The Fall of Númenor, page 25
8A Vala and the spouse of Aulë, described in Valaquenta, p. 27 as ‘the Giver of Fruits… lover of all things that grow in the earth, and all their countless forms she holds in her mind.’
9From the Quenya words anna (gift) and dor (land)
10Akallabêth, p. 260
11As noted by Christopher Tolkien, in Peoples, p. 144 §5 the original passage in ‘The Drowning of Anadûnê’ as given in Sauron Defeated, p. 360 reads: ‘Then the Edain gathered all the ships, great and small, that they had built with the help of the Elves, and those that were willing to depart took their wives and their children and all such wealth as they possessed, and they set sail upon the deep waters, following the Star.’
12Akallabêth, pp. 260–1
13First published in Peoples, p. 144 §5 continued on p. 145, not having been included among the extracts given in UT. Círdan the Shipwright was said to have ‘seen further and deeper into the future than anyone else in Middle-earth’ (Peoples, pp. 385 ff) and it was he to whom Celebrimbor had entrusted the Elven-ring Narya, the Ring of Fire. Círdan subsequently passed Narya to Gandalf on his arrival in Middle-earth, saying: ‘Take this ring, Master… for your labours will be heavy; but it will support you in the weariness that you have taken upon yourself. For this is the Ring of Fire, and with it you may rekindle hearts in a world that grows chill. But as for me, my heart is with the Sea, and I will dwell by the grey shores until the last ship sails. I will await you.’ (Return, Appendix B, p. 1085) Círdan fought in the Last Alliance of Elves and Men and, later, as Master of the Grey Havens, welcomed Galadriel, Celeborn, Elrond, Gandalf, Frodo and Bilbo when the Ring-bearers prepared to embark for the Undying Lands on the ship that he had built for their final voyage.
14Appendix A, p. 1035. Elsewhere it is recorded: ‘To the Númenórean people as a whole is ascribed a life-span some five times the length of that of other Men’; see Christopher Tolkien commentary, UT, p. 224 note 1
15The source of the extracts quoted in this editorial note is Akallabêth, p. 262. Elsewhere (Letters, No. 156, p. 204–5) Tolkien wrote: ‘For the point of view of this mythology is that “mortality” or a short span, and “immortality” or an indefinite span was part of what we might call the biological and spiritual nature of the Children of God, Men and Elves (the firstborn) respectively, and could not be altered by anyone (even a Power or god), and would not be altered by the One, except perhaps by one of those strange exceptions to all rules and ordinances which seem to crop up in the history of the Universe, and show the Finger of God, as the one wholly free Will and Agent.’
Adding in a note: ‘The story of Beren and Lúthien is the one great exception, as it is the way by which “Elvishness” becomes wound in as a thread in human history.’
Tolkien then continues: ‘[The Edain] were forbidden to sail west beyond their own land because they were not allowed to be or try to be “immortal”; and in this myth the Blessed Realm is represented as still having an actual physical existence as a region of the real world, one which they could have reached by ship, being very great mariners.’
16In a draft letter to a reader Tolkien wrote (Letters, No. 244, p. 324): ‘A Númenórean King was monarch, with the power of unquestioned decision in debate; but he governed the realm with the frame of ancient law, of which he was administrator (and interpreter) but not the maker.’ The genealogy of the Kings and Queens of Númenor (there were three of the latter) followed in this book is drawn from UT Part Two: The Second Age, III ‘The Line of Elros: Kings of Númenor’ pp. 218–27. An abbreviated listing appears in The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A Annals of the Kings and Rulers I ‘The Númenórean Kings’ pp. 1033–1037 including (pp. 1035–6) the following notation:
These are the names of the Kings and Queens of Númenor: Elros Tar-Minyatur, Vardamir, Tar-Amandil, Tar-Elendil, Tar-Meneldur, Tar-Aldarion, Tar-Ancalimë (the first Ruling Queen), Tar-Anárion, Tar-Súrion, Tar-Telperiën (the second Queen), Tar-Minastir, Tar-Ciryatan, Tar-Atanamir the Great, Tar-Ancalimon, Tar-Telemmaitë, Tar-Vanimeldë (the third Queen), Tar-Alcarin, Tar-Calmacil, Tar-Ardamin.
After Ardamin the Kings took the sceptre in names of the Númenórean (or Adûnaic) tongue: Ar-Adûnakhôr, Ar-Zimrathôn, Ar-Sakalthôr, Ar-Gimilzôr, Ar-Inziladûn. Inziladûn repented of the ways of the Kings and changed his name to Tar-Palantir ‘The Farsighted’. His daughter should have been the fourth Queen, Tar-Míriel, but the King’s nephew usurped the sceptre and became Ar-Pharazôn the Golden, last King of the Númenóreans.
In the days of Tar-Elendil the first ships of the Númenóreans came back to Middle-earth. His elder child was a daughter, Silmariën. Her son was Valandil, first of the Lords of Andúnië in the west of the land, renowned for their friendship with the Eldar. From him were descended Amandil, the last lord, and his son Elendil the Tall.
The sixth King left only one child, a daughter. She became the first Queen; for it was then made a law of the royal house that the eldest child of the King, whether man or woman, should receive the sceptre.
17Elrond (‘Star-dome’) were born in the year 532 of the First Age, children of Eärendil and his wife Elwing. Six years later, the boys were taken captive by Maglor and Maedhros (two of the Sons of Fëanor) in the third and cruellest of the Elven Kinslayings resulting from their attempt to recover the Silmaril held by Elwing. Despite much blood-letting, Maglor and Maedhros spared the children’s lives and Maglor raised them in his own household.
Following the Third Kinslaying, Eärendil and Elwing voyaged to Valinor in order to entreat the Valar to aid the Men and Elves of Middle-earth in their struggles against the rebel Vala, Morgoth (‘Black Foe of the World’), the first Dark Lord and root of all evil in Middle-earth. Although breaking the Valar’s ban on a mortal entering upon the sacred soil of the Undying Lands, Eärendil was spared death because his plea had been made on behalf of the Elves and Men of Middle-earth. As a Half-elven, he and Elwing were given the choice of whether to be numbered with the race of Elves or that of Mankind, a choice that was further promised to their children. Eärendil followed the choice of his wife and was numbered with the Elven-kind. Of their children, Elrond made the same choice, while Elros chose to live as a Man and became the first king of Númenor. The full tale of these events is told in The Silmarillion, XXIV ‘Of the Voyage of Eärendil and the War of Wrath’, pp. 246 ff. The end of Eärendil’s story is one told in verse by Bilbo in Rivendell and heard by Frodo as he ‘wandered long in a dream of music that turned into running water, and then into a voice.’ Fellowship, Book Two, I ‘Many Meetings’ pp. 233–6
18Appendix A, I (iii), p. 1043 note 1
19Elros took the name Tar-Minyatur meaning in Quenya, ‘High First-ruler’, from the words ‘tar’ (king), ‘minya’ (first) and ‘túrë’ (lord or master). By convention subsequent rulers of Númenor adopted the prefix ‘Tar-’ for their royal title until, as noted, the reign of the twentieth king, Ar-Adûnakhôr (Tar-Herunúmen), who took a title in the Adûnaic, the language of the men of Númenor.
20UT, p. 222
THE GEOGRAPHY OF NÚMENOR
1The geographic descriptions of the island Númenor are drawn from UT (Part Two: The Second Age, I: A Description of Númenor, pp. 165 ff) and Nature (Part Three: The World, its Lands, and its Inhabitants, XIII ‘Of the Land and Beasts of Númenor’, pp. 328 ff) but for the purposes of this book are arranged to best describe the island’s physical geography. To avoid a surfeit of footnotes, unless otherwise stated, these passages are drawn from these two sources. Some details relating to specific periods or the reigns of particular rulers have been relocated within the relevant time frames where their sources are noted.
2Hards = a firm or solid beach or foreshore
THE NATURAL LIFE OF NÚMENOR
1The accounts that follow relating to the flora and fauna on Númenor, are again drawn from UT (Part Two: The Second Age, I: A Description of Númenor, pp. 165 ff) and Nature (Part Three: The World, its Lands, and its Inhabitants, XIII ‘Of the Land and Beasts of Númenor’, pp. 328 ff), but arranged in a form to best serve the narrative; and, as in ‘The Geography of Númenor’ above, footnotes are only added where material is included from additional sources.
2Laurelin (The Golden Tree) with Telperion (The Silver Tree) were the Two Trees of Valinor that gave light to that realm. Accounts of their creation and destruction are to be found in The Silmarillion (Quenta Silmarillion I ‘Of the Beginning of Days’, VIII ‘Of the Darkening of Valinor’ and elsewhere. While successors to Telperion endured into the Third Age (as with the White Tree of Gondor) ‘no likeness remained in Middle-earth of Laurelin the Golden.’ (Return, Appendix A (i) Númenor, p.1034)
3Fellowship, Book Two, VI ‘Lothlorien’, p. 335
THE LIFE OF THE NÚMENÓREANS
1The accounts of the life and culture of the Edain, the Men of Númenor are once more drawn from UT (Part Two: The Second Age, I: A Description of Númenor, pp. 165 ff), Akallabêth p. 261 and Nature (Part Three: The World, its Lands, and its Inhabitants, XI ‘Lives of the Númenóreans’, pp. 316 ff; XII ‘The Aging of the Númenóreans’ pp. 329 ff), but arranged in a form to best serve the narrative; and, as noted above, endnotes are only added where material is included from additional sources
2From the Sindarin meaning ‘west-men’ or ‘westerner’ a name used of Númenóreans who had friendship with the Elves.
3For Tolkien, the spiritual significance of the religious faith and observances of the Númenóreans was not only ideologically central to The Lord of the Rings (and, more broadly, to his entire legendarium), but also had an applicability to the writer’s own world. In a note intended as a personal comment on W. H. Auden’s review of The Return of the King in The New York Times Book Review of 22 January 1956 (Letters, No. 183, pp. 243–4) Tolkien wrote:
In The Lord of the Rings the conflict is not basically about ‘freedom’, though that is naturally involved. It is about God, and His sole right to divine honour. The Eldar and the Númenóreans believed in The One, the true God, and held worship of any other person an abomination. Sauron desired to be a God-King, and was held to be this by his servants; if he had been victorious he would have demanded divine honour from all rational creatures and absolute temporal power over the whole world. So even if in desperation ‘the West’ had bred or hired hordes of orcs and had cruelly ravaged the lands of other Men as allies of Sauron, or merely to prevent them from aiding him, their Cause would have remained indefeasibly right. As does the Cause of those who oppose now the State-God and Marshal This or That as its High Priest, even if it is true (as it unfortunately is) that many of their deeds are wrong, even if it were true (as it is not) that the inhabitants of ‘The West’, except for a minority of wealthy bosses, live in fear and squalor, while the worshippers of the State-God live in peace and abundance and in mutual esteem and trust.
4Letters, No. 156, p. 204
5Tolkien devised Adûnaic as part of his unrealised work The Notion Club Papers (1945) in which one of the protagonists, Alwin Lowdham, compiles an (unfinished) report on the Númenórean language. An astonishing piece of work, running to many pages, it can be found in Sauron Defeated, pp. 413 ff.
For the later use of the language of Númenor, following the end of the Second Age, and its relationship with the other languages of Middle-earth, see The Lord of the Rings Appendix F, The Languages and Peoples of the Third Age, ‘Of Men’ (pp. 1128 ff).
6The line of the Lords of Andúnië was founded by Valandil whose mother, Silmariën, was wife to Elatan of Andúnië and the eldest child of Tar-Elendil, Fourth King of Númenor. Since, under the laws of Númenor at that time, Silmariën was not allowed to inherit and rule as queen, Valandil and subsequent Lords of Andúnië were not in line for royal succession. Nevertheless, by the end of the Second Age, Valandil’s descendants were to become kings in Middle-earth, beginning with Elendil, the last Lord of Andúnië and first High King of Arnor and Gondor.
See also Appendix A, I (iii), p. 1043, for a note discussing the silver rod of the Lords of Andúnië (the sceptre of Annúminas) that survived the Downfall of Númenor to become the mark of the kings of Arnor and was ‘more than five thousand years old when Elrond surrendered it to Aragorn’, as is described in Return, p. 973
7Eressëans = elves of Tol Eressëa
8Tolkien wrote further on the topic of the Númenorean’s longevity in ‘Elvish Ages & Númenóreans’ (Nature, Part One XVIII, p. 151) and, at greater length and with additional reference to the subject of marriage, in ‘The Ageing of Númenóreans’ (Nature, Part Three, XXII, pp. 328–30); he also provided (Nature, p. 318) the following formula for calculating at ‘what “age” a Númenórean was in ordinary human terms of vigour and aptitude’:
(1) Deduct 20: since at 20 years a Númenórean would be at about the same stage of development as an ordinary person. (2) Add to this 20 the remainder divided by 5. Thus a Númenórean man or woman of years:
25 50 75 100 125 150 175 200 225 250 275 300 325 350 375 400 425 would be approximately of the ‘age’:
21 26 31 36 41 46 51 56 61 66 71 76 81 86 91 96 101
9In an author’s note, Tolkien explained that Númenóreans ‘were not of uniform racial descent’; an explanation of these differences can be found in Nature, p. 323
10Mediately = indirectly
11Akallabêth, p. 262
12‘The King’s sword was indeed Aranrúth, the sword of Elu Thingol of Doriath in Beleriand that had descended to Elros from Elwing his mother.’ UT, pp. 171–2 note 2, which also contains details of ‘other heirlooms’ including the Ring of Barahir, the great Axe of Tuor and the Bow of Bregor of the House of Bëor.
13Letters, No. 156, pp. 204–5
14Akallabêth, p. 263
15With reference to the Two Trees of Valinor, see p. 260, ‘THE NATURAL LIFE OF NÚMENOR’, note 2. For the history and names of the White Trees, see Christopher Tolkien’s notes in ‘The History of the Akallabêth’, Peoples, pp. 147–9
16Akallabêth, p. 263 and Peoples, p. 147. The history of the White Tree is spoken of in The Lord of the Rings, as in Elrond’s description of the City of Arnor (later Minas Tirith): ‘…Westward at the feet of the White Mountains Minas Anor they made, Tower of the Setting Sun. There in the courts of the King grew a white tree, from the seed of that tree which Isildur brought over the deep waters, and the seed of that tree before came from Eressëa, and before that out of the Uttermost West in the Day before days when the world was young.’ (Fellowship, pp. 244–5)
By the time of the War of the Ring, the Third White Tree that had been planted in the Court of the Fountain in Minas Tirith was dead, having died in SA 2872 and, as no seedling could be found, was left standing ‘until the King come[s]’ (‘The Heirs of Elendil’, Peoples, p. 206). That prophecy would be fulfilled, at the closing of the Third Age, with the crowning of Aragorn King Elessar Telcontar, the 26th King of Arnor, 35th King of Gondor and first High King of Gondor and Arnor since the short reign of Isildur. As is told in The Lord of the Rings (Return, Book Six, V ‘The Steward and the King’, pp. 972–3) on the eve of the coronation, Gandalf took Aragorn up onto Mount Mindolluin, the easternmost peak of the Ered Nimrais (the White Mountains) to a high hallow high above the city where the Kings of Gondor were wont to go. There, at dawn, Aragorn saw ‘a stony slope behind him running down from the skirts of the snow; and as he looked he was aware that alone there in the waste a growing thing stood. And he climbed to it, and saw that out of the very edge of the snow there sprang a sapling tree no more than three foot high. Already it had put forth young leaves long and shapely, dark above and silver beneath, and upon its slender crown it bore one small cluster of flowers whose white petals shone like the sunlit snow…
‘Then Aragorn laid his hand gently to the sapling, and lo! it seemed to hold only lightly to the earth, and it was removed without hurt; and Aragorn bore it back to the Citadel. Then the withered tree was uprooted, but with reverence; and they did not burn it, but laid it to rest in the silence of Rath Dínen*. And Aragorn planted the new tree in the court by the fountain, and swiftly and gladly it began to grow; and when the month of June entered in it was laden with blossom.’
* Rath Dínen, the way through the Hallows of Minas Tirith – accessed through the gate of Fen Hollen on the sixth level of the city – where, after death, the Kings and Stewards of Gondor were laid to rest.
17Akallabêth, pp. 261–2
18Nature, p. 340
c. 40 – MANY DWARVES LEAVING THEIR OLD CITIES IN ERED LUIN GO TO MORIA AND SWELL ITS NUMBERS
1Appendix A, ‘Annals of the Kings and Rulers, III Durin’s Folk’ p. 1071
2Fellowship, Book Two, II ‘The Council of Elrond’, pp. 240–1
442 – DEATH OF ELROS TAR-MINYATUR
1UT, p. 218
2UT, p. 225 note 3. Christopher Tolkien comments on the rule of Tar-Amandil as follows: ‘The figure of 148 (rather than 147) must represent the years of Tar-Amandil’s actual rule, and not take the notional year of Vardamir’s reign into account.’
c. 500 – SAURON BEGINS TO STIR AGAIN IN MIDDLE-EARTH
1Letters, No. 131, pp. 150–1
2Silmarillion, XXIV, ‘Of the Voyage of Earendil and the War of Wrath’, pp. 254–5. Sauron’s crimes during the First Age are recounted in The Silmarillion, and in particular in chapters XVIII, ‘Of the Ruin of Beleriand and the Fall of Fingolfin’, and XIX, ‘Of Beren and Lúthien’.
3Rings, p. 285. In a draft letter written by Tolkien in September 1954 (Letters, No. 153, p. 190) he writes: ‘Sauron was of course not “evil” in origin. He was a “spirit” corrupted by the Prime Dark Lord (the Prime sub-creative Rebel) Morgoth. He was given an opportunity of repentance, when Morgoth was overcome, but could not face the humiliation of recantation, and suing for pardon; and so his temporary turn to good and “benevolence” ended in a greater relapse, until he became the main representative of Evil of later ages. But at the beginning of the Second Age he was… not indeed wholly evil, not unless all “reformers” who want to hurry up with “reconstruction” and “reorganization” are wholly evil, even before pride and the lust to exert their will eat them up.’
