Silmarillion friends! Please come and discuss with me the question that has been bugging me since yesterday: CURRENCY.
Do the elves have a currency system? Is there one in Beleriand at all?? Do humans and dwarves have currency, but the elves choose to opt out??? I need to know.
I was harassing goblin-bee about this last night and we agreed that probably the Elves at least have an elaborate trade system of jewels etc going on (and that Caranthir gets introduced to currency by the dwarves and feels like all his birthdays have come at once, and then tries to get all the rest of the Noldor to adopt it, with zero success. It’s the only thing he and Finrod have in common), but at some point SOMEONE has to have created coins. They’re certainly in circulation by the third age!
I feel like it is probable that currency was adopted second-age onwards, but I am fascinated by the how’s and the why’s of actual life in Beleriand, because we don’t get much of it. It’s all very well if you’re an elf prince sulking around your misery fortress, but what about everyone else! I want to know if the dwarves had an amazing sophisticated mint and were laughing at the elves the whole time. I want to know if men developed something out of outright frustration at constant war almost definitely ruining their crop rotation. I have so many questions!!!
Given that Tolkien concocted words in Qenya (the prototype for Quenya) for coins (kulusta = gold coin; telpilin = silver coin – see Qenya Lexicon if you can get your hands on it ), one might extrapolate that at some point along the line, currency might have been used among the Elves. At any rate, I’ve run with that, i.e., there’s currency used in my interpretation of Ost-in-Edhil and Eregion, and presumably in Second Age Lindon, too.
Also, have a look at the erstwhile Darth Fingon’s Linguistic Foolery articles on the Silmarillion Writers’ Guild for all sorts of fun Elvish words! Plenty of fodder for fannish extrapolations there! :^)
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