Two Trees of Valinor
In
Commentators have seen mythic and
Narrative
Prelude
The first sources of light for all of Tolkien's imaginary world,
Creation
The Valar retreat to
Each Tree, in turn, gives off light for seven hours (waxing to full brightness and then slowly waning again), with the ends of their cycles overlapping, so that at one hour each of "dawn" and "dusk" soft gold and silver light are given off together. Each "day" of first silver then gold light lasts twelve hours.[T 1]
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Arda in the Years of the Trees
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Tolkien stated that the light from the Two Trees of Valinor alternately waxed and waned, overlapping by an hour.[T 1]
Destruction
Countless "days" pass, until Melkor reappears. He enlists the help of the giant spider Ungoliant to destroy the Two Trees. Concealed in a cloud of darkness, Melkor strikes each Tree and the insatiable Ungoliant devours whatever life and light remains in it.[T 3]
Aftermath
Yavanna and Nienna attempt a healing, but they succeed only in reviving Telperion's last flower (to become the
Because the Elves that first come to
Tolkien never mentioned any tree made in the likeness of Laurelin, writing that "of Laurelin the Golden no likeness is left in Middle-Earth".[T 9] In the First Age, however, the Elvish King Turgon of the city of Gondolin creates a non-living image of Laurelin, named Glingal, 'Hanging Flame', which stands in his court.[T 10]
Origins
The Tolkien scholar John Garth traces the mythology and symbolism of the Two Trees to the medieval Trees of the Sun and the Moon. Tolkien stated in an interview[a] that the Two Trees derived from them, "in the great Alexander stories"[1] rather than from the World Tree Yggdrasil of Norse myth. Garth notes that the Wonders of the East, an Old English manuscript in the same Codex as Beowulf, tells that Alexander the Great travelled beyond India to Paradise, where he saw the two magical trees. They drip down a wonderful balsam, and have the power of speech. They tell Alexander that he will die in Babylon. Garth writes that Tolkien's trees emit light, not balsam; and instead of prophesying death, their own deaths bring Arda's era of immortality to an end.[1]
Marie Barnfield, writing in
Tolkien read the Finnish Kalevala closely. Its central symbol is the magical Sampo, a device that brought wealth and good fortune to its owner, but whose mechanism is described only vaguely. Jonathan Himes, writing in Mythlore, has suggested that Tolkien found the Sampo complex, and chose to split the Sampo's parts into desirable objects. Its pillar became the Two Trees of Valinor with their Tree of life aspect, illuminating the world. Its decorated lid became the brilliant Silmarils, which embodied all that was left of the light of the Two Trees, thus tying the symbols together.[3][4]
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Alexander the Great and followers kneeling in prayer at the Trees of the Sun and the Moon, under the guidance of a high priest. England 1333-c. 1340
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The Lia Fáil on the hill of Tara
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The Theft of the Sampo by Akseli Gallen-Kallela, 1897
Significance
The Elder Days
Cynthia Cohen writes in Tolkien Studies that the White Tree of Gondor in The Lord of the Rings stands for "the deeper history of Men in Tolkien's Secondary World, reaching back to [its ancestors,] the Two Trees of Valinor".[7] During most of the action of the novel, the tree is dead, and has been for over a century, but all the same it serves as a symbol of Gondor's strength and national identity, and of hope for the Kingdom's renewal. She suggests that the White Tree parallels the Dry Tree mentioned in the 14th century text Mandeville's Travels. The Dry Tree had been alive in the time of Christ, and was prophesied to come to life again when a "great lord from the western part of the world" returned to the Holy Land, just as Aragorn brings the line of Kings back to Gondor. Cohen comments that the dead White Tree's replacement by a living sapling "upholds the metaphor of resurrection and enables Tolkien to draw an implicit connection between Aragorn and Christ".[7] Finally, she remarks on the verse that Aragorn recites when he sees the White Mountains of Gondor: "West Wind blew there; the light upon the Silver Tree / Fell like bright rain in gardens in the Kings of old," which she states links Telperion, the Silver Tree of Valinor, to the White Tree. Since Tolkien has left it ambiguous whether the Silver Tree of the verse, the place where the West Wind blew, or where the "bright rain" fell, are in long-ago Valinor or present-time Gondor, the ancestry of the tree and the lineage of the Kings merge into a continuum.[7]
Patrick Curry, in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, writes that the importance that Tolkien gives to the Two Trees shows "the iconic status of trees in both his work and his life."[8] Richard Goetsch adds that the Two Trees are "central to many of the crucial plot developments of the entire saga, from the beginning of the First Age to the end of the Third Age", and further that they "function as the ultimate expression of the natural world in Tolkien's mythos."[9]
Light
Tolkien, as a
Elves and Men
Martin Simonson describes the destruction of the Two Trees as setting a "mythical precedent" for the transfer of the stewardship of Arda (Earth) from the Valar to Elves and Men. In his view, this stewardship is central to the moral battle, as the Two Trees, like Men and Elves, are composed of both matter and spirit.[16] Dickerson and Jonathan Evans note that Tolkien calls the Elves "stewards and guardians of [Middle-earth's] beauty"; they are constantly preoccupied with maintaining the beauty of nature, something they inherited from Yavanna's making of the Two Trees.[17]
See also
- Galadriel
- Quenta Silmarillion
- Tolkien's legendarium
- Cosmology of Middle-earth
Notes
References
Primary
- ^ a b c d e f Tolkien 1977, "Quenta Silmarillion" ch. 1 "Of the Beginning of Days"
- ^ Tolkien 1987, p. 209
- ^ Tolkien 1977, "Quenta Silmarillion" ch. 8 "Of the Darkening of Valinor"
- ^ Tolkien 1977, "Quenta Silmarillion" ch. 11 "Of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor"
- ^ Tolkien 1977, "Quenta Silmarillion" ch. 9 "Of the Flight of the Noldor"
- ^ Tolkien 1977, "Quenta Silmarillion", ch. 5 "Of Eldamar and the Princes of the Eldalië"
- ^ Tolkien 1977, "Akallabêth: The Downfall of Númenor"
- ^ Tolkien 1977, "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age"
- ^ Tolkien 1955, Appendix A, I (i) Númenor
- ^ Tolkien 1977, ch. 15"Of the Noldor in Beleriand"
- ^ Tolkien 1994, "Quendi and Eldar"
Secondary
- ^ ISBN 978-0-7112-4127-5..
... the lakes of sun and moon from the Old English Wonders of the East
- JSTOR 45321637.
- ^ Himes, Jonathan B. (2000). "What J.R.R. Tolkien Really Did with the Sampo?". Mythlore. 22 (4). Article 7.
- ^ Lönnrot, Elias; Crawford, John Martin (trans.) (1888). "Rune X". Kalevala.
- ^ )
- ISBN 978-1-4438-7594-3.
- ^ ISSN 1547-3163.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-415-86511-1.
- ^ Goetsch, Richard A. "Environmental Stewardship in the Works of J. R. R. Tolkien". Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Retrieved 1 August 2023.
- ^ Flieger 1983, pp. 44–49.
- ISBN 978-1-137-55344-7.
- ^ Flieger 1983, pp. 60–63.
- )
- ^ ISBN 978-0261-10401-3.
- ISBN 978-0-415-86511-1.
- S2CID 165620730.
- ISBN 978-0-8131-2418-6.
Sources
- ISBN 0-8028-1955-9.
- OCLC 519647821.
- ISBN 978-0-395-25730-2.
- ISBN 0-395-45519-7.
- ISBN 0-395-71041-3.