>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...

Mm. That's actually a bit of a blunder on my part - Svartalvish (which is an evolution, or a corruption, depending on your point of view, of Old Alvish, the ancient tongue of the elves of Alfheim) uses the same script as Alvish, not Old Norse (which uses the runic alphabet originally invented by Alfheim's dwarvish nations) - much like the way the Black Speech of Mordor is written using the same alphabet as Quenya. What the narration should note is that it's written in one of the languages Anthy's mother taught her, not "(her) mother's ancient script", which implies that the inscription is in Alvish.

However, your surmise about Old Norse being the "common tongue" in the Upper Worlds is correct. Like many things that have been around since the dawn of Asgard/Alfheim/Vanaheim, it has many names; "Westron" is what the elves of Alfheim, who live in the eastern parts of that realm, call it, because it originally comes from Asgard, which lies to the west if you're in the elvish kingdoms.

Tolkien himself claimed that Old Norse was a translation of the language used by the Men of Dale, mentioned in The Hobbit, as a way of explaining why all the dwarves in that book have Norse names, but we may safely assume that that was just a further dodge, since we're making all this stuff up anyway. :)

>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.

Essentially, Quenya = Old Alvish and Sindarin = Modern Alvish (also-also known as Elvish, and very similar to the language spoken on most of Hyeruul, such that Corwin, who is fluent in Elvish, can understand most of what Umi's saying when she speaks in her native language in Knights 2).

>(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.

Oh, I'm not at all convinced that he's actually dead. He was a great friend of the Vanir and the various other peoples of Vanaheim and Alfheim, and traveled widely in the celestial realms during his lifetime; it's entirely possible that on one of his later journeys, he simply never returned to Midgard.

>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.)

In Alfheim, unsurprisingly, they call him Mithrandir.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/