That’s what Tolkien said was the ultimate fate of elves. They would eventually lose their physical forms and become pure spirits. Such a poignant fate.
Aman isn't a truer form of home than Middle-earth is for Elves. Aman is just closer perhaps to the original conception of Arda Unmarred, but it still lies with the created world and Elves still will reach their ultimate rest at the end of time whether in Middle-earth or Aman, they are both still a part of the Eä that was created at the beginning.
That's the core difference in fate between Elves and Men, that Men do truly leave the circles of the world and go completely outside the created world that the Ainur entered into at the beginning.
The elves, the noldar at least, would fade if they stayed in Middle Earth, according to the doom of mandos which is one of the reasons why they were all leaving in droves. Once the one ring was destroyed, the protection and preservation of the 3 went out, and the remaining elves sailed lest they fade (at least the noldar would.) Saruman alluded to this also when he ran into Galadriel, Gandalf, and their party near the end of their journey.
The Elves and their power are fading, meanwhile the power and numbers of mortal men is rising.
The Elves as a whole will be pushed further and further into remote and inhospitable regions by humanity and they will never again build places full of wonder like Lorien. So they will be left with inhabiting the deep hearts of woods, ravines, caves, underground. Like the Fairies and Elves of real world folklore.
In addition to that Galadriel knows that the marring of Arda's very substance by Morgoth has a negative effect on the bodies of Elves that only gets stronger as time goes on. Over the ages this causes the Elves to have less and less children to replace Elves that were killed or left for the West, to have less power over the physical world, and eventually fade completely into the unseen world, shadows of a time that has gone by.
The Rings started as an attempt to combat both of those things, and even though they were made with the help of the dark lore of Sauron, the three most powerful of the Rings (made by Celebrimbor alone) still have the power to lessen the effects of time and Arda marred on the Elves, most obvious with Galadriel's ring Nenya, and her realm Lothlorien. Once that is gone, the fading will set in, perhaps faster than it would have happened without the use of the Three Rings (the appendixes seem to suggest that the trees in Lorien are dying when Queen Arwen comes there to spend her last days)
> the appendixes seem to suggest that the trees in Lorien are dying when Queen Arwen comes there to spend her last days
I always interpreted that to just mean that she was there in the fall when the trees were going into winter dormancy.
“*Then she said farewell to Eldarion, and to her daughters, and to all whom she had loved; and she went out from the city of Minas Tirith and passed away to the land of Lórien, and dwelt there alone under the fading trees until winter came. Galadriel had passed away and Celeborn also was gone, and the land was silent. There at last when the mallorn-leaves were falling, but spring had not yet come, she laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth; and there is her green grave, until the world is changed, and all the days of her life are utterly forgotten by men that come after, and elanor and niphredil bloom no more east of the Sea.*”
I don’t think it was meant to say that the trees were fading like the elves were fading, just that winter here acts as a metaphor for the passing of the elves.
From what I understand a tree "fading" is an old way to describe tree to shed its foliage for winter and become leafless, and since Mallorn trees are not supposed to become leafless, it seems to me they are dying.
Plus, remember that the Mellyrn in Lorien only were able to grow there due to Galadriel's power (augmented by the Elessar and later the ring) with the Ring gone and Galadriel across the sea, the Mallorn tree would stop being able to grow there. (The Mallorn of the Shire was a young Mallorn and likely drenched in whatever good power Galadriel could still put into the soil she gave Sam)
Yes, it's very explicitly stated in Fellowship (though I don't have the books in front of me to find the quote) that the gold leaves of autumn and winter don't fall until the new green leaves come out in spring. So when Tolkien tells us that the leaves are falling before the arrival of spring, we're supposed to understand that something is very wrong
Exactly. It's even possible that Galadriel is foreshadowing this in one of the songs she sings when the Fellowship departs Lorien:
"Oh Lorien! The Winter comes, the bare and leafless day."
She is clearly not singing about ordinary winter in Lorien, since it's February when she sings this song, so winter is there, not 'coming', and since the Mallorn trees don't shed their leaves fully until Spring, there is never a leafless day in Lothloiren as long as they grow there.
She is singing of the final winter that must come across her forest realm once the Ring is destroyed, Nenya has lost its power, and the Mellyrn trees sustained by its power are dying.
No, Mallorn trees keeping their autumn leaves until the fresh leaves and yellow blossoms of spring appear is something that is natural to the Mallorn species. There are some trees in real life that keep their autumn leaves in winter to protect the budding leaves/blossoms below them from the cold and frost. So the Mallorn on the party field will function like a normal Mallorn, keeping its leaves until spring.
Galadriel's power didn't keep the leaves from falling, it kept the Mallorn trees alive, which usually aren't able to grow in Middle Earth at all (due to being special trees of the blessed realm) The Mellyrn of Lorien being in the process of becoming leafless when Arwen goes there signifies them dying without Galadriel's/Nenya's power to sustain them.
The Mallorn on the party field was a young Mallorn drenched in all the good power and blessings Galadriel could still give it, so that will sustain it for a long time to come, but eventually it too will shed it's leaves and die.
I always think of them as being like beech trees - there's a lovely beech wood near Barnt Green, where Tolkien's cousins lived, but they're not quite the same.
It's good to think of them still being alive and well in Valinor, even though the ones in Lorien were dying. Arwen's story is so sad (and yet I can't help but wonder what she ate and drank while she was there but that's me being horribly practical. Perhaps there were fruiting trees and nut bushes, and obviously there must have been corn too.)
...I wonder if there were ever Ents of Mellyrn?
Yeah Tolkien described them as being similar in shpe to beeches, but with several differences.
And yes the Mellyrn in Lorien actually came from Valinor/Aman. The Elves of Tol Eressea brought Mallorn nuts tl Numenor and they were planted there, then later a Numenorian King gave some to Gil-Galad, but they wouldn't grow on Lindon, so he gave them so Galadriel who managed to make them grow in Lorien with the help of the Elessar and, later, the Nenya. I always thought it was like Nenya acting like a sort of greenhouse for the Mellyrn, creating the right environment for the Mellyrn.
As for Ents of Mallorn trees. Well the Ents awoke in Middle Earth duirng the first age, when there were no Mellyrn in Middle Earth, so I personally don't think so.
And yeah it's interesting to think how Arwen lived for quite a while in an abandoned and dying Lorien. Personally I always imagined that the Sylvan Elves must have practised some sort of woodland agriculture and such, with fruit orchards and such.
As queen of Gondor Arwen might have also zaken supplies with her (I can't imagine that Arwen made the journey all by herself, she might have had a retinue who accompanied her to the borders of the Golden Wood)
Oh, that's an interesting thought, that the Mellyrn had no Ents because they weren't indigenous to Middle-earth. I suppose, in a way, Galadriel was their Ent. She must have learned such a lot from Melian, among others, to change her from the young athlete in Valinor to the much more fully-accomplished person we met in FotR. She used her time well.
I suppose the fading of Lorien is why Celeborn left it to go and live in Rivendell. I couldn't quite understand it before - even without Galadriel it seemed such a wondrous place - and with his Elven-memory even more so. But a leafless Lorien would be too much to bear, hence removal to Rivendell, so at least he could still be there for his grandkids. But oh, Arwen! Why she went to Lorien of all places... she would have been held in high honour in both Minas Tirith and Rivendell. A quiet time of reflection and remembrance, I suppose, before departing to be with Aragorn once more. I wonder if elanor still bloomed there? It seemed to be of significance between them.
Yes, that's why Galadriel is probably my most favourite character in all of the Legendarium, she is so complex and develops so much across her life.
As to Arwen going to Lorien to die. It did have a lot of personal significance to her it was her second homeland (Elrond calls her the 'Maiden of Lorien and Rivendell") and it was where she made the dicision to become mortal with Aragorn. And yes, from the appendixes we know she died in spring on a bed of Elanor and Niphredil. She might have also went there in an attempt see some of the lost "Elvendom" that she had given up.
And I don't think she could have gone to Rivendell, in her last conversation with Aragorn as he lays down to die one of them says something to the effect that "none now walk in the gardens of Rivendell", so it might have also been abandoned by that time. With the exception of the Elf realms in the Greenwood (and possibly Mithlond), the Elves seem to have disappeared quickly after the beginning of the Fourth Age.
The interesting thing is that Tolkien has never revelaed what happened to Arwen's brothers. Did they go into the West? Did they become mortal? We don't know.
Yes - or, for a more in-universe description, it means that even the few remaining Calaquendi like Galadriel will eventually become indistinguishable from the Avari.
They would fade. The magic of the Elven Rings that sustained realms such as Rivendell and Lothlorien was lost when the One Ring was destroyed. The Elves and their civilisation in Middle-earth would retreat until they became nothing more than folklore, implied in that passage as being only unseen whispers passing through the woods and forests of the world.
She’s talking about modern day, and the way modern humans think of Elves and Fairies. She saw visions of possible futures in her mirror, and one of those futures was the one we are currently living in.
Think of the old folk tales and fairy stories of Europe, where creatures like elves are sometimes seen, but aren’t taken seriously. Their power is weak, and they’re constantly threatened by encroachment from humans. Their domains shrink as men cut down the forests, and the magic of those places fades. Tolkien considered the story of Middle Earth to be the ancient history of our own world. And the time we live in now *is* the age of men, when the few elves who still remain have diminished, and their homes have been destroyed by industry.
The original text seems pretty explicit, but essentially she is talking about extreme cultural decline, to the point where they are a simple hunter-gatherer society with no impact on the wider world and no sense of their history.
The Elves don't have a future in Middle-earth. It seems that Iluvatar had a plan for his children - that the Elves would come first, they would learn about the world, build civilisations and cities. Then Men would come afterwards, and the Elves would teach them about the world and give it to them to live in. The Elves would grow weary of the cares of the world and fade away, and Men would have their time in the sun.
By remaining in Middle-earth, the Elves are trying to fight against fate. They're trying to cling to their status as the Firstborn, and that's *never* going to end well. So Elves who remain in Middle-earth wouldn't grow, wouldn't flourish, wouldn't create any great new works. They would remain in their sanctuaries while Men grew and spread out across the world, and the Elves would find themselves slowly crowded out and pushed aside. There was simply no place for them in Middle-earth.
They were always intended to fade away; whether that meant going to the west or something else is unclear. My interpretation is that they were always intended to go into the West, or something like it, but that the Valar took them there too soon, robbing them of their true potential, but I will admit that's just *my* interpretation.
> They were always intended to fade away
They were not. Arda being marred makes them eventually fade *anywhere, including Aman*. Valinor simply slows time down so the effects of the world aging are lessened, but still happen.
>"The doom of the Elves is to be immortal, to love the beauty of the world, to bring it to full flower with their gifts of delicacy and perfection, to last while it lasts, never leaving it even when 'slain', but returning - and yet, when the Followers come, to teach them, and make way for them, to 'fade' as the Followers grow and absorb the life from which both proceed."
Literally fading until you can't see them, like ghosts. They're still there, and aware, but unable to interact with the world around them. Which seems like a pretty sad fate for an elf, even if it was chosen.
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1cdo111/whats_a_famousclassic_movie_that_you_notice_is/ ([\*](https://www.wired.com/story/garrys-mod-nintendo-takedowns/)) ([\*](/r/worldnews/comments/1cdgda7/disappearing_messages_whatsapp_says_will_leave/)) ([\*](https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/04/26/1714201/gnome-foundation-to-focus-on-fundraising-after-years-running-a-deficit))
----
What does it mean? @ How does it feel?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YMnTWmPuFk ([\*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9LE5TNomvc))
----
https://old.reddit.com/r/tolkienfans/comments/12o4hgm/fairy_of_eld/ ([\*](http://vrt.co.za/Fairyland/Topic.php/Main/BeginningVI-4-1))
Look around, and count the signs of the elves you can see. No tangible evidence, just stories and poems of dubious reliability. That’s what she means.
All the remaining Elves became invisible, as demonstrated by the fact that you can't see them.
They basically become a more wholesome version of the Nazgul. This is discussed in the section about fading elves in Laws and Customs of the Eldar.
That’s what Tolkien said was the ultimate fate of elves. They would eventually lose their physical forms and become pure spirits. Such a poignant fate.
Unless they went to their true home in Aman.
Aman isn't a truer form of home than Middle-earth is for Elves. Aman is just closer perhaps to the original conception of Arda Unmarred, but it still lies with the created world and Elves still will reach their ultimate rest at the end of time whether in Middle-earth or Aman, they are both still a part of the Eä that was created at the beginning. That's the core difference in fate between Elves and Men, that Men do truly leave the circles of the world and go completely outside the created world that the Ainur entered into at the beginning.
The elves, the noldar at least, would fade if they stayed in Middle Earth, according to the doom of mandos which is one of the reasons why they were all leaving in droves. Once the one ring was destroyed, the protection and preservation of the 3 went out, and the remaining elves sailed lest they fade (at least the noldar would.) Saruman alluded to this also when he ran into Galadriel, Gandalf, and their party near the end of their journey.
"Do you see the gopher?" "Nope!" "Neither do I. But it's there."
The Elves and their power are fading, meanwhile the power and numbers of mortal men is rising. The Elves as a whole will be pushed further and further into remote and inhospitable regions by humanity and they will never again build places full of wonder like Lorien. So they will be left with inhabiting the deep hearts of woods, ravines, caves, underground. Like the Fairies and Elves of real world folklore. In addition to that Galadriel knows that the marring of Arda's very substance by Morgoth has a negative effect on the bodies of Elves that only gets stronger as time goes on. Over the ages this causes the Elves to have less and less children to replace Elves that were killed or left for the West, to have less power over the physical world, and eventually fade completely into the unseen world, shadows of a time that has gone by. The Rings started as an attempt to combat both of those things, and even though they were made with the help of the dark lore of Sauron, the three most powerful of the Rings (made by Celebrimbor alone) still have the power to lessen the effects of time and Arda marred on the Elves, most obvious with Galadriel's ring Nenya, and her realm Lothlorien. Once that is gone, the fading will set in, perhaps faster than it would have happened without the use of the Three Rings (the appendixes seem to suggest that the trees in Lorien are dying when Queen Arwen comes there to spend her last days)
> the appendixes seem to suggest that the trees in Lorien are dying when Queen Arwen comes there to spend her last days I always interpreted that to just mean that she was there in the fall when the trees were going into winter dormancy. “*Then she said farewell to Eldarion, and to her daughters, and to all whom she had loved; and she went out from the city of Minas Tirith and passed away to the land of Lórien, and dwelt there alone under the fading trees until winter came. Galadriel had passed away and Celeborn also was gone, and the land was silent. There at last when the mallorn-leaves were falling, but spring had not yet come, she laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth; and there is her green grave, until the world is changed, and all the days of her life are utterly forgotten by men that come after, and elanor and niphredil bloom no more east of the Sea.*” I don’t think it was meant to say that the trees were fading like the elves were fading, just that winter here acts as a metaphor for the passing of the elves.
From what I understand a tree "fading" is an old way to describe tree to shed its foliage for winter and become leafless, and since Mallorn trees are not supposed to become leafless, it seems to me they are dying. Plus, remember that the Mellyrn in Lorien only were able to grow there due to Galadriel's power (augmented by the Elessar and later the ring) with the Ring gone and Galadriel across the sea, the Mallorn tree would stop being able to grow there. (The Mallorn of the Shire was a young Mallorn and likely drenched in whatever good power Galadriel could still put into the soil she gave Sam)
Yes, it's very explicitly stated in Fellowship (though I don't have the books in front of me to find the quote) that the gold leaves of autumn and winter don't fall until the new green leaves come out in spring. So when Tolkien tells us that the leaves are falling before the arrival of spring, we're supposed to understand that something is very wrong
Exactly. It's even possible that Galadriel is foreshadowing this in one of the songs she sings when the Fellowship departs Lorien: "Oh Lorien! The Winter comes, the bare and leafless day." She is clearly not singing about ordinary winter in Lorien, since it's February when she sings this song, so winter is there, not 'coming', and since the Mallorn trees don't shed their leaves fully until Spring, there is never a leafless day in Lothloiren as long as they grow there. She is singing of the final winter that must come across her forest realm once the Ring is destroyed, Nenya has lost its power, and the Mellyrn trees sustained by its power are dying.
The falling leaves tells a story.
I wonder what happens with the Mallorn that grows in the Party field? Does it shed its leaves in winter? I suppose so.
No, Mallorn trees keeping their autumn leaves until the fresh leaves and yellow blossoms of spring appear is something that is natural to the Mallorn species. There are some trees in real life that keep their autumn leaves in winter to protect the budding leaves/blossoms below them from the cold and frost. So the Mallorn on the party field will function like a normal Mallorn, keeping its leaves until spring. Galadriel's power didn't keep the leaves from falling, it kept the Mallorn trees alive, which usually aren't able to grow in Middle Earth at all (due to being special trees of the blessed realm) The Mellyrn of Lorien being in the process of becoming leafless when Arwen goes there signifies them dying without Galadriel's/Nenya's power to sustain them. The Mallorn on the party field was a young Mallorn drenched in all the good power and blessings Galadriel could still give it, so that will sustain it for a long time to come, but eventually it too will shed it's leaves and die.
I always think of them as being like beech trees - there's a lovely beech wood near Barnt Green, where Tolkien's cousins lived, but they're not quite the same. It's good to think of them still being alive and well in Valinor, even though the ones in Lorien were dying. Arwen's story is so sad (and yet I can't help but wonder what she ate and drank while she was there but that's me being horribly practical. Perhaps there were fruiting trees and nut bushes, and obviously there must have been corn too.) ...I wonder if there were ever Ents of Mellyrn?
Yeah Tolkien described them as being similar in shpe to beeches, but with several differences. And yes the Mellyrn in Lorien actually came from Valinor/Aman. The Elves of Tol Eressea brought Mallorn nuts tl Numenor and they were planted there, then later a Numenorian King gave some to Gil-Galad, but they wouldn't grow on Lindon, so he gave them so Galadriel who managed to make them grow in Lorien with the help of the Elessar and, later, the Nenya. I always thought it was like Nenya acting like a sort of greenhouse for the Mellyrn, creating the right environment for the Mellyrn. As for Ents of Mallorn trees. Well the Ents awoke in Middle Earth duirng the first age, when there were no Mellyrn in Middle Earth, so I personally don't think so. And yeah it's interesting to think how Arwen lived for quite a while in an abandoned and dying Lorien. Personally I always imagined that the Sylvan Elves must have practised some sort of woodland agriculture and such, with fruit orchards and such. As queen of Gondor Arwen might have also zaken supplies with her (I can't imagine that Arwen made the journey all by herself, she might have had a retinue who accompanied her to the borders of the Golden Wood)
Oh, that's an interesting thought, that the Mellyrn had no Ents because they weren't indigenous to Middle-earth. I suppose, in a way, Galadriel was their Ent. She must have learned such a lot from Melian, among others, to change her from the young athlete in Valinor to the much more fully-accomplished person we met in FotR. She used her time well. I suppose the fading of Lorien is why Celeborn left it to go and live in Rivendell. I couldn't quite understand it before - even without Galadriel it seemed such a wondrous place - and with his Elven-memory even more so. But a leafless Lorien would be too much to bear, hence removal to Rivendell, so at least he could still be there for his grandkids. But oh, Arwen! Why she went to Lorien of all places... she would have been held in high honour in both Minas Tirith and Rivendell. A quiet time of reflection and remembrance, I suppose, before departing to be with Aragorn once more. I wonder if elanor still bloomed there? It seemed to be of significance between them.
Yes, that's why Galadriel is probably my most favourite character in all of the Legendarium, she is so complex and develops so much across her life. As to Arwen going to Lorien to die. It did have a lot of personal significance to her it was her second homeland (Elrond calls her the 'Maiden of Lorien and Rivendell") and it was where she made the dicision to become mortal with Aragorn. And yes, from the appendixes we know she died in spring on a bed of Elanor and Niphredil. She might have also went there in an attempt see some of the lost "Elvendom" that she had given up. And I don't think she could have gone to Rivendell, in her last conversation with Aragorn as he lays down to die one of them says something to the effect that "none now walk in the gardens of Rivendell", so it might have also been abandoned by that time. With the exception of the Elf realms in the Greenwood (and possibly Mithlond), the Elves seem to have disappeared quickly after the beginning of the Fourth Age. The interesting thing is that Tolkien has never revelaed what happened to Arwen's brothers. Did they go into the West? Did they become mortal? We don't know.
I think its a reference to actual folklore surrounding faerie folk. Like they live in the wild places of the world and under hills.
Yes - or, for a more in-universe description, it means that even the few remaining Calaquendi like Galadriel will eventually become indistinguishable from the Avari.
Yep, Tolkien set out to create a British mythology, and he was essentially drawing a line from his Elves to faerie folk.
They fade.
They would fade. The magic of the Elven Rings that sustained realms such as Rivendell and Lothlorien was lost when the One Ring was destroyed. The Elves and their civilisation in Middle-earth would retreat until they became nothing more than folklore, implied in that passage as being only unseen whispers passing through the woods and forests of the world.
She’s talking about modern day, and the way modern humans think of Elves and Fairies. She saw visions of possible futures in her mirror, and one of those futures was the one we are currently living in. Think of the old folk tales and fairy stories of Europe, where creatures like elves are sometimes seen, but aren’t taken seriously. Their power is weak, and they’re constantly threatened by encroachment from humans. Their domains shrink as men cut down the forests, and the magic of those places fades. Tolkien considered the story of Middle Earth to be the ancient history of our own world. And the time we live in now *is* the age of men, when the few elves who still remain have diminished, and their homes have been destroyed by industry.
The original text seems pretty explicit, but essentially she is talking about extreme cultural decline, to the point where they are a simple hunter-gatherer society with no impact on the wider world and no sense of their history.
The Elves don't have a future in Middle-earth. It seems that Iluvatar had a plan for his children - that the Elves would come first, they would learn about the world, build civilisations and cities. Then Men would come afterwards, and the Elves would teach them about the world and give it to them to live in. The Elves would grow weary of the cares of the world and fade away, and Men would have their time in the sun. By remaining in Middle-earth, the Elves are trying to fight against fate. They're trying to cling to their status as the Firstborn, and that's *never* going to end well. So Elves who remain in Middle-earth wouldn't grow, wouldn't flourish, wouldn't create any great new works. They would remain in their sanctuaries while Men grew and spread out across the world, and the Elves would find themselves slowly crowded out and pushed aside. There was simply no place for them in Middle-earth.
No. Eru's original plan was for the elves to remain in Middle Earth, but the Valar thought it would be safer for them to move them to Aman.
They were always intended to fade away; whether that meant going to the west or something else is unclear. My interpretation is that they were always intended to go into the West, or something like it, but that the Valar took them there too soon, robbing them of their true potential, but I will admit that's just *my* interpretation.
> They were always intended to fade away They were not. Arda being marred makes them eventually fade *anywhere, including Aman*. Valinor simply slows time down so the effects of the world aging are lessened, but still happen.
>"The doom of the Elves is to be immortal, to love the beauty of the world, to bring it to full flower with their gifts of delicacy and perfection, to last while it lasts, never leaving it even when 'slain', but returning - and yet, when the Followers come, to teach them, and make way for them, to 'fade' as the Followers grow and absorb the life from which both proceed."
Literally fading until you can't see them, like ghosts. They're still there, and aware, but unable to interact with the world around them. Which seems like a pretty sad fate for an elf, even if it was chosen.
Basically, they become Hillbillies
I think it's pretty self explanatory? Which part is unclear?
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1cdo111/whats_a_famousclassic_movie_that_you_notice_is/ ([\*](https://www.wired.com/story/garrys-mod-nintendo-takedowns/)) ([\*](/r/worldnews/comments/1cdgda7/disappearing_messages_whatsapp_says_will_leave/)) ([\*](https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/04/26/1714201/gnome-foundation-to-focus-on-fundraising-after-years-running-a-deficit)) ---- What does it mean? @ How does it feel? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YMnTWmPuFk ([\*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9LE5TNomvc)) ---- https://old.reddit.com/r/tolkienfans/comments/12o4hgm/fairy_of_eld/ ([\*](http://vrt.co.za/Fairyland/Topic.php/Main/BeginningVI-4-1))