Every now and then someone will ask how many Elves there actually were at some point in time. There is no correct answer because J.R.R. Tolkien didn’t provide us with census figures. All we can do is guess and play number games.
It is possible to come up with some reasonable estimates, although such estimates clan vary greatly. Some people believe there must never have been more than, say, a couple hundred thousand Elves at any time. I’m of the opinion that they must have numbered in the millions at the height of their civilizations.
All discussions of Elvish populations inevitably become bogged down in the weightier issues of what constitutes “canon” and how to interpret some of the not-so-precise passages. And then one must also choose whether to rely upon texts which may not be consistent with each other even if they all seem to be “canonical”. After all, the history of the Elves passed through many phases, and is bound up with linguistic decisions as often as not.
The starting point for any guestimations lies in the essay “Quendi and Eldar”, published by Christopher Tolkien in The War of the Jewels. This material, written late in his life by J.R.R. Tolkien, is mostly consistent with The Lord of the Rings and sort of consistent with the published Silmarillion. “Mostly” and “sort of”, however, open the door to all sorts of disputes and debates. But the fact is, if you want to figure out how many Elves there could have been at any point in their history, you either begin with “Quendi and Eldar” or not at all.
So, we begin with “Quendi and Eldar” and see what works best with it.
The essay stipulates that there were originally 144 Elves (72 male and 72 female). They were divided into 14 Minyar (firsts), 56 Tatyar (seconds), and 74 Nelyar (thirds). The three groups were named for the first three Elves to awaken: Imin (one), Tata (two), and Enel (three). “Quendi and Eldar” is accompanied by a unique story, a sort of Elven fairy-tale which tells how the first Elves awoke. Some people through the years have dismissed the story as a reliable source because it is presented in the form of a children’s story, as a “just so” kind of tale.
Nonetheless, because it confirms or agrees with things written in “Quendi and Eldar” I choose to accept the story as essentially true, if somewhat pasteurized. That is, it is a genuine record of Elvish history, just as a third-grade social studies book may be regarded as a genuine record of our history despite its simplifications of many historical events.
In the story, Imin, Tata, and Enel wake up in that order. They see laying beside them the female Elves who are destined to be their mates. The three males wake the females and they begin to speak to one another, creating the primitive Elven language as they go along. Eventually the Elves go for a walk and they come upon a group of 12 sleeping Elves. Imin, seeming a bit pretentious and arrogant, suddenly claims these 12 as his special companions and followers.
The 18 Elves all get to know one another for a while before walking off again. Now they find a group of 18 Elves sleeping on the ground, and Tata follows Imin’s lead and claims these 18 for his special companions. Then they find 24 Elves, whom Enel claims, and Imin decides to be clever. He sits out the next two discoveries thinking he’ll end up with the largest group of Elves. So Tata recruits 36 more Elves and Enel recruits the last 48 to be awakened. And that’s it. There were 144 Elves, paired in 72 couples.
All Elvenkind were descended from these 144 First Elves.
When comparing the information in the tale of the First Elves (as confirmed by “Quendi and Eldar”) to the Silmarillion chapter “Of the Coming of the Elves and the Captivity of Melkor”, one finds that several standard assumptions are challenged. For example, many readers believe (quite reasonably, I suppose, given only The Silmarillion to judge by) that Ingwë, Finwë, and Elwë may be the eldest Elves. Now, The Silmarillion doesn’t actually say they are the eldest. But they are the first named Elves encountered in the narrative, and they were all alive and active when Orome needed three pigeons to take to Aman.
As Christopher Tolkien published The History of Middle-earth series, the early volumes did seem to confirm the belief that the three Eldarin kings might be the eldest of the Elves. Ingwë is stated in more than one place to have awakened first. Finwë is also said in an early version of “Quenta Silmarillion” to have been a first generation Elf. Only Elwë’s position is suspect, since he always seems to have had a brother Olwë through the various mythologies Tolkien devised over the years.
However, as the years passed and Tolkien rewrote and recomposed and re-edited the various texts which comprised “Quenta Silmarillion” or its alleged sources, the Elven kings’ histories were altered. In time the references to their having awakened at Cuivienen were obscured or completely obliterated. And the families of Ingwë and Elwë were expanded. Ingwë was given a sister, Indis, who became Finwë’s second wife. But eventually she became one of “Ingwë’s near kin” and finally the daughter of his sister. And both Cirdan and Eol were said to be members of Elwë (Thingol’s) family.
Eol has his own torqued history. He moved around from kindred to kindred but seems to have ended up back with Elwë’s family. In “Quendi and Eldar” he is actually a Tatyarin Elf, one of the Avari descended from the second kindred. Cirdan, on the other hand, is said in a couple of places to be one of Elwë’s kinsmen (the exact relationship is never defined). And then there is the question of Elmo, the “shadowy” younger brother of Elwë and Olwë who was the grandfather of Celeborn (by one genealogy).
The presence of brothers and sisters implies very strongly that neither Elwë nor Ingwë were among the first Elves. It has been argued that Ingwë’s name, derived from “ing-“, may still mean “first” (although in “The Etymologies” Ingwë is translated as “prince of Elves”, not “eldest” or “first Elf”). Taking the story of Imin, Tata, and Enel as canon, we must accept that neither Ingwë nor Elwë could be first generation Elves. So Ingwë’s name most likely refers to his position among the Minyar (and the Eldar) rather than that he was the “first to awaken”.
But Finwë remains anomalous. He has no brothers or sisters, so far as we know. And yet, neither does he have a wife until he marries Miriel Serinde. Originally Finwë and Miriel were married before the Noldor reached Beleriand, and she died while crossing the Hithaeglir (the Misty Mountains). But that tradition was abandoned so that Fëanor would be born in Aman. But moving Fëanor’s birthplace to Aman doesn’t imply that Finwë was not a first-generation Elf.
In fact, Miriel, alone of all the Noldor, had silver hair. Silver hair was supposedly the trademark of Elwë’s family. Well, hair colors among the Elves changed like the names of hobbits in the early texts of The Lord of the Rings. Although many people believe that only the Vanyar could have golden hair, there are quite a few examples of golden hair outside the Vanyar (and the house of Finarfin). Miriel’s silver hair might eventually have forced Tolkien to consider she was related to Elwë somehow, but there is no indication he ever reached that point.
So, to find a proper context for Miriel, one must look at “The Shibboleth of Fëanor”. This work, published in The Peoples of Middle-earth, indicates that Miriel was herself born in Valinor. The “Shibboleth” points out that “Ingwë” means, more or less, “chief”, and that the Vanyar called themselves Ingwëron, “the chieftains”, the first Elves. They were, technically, the oldest group by all accounts. Ingwë’s title among them was Ingwë Ingwëron “chief of the chieftains”. Nothing in these names must imply that Ingwë should have awakened first at Cuivienen, but unless Ingwë took up the name Ingwë when he set out upon the Great Journey, it seems reasonable to infer he was the leader of the Minyar when Orome found them.
Finwë was clearly of a generation older than Miriel’s, since she was born in Valinor. But since Miriel was Finwë’s first wife, she and he could not be Tatie and Tata, the second couple of Elves to awaken. So, we have pretty much confirmed that none of the three Eldarin kings were First Elves. Beyond that, we have little to work with.
Ingwë and Finwë might very well be second generation Elves. Neither need be far removed from his ancestors for any dramatic purpose, and there is certainly no logical reason to suggest they were very young when they went to Valinor. In fact, they must have been considered mature enough to live on their own when Orome selected them to be ambassadors to the Valar.
Elwë and Olwë, on the other hand, have their various relatives. The extended family of these two brothers implies they must be from at least the third generation of Elves. If we accept that both Cirdan and Eol are indeed relatives of Elwë and Olwë, and assume that they are first cousins to the brothers, there would have to be a generation of siblings to serve as their parents. Hence that generation of siblings could not (or should not, for some people argue that there could have been siblings among the larger groups of Elves) be First Elves.
So, if we conclude that Elwë and Olwë come from at least the third generation and that Ingwë and Finwë come from at least the second generation, we must ask the obvious question: what became of the first generation? Why were these guys the leaders of the Eldar and not their parents?
For one thing, it doesn’t follow that Imin, Tata, and Enel were necessarily the ancestors of Ingwë, Finwë, and Elwë (and Olwë). But even if the four Eldarin kings came from these three primal families, need they have been the oldest sons of the oldest sons?
The Silmarillion, despite its confusing textual history, was still mostly written by J.R.R. Tolkien, and the early chapter “Of the Coming of the Elves” is pretty much “canonical”. Hence, we can see from the text that Orome selected Ingwë, Finwë, and Elwë almost at random from among the dread-filled Elves. And yet, if we look at a slightly older text, “Annals of Aman”, we can see that in a previous version of the story only these three (of the leaders of the Elves) were willing to go with Orome to Valinor. In this older tale the other chieftains are Morwe and Nurwe, and they appear to lead their own two kindreds. So one must concede it is not entirely clear that in the later conception Ingwë, Finwë, and Elwë had rivals for leadership among their peoples.
Nonetheless, having established there were at least three generations of Elves living at Cuivienen by the time of the Great Journey, can we look for an upper limit on the number of generations that would be there? Indeed we can.
In “Laws and Customs among the Eldar” Tolkien wrote that Elven children resembled mortal children for the first few years of their lives, but that by the time mortal children reached their full stature the Elven children still looked like they were about seven years old. This essay establishes that Elven children matured at a much slower rate than mortal children, and reached adulthood no earlier than their fiftieth year (though sometimes they continued growing until their one hundredth year).
Furthermore, “Laws and Customs” says that most of the Eldar married soon after their fiftieth year, and they would (in times of peace, at least) soon begin bearing children. But the Elves spaced their children some years apart. This practice allowed the parents to spend several years focusing on each child’s needs.
And we can be sure (because of his comparison between Elven children and mortal children) that Tolkien was anachronistically speaking in terms of Years of the Sun, not Years of the Trees. This is important to understand because “Annals of Aman”, which provides a calendar system for dating events, is given in Years of the Trees. Morgoth’s Ring provides us with two conversion rates for equating Years of the Trees with Years of the Sun.
I prefer to use the older ratio of 9.58 Years of the Sun to 1 Year of the Trees because the later ratio of 144 Years of the Sun to 1 Year of the Trees is very inconsistent with many texts. The fact that it coincides with the Yen described in the appendices to The Lord of the Rings probably means only that Tolkien wasn’t considering the other texts, then unpublished, because he was in the process of revising the entire (unpublished) mythology.
Some people claim that “Laws and Customs” stipulates that the Elves refrained from having children during wartime. That is not true. First, let me point that “Laws and Customs” contradicts a number of “facts” Tolkien established about the Elves elsewhere, chief of which was its discussion of reincarnation (a concept Tolkien abandoned). “Laws and Customs” is only an experimental text and one that cannot be treated as a canonical work. Secondly, what the text says is that “the Eldar would beget children only in days of happiness and peace if they could.” (Emphasis is mine.) We know from The Silmarillion that the Eldar had children in Beleriand prior to, during, and after the Siege of Angband. And Tolkien specifically wrote that the Noldor increased their numbers in Beleriand.
Finally, “Laws and Customs” also says:
The Eldar wedded for the most part in their youth and soon after their fiftieth year. They had few children, but these were very dear to them. Their families, or houses, were held together by love and a deep feeling for kinship in mind and body; and the children needed little governing or teaching. There were seldom more than four children in any house, and the number grew less as ages passed; but even in days of old, while the Eldar were still few and eager to increase their kind, Fëanor was renowned as the father of seven sons, and the histories record none that surpassed him.
Some people have argued that this passage implies the Eldar had fewer than four children on average, but Tolkien says “there were seldom more than four children in any house”. We can infer that he means there were often four children, since if there were seldom more than three children per family he could have said as much. Hence, if there were often four children per family, the average number of children (in the early generations, at least) was probably closer to four than to three.
Putting all these points together, we can look at how the Elves may have increased their population in the years leading up to the Great Journey. The Elves awoke in Year of the Trees 1050 and the Eldar left Cuivienen in Year of the Trees 1102. They probably had few if any children while traveling across Middle-earth, even though the Great Journey lasted many Years of the Trees. So the Great Journey seems to be a reasonable breaking point in calculating the growth of the Elven population.
Now, since the Elves didn’t have their children all at once, or all together, it’s not reasonable to figure an average generation of 50 years. But the problem with spacing the generations out longer is that you end up with too few Elves. The Eldar, according to The Silmarillion, set out upon the Great Journey in four “hosts”. A “host” is a lot of people. Tolkien could have used the word “companies” to describe the Elven groups but he chose instead to call them “hosts”. So he is implying that these groups were larger than “companies”, although he nowhere defines the size of a company.
Still, it must be that Tolkien intended the reader to understand that thousands of Elves set out upon the Great Journey. If one simply assumes that a new generation of Elves was born every fifty years (of the Sun), and that there were approximately four children per couple, then by the time of the Great Journey you end up with nearly 150,000 Elves. This seems too great a number for several reasons, not the least being that the Elves were still afraid to venture out into the wider world on their own. There just couldn’t yet have been that many of them.
Many of the Elves had disappeared through the years. The disappearances might explain how younger Elves such as Ingwë, Finwë, and Elwë could rise up to positions of leadership. So even if we agree upon an algorithm which produces a smaller number of Elves, in fact Orome probably had even fewer Elves to contend with becaue we have no reliable means of estimating how many Elves were lost in each generation.
One way to estimate the Elven populations would be to assume that the Elves married and bore their first children about the time that their parents were having a second (or third, or fourth) child. Hence, by staggering the count of Elves per generation, one comes up with a smaller number which still amounts to thousands.
For example, there were 72 couples among the First Elves. Each couple would produce one child. We’ll assume an even distribution of males and females. Hence, fifty years later, the 72 parental couples and their 72 children (comprising 36 second-generation couples) would produce 108 new children (72 second-generation children and 36 third-generation children).
Fifty years later, the 72 first-generation couples would have their third children, the 36 elder second-generation couples would produce their second children, the 36 younger second-generation couples would produce their first children, and the 18 third-generation children would produce their first children.
Confusing? Let it suffice to say that this system would produce about 18,314 Elves by the time of the Great Journey. Now we’ve got a relatively small Elven population that can still be divided up into “hosts” which are reasonably large.
“Quendi and Eldar” provides a proportional breakdown of the Eldar and Avari. All the Minyar became Vanyar. That is, of every 144 Elves, 14 were Minyar (Vanyar), 56 were Tatyar, and 74 were Nelyar. Of the Tatyar, precisely half became Noldor. Of the Nelyar, 46 became Teleri (and the Teleri were divided into 20 Amanyar Teleri and 26 Sindar and Nandor).
Hence, there would have been at most about 1780 Vanyar, about 3560 Noldor, and about 5850 Teleri. The Teleri were originally divided into two hosts led by Elwë and Olwë, but Tolkien doesn’t give their proportions. Lenwë, who led the Nandor south, took his people from Olwë’s host. Although I cannot be certain of any number, in The Wild, Wild Wood-elf West I suggested that perhaps Elwë and Olwë led 20/144 and 26/144 of the Elves, and that approximately half of Olwë’s people followed Lenwë.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I keep thinking that perhaps Lenwë only led 8/144 of the Elves, but dang me if I can find a reference for that. So, I’ll continue to use the “Wild, Wild Wood-Elf West” as a reference since it makes little difference for this discussion.
Lenwë may have led off about 1650 of his people, and from them would eventually come the Green-elves of Ossiriand, the Nandor of Eriador, and the Silvan Elves (who merged with at least one group of Avari, possibly all of the Nelyarin Avari).
Olwë eventually led 3300 Teleri over Sea. The Teleri who remained in Beleriand became divided into three groups: Cirdan’s folk (the Falathrim, the most numerous), the Mithrim, and the Iathrim (Thingol’s people of Doriath). At this point, working out how many of the Teleri there were in Beleriand becomes hopeless, but there is still some hope for evaluating the populations of Aman.
The Noldor were the largest group of Eldar in Aman, but they didn’t remain so. Their battle with the Teleri of Alqualonde reduced both groups’ populations, but many Noldor subsequently perished in the storm raised by Uinen, and many more died while trying to cross the Helcaraxe, so at best we can only hope to arrive at some guestimate of the largest possible population of Noldor in Aman which might not require the wholesale slaughter of Orome’s hunting stock just to feed the masses.
The Noldor arrived in Aman in Year of the Trees 1133 and they lived there in relative peace until Year of the Trees 1495. That is 362 Years of the Trees or approximately 3468 Years of the Sun. Although one could contrive many different formulae for slowing or breaking up the multiplication of the Elves, the fact is that they had a lot of time in Aman. About the only reasonable way to slow their progression is to look ahead to an essay in “Myths Transformed” (written many years later than these other texts) where Tolkien says that time in Aman seemed to pass about like time in Middle-earth.
This is the essay where he equates a Valian Year (Year of the Trees) with 144 Solar Years. Ignoring the discrepancy between conversion rates, if we merely consider that the Eldar might have taken a really long time to reach maturity in Aman, we can argue that we only have to work with 362 years of Elf-breeding time. Why? Because 3500 years of Elf babies produces populations of unbelievable magnitudes. The Noldor would have been able to swarm over Angband and bury it without any problem.
But 362 Years of the Trees, that gives us another 8 rounds of expansion. In total, we end up with 19 generations of Noldor, Vanyar, and Amanyar Teleri (but not 19 generations of Elves). The Noldor, at the time of their rebellion, could have numbered around 130,000. Ten per cent of them (13,000) refused to go into exile. Another unspecified number under Finarfin turned back. Just for the sake of being presumptious, let’s say that approximately 1/2 of the rebellious Noldor followed Fingolfin and that 1/4 followed Fëanor and the remaining 1/4 followed Finarfin.
Suppose Finarfin and half his people turned back? That would leave 7/8 of the rebellious Noldor (minus their losses in battle and storm) to continue the flight into exile. Of course, almost any set of numbers would work, but it seems likely that if there were 130,000 Noldor at the beginning of Fëanor’s rebellion, fewer than 100,000 would have reached Middle-earth.
There in Beleriand they would find the Sindar (the Mithrim, Falathrim, and Iathrim) and the Green-elves outnumbered them (by some ridiculous amount not worth calculating, since these populations would by this time also have suffered casualties through Morgoth’s invasion).
Over the next 500 Years of the Sun (appproximately) the Noldor would continue to increase their population, suffering occasional setbacks. They would end up with a population of well over 1,000,000 Elves.
Of course, by the time you get up into the hundreds of thousands of Elves, people start raising their hands and saying, “Excuse me! What about Turgon’s ten thousand?” That is, Turgon led ten thousand soldiers to the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. And he supposedly took a third of Fingolfin’s people with him when he founded the city of Gondolin. Ten thousand soldiers doesn’t seem like very many given the huge numbers of Elves we’re looking at.
But where does it say that Turgon brought all of his warriors out of Gondolin? Did he really strip the city of all its defenders? My feeling is that Gondolin was still well defended. The Noldor had already suffered grievous losses in the Dagor Bragollach. Dorthonion had been lost, the Vale of Sirion had fallen, and the sons of Fëanor had been driven out of their lands for a while. Maedhros ended up taking back the lands which had been lost, but he didn’t have all the Noldor on his side. Orodreth refused to join the Union of Maedhros, and Orodreth supposedly still had one of the largest if not the largest kingdom in Beleriand. So Turgon’s ten thousand soldiers don’t really imply there were fewer than 1,000,000 Noldor by the time of the Nirnaeth.
Well, the numbers are about as bogus as one can get and still call it a discussion of Tolkien and Middle-earth. But no matter how you work your way through the generations, the Noldor end up with a huge population in Beleriand, and the Sindar must be even more numerous. So when Tolkien has Morgoth turn the tables on the Eldar and his legions of Orcs go streaming across the countryside, the devastation is worse than anything prior to the Napoleonic wars in true history. Perhaps it’s even worse than the Napoleonic wars themselves. What the Eldar achieved in Beleriand seems fragile because we have only the one map done by Christopher Tolkien, and it names fewer than a dozen cities.
But think of a map of Europe where at most two dozen cities are named. How sparse and empty the countryside would seem to someone looking at that map. And yet we know better. Whether there were many more cities than are named in the stories, there were a lot of Elves. It shouldn’t seem strange at all that Earendil would be so desperate as to abandon his wife and children to spend years seeking for a way across the Sea so that he could deliver the prayer of Elves and Men to the Valar.
And Morgoth’s accomplishment also comes across as that much more horrifying and awe-inspiring. He wiped out at least a couple million Elves. That’s a lot of sub-creational power that was directed against him. Sort of puts things in perspective, don’tcha think?
The article was originally published on December 8, 2000.
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