Q: Did Tolkien Explain Seasons before the Changing of the World?
ANSWER: A reader sent in the following interesting question in July 2020:
Did Tolkien explain how seasons (fall, winter, etc.) happened in Arda before the Changing of the World in S.A. 3319? Did seasons occur during the Spring of Arda? If not, when did Arda first begin to experience them? Is it ever winter in Valinor?
When I first looked at this question, my immediate thought was that he didn’t try to explain the seasons – but I was wrong. A quick scan of The Silmarillion led to this passage:
Now it was a time of festival, as Melkor knew well. Though all tides and seasons were at the will of the Valar, and in Valinor there was no winter of death, nonetheless they dwelt then in the Kingdom of Arda, and that was but a small realm in the halls of Eä, whose life is Time, which flows ever from the first note to the last chord of Eru. And even as it was then the delight of the Valar (as is told in the Ainulindalë) to clothe themselves as in a vesture in the forms of the Children of Ilúvatar, so also did they eat and drink, and gather the fruits of Yavanna from the Earth, which under Eru they had made.
Therefore Yavanna set times for the flowering and the ripening of all things that grew in Valinor; and at each first gathering of fruits Manwë made a high feast for the praising of Eru, when all the peoples of Valinor poured forth their joy in music and song upon Taniquetil…
So, yes, Tolkien did explain how the seasons worked prior to the changing of the world.
Interestingly, the book says “[the Teleri of Alqualonde] recked little of seasons or times.”
And the mention of seasons is not a fluke or relic of a previous text. I found many references to “summer”, “autumn”, and “winter” in various chapters of the book. So I think Tolkien’s vision of pre-change Arda included the four normal seasons we associate with the modern (spherical) world that orbits the sun.
I also checked Morgoth’s Ring to see if there was anything else. I couldn’t find any additional musings or explanations.
As for whether it was “ever winter in Valinor”, I don’t know how to answer that. On the one hand, Fingolfin led his people far into the north where they crossed the Helcaraxë (the Grinding Ice). It’s not clear to me if that region was filled with ice because of Melkor’s meddling with the waters of Ulmo (which Ilúvatar mentioned in his talk with Ulmo) or if it was simply that cold that far north (and beyond the Pelori). Before Melkor destroyed the Lamps of the Valar, he began building Utumno in regions that were already cool because the light of the Lamps was weak there.
So pre-change Arda was indeed quite strange, compared to our simple modern Earth whose seasons are dictated by the laws of physics. I suspect that Valinor proper – that is, the regions west of the Pelori that were close to Valmar and the habitations of the Valar – didn’t experience what we would have considered a “cold winter”. But I get the impression that Tolkien envisioned a changing of the seasons sufficient to make some variation in temperature expected.
But when you stop to think about it, neither the Eldar nor the Ainur (the Valar and Maiar who dwelt in Valinor) were very sensitive to the cold. I suppose they could have had roaring blizzards covering the landscape with beautiful snows and the Elves would not have thought enough of the weather to complain about it. Legolas certainly didn’t have a problem with snow thousands of years later when he and the Fellowship tried to cross the Redhorn Pass.
So I think Arda must have had some kind of (semi-)regular seasons, thanks to the Valar. But they may have been more severe outside of Valinor or if not severe then at least more pronounced. Maybe the Sleep of Yavana is an allusion to a cold age. I didn’t really get that impression, but given that there was no sunlight for thousands of years, the world would have been cooler than when it was warmed by the Lamps or the Sun.
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