Q: Do Elves Die When They Go Into the West?
ANSWER: No, the Elves do not die when they sail into the West. However, in past articles and essays I have compared the Elves’ journey over Sea to a physical death, in that (by the time of The Lord of the Rings) there is no return for an Elf who sails over Sea. They are supposedly departing from Middle-earth forever because the world (so named) has become the rightful abode of Men. Elves must live elsewhere, essentially in a world apart from the Earth.
There has been much debate and speculation through the decades on what Tolkien meant for the reader to understand happened when Ilúvatar remade the world after the rebellion of Númenor. Some people say that Aman was whisked away into a spiritual realm, although that is not implied. If anything, the Valar must remain within Eä until the end of Time, for that was one of the terms of their entry into the universe. Hence, wherever Aman may have gone after the changing of the world, it had to remain within Space and Time.
A voyage to Aman after the changing of the world would be comparable to a trip to Mars, in that you would be leaving the Earth and traveling to another world. J.R.R. Tolkien imagined that the Elves accomplished this by building specially hallowed ships that were permitted to travel “the straight road”, a seaward pathway that carried their ships to wherever Ilúvatar had placed Aman.
So far as I am aware, no one has published any obscure Tolkien texts that explain what Aman’s new world would be like. I rather imagine it to be another round world with its own sun, just like the Earth. The Valar should be able to watch over the Earth from anywhere within Space and Time. Of course, some people attempt to extrapolate from unrelated writings what Tolkien might have imagined, but there are serious issues in looking at other stories.
For example, I have mentioned Roverandom in the past as including a reference to Aman because the whale Uin carries Roverandom under the sea and close to the shores of “Elvenhome”. In Smith of Wootton Major the main character travels to Faery, where on the far western shores of the continent he beholds Elvish warriors returning from wars across an unnamed sea. But though Aman’s influence is obvious in both of these stories, they are merely literary borrowings from the fount of Tolkien’s imagination, not glimpses into the canonical truth of what Aman may have been transformed into.
I think it would be unlikely that Tolkien imagined the Elves of Aman wandering off to fight other creatures in the same world. They were supposed to dwell there in peace and bliss so that they could grow and achieve their full potential. Tolkien viewed war as a destructive force that disrupts the normal path of progress, at least in terms of individual growth. And the Elves who leave Middle-earth are apparently fleeing the conflicts of the world, so they are expecting to find a safe haven over Sea.
For that reason some commentators compare Aman or Valinor to a sort of Elvish heaven, but I don’t think that was Tolkien’s implication at all. Heaven, after all, is where God dwells and Ilúvatar does not dwell in Aman. So Aman is only a home for the Elves while Space and Time exist. At some point in the distant future, I suspect, Tolkien meant for the Elves to continue on to whatever fate Ilúvatar intended for them afterward. It was this unknown ultimate fate that the Elves feared because for them it was possibly worse than death: they were afraid it might mean the end of their existence.
In my opinion the Elves would probably join the spirits of Men (and Dwarves), their fellow Children of Ilúvatar, somewhere else, perhaps in the Timeless Halls (Tolkien’s version of Heaven). I don’t see Ilúvatar creating rational spirits that he intended to destroy. I don’t think Tolkien meant to imply that at all. Rather, he was using the Elves’ fear for their own ultimate fate as a vehicle for exploring humankind’s own curiosity about what happens to the soul. In a way the Elves express an atheistic point of view, because many (if not most or all) atheists do not believe that their consciousness will continue to exist after they die.
But though Tolkien raised this point within his fictional musings it did not become a significant item among the many details he created for the Elves. And their questions about what comes after Space and Time (if anything) were unrelated to their special relationship with the Valar and Aman. I think readers are meant to imagine the Elves achieving incredible things after they established new homes “over Sea”.
See also:
- Where Did the Undying Lands Go?
- Did the Elves Fear Death at All?
- Do Elves Dream of Eclectic Sleep?
- Where Do the Elves Go When They Leave Middle-earth?
- Why Did the Elves Leave Middle-earth?
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Have you read our other Tolkien and Middle-earth Questions and Answers articles?
Is a sort of Ragnarok cannon? If so I think you’d have to have dwarves and elves (and hobbits—remember their archers) and ents there—with Turin taking names and kicking asses (he’s back to meet Morgoth, and this time it’s personal), and perhaps then in a remade Arda.
J.R.R. Tolkien abandoned the idea of any sort of Ragnarok-like event. See my article on the Second Prophecy of Mandos.
I think you could actually make a case for the idea that Aman was taken into the spiritual realm. The Akallabeth states that “…the world was diminished, for Valinor and Eressëa were taken from it into the realm of hidden things” (Silmarillion, page 279).
It’s a confusing topic and really cannot be resolved properly. Your comment reminded me that I had actually addressed this point a couple of years ago:
https://middle-earth.xenite.org/2013/10/03/where-did-the-undying-lands-go/
In that article I mentioned that change my mind on the topic and at that time I wrote:
To be honest, I will probably never settle this question for myself, much less anyone else.
I just read your other essay. I like the idea of Aman existing in a “companion universe” or “Lesser Ëa”. I doubt there would be other planets and stars though. Aman was just one land and I think it would be self-contained. But you’re right that there is no clear answer, and you do have interesting theories.
Regarding the ultimate fate of elves, I was struck by Finrod’s last word in his discussion with Andreth: “But you are not for Arda. Whither you go may you find light. Await us there, my brother – and me” (MR, p. 326). My impression is that Finrod believed, or at least hoped, that elves and humans would be reunited after the end of the world.
Philosophically, it’s interesting to speculate whether Aman was removed from the rest of the world, or whether Aman remained fixed in place while the rest of the world moved away from it. Perhaps it doesn’t matter.
Physicists are sure there are more than the four dimensions we can experience, three space and time. I’ve always assumed that Aman was moved to a “parallel universe”, although not necessarily a fully independent one. Simply moving it “over” a bit in a fifth dimension would take it out of our visible world, yet it would still be at the same place, relative to our four dimensions. Travel back and forth would be relatively simple, if one had a way of moving in the extra dimension, so sailing would work. Since the ocean would be in the same place in both worlds, you’d leave “our” ocean and sail onto Aman’s.
For the Ainur, who came from outside our space-time to begin with, finding a way to do this would probably be simple, and teaching the Elves to build ships capable of it not too difficult. In theory, we could probably build a device that would do it, but we don’t have the theory yet, much less the technology. And, of course, we’d have to use trial and error to navigate, and there’s no telling where our first attempt would wind up. Probably NOT in Aman!
Great post, I also read your related posts on this topic. I wonder how much Tolkien loved his elves. With all their grandeur and sorrow, how could he write a sequel with them gone. There is something wonderfully mysterious and beautiful about them which has long generated a sorrow in me of a vivid world that has faded and gone. Your articles have only added to that wonderful mystery, beauty and sorrow. Thank you.
Sorry about the previous entries, I will try again! I have read this article and your other related articles and have found them very illuminating with regard to the elven worldview. When I first read LOTR with its glimpses into the past (for example – the tale of Luthien and Beren near Weathertop) there was a sense of mystery, beauty and sorrow of a world now passed away. Perhaps, I was unwittingly picking up on this elven worldview seeping through the words and pictures Tolkien used to illuminate his rich story. I wonder how much he loved his elves. Perhaps, he could not bring himself to write a sequel because his beloved elves had gone or faded, it would have been for him to commit the same sin as they did – trying to keep alive their world which had gone. This is all total guesswork on my part of course!
I have really enjoyed your investigations into the big picture view of Middle Earth. It has added to my interpretation richly and yet at times also added to my sadness relating to things Middle Earth.
Well I seem to remember scattered across the texts certain in-universe theories about existance of ‘other worlds’ from various stages of legendarium, apparently elves believed that all creation must be within Ea so Ea is actually…multiverse, anyway the quote went something like this they do not believe in non-contiguous, contemporaneous worlds, everything must be connected and if there are any ‘intersections’ with those other worlds or dimensions, they still must be provinces of Ea, there were also some fragments implyng that there might have been other crews of Ainur taking care of other worlds. I have no text at hand but I remember soemthing like that. What do you think? And how the Unseen, the wraith world, second layer of reality fits into this, as well as the Halls of Mandos which on one hand appear to have physical location and in the same time spiritual?