Valuable, yes. Money... not exactly. Or at least not in the modern sense. Early medievalists like myself hit this problem a lot, and it may be applicable here (since Tolkien was a medievalist too). Bear in mind that I rarely venture further than the 11th century in my work, so none of this necessarily applies after that.

The late Roman Empire was largely a monetary economy, and after its collapse, Roman coins remained in circulation. Gradually, however, they lost their value as "money", a (mostly) fixed unit of exchange, and became a barter good like jewels or cattle or grain. Merovingian, Carolingian, Anglo-Saxon, etc. etc. kings often minted coins of their own, but they did so not because they expected their people to start paying for goods with them but because minting coins was part of what kings did (and they pointed to Rome as an example).

Coins are often mentioned in the payment of dowries and ransoms, as part of tributes from noble and client kings, as payment for land, prayers, military support, and a number of goods and services that could be considered "bought" in the modern sense. However... they really weren't. Coins were included in these transactions because they were valuable as objects made of gold and silver, not because they were the physical representation of a complex economy backed by a nation and its government (like paper money- paper isn't valuable, but what it represents is). So the dowry of a Visigothic princess might include gold coins, jewelry, crowns, animals, servants, armed men, cities and provinces. The coins are important and valuable, but they aren't really money.

And on a humbler level, pennies (silver usually, sometimes lesser materials) often turn up in Old English and Old Norse texts- a couple of pennies could buy a sheep in the time of Edgar (late tenth century) or his grandson AEthelraed II, the last Anglo-Saxon king. But there weren't really enough of these pennies in circulation /in England/ for the English economy to have been considered monetary. I emphasize the "in England" part because pennies were far more important as a method of dealing with the Vikings than they were as a means for buying sheep. There had been a single coined currency in England since the early tenth century (under Aethelstan), but daily life was barter-based. The arrival of the Vikings brought an explosion in coin production, since the Danegeld (tribute to get the Vikings to go away) was paid in coins. Some of these were probably older coins (clever, really. what better way to get rid of old money?) but most were newly minted for the occasion. This is arguably still treating coins as a barter-good and tribute item, rather than as money. Much the same effect could likely have been achieved by giving the Vikings big piles of silver shaped as Monopoly houses rather than coins. The important aspect of coins wasn't what they meant (like modern money) but what they were.

It's much the same in Middle Earth. The money we see stands out because there isn't very much of it, and because most of it is silver and gold. A gold coin buys information because it's gold, not because it's a coin. A gold nugget or a piece of gold jewelry would probably work too. It seems likely to me that as the Fourth Age progressed, a monetary economy may have developed and become commonly accepted, because that seems like something Aragorn would have supported (enlightened fella that he is). But it seems to me that at the point in the Third Age when LOTR takes place, ME has a barter economy in which coins make an appearance as hoard goods, trade goods and even markers of nobility, but not as coins in the modern economic sense.

The end.

You have a good point there Best.

Elronds house /mansion /castle must have been enormous to house so many people. I am not too sure about the exact population of Rivendel, but it at its peak, it should have numbered in the thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, just after the fall of Eregion.

I wonder where did Elrond put evrybody? Large sections of the House must have been empty at the time of TLOtRs, given the exodus of elves westward and the departure of Galadriel and her people.

Good point here. There must have been more room than you'd think in Rivendell, otherwise it can't have been liveable. What other options are there? Tents in the gardens? No gardens at all (which can't be true)? 20 people lodged together in the same room?

My dear peoples, its elementary: Elrond's servants at Rivendell were members of that unique subspecies of elf known as the elfin domesticus otherwise known as your "common house elf". That is the reason why everyone was happy and no one was stuck doing the menial scuttwork against their natural desires. Now we know where JK Rowley got her ideas for the servants at her institute of higher learning.

That's kinda like the slaves in the Roman time, only the common house elves are treated better... That's your point, right, Grondy?

The point being, that by my way every elf could do their thing and be happy, rather than the worker elves having to slave away whilst their cousins fiddled into the night. The House Elves loved doing domestic work and to them it was an honor, not a millstone.

In that case, I'm with you Grondy.

About Rivendell being more like the Ted Nasmith paintings. I didn't see Rivendell between the paintings in the Art Gallery? What does it look like?

[Edited on 22/4/2002 by Grondmaster]

Yeah, a ski lodge is what I mean way back when I said the main building resembled a chalet.