Lord of the memes

Maia he

This is fun because Maija is a very common name for women in Finland. Not this generation particularly but it's like the Finnish equivalent of Mary or something to the generation that was born around 30's-40's. For some reason it was exploding in popularity from the the 1900's (as in the oughts, not the century) to 1930 in Finland. And seeing how Tolkien definitely took influence from Finnish, I wonder if there might be an actual connection.

edit I changed the example name from Jennifer to Mary as I realised "Mary Poppins" is translated as "Maija Poppanen" in Finnish

I've already forgotten most of my childhood and I'm only around 30. So I'd assume, yes.

You would forget most everything. Even big events would become fuzzy. Do you remember what you had for lunch on this date when you were 5?

Yes and no, probably. You will remember important bits and will reconstruct/imagine other things just like you do now. Even with our short lifes not all the things you "remember" actually happened.

I assume you forgot a "not" after the "but". I just looked it up though, Gandalf left Valinor for Middle Earth around 1000 T.A. I don't know about you, but I'd consider that "long after" the War of the Last Alliance.

Iirc the books themselves didn't say, but Tolkien's letters say something to the effect of the Istari only having vague memories of their time as Maia, with the exception of things that they were explicitly meant to remember, e.g. Olórin's memories of being sent back after his physical death while fighting Durin's Bane.

They know that they are, in our parlance, embodied angels or minor gods, but they don't remember a ton of where they came from

Isn’t much of the power of the Maiar in diplomacy and setting events in motion? Gandalf was as much of an interloper and manipulator as he was anything else, and his hiring Bilbo as a thief was the penultimate piece of his mission, as inadvertent as I’m not entirely sure it was. Right? No, really, I’m kinda asking, I don’t know for sure.