“Thus spake Mandos in prophecy, when the Gods sat in judgement in Valinor, and the rumour of his words was whispered among all the Elves of the West. When the world is old and the Powers grow weary, then Morgoth, seeing that the guard sleepeth, shall come back through the Door of Night out of the Timeless Void; and he shall destroy the Sun and Moon. But Eärendel shall descend upon him as a white and searing flame and drive him from the airs. Then shall the Last Battle be gathered on the fields of Valinor. In that day Tulkas shall strive with Morgoth, and on his right hand shall be Fionwë, and on his left Túrin Turambar, son of Húrin, coming from the halls of Mandos; and the black sword of Túrin shall deal unto Morgoth his death and final end; and so shall the children of Húrin and all Men be avenged.
Thereafter shall Earth be broken and re-made, and the Silmarils shall be recovered out of Air and Earth and Sea; for Eärendel shall descend and surrender that flame which he hath had in keeping. Then Fëanor shall take the Three Jewels and bear them to Yavanna Palúrien; and she will break them and with their fire rekindle the Two Trees, and a great light shall come forth. And the Mountains of Valinor shall be levelled, so that the Light shall go out over all the world. In that light the Gods will grow young again, and the Elves awake and all their dead arise, and the purpose of Ilúvatar be fulfilled concerning them. But of Men in that day the prophecy of Mandos doth not speak, and no Man it names, save Túrin only, and to him a place is given among the sons of the Valar.”
—J.R.R. Tolkien, The History of Middle-earth V: The Lost Road and Other Writings, “Quenta Silmarillion”
“The appearance of Túrin at the end remains profoundly mysterious…. it is said that Túrin is named among ‘the sons of the Gods’ rather than among the Gods, and also that he comes ‘from the halls of Mandos’ to the final battle; about which I can say no more than that Túrin Turambar, though a mortal Man, did not go, as do the race of Men, to a fate beyond the world.”
—Christopher Tolkien, The History of Middle-earth IV: The Shaping of Middle-earth, “The Quenta”
‘And you, Ring-bearer,’ she said, turning to Frodo. 'I come to you last who are not last in my thoughts. For you I have prepared this.’ She held up a small crystal phial: it glittered as she moved it, and rays of white light sprang from her hand. 'In this phial,’ she said, 'is caught the light of Eärendil’s star, set amid the waters of my fountain. It will shine still brighter when night is about you. May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out. Remember Galadriel and her Mirror! ’
Frodo took the phial, and for a moment as it shone between them, he saw her again standing like a queen, great and beautiful, but no longer terrible. He bowed, but found no words to say.
–J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, “Farewell to Lórien”
I will never get over Earendil, Elwing and language, and how it’s used to show their connection to each other and to their heritages.
Earendil is canonically trilingual (Quenya, Sindarin, and Taliska) and he pleads to the Valar for the peoples of Middle-earth in all three languages; he succeeds in his plea in part because he can speak in all three languages - he’s asking on behalf of (almost) everyone in Beleriand - the Exiles, the native Sindar, and the Edain, and though he doesn’t have any Sindarin ancestry (though his wife and children do) he can speak the language and does.
Earendil also named Vingilot after Elwing . Tolkien makes note of it more than once and at one point says that the ship has to be called Vingilot(or a variation thereof; there are multiple forms) becauseit references Elwing’s name. From Problem of Ros:
[Elros] called [his ship] Wingalôtë*, which like his own names were Quenya in form; for Quenya was his childhood’s speech, since in the house of his mother’s father, Turukáno (Turgon), King of Gondolin, that speech was in daily use. But Vinga- was not a Quenya word: it was a Quenyarized form of the Bëorian wing that appeared in Elwing the name of his spouse. The form given to this name in Sindarin was Gwingloth, but as said above it was in the Adunaic of Númenor translated as Rôthinzil.
[…]
[Christopher says that his father] still held to the view that the word wing (‘spray, spindrift’) was of Bëorian origin; and while noting that the name Wingalôtë [> Wingelótë] of Earendil’s ship had not appeared in print, [Tolkien] observed that it ‘must be retained, since it is connected with the name Elwing[…] Concerning wing he said again that Earendil named his ship in Quenya form, since that language had been his childhood speech, and that he intended its meaning to be ‘Foam-flower’; but he adopted the element wing from the name of Elwing his wife. That name was given to her by her father Dior, who knew the Bëorian tongue [Dior grew up either bilingual or with Beorian as his first language; Luthien and Beren spoke it to each other.]
Earendil likely learned the Edainic language Taliska in Sirion. It’s questionable whether Tuor spoke it - certainly it wasn’t Tuor’s native language, which would have been the Sindarin spoken by Annael and the other Elves who raised him.
Elwing spoke Taliska too, and gave Elros a name with a Taliska element. She (obviously) speaks Sindarin as well, probably multiple dialects thereof, since there were multiple dialects spoken in Sirion (there were several tongues to be heard [in Sirion]. Not only the Sindarin, which was chiefly used, but also its Northern dialect**).
But I also think she speaks Quenya. Firstly, she speaks to the Teleri. Telerin and Quenya are mutually intelligeable - that is, someone who speaks one language can understand someone who speaks the other, though there may be some difficulties. Meanwhile, Sindarin would not at all help her speak to the Teleri - Telerin and Sindarin don’t have much in common aside from a couple sound changes not found in Quenya (/kw/ to /p/ and the prenasalized voiced stops becoming voiced stops rather than nasals). A monolingual speaker of Sindarin would not be able to communicate linguistically to a monolingual speaker of Telerin. Elwing was without a doubt exposed to Quenya - she married a native Quenya speaker who went by his Quenya name and lived in a city where a large portion of the population (the Gondolindrim) had at least some knowledge of it.
And her husband named a ship after her in Quenya - a clear act of love and acknowledgement, and also acknowledging their mutual human ancestry. Elwing and Earendil are so clearly devoted to each other and their love for each other informs everything they do - I can’t see Earendil using a Quenya name for Vingilot if Elwing didn’t like it; I can’t see Elwing as hating Quenya when it’s Earendil’s language. I can see her learning it because it’s Earendil’s language and she wants to learn it to learn him and be close to him, just as I can see Earendil learning Taliska because it’s a language she speaks or a language that she wants to learn because of her father and Beorian heritage. But just… language and sociolinguistics as a thing of connection and liminality and heritage and love, and the multilingualism of the Peredhil as a way of signifying their heritages.
*In later Exilic Quenya VingilóteorVingilot. Tolkien varies between i, e, and a for the second vowel; the published Silmarillion uses i. The /w/ -> /v/ change occurred in Exilic Quenya sometime in the Second or Third Age (I’d place it in the early Second, personally, and might headcanon it as starting in the First but not a change that happened in isolated Gondolin.) The lóte->lotshows fairly common Exilic changes: one is that long vowels shorten in final syllables and the other is that there’s often alteration between -CV:Ceand -CVC (see also Númenóre ~ Númenor).
Incidentally,Rôthinzil(alsoRothinzil) is very pretty I think. Adûnaic is often very pretty.
**what Tolkien means by “the Sindarin but also its Northern dialect” is unclear. Sirion was founded by Falathrim refugees after the Nirnaeth, so their dialect woud have been spoken first and it’s also the dialect that becomes Standard Sindarin, as seen in LotR and Jirt’s writings. I don’t think he’d refer to the Iathren dialect as plain “Sindarin” and the Falathrim/Standard dialect would definitely be spoken in the Havens so I think that’s what he’s referring to. Presumably there would be some Sindarin of Doriath as well, so all three major Sindarin dialects there (not that the dialects are all that divergent). Sirion is very multilingual!
“At last, in the year when Eärendil was seven years old, Morgoth was ready, and he loosed upon Gondolin his Balrogs, and his Orcs, and his wolves; and with them came dragons of the brood of Glaurung, and they were become now many and terrible. The host of Morgoth came over the northern hills where the height was greatest and the watch least vigilant, and it came at night upon a time of festival, when all the people of Gondolin were upon the walls to await the rising sun, and sing their songs at its uplifting; for the morrow was the great feast that they named the Gates of Summer.”
8. Rog - Strength 9. Galdor - Justice 10. Salgant - Wheel of Fortune 11. Penlod - The World 12. Idril and Tuor - Lovers 13. Voronwe - The Hermit 14. Earendil - The Star
My first real artwork of 2022 and of course it’s my favorite elves in love
This was an answer to an “ask Mentelossë a question” thing I did on my Instagram. All the questions/answers +more explanations under the cut
When Glorfindel came back to middle earth and they finally got married they didn’t talk long before wanting to try for a child. They’re both good with children and love them. Mentelossë took care of little Earendil and then of Elrond and Elros but she really wanted a child of her own. Especially after Elros’ death, it devastated her. But even if both really really wanted a child it was not working. They tried everything they could, asked every healer, but nothing worked. They eventually came to the conclusion that one of them or both were infertile. In fact, it’s because of all the trauma Mentelossë went through, it hurted her fea deeply. So after a really long time of trying and the grief of a child they could never have they stopped really trying and finally came to terms with the fact that it will only be the two of them. It was hard for them to see Elrond and Celebrian’s children grow, but they helped to raise them and felt happy to be there for them. It’s only after they sailed to Valinor and that the magic land healed Mentelossë that they were eventually surprised by a pregnancy. I don’t often talk about Mentelossë’s relationship with motherhood, but I thought a lot about it.
Their mother actually died of sadness that her love would never be mutual and that she married him only because he needed an heir (of course Fingon also didn’t wanted this he loved Maedhros). She was never really close to her daughter because seeing Mentelossë reminded her of what her life was now. Although Fingon has always been very fond of his children and tried to spend as much time as possible with Mentelossë.
She lived in Gondolin because Fingon thought it would be safer. She spends a lot of time with Idril and they became very close. After the fall of Gondolin they helped each other during these hard times.
She wasn’t really kidnapped by M&M, she chose to go with the little twins (mostly because she didn’t have a lot of relatives left, at the time she only knew Gil Galad when he was a baby and Galadirel who she wasn’t fond of. Following Maedhros was probably the best option).
okay listen to me: Mentelossë, Celebrimbor and Celebrian together ? Worst calamities of the second age They’re this kind of friends who are really smart, but when they’re together they share one brain cell.
And Meril is my best friend’s OC ( @firesn0w ♥️) don’t be fooled by her cute face she’s a demon
And the last ask made me draw their wedding ! Thanks to anyone who took the time to read me rambling about my OC <3
the thing that i need, desperately: a fic with frodo & earendil and the sacrifices you make to save something but then having to give up the thing you saved, even if it is for the best.
