The White Council

Re: Glorfindel's Knowledge

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

: But then, after Frodo expresses his unwillingness to flee and leave his friends in danger: "I doubt very much f your friends wouldbe in danger if you were not with them! The pursuit would follow you and leave us in peace, I think. It is you, Frodo, and that which you bear that brings us all in peril." : Now, I may be reading things into this, but, to me, this implies that Glorfindel knows about the Ring. There hasn't been time for Aragorn to fill him in, so I wonder how he got discovered this. I see two possibilities: : 1.) Gandalf passed through Rivendell in March/April, on his way from Mirkwood (where he had just interrogated Gollum) to the Shire, where he would "brief" Frodo. Now, he wasn't 100% sure Frodo's Ring was the One Ring (he still had to perform the fire test), but he was 95% sure, let's say. His intentions were to alert Frodo and to persuade him, as soon as possible, to leave the Shire (in some secrecy) and head for Rivendell where the further course would be decided. It would be natural, at this point, for Gandalf to fill Elrond in on things. Elrond would be worried, as September came, and no Frodo (surely, some message that the Nine were on the loose would have reached him prior to Gildor's messages, though not necessarily from Radagast). Then when Gildor's message came in, and he sent out Glorfindel (and others unnnamed: his sons? Erestor?-Erestor doesn't strike me as a warrior) to scout and maybe alert the Rangers, especially if, as michael has argued, their main camps were in the nearby Hoarwell-Loudwater angle), it would be natural to brief Glorfindel at least as to what burden Frodo might be carrying, increase the sense of urgency, let him know that if necessary, any companions were "expendable" (I know, Elrond didn't think in these terms), that sort of thing. : 2.) Gandalf passed through Rivendell in great haste and didn't confide in Elrond. But Elrond, being wise, would see that his old associate was worried and in haste, might feel offended that he wasn't confided in, or just be curious. When word came that it was Hobbits that were astray with some burden, he'd put two and two together. There was a Hobbit in Rivendell who might know what was up, so maybe Elrond and Bilbo had a conversation (or had one years ago: Bilbo wasn't all that close-mouthed about the Ring, that's not the impression I get from _The Hobbit_ at least, though he, not knowing the history, wouldn't know how important it was. Elrond would. : There may be other possible combinations of these factors.

I'll toss out a third possibility. Glorfindel knows that Frodo has been wounded by the Morgul-knife and that the Nazgul have not attacked since then. He knows also that the knife wound will eventually place Frodo under the power of the Nazgul. Since the Nazgul seemed content to more or less wait for this to happen, logic suggests that for whatever reason, their most important goal is to capture Frodo. Therefore, the others are not in danger if Frodo goes ahead.

So it is not strictly necessary for Glorfindel to have explicit knowledge of the Ring, although at worst he could have probably have made some educated guesses.

Now that line of reasoning certainly does not rule out the possibility that Glorfindel knew of the Ring. The question (IMO) comes down to how much did Elrond know? I think that he probably knew a great deal. As you pointed out, Bilbo wasn't exactly the most discreet fellow in the world. An interesting side question is how much did Gandalf confide in Elrond? We know that he confided in Aragorn and that he withheld info from Saruman. Best guess is that Gandalf did in fact share his suspicions with Elrond, who then suggested that Aragorn might be a useful guy to have on the team.