Board Thread:Lore Texts/@comment-31684825-20170601182826/@comment-25101089-20170602012921

Cundö Calassëru wrote: I just did a check on dorwinion elves (I can't remember where, sorry) but here is some stuff I learned, or re-learned:

They traded with the Greenwood, so they weren't reclusive and, they were influenced in shipmaking (they lived beside the sea of Rhun) by Cirdan the Shipwright.

So all in all, I would say that they aren't reclusive and they the statement "and seemingly had no contact with any other people, certainly not in the West" is false, also it is mentioned that the wines of dorwinion carried all the way to the Dwarves of Nogrod, so again, it is absurd to say that they wouldn't know about Glorfindel, and it is absurd to say that they were reclusive and "didn't build cities"

Thank you, I will be on the wiki tomorrow, at 5:00 eastern standard time, if you wish to continue this conversation. I'd just like to reply to you before the lore fundamentalists bite your head off for it. Dorwinion Elves are not, explicitly, canonical (though there are strong reasons to suppose they existed, as I said above) so a word of warning: anything you 'learned' anywhere about Dorwinion Elves isn't going to be canon. It will be someone else's speculation.

(Was it on the LOTR wikia, perhaps? Stay away from LOTR wikia for canon! Tolkien Gateway is much, much better.)

Now I'm not saying that speculation is a bad thing. This whole lore text business, after all, is built around speculation and fan-fiction. It's pretty much a requirement to make things up. But we do like to make sure they fit with the canon as well as possible.

Trading with the Greenwood? Fine. Strongly hinted at in the Hobbit book.

Good at shipmaking? Yes, that makes sense. Elves tend to be good at that.

Having contact with the wider world? Yes, for Dorwinion, that does make sense.

So there's nothing wrong with speculating, but be careful about treating it as canonical fact, and if you 'learned it' somewhere, pay attention to where you read it from.

What Thindithron is criticising isn't the speculation and fan-fiction itself, but the 'less fitting' parts, like the names, and the appearance of a Balrog, and the mention of Glorfindel and Gondolin which honestly seems a bit misplaced. Again, if you're going to submit something for inclusion in the mod, please do so with the full understanding that people are going to freely critique and edit parts of it.