Transcript: CCT#2

Coming at you live from the throne room of the Halls of Mandos, this is Crystal Clear Tolkien.

This is Silime. Welcome to Crystal Clear Tolkien. Today's topic is taken from an email sent to me by a listener named Kris. In her email, she asks "I've read various rants and heard different opinions on "How to Kill an Elf", and questions always came up in conversation of how elves live to be so old without growing ill or getting food poisoning (or some other ailment ^_^).  Perhaps you could do a podcast on how elves CAN die, as well as how they CAN'T die; giving the facts about the whole "fading" misconception along with information about the level of mortality the elves do possess."

That's a tall order, Kris, but let's give it a try!

Let's begin with how Elves die. It's not as easy as it sounds, since Elven lives are tied to the life of Eä. The fact of the matter is, Eru created the Elves to be immortal. Not just unaging, but immortal. They weren't supposed to die at all. It's one of the reasons why Aman is referred to as 'The Undying Lands'.

But, when you give creatures independent thought and free will, shit happens.

As with most of the shit in the early stages of Middle-earth, this one can be traced back to Melkor. Death didn't come to Aman until he brought it with him. After Ungoliant killed the Two Trees, Melkor high-tailed it to Formenos and slaughtered Finwë on his way to the Silmarils. Fëanor returns to Formenos, finds Finwë dead and the Silmarils gone. Instantly, he blames the Valar, and this blame is two-fold. One, because Melkor himself is a Vala, just like them, and two, because the Valar were the ones who released Melkor from his chains.

Fëanor renounces the Valar for their inaction, and vows to take matters into his own hands. He gathers the Noldor, riles them up and they take arms, and set off after Melkor, who has, by now, fled Aman. The Noldor come to the shores of Alqualondë and ask the Teleri for their ships so that they can cross the sea. The Teleri, still loyal to the Valar and very proud of their ships, stupidly refuse to help the armed Noldor.

The result is the same, as it always has been, when people without weapons stand up to people with weapons. The Noldor slaughter the Teleri, take their ships by force, and set out for Arda.

The point of telling you all of this is to set up the context of what I am going to telling you next, which actually has something to do with our topic.

When the Noldor reach the far north of Arda and stop to debate their course, Námo -- aka Lord Mandos -- appears before them, and is not happy. He pronounces the Doom of Mandos, which among other things, details the manner that they can die: by weapon, by torment, and by grief.

Now, we know they can be killed by weapons because they are. Frequently. Torment includes things like torture, poison, beatings, etc, which we also have evidence of. Grief... not so much. There is actually not a single, canonical example of an Elf who has died of grief. As a result, we don't really know what this means except that what we as humans consider grief is insufficient considering what the Elves suffer throughout the First Age without a recorded death caused by grief.

It's important to note here that the Doom of Mandos was pronounced upon the Noldor. In fact, the Doom of Mandos is often referred to as the Doom of the Noldor. This begs the question, do these methods of death apply to all the Elves, or just to the Noldor?

Well, let's look at what we know.

We know that Sindar can be killed by weapons, because they are. Frequently. We know that the Teleri can be killed by weapons, because the Noldor performed that little experiment for us. We know that even before the Doom of Mandos was pronounce that the Noldor could be killed, because Finwë was and, presumably, some of the Noldor fell in the battle against the Teleri. So all of this points to weapons as a universal cause of Elven death. You stick a sharp, pointy thing into an Elf in the right spot or the right number of times, they'll fall down and not get up.

Or will they?

Because, you see, there is one group of Elves that is left out here that we know nothing about. No, I don't mean the Avari. Those count as Sindar. I mean, the Vanyar. The only record we have of the Vanyar in battle is when they came with the host of the Valar during the War of Wrath. We're told how the armies of Morgoth fell under the might of this army, how the Balrogs were destroyed, the Orcs slaughtered, the dragons repelled. What we're not told is whether any of the Vanyar were killed in the battle itself. Does this mean that none of them were? Either because they were just that bad-ass, or because they literally couldn't be killed?

It's interesting to note that there is an earlier draft of the account of the War of Wrath in the History of Middle-Earth: Volume One, The Book of Lost Tales 1. In that draft, Ingwë, who is Vanyar and the High King of the Elves of Aman, is explicitly stated to have died(1). However, the final published version of The Silmarillion leaves this out, and Ingwë never returns to Middle-Earth and remains the High King throughout all the Ages of Aman. The question is whether this was simply cut for reasons of length, or if Tolkien didn't intend for any of the Vanyar to die? We don't know, and it's a matter of personal interpretation at this point, whether or not the Vanyar can be killed.

My belief is no, they can't. They stayed true to the Valar, served them and worshiped them, and their reward was what Eru had intended for them, which was not to die while Eä existed.

So that covers weapons, and we have no proof that any Elf canonically died of grief. This leaves torment.

The best example we have of a non-Noldorin Elf who had to deal with torment is Celebrían, and even she is technically half-Noldor through her mother. She was captured by Orcs, she was tortured and received a poisoned wound(2). Some people like to claim she was sexually assaulted by the Orcs, but there is no canon proof of this and there is no canon support that Orcs are sexual in nature or understand it as a form of torment. So, this is fanon, and I digress.

Celebrían took a poisoned wound and endured torment at the hands of the Orcs for an undisclosed amount of time, and she did not die from it. Many people screw this up all the time, and I think it's due to one early draft of The Tale of Years of the Third Age where Tolkien wrote that she did die(3). However, in the subsequent versions of this section, as well as in the published Appendices, Celebrían did not die. She lost all joy in Arda and left of her own volition under her own power. Got on a boat and sailed back to Aman in hopes of rekindling her love for life. If anyone had the right to death by torment or by grief, it would have been Celebrían, but she didn't.

On the other hand, Aredhel, who was full-blooded Noldor, took a poisoned wound and died from it that very night(4). Does this mean that non-Noldor can't be poisoned to death? We don't know, since these are the only two examples that we have. But, I am of the opinion that Elves who did not have the Doom pronounced upon them can't die in that way.

We also have some evidence of other forms of death. We know at least three Elves died from falling off cliffs. Well, actually we know they died because they hit the ground after falling off a cliff. The fall didn't kill them, the sudden stop at the bottom is what did them in. We also know that can drown. This happens on two occasions, one prior to the Doom. Following the slaughter of the Teleri, Ulmo made the seas rise and smash as many ships as possible, and many of the Noldor on those ships drown. Additionally, after the Doom, as the Elves were crossing the Helcaraxë, the ice would crack, the Elves would fall into the water and be carried away by the current, trapping them under the ice where they would drown(5). We can speculate that suffocation would work just as well as drowning, which is to say Elves must breathe, but we don't know this for absolute certainty. It's also entirely possible you could lump all of these methods under torment, or weapon if you're using a really liberal definition of the term. Cause of death: cliff.

Now we know what kills Elves. Let's look at what doesn't, cause this is where people go WAY off the beaten path.

1. Age will not kill an Elf. This should be obvious. Look at Galadriel, Círdan, Maglor. They get really, really old, but it doesn't slow them down, they don't get infirm, and they don't die simply because they're old.

2. Elves don't die in childbirth. We'll get into reproduction and childbirth in another episode, but it is important to note in this one Elves don't have complications in their pregnancies and they don't die while giving birth. Not even Míriel died in childbirth or because of giving birth. Her death was caused by imparting too much of her own spirit into the spirit of her son, thus exhausting her to the point of death some years later. She is also a stand-alone case where bearing a child contributed to her ultimate demise.

3. Exposure to extreme elements can't kill an Elf. We have three major examples of this. The Elves crossing the Helcaraxë didn't pack for a winter vacation, and they didn't freeze to death. The Elves that died drowned from falling under the ice, and even the instances we have where Elves fell in and were pulled out of the freezing water into the freezing wind, they did not develop frostbite, they did not develop hypothermia, and they did not die. Second, we have Legolas on Caradhras. The rest of the Fellowship is bundled up, shivering, and neck-deep in snow, Legolas is wearing the same light, warm-weather gear he left Imladris in, trotting on top of the snow like it wasn't even there. On the other temperature extreme, we have Maedhros chained to Thangorodrim. He endured every sort of seasonal change you could imagine for years and suffered neither heatstroke nor frostbite.

4. And while we're on the subject of Maedhros, I'm pretty sure Melkor didn't feed or water him like a good captor. Likewise, the Elves crossing the Helcaraxë didn't have sufficient rations for the length of the journey and the number of people, neither of which they had anticipated when they set out. So, hunger and thirst are two extremes that don't kill Elves.

5. Sickness and infection. This is a bone of contention within the realm of Tolkien discussion. It is true that they cannot die from illness. That is part of the Doom of Mandos. "No sickness may assail you." The controversy comes over the choice of words Tolkien used. 'Assail' specifically means 'to attack violently' or 'to assault'. It comes down to whether or not this was meant to mean only they could not die from sickness or if they could not become sick at all. We never see an Elf catch a cold or come down with pneumonia, but we don't hear about any of the Men in his tales contracting the flu. You can look at it as sickness is such a minor worry that Tolkien didn't ever bother to write about it (I mean, who really cares if Boromir caught yellow fever as a tyke or if Elladan was laid out with the measles for three weeks as a child?), or you can look at it as sickness was a part of life for Men and not for Elves. It's a matter of personal interpretation at this point.

You also have to decide, if the Elves do get sick, is it only the Noldor who don't as part of the Doom or if all Elves fall under the sickness rule.

6. Finally, we have the question of poison. We know that Celebrían was sick from her poisoned wound, and that Aredhel died of hers, but we don't know about ingested poison or topical poison or inhaled poison. There was herbal knowledge all throughout the tales, of which plants you could eat, which ones you could smoke, which ones, when ingested, could cure an ailment, so it isn't beyond the knowledge of the races of Middle-earth that one could give a known poisonous plant to someone to eat and that there would be ill effects. It's just never shown if anyone did this. This is yet another area you need to make your own call. My opinion is that a toxin, no matter its mode of delivery, is going to have the same effect on an Elf, but can't say it for absolute fact because we simply don't know.

So, we know how Elves die, and how they don't die. Let's now look at the final part of Kris' question, and that is 'fading'.

For those of you listening who are not part of the Tolkien fanfiction world, let me to explain to you why Kris even asked me about this. There is a fanfiction author by the name Ilye. She wrote a beautiful, sweeping story year ago when she was, perhaps, fifteen, and she will admit that it is a little on the immature, and noncanonical, side of things. The plot device of this trilogy of stories has become infamous, because it redefined what canonical fading is. This misuse of the term has been picked up by many, many other fanfiction authors and has been perpetuated as a fanon concept that most believe to be canonical.

It's not.

What Ilye essentially did in her story was to use the term 'fading' to mean 'death by grief', a concept, as we've discussed, we know nothing about. Death by grief is not what fading means. Fading is not a slow, physically withering death where the internal flame of an Elf dims. In fact, fading is not death as we mortals think of the term. Fading is the fate reserved solely for those Elves who refused to heed the call of the Sea after the ending of the Third Age(6). As time moved on, and Arda became the domain of Men and the time of Elves had come to an end, it was fated for those Elves who remained to fade from the sight of Men. They would slowly become incorporeal spirits, in the world but not of the world.

It's stated that they could, through force of will, become visible for short times to those they desired to see them, but it's obvious this isn't something that would happen often. The only way to escape this half-life was to follow the call of Mandos and journey to the Halls of Waiting. Needless to say, we're given the impression that not many Elves chose this fate. It's speculated this is the fate of Maglor, but we have no evidence to support either his return to Aman or his fading in Arda.

My point in this is that fading is not a form of death, and it is especially not death by grief.

So, Kris, I hope that clears everything up for you, and for everyone else out there. Remember, ff you have comments or questions about this episode, or if you have a question about Middle-Earth that you'd like me to address on a future episode, then please drop me an email at [e-mail].  That's S-I-L-I-M-E at gmail dot com.

Until next time, I'm Silime and this is Crystal Clear Tolkien.  Namarie.

References

1. Book of Lost Tales 1, The Cottage of Lost Play, p18
2. Lord of the Rings, 1994 ed., Appendix B, The Tale of Years, p1062
History of Middle-Earth: Volume Twelve, The Peoples of Middle-Earth, The Tale of Years of the Third Age, p235
History of Middle-Earth: Volume Twelve, The Peoples of Middle-Earth, The Making of Appendix A, p264
3. History of Middle-Earth: Volume Twelve, The Peoples of Middle-Earth, The Tale of Years of the Third Age, p226
4. The Silmarillion, Of Maeglin, p138
5. The Silmarillion, Of the Flight of the Noldor, p90
History of Middle-Earth: Volume Twelve, The Peoples of Middle-Earth, The Shibboleth of Fëanor, p346
6. History of Middle-Earth: Volume Ten, Morgoth's Ring, p212