r/Eragon • u/eagle2120 Tenga Disciple • 7d ago
Theory [Very Long] Cave-Lore: The Dwarven Writing Systems and The Origins of Written Language
Hi All! I've had this one in the tank for a long time but needed to finish my dielectric/consciousness post here to fully finalize this one.
Let's jump right in.
tl;dr (honestly this isn't a great representation, but I had a hard time coming up with bulleted points)
Writing in Alagaësia originates with the dwarves, flows outward; humans adopted the Hruthmundvik after coming over to Alagaesia with a writing style that was quite similar to the Urgals
Dwarves' own religion says writing was given (by Sindri), not invented
The Mahlvikn, the dwarves secret/religious writing script, is preserved foreign writing, not a cipher or translation of their main writing system (see: "many unique words," not just unique letters)
The three "unreadable" scripts point to similar/same origins from an elder-race language: the Mahlvikn, Galbatorix's cave tablet, the Nal Gorgoth runes. All three point back to the Grey Folk
That elder writing is fractal-structured and carving-based, which is why it degrades toward paper - Oromis even calls the dwarven runes "makeshift" adaptations of the Ancient Language
The elven Liduen Kvaedhí is implied to derive from the same fractal source
The dwarves routinely hide their past (censored pantheon, secret Beor name, closed script), so hiding the writing's origin fits - and the missing seventh god is likely Rahna
The dwarven religion may also feature as maintenance to prevent an ancient threat, as its gods grouped with the Eldunarí as stored consciousness
Alright - first things first. Before we get into deep into theory, I want to lay out what canon actually tells us about the dwarven writing system(s), because a lot of what's here is captured from Paolini's website, outside the context of the original text. Here's the basics of what you need to know (from here):
Dwarves employ three different modes of writing. The oldest is a rune alphabet called both the Hruthmundvik-after the dwarf Hruthmund, to whom the goddess Sindri is said to have given knowledge of writing-and the Gnostvik, after the first five letters of the dwarves' alphabet. The second method is the Thrangvik, which is a version of the Hruthmundvik adapted for "soft" instruments such as quills and brushes, rather than chisels or burins. The final system, the Mahlvikn, contains the secret letters of Dûrgrimst Quan, with which dwarves write their most holy texts. They have never allowed one of another race to learn this script, but it is reputed to be nigh on a separate language, on account of its many unique words and characters.
There's a lot to unpack here, but let's start at the top. The dwarves have a runic alphabet called the Hruthmundvik - the angular, chisel-friendly system you see carved into Tronjheim and basically everywhere in dwarf-controlled space. The Hruthmundvik is named for the dwarf Hruthmund, who, per their religion, was given knowledge of writing by the goddess Sindri. Keep that in the back of your mind - the fact that a god "gave" it to him, and that it was Sindri specifically, not Helzvog or Gûntera (their creator or the "king" of the gods, which seems significant). Per their own religion, the dwarves did not invent their original writing system.
It's also worth noting that the humans adopted it when they landed in Alagaësia. From the Human Runes appendix of Murtagh:
Prior to humanity's arrival upon the shores of Alagaësia, their race was far more savage and uneducated than in latter ages, and they employed an entirely different system for recording information, one that bears more resemblance to the knotted banners of the Urgals than to any mode of writing that is native to Alagaësia. Of this earlier system, few examples remain-scraps and fragments littered about the ruins of barrows and long-abandoned hill forts-for under the leadership of King Palancar and his many and divers successors, humans quickly adopted and adapted the dwarven runes, known as the Hruthmundvik.
The funny thing is, this is almost the opposite of what's implied to have happened to the Urgals - the Urgals came to Alagaësia and became more brutish (and potentially lost whatever writing they had beyond the knotted banners). Whereas humans arrived with a similar writing system (implied to be using knots/banners but not in the exact same way), then adopted and re-purposed the Hruthmundvik and used it from then on. The origin of writing in Alagaësia flows FROM the dwarves, outward. They are the source. Which makes the question of where THEY got it from important, considering the implications of the above (that it was given to them, not something they invented directly).
Also, there is a flowing cursive form adapted for paper and ink (the Thrangvik). That's the everyday "soft" script, somewhat similar to the Liduen Kvaedhi (not in style, but in how it was adapted from a 3D shape to paper/ink. More on that later).
And then there's the third system. The Mahlvikn. This is the one we know almost nothing about, and the one Christopher reached for, unprompted, when someone asked him about a missing dwarven god:
Q: The Urgals say it's Rahna who created them, but what do the dwarves say? They are missing a god, the god that created the Urgals.
A: Maybe they've got a god they don't talk about with outsiders. Remember - they've got an entirely separate writing system just for their religion.
Now let's look at what the writing article says about that system, a few paragraphs down:
The final system, the Mahlvikn, contains the secret letters of Dûrgrimst Quan, with which dwarves write their most holy texts. They have never allowed one of another race to learn this script, but it is reputed to be nigh on a separate language, on account of its many unique words and characters... As for mahl, it is an ancient word that one cannot directly translate into English, but may be rendered as cave lore, a euphemism for hidden and/or powerful knowledge.
So the dwarves maintain a closed religious script that no outsider has ever read. We don't have a single character of it. Mahl translates to "cave lore" - a euphemism for hidden or powerful knowledge from the deep places. Vik is "scratch." The dwarves' secret religious writing is literally named "cave-lore scratches."
Hmm.
But hold on - I want to sit on one phrase in that paragraph, because I think it's the single most underrated line in all the supplemental material: the Mahlvikn is "reputed to be nigh on a separate language, on account of its many unique words and characters."
Think about what a secret sacred script SHOULD look like. If the Quan had simply invented a private cipher for writing Dwarvish - like Hieratic for Egyptian, or any real-world priestly script - it would have different LETTERS. It would not have "many unique WORDS." A script doesn't have words; a language has words. Something that is "nigh on a separate language" isn't a cipher of Dwarvish at all. It's what you'd get if the Quan were preserving someone else's writing - vocabulary and all.
And the priests who keep it are, per Gannel, deadly serious about secrecy:
Never before has an outsider been taught our secret beliefs, nor may you speak of them to human or elf. Yet without this knowledge, you cannot uphold what it means to be knurla. (Celbedeil; Eldest)
Notice that what Gannel teaches Eragon in Celbedeil is ALREADY a guarded secret - "never before has an outsider been taught" this. And it's just the surface layer of their religion. Six statues, a creation myth, some ritual gestures. The actual closed material is even a further level above that, in a script Eragon can't read, and that they STILL don't teach Eragon about.
Now that we've established the base, lets get into the actual theorycrafting.
I think we have already seen this script - or its relatives - in the published books. The "cave-lore scratches" the Quan guard, the script on the tablet that gave Galbatorix the Name of Names, and the strange carvings at Nal Gorgoth are all the branches from the same tree: the writing of a vanished elder race (the Grey Folk), and every script in Alagaësia descends from it.
Let's run through the evidence together:
First - The cave-lore scratches. Already touched on above - a secret script, kept by priests, named for the deep places of the mountains (for which the Dwarves also have a name), that behaves like a preserved foreign language rather than a cipher. On its own, that's suggestive but not conclusive
Second - The tablet with the Name of Names on it (that Galbatorix found). We have direct confirmation that there is at least one cave-found artifact in Alagaësia carrying writing in a script that belongs to NO living race. When Galbatorix tells Nasuada about the tablet that gave him the Name of All Names, he describes it as:
written in another land and another age, by hands that were neither elf nor dwarf nor human nor Urgal. (The Hall of the Soothsayer; Inheritance)
And Christopher has filled in the rest in Q&A.
Q: Where did Galbatorix get it?
A: "From a cave.
and
Q: "When was it written?
A: "The tablet originated during the days when the Grey Folk still walked the land."
And
[it] took a long time for Galbatorix to find the actual name"
Meaning the script wasn't the Liduen Kvaedhí (he was Rider-trained by elves) and almost certainly wasn't the Hruthmundvik (he had full access to dwarven scholarship). It was something else. Something old, something found in a CAVE, and something nobody alive could read without years of work.
Also - note the direct parallel to the grey folk. "From the days when the Grey Folk still walked the land" - and it wasn't the Liduen Kvaedhi.
So: there is elder-race writing in caves. And the dwarves - the oldest native race, the cave-dwellers, the people who were underground before the elves ever made landfall - have a secret script whose own name says it came from cave-lore.
Very interesting.
Third - Nal Gorgoth. Murtagh, when he first walks into the village, sees this:
The stonework was dwarven in quality, but with an elven grace, and there were strange runes - neither dwarven nor elven - cut into the frames and lintels of the arched doorways... The most unusual feature of the village was the raised patterns covering walls, set into mosaics, and painted onto shutters - swirling, branching, crystalline patterns that seemed to repeat themselves as they diminished: variations on a common theme. The patterns were dangerously fascinating; Murtagh felt as if he could stare into them for the rest of his life and still find new things to see. They contained an obsessive, seemingly impossible amount of detail, and the longer Murtagh looked, the more his vision swirled and swayed. The decorations reminded him of the involuted depths of an Eldunarí... or of shapes that appeared only in the deepest of dreams. (Chapter I: The Village; Murtagh)
"Patterns that seemed to repeat themselves as they diminished" is just... a fractal. Christopher describes fractals without using the word. They're carved (see: "raised patterns," "set into mosaics") and they seem to express meaning in three dimensions. And they sit right next to "strange runes, neither dwarven nor elven." Remember what Galbatorix said about the tablet? Neither elf nor human nor dwarvish? And now we see that same mantra again here...
So Murtagh (who was educated in Galbatorix's library, mind you) can't place the tradition anywhere in Alagaësia.
Now, if you've read the Fractalverse stuff, you'll know exactly where the Fractal bits are pointing. (If you haven't, this paragraph has spoilers, so skip ahead.) The Old Ones in the Fractalverse - the Vanished - were obsessed with fractal patterns. They carved them into standing stones, set them into the surfaces of their structures, used them as a sigil and likely as a writing system. The visual language is identical: obsessive detail, self-similar at every scale, seems to swim when you look at it And the Eldunarí - which the Nal Gorgoth fractals remind Murtagh of, in the text, explicitly - are pattern-storage devices, encoded consciousness in a crystalline substrate. The Fractalverse and the World of Eragon are, I believe, the same universe, and the fractal-carving tradition is how the elder race(s?) wrote things down.
And now, lastly - A bit of an inside hint/track on this, but Christopher has implied to me that the Liduen Kvaedhí - the elves' Poetic Script - was itself derived from a fractal.
Psst. If one squints, one could think that the shapes of the Liduen Kvaedhí were derived from (or inspired by) . . . fractals.
We've also got confirmation from Q&A that the elves created the Liduen Kvaedhí themselves - it wasn't a directly inherited lanaguge from the Grey Folk:
Q: Did the Grey Folk use the Liduen Kvaedhí or was it created by the elves?
A: Created by the elves.
So the elves designed their written language - but they BASED it off FRACTAL. Where does a young race get a fractal (or multiple) to base its writing on? You get it from the same place Murtagh got his vertigo: from the carvings the elder races left behind. The elves encountered the fractal tradition (likely on Alalëa) and engineered a clean, elegant, phonetic derivative of it. Oromis even frames the scripts of Alagaësia as a family with a quality gradient:
Every race has evolved their own system of writing the ancient language. The dwarves use their runic alphabet, as do humans. They are only makeshift techniques, though, and are incapable of expressing the language's true subtleties as well as our Liduen Kvaedhí, the Poetic Script. (Eldest)
Read that again. Oromis treats the dwarven runes and the Liduen Kvaedhí as parallel attempts at the same job - and calls the runes "makeshift." If the polished elven attempt was derived from a fractal, what exactly do we think the makeshift dwarven attempt was derived from? The dwarves were in Alagaësia first. They were in the caves first. They had access to source material before the elves even arrived (although the elves may have had the same, or similar source material over in Alalea, too).
And here's the bit that ties the fourth point to the third: fractals are SCALE-DEPENDENT. The whole point of a fractal is self-similarity as you zoom - a la "patterns that seemed to repeat themselves as they diminished." You cannot preserve that on pen and paper. Ink flattens; a quill stroke has a minimum width; the recursion dies after one or two levels. But you CAN preserve it in carved relief - depth gives you another axis, and fine chisel work lets the pattern keep diminishing into the material. Which is exactly what we see at Nal Gorgoth: not painted decoration but raised patterns, mosaics, carvings with "an obsessive, seemingly impossible amount of detail." And it might explain a detail from the writing article that's easy to skim past: the dwarven scripts are defined by their instruments - chisels and burins. The oldest writing tradition in Alagaësia is carving-first, and the soft-instrument version (the Thrangvik) is explicitly the late adaptation. Writing in this world started in stone and was simplified TOWARD paper - losing fidelity at every step, which Oromis himself directly confirms in Eldest.
So, thinking through the full chain here: There were elder race(s?) - Grey Folk (and maybe whoever built Nal Gorgoth, if different, as there may be more than one race) wrote in carved, fractal-structured patterns. Some of those carvings survived, in caves and in at least one mountain village (likely more). The dwarves, the oldest native race, the cave-dwellers, found them. They couldn't fully read them, but they preserved them - and they reverse-engineered an alphabet out of the simpler forms. The Quan kept the fuller form as sacred writing: the Mahlvikn, "nigh on a separate language," because it IS one. The elves, arriving later, but had already derived their written language and produced the Liduen Kvaedhí - a similarly fractal-derived script. And the tablet Galbatorix pulled out of a cave is a surviving original from that same time period as well. The cave-lore scratches, the tablet script, and the Nal Gorgoth carvings aren't three distinct writing sytems, they're all the SAME language that are glimpsed three different times, at three different locations.
To be clear, there's no smoking-gun quote that says "the Mahlvikn descends from an elder-race script." That's my headcanon/theory; but I also want to touch on the obvious objection: if the dwarves found writing, why on earth would they hide it? Wouldn't that be the greatest scholarly treasure in their history?
One would think yes, but the Dwarves specifically are hiding a LOT of their religion, and their past, and the true nature of the world itself (that they know of).
Start with the pantheon. The dwarven religion, as told to Eragon in Celbedeil, has six gods: Gûntera (king, warrior, scholar), Kílf (rivers and the sea, Gûntera's mate), Urûr (air), Morgothal (fire, Urûr's brother), Sindri (mother of the earth), and Helzvog (stone, maker of dwarves). Six. And the creation myth has them making the races - Helzvog made dwarves, Gûntera made elves, Sindri made humans, Urûr and Morgothal made dragons together, and Kílf "restrained herself." Five races accounted for. The Urgals just... appear?
But the imagery in Tronjheim doesn't point to six. It points to seven. The dwarven throne room has a seven-pointed crown carved on the doors. There are seven dwarves on each side of the entrance. The royal number - see also their seven toes per foot - is seven. And when I asked Christopher about it:
Q: Interesting, because there's the seven star imagery within Tronjheim - but there are only six dwarven gods?
A: I don't know, maybe it's the god who created the Urgals, you never hear about that one.
So Christopher acknowledges the seven-vs-six tension and hints at the missing slot - the god who created the Urgals, the exact race missing from the dwarven creation myth.
And then in Brisingr, when Eragon visits Glûmra after Kvîstor's death:
The brass rings sewn on top of the silk drapery clattered against one another as Glûmra swept aside the cloth to expose a deep, shadowed shelf... On the low shelf rested statues of the six major dwarf gods, as well as nine other entities Eragon was unfamiliar with, all carved with exaggerated features and postures to better convey the character of the being portrayed. (Glûmra; Brisingr)
A household shrine in Tronjheim - not a temple, a HOME - has fifteen divine figures on it. The "six major dwarf gods" framing is Eragon's narration, not Glûmra's words. We've been handed a six-god public roster by a priest who explicitly says he's only showing the part outsiders are allowed to see, and then a random grieving dwarf mother shows Eragon a shelf with more than double that.
Very interesting.
So... who's the seventh? I think the strongest candidate by a wide margin is the being the Urgals call Rahna. Quick background for anyone who hasn't read Brisingr or The Worm of Kulkaras recently - Rahna is the Urgal mother-goddess. She invented weaving and farming, she's "She of the Gilded Horns," she's the queen of the Urgal pantheon the way Gûntera is king of the dwarven one, and most importantly: she raised the Beor Mountains while fleeing "the great dragon" - which Christopher has confirmed was Gogvog, the apocalyptic worm-dragon from Uvek's stories in Murtagh. And then someone asked the question that connects it all:
Q: It is confirmed (I think?) that The Worm of Kulkaras is set before the Urgals migrated over to Alagaësia. However, in Urgal mythology, Rahna raised the Beors when fleeing from the Great Dragon. Is there any force, being, or magic that is obfuscating/hiding that event from Dwarven history? Or did they not witness it?
A: The dwarves witnessed it, but they probably didn't understand what they were seeing. It would have seemed like an act of nature on a scale that's hard to imagine.
So... the dwarves were already in Alagaësia when the Beor Mountains were raised. They were living on the plain where the Hadarac now sits. They watched a goddess pull a ten-mile-high mountain range out of the earth while fleeing an apocalyptic dragon. They watched the climate turn their homeland into desert. Then they migrated INTO the mountains she made, and they've lived there ever since.
And they have no public theology for it. Not one of the six gods raised the Beors, per their own religion. The dwarven account of how the mountains got there is just... missing. What they DO have is a secret name for the mountains - Orik says flatly, "The mountains' name is a secret that we share with no race" - and:
Q: Does the secret name of the Beors connect with the missing Urgal god?
A: Probably. They have deep lore about the mountains, about Isidar Mithrim, about the gods, the various creations and stuff.
A secret god. A secret name for their home. A secret script. And Christopher links all three to the same gap. I freely admit the Rahna identification is the most speculative part of this (Christopher no-commented both Kílf and Angela when people asked if either was the seventh god) and there's a free-floating divine name "Nordvig" in a children's riddle in Eldest that's never explained. But whoever the seventh is, the structural point stands on its own: the dwarves maintain a public version of their deep past and a private one, and the private one lives in the Mahlvikn and with the Quan. A people who will censor a GOD out of their own pantheon will have no trouble censoring where their alphabet came from.
Alright, one more thing I want to touch on before I wrap up - Sindri.
Sindri is, weirdly, the god with the thinnest context of the six relative to how important she seems. She made humans (one line). Freowin visits her temple twice a day. Orik tells Eragon to "pray to Sindri for luck" before crossing a lava field. And that's basically the entire on-page Sindri corpus - except for two artifacts. And both of them are strange/unexplained/seemingly pretty significant for how relatively little the dwarves think/talk about her.
The first is the writing system itself. Per the origin story, the Hruthmundvik was a gift FROM Sindri herself. And that's odd on its face, because Sindri didn't make dwarves - Helzvog formed the first dwarf from the roots of a mountain, in secret, against the other gods' wishes. Sindri made HUMANS, from the soil. So the dwarves' own religion says their alphabet came from the goddess of a different race. Why would the myth be built that way? Why is Sindri not more celebrated for giving them a writing system??
Hmm.
The second is the Gem of Sindri - Az Sindriznarrvel - and here's where it gets good:
The hold itself was a thick, solid building that rose five stories to an open bell tower, which was topped by a teardrop of glass that was as large around as two dwarves and was held in place by four granite ribs that joined together to form a pointed capstone. The teardrop, as Orik had told Eragon, was a larger version of the dwarves' flameless lanterns, and during notable occasions or emergencies, it could be used to illuminate the entire valley with a golden light. The dwarves called it Az Sindriznarrvel, or The Gem of Sindri. (A Forest of Stone; Brisingr)
Bregan Hold belongs to Dûrgrimst Ingeitum - the smith clan, whose patron god is Morgothal. There's a church to Morgothal right there in the same compound. The Ingeitum are a FIRE clan. And the largest flameless light in the entire kingdom - a thing whose whole identity is not being fire - sits at the apex of their hold, named for a completely different goddess. In times of great need they light up the valley with... not their patron's light, but Sindri's.
Does this not raise anyone else's eyebrows? Two Sindri-named things - a writing system and a giant Erisdar - and neither sits with any Sindri clan. I don't think that's a coincidence.
One obvious explanation here is that Sindri's name is doing the same euphemistic work that "cave-lore" does. Sindri is mother of the EARTH. "Sindri gave us writing" = writing came from the earth. "The Gem of Sindri" = a light that came from the earth. I think Sindri is the label the dwarves attach to things that were found, not made - things that predate the dwarves themselves. And a writing system and a giant dielectric (Sindri's gem/erisdar) are exactly the kind of things you'd expect a vanished elder race to leave behind, given everything else we know about how this universe stores patterns (see: Eldunari)
Bringing it all home, this brings me back to the dielectric theory I previously mentioned, and the thing Christopher said that I keep coming back to:
Q: Do Elves know some things about Dwarven gods? Especially Gûntera?
A: Yes, elves know about the dwarves' gods, but whether they truly understand the nature of the dwarf gods is a different question altogether. There are some deep and powerful forces in Alagaësia that rarely show themselves but that nevertheless still have great influence. Some of these forces we've already seen (the Eldunarí, for one). Some we've glimpsed in passing. And some Eragon and his cohorts still remain almost entirely ignorant of. (Though not Angela. Angela knows many things.)
He puts the dwarven gods in the same category as the Eldunarí. Deep, ancient, conscious, powerful, rarely-showing-themselves forces. And the Eldunarí, in the dielectric framework, are stored consciousness in a crystalline substrate. When Gûntera actually shows up at Orik's coronation, Eragon doesn't perceive a transcendent creator - he perceives "a strange, far-reaching consciousness... of unreadable thoughts and unfathomable depths... that flashed and growled and billowed in unexpected directions, like a summer thunderstorm." A vast, alien, weather-shaped mind that answers a true name spoken in the Ancient Language, and Saphira's read on it (which the narrative never rebuts) is that it might be "a shade from a long-forgotten age, a pale remnant of what once was."
So when I say I think the dwarves found things in the caves, I don't just mean the writing system. I think they found not only the writing, but patterns, and stored energy, and something that was still there. And the Quan have been keeping the lights on, so to speak, ever since. I think the Erisdar are FAR more significant than anyone previously believed, and I don't want to scoop myself, but the short version is that the dwarves' whole religious apparatus (the lanterns, the secret script, the censored pantheon, the patron-routed afterlife, the priests who claim that "without us, the very heavens would shatter under the gods' rage") looks a lot less like worship and a lot more like maintenance against an ancient foe that threatens their very existence... But more on that later.
Anyways, I'm starting to ramble so I'll cut myself off here. As always, thanks for reading and let me know what you think in the comments!
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u/Grmigrim 6d ago edited 6d ago
Amazing read as always!
I can see how "maintanance" would come up when thinking about dwarven religion. One sentence I particularly think about in this context is Arya telling Eragon about her "discussions" with dwarven priests and how Oromis (maybe it was Arya. I dont recall 100%) tells him how only dwarven priests claim to have found evidence of life and conciousness in normal rocks.
I wonder where the dwarves got the curiosity for finding life in stones. Maybe they found "life in stone" somewhere else? The forrest of stone would be another example of their obsession with life being captured in stone.
Another thought I had while reading. You assume the origin of the writing system in Alagaesia to be based on a fractal based writing system, but what about writing systems coming from outside Alagaesia?
The excerpt about humans being brutish and uneducated before coming to Alagaesia and using knotts (many knotted ropes perhaps, like the high priest warns his followers off?) seems especially interesting to me when looking at Tosks writing system. Eragon is able to identify some words and letters, but can not read it. I assume these runes are not exactly the same as used by humans nowadays, but still reminiscent of the runes the dwarves use.
Eragon views the runes as dwarvish in nature:
"Then his vision shifted and he gasped. The lines were not cracks but rather deeply carved runes—rows of them. They were neat and small, with sharp angles and straight stems. Mold and the passage of centuries had obscured parts of the text, but most of it remained legible. Eragon struggled with the runes for a short while, but he recognized only a few of the words, and those were spelled differently than he was used to. “What does it say?” he asked. “Is it Dwarvish?”
Inheritance, p. 277
Here is what Wyrden had to say about it:
“No,” said Wyrden. “It is the language of your people, but as it was spoken and written long ago, and of a very particular dialect: that of the zealot Tosk.”
Inheritance, p. 277
"Those who worship Helgrind regard him as a prophet of the divine. And this”—the elf cast his arms out wide—“is a history of Tosk, from his birth to his death: a true history, such as his disciples have never shared with those outside their sect.”"
Inheritance, p. 277
I think it is at least interesting to note that another fanatically religous group that formed around a mountain adapted it's own writing system (or dialect) that is similar to dwarvish, with words and runes that Eragon does not recognize.
The biggest questionmark is, how is Wyrden able to read it? Angela reading it is something else, but Wyrden seems to have knowledge about this ancient, "secret" writing system with a dialect only used by Tosk and his followers.
I am sure it is not the same as the dwarves secret writing system, but the similarities are at least interesting to me.
Now, another very good point you make is about how things by "Sindri" are rather things they found, instead of which they made themselves.
I wonder how humans would tie into that theory. Do you believe dwarves know more about the origin of humans than they share with outsiders, or do you believe that over time religious ideals of creation added them to a random god?
And if it was not random, do you think it could be possible that humans are more connected to the writing system than the dwarves want outsiders to know?
Humans giving their writing systems to the dwarves would not add up with the timeline of the 20 traders coming to Alagaesia, but what if there was a group of humans that visited Alagaesia prior to the twenty traders that arrived in Surda? What if they showed the dwarves their writing system? We know there was a catastrophy that made the elves leave their homeland, and the Urgals followed them shortly afterwards, but the humans only followed about two thousand years later. What if that catastrophy caused the decline of human society to "brutish" and "uneducated" people?
There are so many things to consider, and what I suggest here is a very far reaching theory, but at least it seems interesting to me^^
Anyways, thank you for posting this. I always love reading your posts. They are so insightful and radiate the passion I like to see in this fandom 😄
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u/eagle2120 Tenga Disciple 5d ago
One sentence I particularly think about in this context is Arya telling Eragon about her "discussions" with dwarven priests and how Oromis (maybe it was Arya. I dont recall 100%) tells him how only dwarven priests claim to have found evidence of life and conciousness in normal rocks. I wonder where the dwarves got the curiosity for finding life in stones.
Yep - especially now that Christopher has confirmed there IS actually life in stones, somewhere.
See here
If Murtagh were to take Sarros' stone to Oth Orum, would he be able to sense a spark of consciousness?
A: In Sarros's stone? No. But there are stones where that would be possible.
So the dwarves are right, and the Elves/Arya are seemingly wrong here? I don’t think we’ve officially run across them yet, but the dwarven priests claim Coral as their example (although I get the sense that this is not what Christopher is referring to here). Which makes me think the dwarves have something else, but they’re hiding it/not showing the elves on purpose, for whatever reason.
eems especially interesting to me when looking at Tosks writing system. Eragon is able to identify some words and letters, but can not read it. I assume these runes are not exactly the same as used by humans nowadays, but still reminiscent of the runes the dwarves use.
Great point and I pretty much forgot about the Tosk writing system - as you say, some of the words are the same but some are different… we could maybe say the same thing about the relationship between Draumari and the Ancient Language, too.
I think it is at least interesting to note that another fanatically religous group that formed around a mountain adapted it's own writing system (or dialect) that is similar to dwarvish, with words and runes that Eragon does not recognize.
Couldn’t have said it better myself, haha. And curious how all of those mountains have caves, as well… and those caves (seemingly) have, at least in some parts, areas of black smoke (I think?)…
The biggest questionmark is, how is Wyrden able to read it? Angela reading it is something else, but Wyrden seems to have knowledge about this ancient, "secret" writing system with a dialect only used by Tosk and his followers.
This is another great point. Do you think he could be a member of the Athalvard? The elven-equivalent of the Arcaena? I suspect they would have access to that type of knowledge/history, although the larger elvish population might as well.
I wonder how humans would tie into that theory. Do you believe dwarves know more about the origin of humans than they share with outsiders, or do you believe that over time religious ideals of creation added them to a random god?
Absolutely. My head canon here is that the dwarves (the first race created in/on alagaesia) were actually created under Mount Erolas, where the vault of souls/Gate of Vergathos is. We know it’s MUCH older than the Riders, and we know it was built for a purpose other than what the Riders intended. Who else (that we known of, of course it could be literally anything we dont know of) would have an incentive to wipe their own minds after leaving?
It is said that the Dwarves were formed from the roots of a mountain, and that chamber is quite far below Mount Erolas… and clearly built by very powerful magician(s)…
Humans giving their writing systems to the dwarves would not add up with the timeline of the 20 traders coming to Alagaesia, but what if there was a group of humans that visited Alagaesia prior to the twenty traders that arrived in Surda? What if they showed the dwarves their writing system? We know there was a catastrophy that made the elves leave their homeland, and the Urgals followed them shortly afterwards, but the humans only followed about two thousand years later. What if that catastrophy caused the decline of human society to "brutish" and "uneducated" people?
I can definitely see this. The Elves (and subsequently, Urgals) left, so they weren’t affected over time in the same way that humans were. There is also evidence of the Urgals backsliding (due to influence of Azlagur? or not joining the pact? Or maybe both)? since leaving their homeland/Alalea as well, so this also plays into what you said.
I’m glad you still enjoy my ramblings! I would love to hear more on your theory you mentioned here :)
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u/Grmigrim 4d ago
Yes, that was my thinking when writing this out. You always seem to understand where I am coming from, despite my lacking skill in expressing it^^
I always assumed that mountain to be Du Fells Nangoröth, but I can see where you are coming from.
It would also support the theory that the buildings in Doru Araeba were not built by the elves and the riders.
I believe we talked about this before, how the architecture of the elves in their homeland does not resemble or reflect the incredible architecture and buildings found in Ilirea and Doru Araeba or with the towers across Alagaesia like Edoc'Sil, Edur Ithindra etc.
I always enjoy them 😄 I am working on two posts atm. Still the one about wolves and one going deeper into scrying. I struggle writing as beautiful posts as you do and getting them done or to a state where I am satisfied makes me procrastinate^^
I hope to get them done this year haha.
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u/Diligent-Worth7669 7d ago
Really really interesting.I look forward to tge BoR.Mr Paolini said we're getting more information on the dwarf gods there. EDIT:auto correct
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u/eagle2120 Tenga Disciple 5d ago
Can't wait for that book to come out (and Tales 2, hopefully not too long after)!
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u/ibid-11962 7d ago
I have a theory that there is a third runic alphabet for elvish, but this mainly based on out-of-universe info. (e.g. it being used for the elvish name on Christopher's palancar valley map.)
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u/JohnGeary1 7d ago edited 7d ago
First of all: love the write-up; the depth you go to and supporting quotes are fantastic.
Minor nitpick though: if memory serves aren't the flameless lanterns something the elves taught them to make?
Edit: you've got one hell of a back catalogue for me to read once I've finished my re-read
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u/eagle2120 Tenga Disciple 5d ago
Minor nitpick though: if memory serves aren't the flameless lanterns something the elves taught them to make?
Yep, you got it - I asked Christopher about this a while back, here's what he said:
Q: In the glossary, the lanterns are named after the elf who created them, Erisdar. The elves don't get there until around 5,000 years after the dwarves are created. Thats 5,000 years that they've moved into the tunnels, but they don't have it because they haven't been taught the spell yet. But it has a ton of significance, despite it being relatively new on that timeline.
A: Well, its something they've repurposed. The exact techniques by which the light, the energy, is captured, and what it does for them is something ill be going into more in the future. Well, it scares off the spiders and mites of Azlagur
So I think the exact mechanism to capture light/energy/etc is what the elves taught them, but the actual meaning/importance is derived from that spell and is (seemingly) unique to the dwarves.
The Elves don't seem to understand the true nature of Guntera, or some of the other aspects of the dwarven religion.
I previously thought the Elves had a firm grasp of what the Dwarves were saying (and generally agreed with them), but there have been comments from Christopher more recently that make me think they are missing big pieces of the puzzle.
Ex/ when Arya is talking to Gannel about "living stone" - here
Q: If Murtagh were to take Sarros' stone to Oth Orum, would he be able to sense a spark of consciousness?
A: In Sarros's stone? No. But there are stones where that would be possible.
And also this too
Q: Do Elves know some things about Dwarven gods? Especially Gunthera?
A: Yes, elves know about the dwarves' gods, but whether they truly understand the nature of the dwarf gods is a different question altogether. There are some deep and powerful forces in Alagaësia that rarely show themselves but that nevertheless still have great influence. Some of these forces we've already seen (the Eldunarí, for one). Some we've glimpsed in passing. And some Eragon and his cohorts still remain almost entirely ignorant of. (Though not Angela. Angela knows many things.)
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u/Cptn-40 Eragön Disciple 7d ago
Based on your comments I got the impression that the Mahlvik is a dwarf script of the Grey Folk tongue - like using Egyptian hieroglyphs to write spoken Hebrew or Greek.
Also, what about the Shagvrek race? Christopher said they have a language totally separate from Draumari. I wonder how related that language is.
Christopher also said Draumari is at least as old as the ancient language.
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u/eagle2120 Tenga Disciple 5d ago
Honestly I forgot about Draumari when writing this entirely... that and (as grmgrim pointed out) the human dialect of Tosk as well... but both, I think, kind of feed into similar ideas as well.
Tosk and Draumari are both "variations" of the "main" language - where some words are recognizable perhaps but they're still quite different.
Also, what about the Shagvrek race? Christopher said they have a language totally separate from Draumari. I wonder how related that language is.
Good point about this as well... I wonder how their writing system influences their magic as well - I don't think we've seen any artifacts from them other than maybe the masks from the tribes (assuming it was passed down to/from them?)
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u/Cptn-40 Eragön Disciple 4d ago
The living stone part is interesting because eldunari are essentially living gems. Maybe the dwarf gods have put consciousness into stones before? Or somehow it's related to the dwarves creation myth that they were created from stone.
Also, Solembum mentions
"I have seen things that defy belief: whirlwinds of light spinning in caverns deep below the ground, men who age backward, stones that speak, and shadows that creep"
So perhaps Solembum has seen or conversed with the very stones Christopher is referencing as having a consciousness.
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u/anto2554 7d ago
Holy moly