History of Arda

• 1. Introduction

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  The history of Arda, the imagined past of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, comes with a correction from its own author. In a letter written in 1958, Tolkien complained that many reviewers seemed to assume Middle-earth was another planet. He set them straight in his own words: "I have, I suppose, constructed an imaginary time, but kept my feet on my own mother-earth for place."

  That one sentence changes how every battle, kingdom and ring in the legendarium should be read. If Arda is our own Earth in the far past, then the peoples who lived there must have left something behind. Who spoiled the harmony of the world, and what did the damage cost? What became of the Elves, the Dwarves and the Hobbits? And how does a place so crowded with life shrink down into the world we know?

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• 2. Music Before the World

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  Eru Ilúvatar, the supreme deity of Tolkien's universe, opens the history by making spirits out of his own thoughts. He called them the Ainur, and some of them counted as brothers or sisters. Together with Ilúvatar they made a divine music. Melkor, at that time the most powerful of the Ainur, broke the harmony of that music.

  Ilúvatar answered the discord with a second theme, and then with a third. The Ainur could not comprehend either one, because they were not its source. The music as a whole stood for the history of the entire universe. It also stood for the Children of Ilúvatar who would live in it, Men and Elves.

  Only after the song did Ilúvatar make Eä, a name meaning "to be", which is the universe itself. Inside it he formed Arda, the Earth, "globed within the void". Arda and its three airs were set apart from Avakúma, the empty void outside.

  The first fifteen of the Ainur to descend into Arda were also the most powerful, and they were named the Valar. The lesser Ainur who followed them were called the Maiar. From the moment these spirits arrived, time was counted in Valian Years, each of them considerably longer than a solar year.

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• 3. Lamps and Trees

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  Two great lamps, Illuin and Ormal, gave Arda its first steady light. When the Valar arrived, the world was lifeless and had no distinct features. They chose a symmetrical shape for it, with a much larger Middle-earth at the centre, covered only by a misty glow over barren ground. They gathered that glow into the two lamps. The Vala Aulë forged two pillar-like mountains to hold them, Helcar in the north and Ringil in the south. Illuin stood on Helcar and Ormal on Ringil. Where their light mingled, the Valar made their home on the island of Almaren, in the Great Lake.

  This age was called the Spring of Arda. The Valar rested on Almaren while animals appeared and forests began to grow, and Melkor lurked beyond the Walls of Night. He returned and built the fortress of Utumno, also called Udûn, beneath the Iron Mountains in the far north. Then he assaulted the lamps and destroyed them. Darkness fell again, and the collapse spoiled the symmetry of Arda's surface. In its place came three lands: Aman in the West, Middle-earth proper in the centre, and uninhabited eastern lands later called the Land of the Sun. The inland Sea of Helcar, with its bay Cuiviénen, filled the site of the northern lamp. The Sea of Ringil filled the southern one.

  After the loss of Almaren, the Valar abandoned Middle-earth and built a Second Kingdom, Valinor, on the continent of Aman. There Yavanna made the Two Trees, Telperion the silver tree and Laurelin the golden. Their glow lit Valinor and left Middle-earth in darkness, during the Sleep of Yavanna that Treebeard later remembered as the Great Darkness. The first ten ages of this time, the Days of Bliss, brought peace and prosperity to Valinor. Manwë, Yavanna and Aulë conceived the Eagles, the Ents and the Dwarves, but each people was put to sleep until the Elves should awake. In the next ten ages, the Noontide of the Blessed Realm, Varda kindled the stars above Middle-earth.

  The first Elves awoke at Cuiviénen, in the middle of Middle-earth, and with them began the First Age of the Children of Ilúvatar. Melkor soon approached them, hoping to enslave them. When the Valar learned of this, they came into Middle-earth with the Maiar. In the War of the Powers, also called the Battle of the Powers, they defeated Melkor and carried him captive to Valinor. That victory began the Peace of Arda.

  Oromë of the Valar then summoned the Elves to Aman, and many followed him on the Great Journey westward. Some groups lingered along the way, notably the Nandor and the Sindar. Three clans reached Aman, the Vanyar, the Noldor and the Teleri, and they made their home in Eldamar. Back in Valinor, Melkor had begun a servitude that was to last three Ages.

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• 4. Silmarils and Exile

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  Finwë, king of the Noldor, had two sons, Fëanor and Fingolfin, and Melkor turned their rivalry to his own use. He had been released after appearing to repent, and the quarrel exposed his deception. With the help of the giant spider Ungoliant, he destroyed the Two Trees, and only faint starlight remained. He then killed Finwë and stole the Silmarils, three gems that Fëanor had crafted to hold the light of the Trees. In his fortress in the north of Middle-earth he forged a black iron crown and set the Silmarils in it.

  Fëanor, bitter at the inactivity of the Valar, cursed the thief with a new name, Morgoth. He and his house set out in pursuit, and a larger host led by Fingolfin followed. Fingolfin's brother Finarfin chose to stay in Valinor.

  At Alqualondë, the port-city of the Teleri, the host asked for ships and was refused. The first Kinslaying followed, and the Noldor who took part were exiled indefinitely. Fëanor and his children swore an oath to retake the Silmarils, and the Valar turned that oath into a curse over the house of Fëanor. Fëanor's host sailed away in the boats. Fingolfin's host, left behind, crossed to Middle-earth over the Helcaraxë, the Grinding Ice of the far north, and lost many on the way.

  The Valar then took the last living fruit of Laurelin and the last living flower of Telperion and made the Moon and the Sun. These stayed part of Arda but were separate from Ambar, the world itself. The first sunrise over Ambar ended the Years of the Trees and opened the Years of the Sun, which in Tolkien's scheme last to the present day.

  Fëanor did not live long in Middle-earth. He was lost in an attack on the Balrogs of Morgoth, Maiar who had betrayed the Valar to serve him. His sons survived and founded realms, as did the followers of Fingolfin, who reached Beleriand after Fëanor's death. In the Dagor Aglareb, the "Glorious Battle", the Noldor under Fingolfin and Maedhros attacked from east and west. They destroyed the invading Orcs and laid siege to Morgoth's stronghold of Angband. The siege brought the Long Peace, which lasted hundreds of years, and during it Men arrived over the Blue Mountains.

  Fingolfin died when Morgoth broke the siege in the Dagor Bragollach, the "Battle of Sudden Flame". Later the Nírnaeth Arnoediad, the "Battle of Unnumbered Tears", ended in disaster for Elves, Men and Dwarves alike. One by one the kingdoms fell, even the hidden ones of Doriath and Gondolin. By the end, the free Elves and Men of Beleriand held only a settlement at the mouth of the River Sirion and another on the Isle of Balar.

  Eärendil possessed a Silmaril that his wife Elwing's grandparents, Beren and Lúthien, had taken from Morgoth. The sons of Fëanor still claimed every Silmaril as theirs, and two more Kinslayings followed. Eärendil and Elwing crossed the Great Sea to beg the Valar for aid, and a great host answered. In the War of Wrath, Melkor was utterly defeated and expelled into the Void, and most of his works were destroyed. The victory had a terrible price, because most of Beleriand itself sank.

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• 5. Númenor and the Rings

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  The Second Age, which would last 3,441 years, began with a gift. The Men who had remained faithful received the island of Númenor, in the middle of the Great Sea, and built a powerful kingdom there. In the King's city of Armenelos they planted the White Tree, and it was said that Númenor would endure while the tree stood in the courtyard. The Elves were pardoned for the sins of Fëanor and allowed to return home to the Undying Lands. The Númenóreans became great seafarers, learned and wise, with lifespans beyond those of other Men. At first they honoured the Ban of the Valar and never sailed into the Undying Lands. They went east to Middle-earth instead and taught the Men living there valuable skills. In time they grew jealous of the Elves for their immortality.

  Sauron, the mightiest of the Maiar and Morgoth's chief servant, was still active. Wearing the deceptive disguise of Annatar, he taught the Elves of Eregion how to craft Rings of Power. Seven rings were made for the Dwarves and nine for Men, who later became known as the Ringwraiths. He built the stronghold of Barad-dûr and secretly forged the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom, to control the other rings and their bearers.

  Celebrimbor, a grandson of Fëanor, forged three mighty rings on his own. Vilya belonged first to the Elven king Gil-galad and then to Elrond. Nenya was wielded by Galadriel. Narya went from Celebrimbor to Círdan, who gave it to Gandalf.

  The instant Sauron put on the One Ring, the Elves realized they had been betrayed and removed the Three. Sauron eventually obtained the Seven and the Nine. He could not subdue the Dwarf ringbearers, but the Men who bore the Nine became the Nazgûl. His war on the Elves, the Dark Years, nearly destroyed them until the Númenóreans joined the fight and crushed his forces. Sauron never forgot that ruin, and he made the destruction of Númenor his goal.

  Ar-Pharazôn, the last and most powerful of the Kings of Númenor, belonged to a people who had grown haughty and sought to dominate other Men. He humbled Sauron and brought him to the island as a hostage, which was exactly what Sauron wanted. Still beautiful in appearance, Sauron won the king's trust and became high priest in the cult of Melkor. The Faithful, who still worshipped Eru Ilúvatar, were openly persecuted by the King's Men and sacrificed in Melkor's name. Eventually Sauron deceived Ar-Pharazôn into invading Aman, promising him immortality, though Sauron knew the promise was false.

  Amandil, chief of the Faithful, sailed west to warn the Valar. His son Elendil and grandsons Isildur and Anárion prepared to flee east, carrying a seedling of the White Tree and the palantíri, gifts from the Elves. When the King's forces set foot on Aman, the Valar laid down their guardianship of the world and called on Ilúvatar to intervene. The world was changed into a sphere and the continent of Aman was removed. Only the Old Straight Road, open to Elves but not to mortals, remained. Númenor was utterly destroyed, and so was the fair body of Sauron, though his spirit returned to Mordor.

  Elendil and the remaining Faithful sailed to Middle-earth and founded the exile realms of Gondor and Arnor. When Sauron rose again, Elves and Men joined in the Last Alliance of Elves and Men. For seven years they besieged Barad-dûr, until Sauron himself entered the field and slew Elendil and Gil-galad, the last High King of the Noldor in Middle-earth. Isildur took up the hilt of Narsil, his father's shattered sword, and cut the One Ring from Sauron's hand. Sauron was defeated but not destroyed. Isildur ignored the counsel of Elrond, and instead of casting the Ring into Mount Doom, he kept it as weregild, a payment for his dead father.

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• 6. Shadow and Fading

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  At the Gladden Fields, an Orc ambush caught Isildur, and the Ring slipped from his finger as he fled. An orc arrow killed him, and the Ring was lost in the Anduin River. That betrayal came early in the Third Age, which lasted 3021 years and ended with the War of the Ring and the final defeat of Sauron.

  Arnor was divided into three petty kingdoms, which fell one by one in wars with Angmar, the vassal kingdom of Sauron. Gondor suffered kin-strife, plague, the Wainriders and the Corsairs. The line of the Kings of Gondor ended, and the House of the Stewards ruled in its place. Meanwhile the heirs of Isildur from fallen Arnor wandered Middle-earth, aided only by Elrond in Rivendell, and their line never broke.

  Elven kingdoms survived in Lindon, Lothlórien and Mirkwood, and Rivendell became a prominent haven for Elves and other peoples. Many Elves had left for Valinor at the start of the age, disturbed by the recent war. Those who stayed mostly kept out of other lands' affairs, devoted themselves to artistic pleasures and tended their territories. They came to the aid of others only in time of war. By the end of the age, only fragments of their once-grand civilization survived.

  Around a thousand years into the age, the Wizards arrived to help the Free Peoples against a possible return of Sauron. The most important of them were Gandalf and Saruman. Elsewhere, Sméagol found the One Ring and, under its power and ignorant of its nature, retreated with it to a secret life under the Misty Mountains.

  The Great Plague began in Rhûn, in the vast east of Middle-earth, and spread into Wilderland, where it killed more than half the population. It then reached Gondor and Eriador. In Gondor it killed King Telemnar, his children and the White Tree, and it decimated the capital, Osgiliath. Government of the kingdom moved to Minas Tirith. In Eriador, the young Hobbit realm of the Shire suffered "great loss" in what the Hobbits called the Dark Plague.

  The Watchful Peace began when Gandalf went to Dol Guldur and the evil dwelling there, later revealed to be Sauron, fled to the far east. Gondor strengthened its borders and kept watch on the east, with Minas Morgul still a threat and Mordor still occupied by Orcs. There were minor skirmishes with Umbar. In the north the Hobbits prospered, got their first Took Thain and colonized Buckland. The dragon Smaug drove the Dwarves of Durin's folk out of Erebor, and under Thorin I they settled in the Grey Mountains. Sauron meanwhile built a strong alliance among the tribes of the Easterlings, so that he would return with many Men in his service. The main events of The Hobbit also belong to this stretch of the age.

  By the time of The Lord of the Rings, Sauron had recovered and was seeking the One Ring. The Ring was destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom, and the Third Age ended. Aragorn took his place as King of the Reunited Kingdom of Arnor and Gondor, restoring the line of Kings from the Stewards of Gondor. He married Arwen, the daughter of Elrond, for the last time adding Elvish blood to the royal line. Gandalf, Frodo, Bilbo Baggins and many of the remaining Elves sailed from the Grey Havens to Aman.

  The Dominion of Men began with the Fourth Age. Elves no longer took part in human affairs, and most left for Valinor, while those who remained "fade" and diminish. The Dwarves met a similar fate. Erebor became an ally of the Reunited Kingdom, and there are indications that Khazad-dûm was refounded, along with a colony established by Gimli in the White Mountains. Together they disappear from human history.

  Eldarion, son of Aragorn and Arwen, became King of the Reunited Kingdom in the year 120 of the Fourth Age. Aragorn gave him the tokens of his rule and surrendered his life willingly, as his ancestors had done thousands of years before. Arwen left Eldarion to rule alone and passed to the now-empty land of Lórien, where she died. Legolas then departed for Valinor, taking Gimli with him and ending the Fellowship of the Ring in Middle-earth.

  Tolkien once considered writing a sequel to The Lord of the Rings, called The New Shadow, set in Eldarion's reign. In it Eldarion would deal with his people turning to evil practices, in effect repeating the history of Númenor. In a 1972 letter about this draft, Tolkien said the reign would have lasted about 100 years after the death of Aragorn. The realm was to be "great and long-enduring", but the lifespan of the royal house would not be restored. It would keep waning until it was like that of ordinary Men.

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• 7. Echoes and Influences

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  Scholars who note that Tolkien was a devout Catholic hear Christian echoes in the Ainulindalë creation myth. Brian Rosebury calls its prose appropriately "scriptural". Jane Chance sees the conflict between the creator Eru Ilúvatar and the fallen Vala Melkor, also called Morgoth, as a mirror of God against Satan. She adds that Elves and Men, corrupted by Morgoth and his spiritual descendant Sauron, echo Adam and Eve tempted in the Garden of Eden.

  Verlyn Flieger follows the splintering of created light through the Two Lamps, the Two Trees and the Silmarils, each time as the wills of different beings conflict. She cites Tolkien's poem Mythopoeia, "Creation of Myth", in which man the sub-creator is "the refracted light / through whom is splintered from a single White / to many hues, and endlessly combined / in living shapes". For Tolkien, she says, this creative light was equivalent to the Christian Logos, the Divine Word.

  Owen Barfield's 1928 book Poetic Diction gave Flieger a theory of decline that she finds behind Tolkien's thinking. Its central idea was that an ancient language once held a unified set of meanings, and that modern languages descend from it by fragmentation. Tolkien took this to imply the separation of peoples, in particular the complicated and repeated sundering of the Elves.

  Greek mythology offers another set of parallels. The disappearance of the island of Númenor recalls Atlantis. Like the Olympians, the Valar live in the world but on a high mountain, apart from mortals. Ulmo, Lord of the Waters, owes much to Poseidon, and Manwë, Lord of the Air and King of the Valar, owes much to Zeus. Tolkien compared Beren and Lúthien with Orpheus and Eurydice, but with the gender roles reversed. He mentioned Oedipus in connection with Túrin in the Children of Húrin. Flieger compares Fëanor with Prometheus, since both are associated with fire and both are punished for rebelling against the decrees of the gods.

  Norbert Schürer notes the 2022 book The Fall of Númenor and the Amazon television series The Rings of Power, both about the Second Age, and asks what that period means for the legendarium as a whole. He points out that it has only one finished tale, the Atlantis-style Akallabêth. In his view, Tolkien wanted a central period to join the First Age, most of the 1977 Silmarillion, to the Third Age of The Lord of the Rings. Schürer argues this could not work, because the Second Age centres on "the failure, decline, and corruption" at the core of human life, which a Christian Tolkien could not accept.

  Scholars including Flieger have noted that if Tolkien meant to create a mythology for England, the history of Arda in The Silmarillion made it very dark. John Garth identifies his experiences in the First World War as formative, and Tolkien began his Middle-earth writings at that time. Flieger suggests the world also arose from the wartime experience of his dead schoolfriends, Geoffrey Bache Smith and Rob Gilson. Janet Brennan Croft points out that Tolkien's first prose work after returning from the war was The Fall of Gondolin. She calls it "full of extended and terrifying scenes of battle", with the street-fighting described over 16 pages.

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• 8. Imagined Prehistory

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  Paul H. Kocher summed up Arda as "our own green and solid Earth at some quite remote epoch in the past." Tolkien himself says as much in the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings, where he writes that the Third Age "is now long past" and "the shape of all lands has been changed". Yet the regions where Hobbits lived were doubtless the same ones where they still linger: "the North-West of the Old World, east of the Sea."

  The distance in time is something Tolkien tried to measure. He imagined a gap of about 6000 years since the end of the Third Age, which places the start of the Fourth Age that far back. If the Ages were as long as the Second and Third, he reasoned, we would be at the end of the Fifth. But he thought the Ages had quickened, writing: "I imagine we are actually at the end of the Sixth Age, or in the Seventh."

  Richard C. West points to one of the final passages of the internal chronology of The Lord of the Rings, The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen. It says that Arwen's grave will remain on the hill of Cerin Amroth in what was Lothlórien "until the world is changed, and all the days of her life are utterly forgotten by men that come after". West calls this feature "highly unusual" among modern fantasy, because the story is set in the real world but in an imagined prehistory. Tolkien can build elves, wizards and hobbits as he likes, so long as he tears them down again. The modern world then emerges from the wreckage with only "a word or two, a few vague legends and confused traditions" to show for it.

  West praises Kocher's reading of the same ending. Kocher sees the first steps of a long retreat in which every other intelligent species disappears, leaving man effectually alone on Earth. He writes: "Ents may still be there in our forests, but what forests have we left?" The extermination was already under way in the Third Age, he says, and Tolkien bitterly deplores its climax today.

  The Tolkien scholar Stuart D. Lee and the medievalist Elizabeth Solopova offer their own summary. The Silmarillion describes events presented as factual, set before Earth's actual recorded history. Generations then pass them down as folk-myths and legends, especially among the Old English. Later geological events reshape the continents into the Earth as it now is. The old tales still survive here and there, which explains mentions of Dwarves and Elves in real medieval literature. Tolkien's mythology, they conclude, "is an attempt to reconstruct our pre-history."

  The poet W. H. Auden wrote in The New York Times that "no previous writer has, to my knowledge, created an imaginary world and a feigned history in such detail." By the end of the trilogy and its appendices, he said, a reader knows as much about Middle-earth as about the actual world outside his special field. Margaret Hiley observes that Auden's phrase "feigned history" echoes the foreword to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings. There Tolkien says he much preferred history, true or feigned, to allegory.

  Dagor Dagorath, the final battle, gives the legendarium its last scene. In a letter, Tolkien wrote that the legendarium ends with a vision of the end of the world, its breaking and remaking, and the recovery of the Silmarilli and the "light before the Sun". The battle, he supposed, owes more to the Norse vision of Ragnarök than to anything else, though it is not much like it. The idea appears in manuscripts that his son Christopher published in The History of Middle-earth series, but not in the published Silmarillion. There, the closing lines of the Quenta Silmarillion leave the fate of Arda open-ended. Tolkien later concluded that the Elves had no objective idea of the end, only a clear sense that it would come through a large-scale catastrophe. Their one certainty was estel, hope that Eru's divine plan would bring salvation and good to the whole world. In that light, the Second Prophecy of Mandos and the events of Dagor Dagorath became an ancient myth among Men of Númenórean origin.

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