So here’s a question I’ve been pondering on-and-off for quite a while now: what might the Elessar brooch given to Aragorn by Galadriel, and from which he derived his kingly name, have actually looked like?
The brooch was said to be made in Gondolin, sometime in the 1st age, by an elf smith named Enerdhil, who then passed it to Idril, who in turn passed it on to her son, Eärendil, who bore it with him on his journey to Valinor - and it was then delivered back to Middle-earth by Mithrandir, who gave it to Galadriel with instructions to pass it on to its final keeper when the time came.
It is described as a bright green gem, set in the center of a silver brooch shaped like an eagle, and that the stone itself held the magical property of showing any who looked through it a vision of all things old and withered as young and vibrant once again. This is the extent of the description, however, which leaves the actual design of the brooch up to quite a lot of interpreatation.
So what I’m after, really, is a “realistic” take on what the brooch might have looked like, given what we know of Elven culture in general, Gondolin in particular, and the mytho-history of Middle-earth as a whole. Eagles certainly appeared in art throughout early human history, but I feel like most of the eagles depicted in ancient and medieval art were rather different than most people would probably imagine today. Then, of course, there were the heraldic eagles that popped up around Europe in the Middle Ages (mostly in the Germanic lands of the Holy Roman Empire, I believe), but they have an extremely culturally-specific German vibe to me, so I’m not sure they fit with the 1st Age Elven aesthetic.
I’ve included a few pictures here of various artistic interpretations of the brooch itself, as well as historical (and historically-inspired) eagle brooches, for reference. Personally, I’m not really satisfied with any of these as a direct basis for the Elfstone’s design as it may have been intended by Tolkien himself, or as it may be reasonably interpreted based on Gondolin’s cultural and artistic sensibilities (whatever those may have been). Sadly, I don’t think we have much in the way of concrete examples to go on in the way we have examples of, say, Numenorean art and design.
So - what are your thoughts? If you were to design your idea of the quintessential Elessar brooch, what would it look like?
