RIVENDELL: THE KING UNDER THE MOUNTAIN
Below is a schematic drawing of the right-hand side of Tolkien’s watercolour Rivendell (Pictures 6) which first appeared in The Hobbit (Hobbit) in 1937 in George Allen & Unwin’s second print, and in the 1938 U.S. edition published by Houghton Mifflin. I’ve pointed out specific hidden details in that drawing. Look at my schematic in fig. 1.3 below and then look at Tolkien’s original. Can you see the man with the crown on his head hidden in the foreground cliff face at the top of the birch tree? This is the aspirational King under the Mountain who has his sights fixed on Erebor.
Erebor probably wouldn’t be visible in the distance given the interposition of the Misty Mountains but this is artistic licence to serve the riddle. Tolkien was disappointed that Houghton Mifflin cut off the top and bottom of the image (C&G 1.214). They cut off the bottom border and I presume they cut off the mountain that the crowned man is looking at. This would have spoiled Tolkien’s riddle because the man is the King under the Mountain looking at Erebor. We can pinpoint the moment when Tolkien decided to include this hidden imagery in the Rivendell watercolour to July 1937 (C&G 1.198). Tolkien created the visual riddle specifically it seems for the U.S. publication, which also was included in the second print of Allen & Unwin’s.
The Arkenstone is the “Heart of the Mountain”, the mountain that the hidden crowned man, the would-be King under the Mountain, is looking at. To paraphrase a A Clerk of Oxford, the Arkenstone is found in the Old English version of the poem Christ III in Exeter Book. The poem is about Christ’s Second Coming in which he is referred to Old English as earcnanstan, “precious stone”. The stone that is precious is also associated with the Virgin Mary in the same poem, both Christ and Mary are called æþele “noble”, the first element, earcnan, seems to mean something like “noble”, found in Anglo-Saxon royal names (A Clerk of Oxford, The words linger). “Arkenstone could be a modernization of the Old English name eorclanstán or an anglicization from the Old Norse name iarknasteinn” (Tolkien Gateway, Arkenstone). Bilbo comes into possession of the Arkenstone. He is dubbed “O Bilbo the Magnificent” by the Elvenking (Hobbit 18.236). These things would further explain the crown and identify him as Bilbo.
“Iarknasteinn” appears in The Poetic Edda. Tolkien drew his names for Gandalf and the dwarves, from the Völuspá also from The Poetic Edda. The Exeter Book also famously contains riddles including the acrostic of Tatwine, which no doubt contributed to his decision to include the Alvismæl acrostic in Hobbit riddles (Roberts 4.86). Given Tolkien’s riddle in his hidden imagery this all seems appropriate. So his framing of the LotR narrative within the Christian dates involving the earcnanstan and Rivendell as Shippey points out, is further evidence that Tolkien, in his denials, was “playing the game” when he said to Resnick, the date was “just an accident”.
