LAST EDITED ON Jan-10-07 AT 07:53 PM (EST)
 
>What I'm doing in adapting it to UF is to take literally the sly
>metacontinuity that Tolkien himself sometimes invoked. Tolkien
>claimed, with a bit of a wink, that The Hobbit and The Lord
>of the Rings were both English translations from the ancient
>Red Book of Westmarch, and that some details had probably been
>lost in translation.
>
>The thing is, he presented the Red Book as a history of events
>that occurred on a pre-historic Earth, in some ancient epoch that
>happened so long ago it isn't reflected in the archæological
>record. That won't really wash, so my take on it for UF purposes is
>that it was a blind, intended as another sly wink to the knowing
>reader. The Red Book isn't an account of events in ancient
>Midgard at all, and Professor Tolkien knew it: it's an account of
>events in ancient Vanaheim and Alfheim, from an era before the rise of
>the current Æsir and Vanir - probably back during the lifetime
>of Búri, Odin's grandfather, the original king of the gods.
>
(...)
>
>(Presumably he got to Vanaheim and Alfheim to conduct his research
>through the good offices of his close friend and associate, the wizard
>C.S. Lewis.)
>
One thing that incorporating Middle-earth as part of the UFverse's backstory does, at least from my viewpoint, is to answer the question of how so many people in the Upper Worlds, from Asgard down to Svartalfheim, seem to all know the same language, i.e., what we know as Old Norse, and not just as a magic user's tongue either. Consider this bit from Knights of the Tenth World, Part 3, for example:

It wasn't actually black, but a very, very deep blue, like the
blue of a gun. The long, straight blade was double-edged like a
broadsword and perfectly balanced, seeming as right in Utena's hand as
the Heart of the Rose did. The basket hilt was worked into an
intricate rose vine, studded with wicked thorns, and it had a rose gem
hilt, just like the Heart's. Down the flat of its blade marched a
runic inscription in Anthy's mother's ancient script, and Anthy gasped
again in astonishment. It was a -Valkyrie's- sword!

Note that Anthy recognized the runic script - the same script as that used in Asgard - as the script used in Svartalfheim, and was able to read the inscription. It's possible that Svartalfheim uses the runic script to write a different language (just as the script is used in LOTR to write several different languages), but...

Here's what I think is going on (and this is strictly my own supposition, Gryphon and the rest of the editorial team may have something different in mind on this point): when UFverse Professor Tolkien is talking about the Common Tongue (a/k/a what he calls Westron, or Adunaic), he's really referring to the common language shared by the Upper Worlds of Asgard, Vanaheim, Alfheim, Jotunheim and Svartalfheim. As I said, this is the language we know today as Old Norse. (I'm pretty sure the real-world Tolkien knew ON, so the UFverse Tolkien most likely would have too, and therefore would have been able to communicate with the people he met in Alfheim and Vanaheim right away.) Obviously, reproducing large swatches of ON in LOTR would have given the game away, so he simply represented the Common Tongue as modern English. I further conjecture that Quenya and Sindarin are either actual languages of ancient Alfheim/Vanaheim, or else that Tolkien created fictional versions of those languages as part of the great blind.

Again, my own opinion, subject to voiding by editorial fiat. (Incidentially, UF-Tolkien would likely be eligible for Valhalla by dint of his World War I service on the Western Front, so if anyone with access to Asgard cared to, they could probably look him up and ask him themselves. If, that is, they could find him at home...I like to think of him, if he ended up in Valhalla, still tramping the byways of Alfheim and Vanaheim, walking staff in hand, collecting the legends and tongues of those lands.)

-Joe-

P.S. If 25th-century hobbits are as insular as they were at the time of the War of the Ring, I can just hear the grumblings of the crustier gaffers at the Green Dragon Inn in Bywater over their pipes and ale about the latest doings of Miss Took: "...didn't ought to be going to school in no heathen foreign parts..." Second old hobbit: "Aye, and not learning magic, either." Third old hobbit: "You watch, lads, she'll come to a bad end, see if she doesn't. She'll end up piloting a... (voice drops to portentous whisper) starship." (All recoil in horror and quaff their ale to cure the shock and dismay, then call loudly for more.)