J.R.R. Tolkien might not agree with me but I sometimes envision the rebellious Noldor traipsing down the road to Alqualonde in much the same state as Steve Martin appears in that famous promotional poster for his movie, “The Jerk”. He’s unshaven, bedraggled, his pants are dragging around his feet, and he’s carrying a chair, a lamp, and some other stuff.
Were the Noldor jerks? One would certainly be tempted to question their wisdom. Regardless of how many Noldor you believe there would have been when Feanor held his anti-Valar rally in Tirion upon Tuna, the sad fact is that most of those Elves who listened to him ended up dead. And they weren’t very nice to the Teleri, either.
But the passage which brings the similarity to my mind is the one where Tolkien notes (in speaking of Finarfin and Finrod and the Noldor who followed them) that “more than any others of the Exiles they carried thence memories of the bliss they had forsaken, and some even of the things that they had made there they took with them: a solace and a burden on the road.”
Well, I can hardly imagine why a Noldo would carry a chair along, but maybe they had some really good carpenters who just couldn’t bear to leave their work behind. One can almost see Feanor trying to persuade the carpenters specializing in chairs not to carry their works with them. “It may be that we can leave our chairs behind,” they might have replied. “But never again shall we make their like, and if we must leave them, we shall break our hearts.” Clearly, the chair guys were not numbered among the Feanorians, although their prized possessions would have made for a good bar-fight on the quays of Alqualonde.
What sort of things would the Noldor have taken with them? Finrod and his people brought a lot of jewels out of Aman. The Noldor made gem-stones in addition to mining the mountains for precious stones and metals. Presumably they had plenty of rings, bracelets, necklaces, loose stones, stones mounted on plaques or in special frames, and ornamental brooches, etc. Would these have been magical items? Perhaps they had enchanted lustre, or radiated like the Silmarils but far less brilliantly and with less clarity.
Given the immense lengths of time the Noldor spent in Aman, and how anyone can produce many works of art over a human lifetime, one can imagine huge treasuries in nearly every house filled with all sorts of odds and ends, little trinkets which were special to their makers in the crafting but which in time were lost and forgotten. Tirion is said to have glittered with the dust of diamonds, and when Earendil wandered through the empty streets of the city he became covered in diamond dust.
So whatever treasures the Noldor took with them on their long journey must have been precious indeed. I’m sure the crafters would have taken such tools as they felt would be necessary for continuing their works in Middle-earth. Smiths would have to take hammers and tongs, anvils, and other tools. The Noldor had horses but they seem to have lost the majority of their herds either in the storm raised by Uinen or in crossing the Helcaraxe. Perhaps only the horses carried by ship made it to Middle-earth.
Miners would have to take their axes and hammers, their stone-cutting tools, and other implements. Hammers, saws, chisels, knives, scythes, sickles, pincers, picks, axes — everything required to build a civilization would have to be carried by the Elves, or hauled in carts (but there is no mention of carts or wagons). They really had no idea of where they were going, or how they would get there. Feanor had a vague plan, but he didn’t share it with anyone. He just tried to get everyone to hurry up and go. And most of the Noldor wouldn’t have listened to him anyway. They had decided to leave, but they wanted Fingolfin to be their leader.
Less mundane treasures would have included harps, trumpets, weapons, scrolls or books, flutes, and objects for carrying food and water, and probably corn. The special corn the Valar gave the Eldar for their journey across Middle-earth. Although Araman may have been completely lifeless I suspect that it must have supported plant and animal life of some sort. But could it really have fed all the Noldor? Fingolfin led them in the wilds for the equivalent of nearly fifty years.
My guess is the Noldor must have been baking a lot of lembas in those years. They would have to stop somewhere along the way, plant some corn, raise it, harvest it, and then make a lot of lembas before setting out again. Moses and the Hebrews at least only had to go out and scrape up manna from the ground six days a week. They pretty much had it made, although they probably got as tired of manna as the Elves must have become of lembas.
Lembas-corn (if I may call it that) was pretty special stuff. It would grow by starlight (since in the original conception of the world Tolkien decided that only the stars gave light to Middle-earth for many ages after Melkor destroyed the lamps of the Valar). And the corn would also, apparently, grow in a variety of climates. But it’s doubtful the Noldor would always have a piece of lembas to chew on if they grew bored. The journey through the wilderness was a hard one. The crossing of the Helcaraxe was miserable. Fingolfin probably stopped to grow one last crop of corn before setting out across the ice.
So what became of all the stuff the Noldor took with them? For example, a lot of Noldor were slain when the Feanorians took the ships from Alqualonde. Did Feanor scoop up their belongings and take them aboard the ships? Were piles of duffle bags and the equivalent left on the quays or by the shoreside?
And what happened when Fingolfin and his people awoke to find that Feanor had abandoned them? Did they construct tents and huts, or perhaps even create a whole moving city? Would they have invented travois-like contraptions to haul their goods and children, or perhaps little pull-carts? Or did each Elf take only what he or she could carry on his or her back? A harp, a few extra clothes, some jewels, and a small case of precious tools?
What treasures were lost when the ships sank in Uinen’s storm? And of Fingolfin’s people, how many brought all their gear across the Helcaraxe? Who carried the tents and the wine? Who brought the ropes and the nets? Was there even so much as a first-aid kit among them?
In one place Tolkien suggests that all the special lamps of the Eldar were made in Aman, perhaps even by Feanor himself (they were powered by special gems). That seems a bit constricting, but perhaps Fingolfin’s people were indeed burdened by carrying such devices (in fact, traveling by starlight without even the benefit of a moon in the wilds can be pretty rough — I know, I’ve done it, and Tolkien may have, too). Fortunately the Elves had prodigious memories and they typically kept their lore in their memories. In Beleriand books were most often composed if the authors believed they might not live to pass on their knowledge. So there may have been few books among the Elves during their wanderings.
But nothing the Noldor made should have been “mundane” (by our standards). That is, the Elves were artists (according to Tolkien) and they were always practicing their “art”, which was the making of new things. The Noldor, especially, were “technologists”. They must have always been looking for the next best thing for the kitchen. “Honey, look at this new knife I fashioned! It slices, it dices, it Juliennes fries!”
An Elven craftsman would have enchanted the items he made, not because he could get a better price for them but because that is what he would do. Think of a carpenter putting an extra finish on a piece of furniture to protect it from buffing and scratching, or adding some ornamentation. Carefully he carves a pattern into each leg, paints something simple but beautiful into the wooden surface. Perhaps a hidden drawer is added, or a set of hinges are used to make a loose piece fold out. In Lorien the Silvan Elves told Pippin they put “the thought of all that we love into all that we make”. This may have been only something the Elves of Lorien did, but I don’t believe so. Tolkien’s various discussions of the Elves’ sub-creational (magic) abilities, and the fact that the Mithrim Sindar seem to have woven the same kind of grey cloaks used by the Lorien Elves, seem to imply that this was a fairly standard Elven concept.
In whatever way we can, we try to improve our work and imprint our wants and desires upon the things we make. Elves would be no different in that respect, but they’d be able to make the picture move, perhaps, or glow. The legs might never chip, the paint might never peel. The hinges wouldn’t just open with a thought, they would do so without so much as a squeek. A Noldorin lady might possess nothing more than a pair of scissors and her jewelry box, filled with delights and gifts, baubles that floated, glowed, changed colors, fertilized gardens, caused water to cleanse itself, warmed the hands on a cold winter day, cooled the brow in summer, always rolled true, reflected the owner’s mood, etc. We create such things now (even floating things). Tolkien may have felt the Elves could create them then (and by a different means).
When the Noldor arrived in Middle-earth they must have looked pretty scraggly to the Sindar. Well, Feanor’s Noldor sailed across the Sea by ship. So they might have been a little dizzy by the time they made landfall but they would not have been long without the benefits of civilization. And they also brought more horses across the water than Fingolfin’s people were able to save (if they saved any). It may be that Fingolfin had a lot of horses to begin with. The Noldor might have been moving along as a group of caravans (huge caravans). So the horses would have been lost in crossing the Helcaraxe. And if they were used as beasts of burden, then there must have been carts or sledges lost aplenty along with the horses, or packs.
Araman and the Crushing Ice must have been littered with lost or forgotten artifacts. Few large items like the Palantiri could have been carried for long by the Noldor, but they must have had things beyond their enchanted swords and armor, lamps and harps. A well-equipped Tolkien Elf would probably make all but the most successful role-playing gamers drool with envy. After all, the Elves could both make magic stuff and fight (even the women). It’s not for small reason that prospective players of the long-delayed online Middle-earth game fear that any player who gets a Noldo should be all but unbeatable. Those guys ate Orcs for breakfast, lunched on trolls, and finished off an occasional Balrog or two before turning in the for the night. Or so it seems.
You never see an Elf with a wand or a staff, but Galadriel shows us that they can use devices to work their magic (or, their Art, as Tolkien put it). She poured water from a pitcher into a silver basin to give Sam and Frodo a glimpse of things that might be, and things that probably were. The water came from the spring flowing through Galadriel’s garden. The garden itself was “enchanted”, or at least could be. Galadriel gave Sam a little box with some of the dirt from her garden (or orchard), “and such blessing as Galadriel has left to bestow is upon it”. I’m sure the dirt was more effective than any commercial growth feed we can give our plants today. But was the spring also “enchanted”? Could be. The power of Ulmo might have been flowing through it. Or it may simply be that Galadriel and her maidens occasionally sang songs of power by the waters to invigorate them, or something.
The pitcher she used could have been a normal, everyday, Elven “only pours the water where you want it to” type of pitcher, or it could have been a special ceremonial pitcher used only for scrying purposes. I think the basin was probably very special in that respect. The pitcher and basin may have been very old but I doubt Galadriel carried them around with her on her travels through Middle-earth. Quite probably they were made after she and Celeborn settled in Lothlorien in the wake of Amroth’s departure. And if Galadriel could make new stuff when she moved, then so, too could the other Elves.
Turgon’s people were very productive. They had to do something through the centuries they were refusing to have anything to do with other Elves. Imagine the enchanted lamps and light-bulbs they could have made? The old question, “How many Elves does it take to change a light-bulb” takes on new meaning, as the answer would surely be, “None. They’ll just make a new one” (ba-dum-DUMP). Change a light-bulb, make a new one…oh, never mind.
One of Gondolin’s names was Ondolinde, which means (more-or-less) “singing stone” (or, more appropriately, “the Rock of the Music of Water, for there were fountains upon the hill”). The city may have been constructed with acoustics in mind, so as to enlarge and scatter the sound of the waters from the fountains. But why couldn’t the Elves add a little extra oomph! to their architecture and give the stone they worked an additional resonance? Think about it. There are a few domed buildings in the world where if you stand on one side and whisper your voice is carried clearly around to the far side of the dome. Turgon could have arranged matters so that he could address the entire city (or not) from his tower without having to interrupt their Elfevision shows.
In fact, of all the Noldorin cities in Beleriand, Gondolin was said to be most like ancient Tirion in Aman. Perhaps the Noldor of Gondolin came closer to rivalling their people’s achievements in Aman of any realm in Middle-earth. They didn’t produce Silmarils, but in one attempt to put a story behind Aragorn’s green stone Tolkien made it an artifact of Gondolin. Maeglin, of course, improved the mining and smith lore of Turgon’s people, so they were probably not as good at that sort of thing as the Feanorians. But they were nonetheless very gifted. And they had the time to focus on making things. Their seven gates show just how much time they had on their hands. Was Turgon really interested in creating a secret refuge where the Elves’ last hope could be born or was he just trying to build the ultimate artists’ colony?
Whatever cities the Noldor built in Hithlum were long forgotten, but Gondolin lived on in song and story, even though most Noldor never even saw it. The wonders of the city surpassed everything else achieved by the Eldar in Beleriand, and they were mostly lost. What treasures weren’t buried in the ruins of Gondolin would have been looted and carried off by the Orcs for Morgoth’s treasuries, and those were eventually buried and destroyed when Angband was ruined and sank beneath the sea. How many countless items made with all the love the Elves could muster were lost? But then, those who loved those things were also lost.
A lone warrior might have braved the perils of Dorthonion a generation later to look upon the runs of Gondolin, but none of its people ever returned there. What would such a wanderer think, seeing the crumbling ruins of the once proud city on its hill, with the bones of dead Orcs and Elves strewn about the rocks? Would anyone have defiled the ruins to dig for swords and gold, jewels and magic harps? Is that, perhaps, how the swords Glamdring and Orcrist eventually made their way to some troll-hoard in Eriador?
Nearly two thousand years later another great Noldorin city was destroyed: Ost-in-Edhil, the chief city of Eregion. There the Gwaith-i-Mirdain had labored for centuries, learning how to make the Rings of Power. But they created other treasures, and such baubles as were not carried off by the survivors or destroyed by the invading armies undoubtedly fell into the hands of Sauron. He must have sent quite a train of goods back to Mordor before pressing on with his invasion of Eriador. The Orcs must have made out pretty well, too. Perhaps a lot of them sported some genuine Elf-armor for a while (not that it seems to have done the Elves all that much good). Surely Sauron could have dined on non-tarnishing silver plate.
Thousands of years later Gandalf told Frodo that “in Eregion long ago many Elven-rings were made, magic rings as you call them, and they were, of course, of various kinds: some more potent and some less. The lesser rings were only essays in the craft before it was full-grown, and to the Elven-smiths they were but trifles — yet still to my mind dangerous for mortals.” That’s a very ambiguous passage, and one which has inspired much discussion. Was Gandalf implying some of these Rings were still around, or simply stating that if any of them had survived he believed they would be dangerous artifacts for mortals to possess? He goes on to say, “But the Great Rings, the Rings of Power, they were perilous.”
Perilous? Gandalf, there were a lot of these Great Rings. The Elves made sixteen of them before Celebrimbor went off on his own and made Three. Were the nineteen Great Rings a minority? What did the Elves do with the lesser Rings when Sauron put on the One Ring? The keepers of those “essays in the craft” must have taken off their rings, too, not just the Elves wearing the nineteen Great Rings. So by the time Sauron showed up at the border of Eregion (nearly 100 years later), where were all the lesser rings? No one would have been wearing them.
Perhaps these rings were rounded up and stored in the House of the Mirdain, which Celebrimbor defended until he was taken. And another treasury was looted. Sauron must have picked up quite a few potent items which would have been, in Gandalf’s opinion, “dangerous for mortals”. The Elves were interested in stopping the effects of time and preserving the beauty of their lands. They may have worked on other neat things and bestowed their virtues wherever possible. Every garden and orchard in Eregion must have been a magical place. Every tower must have held secrets of Elven sorcery. Every town and homestead must have literally gleamed with magic cutlery and pottery.
The Elves built entire civilizations and those civilizations included everything from hitching posts for their horses to crystal gems used for healing and controlling the forces of nature. They were so into doing what they would do that the very lands remembered them. Legolas said he could hear the stones of Eregion lamenting their former masters: “Deep they delved us, fair they wrought us, high they builded us. But they are gone.” Did the tumbled stones actually speak to Legolas or was he merely sensing a memory of the purpose to which the stones had been devoted? Was there a resonance of the sub-creational power, the will and the song, which must have gone into building up the stoneworks, and shaping the stones.
How, indeed, did a Noldo mine or quarry? Did they use tools at all, or did they simply sing the Earth into a restive state and then extract what they required? What we call magic was second-nature to them, or at least an ability which they could develop and focus with long years of study and practice. Each Elven worker may have reached a stage in his skill where he put down his tools for the last time and sang his thought into being, shaping whatever materials he had chosen to use. Perhaps only a master craftsman, a master among masters, could achieve so much. Perhaps groups of Elves would work together to enlarge their achievements, but alone they would still need to prepare their forges and looms, and wield hammer and tongs, needle and knife.
Luthien wove a cloak of darkness from her hair, Finrod wove illusions about himself, Beren, and their companions, and Arwen sang the White Tree into health and maturity. When Galadriel came to bid farewell to the Fellowship she sang for them: “I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew; Of wind I sang, a wind there came and in the branches blew.” Is she singing of the first Mallorn? Did Galadriel create the mallorns which were carried first to Numenor and then to Lindon, and from there to Lothlorien?
Elven magic must have pervaded every aspect of their realms. Even in Lorien and Rivendell at the end of the Third Age the Hobbits and others noticed things which made those lands feel separate from the lands of mortals. An Elven house might stand long after a mortal house had fallen. The grass and garden around the house would be imbued with the thoughts of the occupants, encouraged to grow long and healthy. Leaving their homes must have been very hard on the Elves, not just because they wouldn’t be able to carry everything with them, but because they would have to leave behind labors of love. In Valinor the Elves must have sung many beautiful trees and flowers into existence, caused springs to well up and flow through gardens, dressed stones and shaped their visions in masonry and metal. They would have given their hearts to the land they left. Would it be any less so in Middle-earth, where the Elves lived for centuries in Hithlum, Gondolin, and Nargothrond?
Not all artifacts were transportable, and the most precious may indeed have been — for many Elves — the very lands they worked and lived upon, year after year, century after century. Elvish country would feel Elvish because the power of the Elves ran through it. When Sauron swept through Eregion and Eriador, laying waste to all the lands, was he perhaps wounding the Elves who had tended the valleys and groves, the quarries and springs, in ways no mortal spirit could perceive? Why did Haldir, the march-warden of Lorien, curse the feet of the Orcs who walked across the Nimrodel river, sullying its waters? Was their presence more than just a military threat?
The Elves must have taken many of their lesser enchantments for granted. Whether it be soothing a frightened horse or merely singing up a breeze, they must have exercised their wills in countless ways that would leave mortals gaping in astonishment. And yet, if an Elf decided to leave a long-time home, a land where his or her thought and love were reflected in every bush and garden path, the decision must have been painful. Greater still, then, must have been the love for the things they took with them: gifts, perhaps, from other Elves, but surely also items made in those once-in-a-lifetime moments. An Elven house might eventually be filled with artifacts that resonated with the thought of their makers. The Elves may have lived in a sort of perpetual state of soothing music which unfeeling mortals could not hear.
And thus, when the hoards were robbed and the treasuries emptied, and the victorious soldiers of the enemies took off with their loot, the songs would continue unheard, unappreciated. The Elves most surely placed a greater value in the things they made than their enemies. Was the greater tragedy, then, that which befell the items lost in the crossing of the Helcaraxe, where they sank beneath the cold, cruel waves? Or did the Elves lament the stolen voices of their cherished treasures, trapped in cold, unfeeling walls whose masters did not even understand what the items said to them?
This article was originally published on December 1, 2000.
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