Editing Noldor (section)

=== Tuatha Dé Danaan ===

[[File:"The Riders of the Sidhe" John Duncan 1911 McManus Galleries, Dundee.jpg|thumb|The [[Tuatha Dé Danann]] depicted in [[John Duncan (painter)|John Duncan]]'s 1911 ''Riders of the Sidhe'']]

Scholars including [[Dimitra Fimi]], Anne Kinniburgh, and [[John Garth (author)|John Garth]] have connected the Noldor with the Irish [[Tuatha Dé Danaan]] as a possible influence. The parallels are both thematic and direct. In Irish mythology, the Tuatha Dé Danaan invade Ireland as a tall pale fair-haired race of immortal warriors and sorcerers. They have godlike attributes but human social organisation. They enter Ireland with what Kinniburgh calls a "historical trajectory", entering in triumph, living with a high status, and leaving diminished, just as the Noldor do in [[Middle-earth]]. They are semi-divine as Sons of Danu, just as the Noldor are counted among the first of the sentient races, the Children of [[Ilúvatar]]. Their immortality keeps them from disease and the frailty of age, but not from death in battle, an exact parallel with the Noldor. [[Nuada Airgetlám]], the Tuatha Dé Danaan's first high king, is killed by [[Balor]] of the Evil Eye; [[Fëanor]] is killed by Gothmog, Lord of Balrogs.<ref name="Fimi 2006">{{cite journal |last=Fimi |first=Dimitra |author-link=Dimitra Fimi |s2cid=162292626 |title="Mad" Elves and "elusive beauty": some Celtic strands of Tolkien's mythology |journal=[[Folklore (journal)|Folklore]] |volume=117 |issue=2 |date=August 2006 |pages=156–170 |doi=10.1080/00155870600707847}}</ref><ref name="Kinniburgh 2009">{{cite journal |last=Kinniburgh |first=Anne |title=The Noldor and the Tuatha Dé Danaan: J.R.R. Tolkien's Irish Influences |journal=[[Mythlore]] |date=2009 |volume=28 |issue=1 |at=article 3 |url=https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol28/iss1/3}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Garth |first=John |author-link=John Garth (author) |title=[[Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth]] | publisher=Houghton Mifflin | year=2003 |page=222 |isbn=0-618-33129-8}}</ref> [[Celebrimbor]]'s{{efn|Celebrimbor is a Noldo in some of Tolkien's versions, a [[Sindar|Sinda]] in others.}} name means "Silver Hand" in [[Sindarin]], the same meaning as Nuada's epithet Airgetlám in Irish Gaelic. Celebrimbor's making of powerful but dangerous rings, too, has been linked with the finding of a curse on a ring at the temple of [[Nodens]], a Roman god whom Tolkien in his work as a philologist identified with Nuada.<ref name="Anger 2013">{{cite encyclopedia |last=Anger |first=Don N. |editor-last=Drout |editor-first=Michael D. C. |editor-link=Michael D. C. Drout |title=Report on the Excavation of the Prehistoric, Roman and Post-Roman Site in Lydney Park, Gloucestershire |encyclopedia=[[J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia]] |year=2013 |orig-year=2007 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-0-415-86511-1 |pages=563–564}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Armstrong |first=Helen |title=And Have an Eye to That Dwarf |journal=[[Amon Hen (journal)|Amon Hen: The Bulletin of the Tolkien Society]] |date=May 1997 |issue=145 |pages=13–14}}</ref><ref name="Bowers 2019">{{cite book |last=Bowers |first=John M. |title=Tolkien's Lost Chaucer |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eGOtDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA132 |date=2019 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-884267-5 |pages=131–132}}</ref> Like Nuada, Maedhros loses a hand.<ref name="Fimi 2006"/><ref name="Kinniburgh 2009"/>