Q: Do Wood-elves Hunt Animals?
ANSWER: Many Tolkien readers have confused the story of the Green-elves of Ossiriand, who lived in the woods but did not hunt animals, with the nature of all Wood-elves in J.R.R. Tolkien’s stories. This mistaken perception has led a large number of Tolkien fans to believe some very inaccurate things about Wood-elves. A few weeks ago I addressed a similar question arising from this misunderstanding, Did All Wood-elves Live in Trees?.
There were many different groups of Elves who lived in forests. In one sense or another all of these Elves would have been deemed “wood-elves” by their peers. However, the Wood-elves Tolkien most often referred to were the Elves of Lothlorien and Northern Mirkwood, especially those who dwelt in those regions at the end of the Third Age during the years when Bilbo and Frodo Baggins were adventuring in Middle-earth.
As told in The Silmarillion and several source texts, all the Elves originally lived in the woods by Cuiviénen. For the first part of their history the Eldar — those groups of Elves who left Cuiviénen on the Great Journey to Valinor — continued to camp in woodlands from time to time. They stayed in forests near the inland Sea of Rhun, in Greenwood the Great, in the forests of Eriador, and finally in the forests of Beleriand.
The Noldor and Vanyar arrived in Aman first and they built the city of Tirion upon the hill of Túna. Over time the Vanyar gradually migrated from Tirion — which sat in the great valley called the Calacirya looking out upon the Bay of Eldamar — into Valinor, and they spread out across the land of the Valar. Many of the Vanyar settled in the forests of Valinor. Over time some of the Noldor also settled down to live in or near the woodlands inhabited by the Vanyar, so even in Aman some of the Noldor led a woodland lifestyle, although Tolkien did not provide us with details of that lifestyle.
In Beleriand the Sindar were divided into two primary groups, the Eglath and the Falathrim. The Eglath were the people who dwelt with Thingol and Melian in the great forest of Neldoreth. Although many of them settled in the city of Menegroth other Eglath/Sindar continued to live in the woodlands. Many of them also spread to other parts of Beleriand, some living in Dorthonion and other wooded regions.
The Nandor were a group of Telerin Elves who turned away from the Great Journey in the Vales of Anduin. Some of them remained near the Gladden Fields and others wandered south into the lands later named Ithilien and Calenardhon. From Calenardhon some of the Nandor eventually made their way north to Eriador long after the Vanyar, Noldor, Falmari (the Teleri of Aman), and Sindar (the Teleri of Beleriand) had passed through to Beleriand. Eriador was heavily forested at this time, so the Nandor continued to live in a woodland lifestyle.
When the Nandor were threatened by Orcs and other evil creatures Denethor son of Lenwë gathered many Nandor together and led them to Beleriand. They settled in the southeastern region of Beleriand in Ossiriand. These Nandor became the Green-elves of Ossiriand.
The Avari — those Elves who had refused the summons of the Valar and remained behind in Cuiviénen — eventually migrated west. Many of them settled in the Vales of Anduin, Eriador, and a few even reached Beleriand where they settled among the Nandor in Ossiriand. In fact, after the death of Denethor some of the Green-elves went to live in Doriath, among them some families descended from the Avari, and these former Green-elves were then called the “Guest-elves”, living in Arthorien (a wooded region in southeastern Doriath). One of the leaders was Saeros, the elf who tormented Turin (and whom Turin humiliated in revenge, unwittingly causing his death).
The Nandor and Avari who settled in the Vales of Anduin appear to have merged to become the Silvan Elves of Lothlorien and Greenwood the Great. For some background on Tolkien’s use of “silvan” for “sylvan” see Was Amroth Related to Celeborn?.
So given all this background information about wood-elves in Middle-earth, the only group of whom Tolkien said they would not hunt animals were the Green-elves of Ossiriand. There is not enough information about the Guest-elves of Arthorien to say whether they changed their lifestyle. In The Hobbit, however, Bilbo and the Dwarves hear Thranduil’s people hunting in the forest (presumably the white stag that surprises the travelers). In The Lord of the Rings Haldir the march-warden and his brothers Rumil and Oropher provide Frodo and other members of the Fellowship with skins and blankets to keep them warm while they spend the night on the flets.
Which leaves us to ask: WHY do so many people wrongly believe that the Wood-elves are vegetarians? I think the answer has something to do with the widespread beilef that Tolkien was sort of an anti-industrialist. He is quite popular with people who are sensitive to environmental issues and perhaps the rustic descriptions of the various Wood-elves have sort of lulled people into assuming that Wood-elves must be very close to nature, unwilling to harm living creatures, etc.
There is most likely a great deal of truth to this idea that Tolkien’s Elves were much closer to nature than we are, for they were — in his words — an idealized aspect of humanity, a sort of elevated model of what man could aspire to be (or should have aspired to be). And yet despite whatever attunement they have with nature, the majority of Elves seem to feel no compunction about hunting animals for food and in using their skins, or about cutting down trees for use in bridges and construction, and in quarrying stone and building great cities, and mining and smelting and forging metals, and more. But the Elves were probably not great industrialists like we have become.
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