned to the Mouths of Sirion
- Feanor's sons and the 3rd Kinslaying
- Sundering of Beleriand, new Havens on Middle Earth
- Friendship with Numenor
- Against his counsel the rings are forged
- Battles with Sauron
- Part of the last alliance when the one ring was captured
- His forces helped defeat Angmar
- Gives the ring to Gandalf - sensing that he is the wisest of the Istari
- Entrusted with the palantir
- Was part of the White Council who's advise led to Sauron being chased back to Mordor
- Built the ships that took the last ring-bearers to Valinor.

I think this would still be a "too long" bio. After this bio, give a mention to his appearance in the movie. Everything else is superfluous I would say.
Does that sound ok? I can help you draft a revised version if you like. We definitely need to make the style more encyclopedic too.

--Smcgrother 18:04, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Length, tone, and style

This is much, much too long, and includes things that are undoubtedly unimportant. Yes, I know that Tolkeenologists love minutiae, but, for instance, the White Council neither included nor nor influenced, nor was influenced by Cirdan. Furthermore, the whole article is written with a too-concious attempt to mimic Tolkien's style, and it is not encyclopedic in tone. It doesn not seem to follow the style guide's recommendations about fictional works

The White Council certainly did include Círdan. He is explicitly one of five members specified by name by Tolkien. In "Of The Rings of Power and the Third Age", he writes: "...and in that time was first made the Council of the Wise that is called the White Council, and therein were Elrond and Galadriel and Círdan, and other lords of the Eldar, and with them were Mithrandir and Curunir." p. 360 in my Del Rey paperback edition of the Silmarillion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.83.2.252 (talk) 21:34, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

An example from the text: "The Lay of Leithian, the tale of Beren and Lúthien, is a well known one and shall not be recalled here in whole, for it is of great length and much of it is of little consequence."

This is an in-universe perspective, first of all. Secondly, the whole tale is of limited, if any, significance at all to a description of Cirdan's character history. Remember, this is not written for Tolkien fans, but for people that have a wide variety of reasons for wanting to know who Cirdan is. All this user needs to know is Cirdan joined the war against Morgoth. Thirdly, the tale is only "well-lknown" to a section of fandom. A person who saw the Peter Jackson movies and is wondering who that guy at the end was doesn't know Beren and Luthien from Adam and Eve, nor do they need to.

Frankly, I think this article needs radical surgery to be brought up to snuff. Before I start such surgery, however, I wanted to seek some consensus. Eggishorn 19:58, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I began work on making the tone somewhat more encyclopedic on the First Age section. I'll leave the experts to nitpick and continue, and if my revisions were really horrible, there are always reversions. If there are no objections (if there are, say so), I will continue tomorrow. --queso man 01:45, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I say it has too much slang, doesn't really sound encyclopedic...thedrtaylor 04:27, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

In the two years since this post, there has been little improvement. The style is inappropriate and the detail far too great for an encyclopedia article. Other Middle Earth sites can provide the achingly pedantic detail that Tolkien fans like me love. For the casual reader, there is way too much background. Wellspring (talk) 14:24, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Update: I did a cleanup. I tried to strip out all the flowery language. There were numerous diversions which boil down to yet another retelling of the History of Middle Earth, so I stripped most of the asides away. What's left is, in my opinion, still too long, but it's more serviceable and I can't strip more away without taking out events that Círdan actually participated in. Summarizing will require some kind of outside literary critic to quote. Wellspring (talk) 15:59, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I did my best to revise the article and trim extraneous info. There is probably still more that can be done. The long block-quotes seem unnecessary but I didn't want to remove them, in case the article was tagged for not citing any sources. Rajah1 (talk) 17:29, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Sailing off with Sam?

The Wikipedia entry says that in the FA, Sam and Cirdan sailed off, and there is a {{fact}} tag on it. The inline comments ask if Cirdan really did sail off with Sam?

The canonical books do not say this. Appendix A.I.iii says some say he dwells there still. Appendix B, SR year 1482, says that Sam passed over, last of the Ringbearers. I don't have access to the HoME, etc, volumes to compare.

But this also begs another question. Was Cirdan ever really considered a ringbearer, even tho he kept charge of one of the Three? From memory (albeit poor ATM), the title ringbearer was only used for those who held the One Ring. Yngvarr (c) 18:37, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I think Círdan must be considered as a ring-bearer. (Mapar007 15:18, 5 June 2008 (UTC)) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mapar007 (talk • contribs)

Question of Age

well lets do this mathematically. First of all it should be decided at what point his age should be measured from, as well as when he was born; I think his age should be measured at the deparure of Elrond and the start of the fourth age, and that he should be reckoned among the the first elves to awake on the shores of Cuivienen. Now the start of the fourth age since the rising of the sun is thus: 1st Age=583 + S.A 3441 + T.A 3021 = 7045 years. Unfortuneatly the years of the sun are the only exact timeline we have, as the years of the trees were not so carefully documented. However we know that it wasn't long after the awakening of the elves till the chaining of melkor; call it 200 years. after melkor was freed it was awhile before the sune rose; call it around 800 years so there is a nice round 1000 years before and after the chainig of melkor. now melkor was imprisoned for 3 ages, where we have some difficulty as tolkein changed his views often. however his final estimation was 1000 valian years of 144 of our years. this puts the imprisonment of melkor at 432,000 years. so if we take these 3 totals: 432,000(chaining of Melkor)+ 7045(years of the sun)+ 1000(before and immediately after Melkor's inprisonment) we come to 440,045 years. now if we take the lowest estimatian Tolkein gave for an age (10,000 years), it becomes 30,000 years+ 7045+ 1000+ 38,045 years. the estimation given in the article is only correct if an age is assumed to be 1000 years, an estimation tolkein never gave. i will change the article to reflect my above reckoning. —Preceding unsignedcomment added by Penguinsforever (talk • contribs) 05:49, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

My edit has been undone for the reason of it being "original research". In my opinion there is no research involved; it's just math. I will admit to some research to the extent of looking up (on wikipedia) the length of an "age" for the portion of Middle-earths history in which Morgoth was imprisoned. Now whether or not my estimation is used or not, the age of cirdan should be changed because it is incorrect just about everyway you look at it. Penguinsforever (talk) 06:19, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I've take the liberty to format the talk page correctly. If you wish to add a topic then feel free to but try to add it to the bottom of the page, not the top.

As to the question of Cirdan's age, this is nothing but speculation. The definitive time and location of his birth are not in any of the published works, and it is not the job of editors to decide on a figure. Carl Sixsmith (talk) 13:32, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

you are correct, Cirdan's birth date and place are not given. He is first mentioned in chapter 5 of the Quenta Silmarillion, placing the first mention of his existence in the beginning of the era of Melkor's imprisonment. But overall it is irrelevant what his age is given as, for any age given, even an estimate rounded to the nearest millinium, is speculatory. Where Cirdan's age is given it should instead read something along the lines of, "he has been had been alive through and witnessed the vast majority of the history of middle earth" this is not only completely accurate but also circumvents the problem of no possible discernable D.O.B and contains no speculations. as it stands, what is written is worse than nothing because, as i have demonstraded above, it is completely innacurate. Penguinsforever (talk) 06:10, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

I've updated it slightly.. Opinions? Carl Sixsmith (talk) 11:31, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

He was certainly around at Cuiviénen, so he's at the latest born in Y.T. 1105 (the Sundering of the Elves). We know he was around in T.A. 3021, and then 1 year of the Trees = 9.582 years of the Sun. If my calculations are correct, that means that when Frodo and Bilbo depart he is at least 10837. A more plausible estimate for his age when he sails is perhaps 11364. Either way he was then over halfway to reaching 12⁴ (= 20736) years old – a great milestone for an Elf! Double sharp (talk) 16:50, 7 November 2013 (UTC)