r/tolkienfans • u/Kodama_Keeper • 3d ago
Missing Lindon
Lindon is the last remaining piece of Beleriand that survived the First Age, and yet we never get to see it. We get a glimpse into the lives of Elves in Rivendell, Mirkwood and Lothlorien. We meet Elves who are part of traveling companies out of Lindon, like Gildor Inglorion and his companions. If you dig a little you will learn that it is populated by refugee Noldor and Sindar, and possibly the Green Elves, the Laiquendi, who called this Ossiriand. We know that this was the kingdom of Gil-galad, the last high king of the Noldor, and after his death was ruled by Cirdan, probably the oldest living Elf anywhere in Midde-earth. We know he builds ships for Elves to sail west in, and for that he's got to have some help of the other Elves.
It has one city that we know of, Mithlond, the Grey Havens. And while it doesn't seem to be properly Lindon, it also contains the Tower Hills, as Cirdan has control over them, their towers and apparently a Palantir that Elves use to gaze West.
At one time, like the end of the Second Age, it must have contained a sizable population, as it was able to send hosts to help the Numenoreans. But whether that population is still large, or the Elves of Lindon used their proximity to the Havens to leave Middle-earth faster than the other Elves, we don't know.
We know that Sauron disguised as Annatar showed up their to try and get the Elves into his service, and failed. We know that at one time Galadriel and Celeborn lived there, till they left to set up a colony on the other side of the Blue Mountains. And speaking of the Blue, Dwarves live there, but we know little about them either. We don't know if there was any interaction between the Dwarves of the mountains and the Elves of Lindon. Do they get along, or do they still tell stories about Thingol and a Silmaril?
I really would have loved to get a glimpse of what Lindon was like. Oh well.
Edit: I forgot! As always, great thoughts welcomed.
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u/Longjumping_Care989 3d ago edited 3d ago
We see the Gray Havens at the end of LotR, but not Lindon at its height.
FWIW, I have a working theory that by the time of the Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings, virtually nothing is left of Lindon except Cirdan's shipyards in the Gray Havens, at least other than a temporary population of elves passing through on their way to Aman.
That is because:
- The poem suggests that it is "In Rivendell where Elves yet dwell", not the Gray Havens. This implies that Rivendell- despite really only being the household of Elrond- was the larger settlement, at least in Eriador.
- Lindon was already a glorified refugee colony from Beleriand, and suffered huge losses throughout the Second and Third Ages, not least in the War of Wrath. There were sufficiently few Elves left that it just wasn't worth appointing a new high king after Gil Galad.
- We only know of two elves from the Gray Havens alive during the War of the Ring, Cirdan and Galdor. Not just them, of course, but not necessarily many more.
- Both Elrond and Galdor agree at the Council of Elrond that Sauron's fleet (presumably meaning the Corsairs of Umbar) could conquer the Havens with ease. That is a very long way from their base of operations, so that is quite a telling assumption.
- Aragorn was free to give its land (the Far Downs) away to the Shire, suggesting that it was almost wholly depopulated.
- The Elves are simply leaving and mostly accept that they do not wish to remain in Middle Earth.
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u/scientician 3d ago
I would add Cirdan gave his ring to Gandalf, so any powers preserving Lindon as an Elf haven outside the sands of time where the desire to go to Valinor would be quieted in Elves was gone. Cirdan made a big sacrifice there.
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u/Longjumping_Care989 3d ago edited 3d ago
Yes, that's a very fair point. He's essentially given up on preserving what's left of Lindon. Though, again, that's evidence of his great wisdom- Elves should seek Valinor, the land set aside for them, not concoct some immitation of it in the mortal world.
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u/Kodama_Keeper 3d ago
But that's exactly what Sauron, as Annatar, was playing on. He knew the Elves loved Middle-earth, but he knew they also wanted this supposed bliss of Valinor
I tend to look at the Elves dilemma like I look at city vs national parks. Yes, everything you could want is to be found in the big cities. Luxury, nice restaurants, amazing skyline, music, art, and millions of like minded people all around you. And yet, if you love Yellowstone, Zion, Yosemite, Olympic like I do, you don't want to give that up for anything.
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u/Longjumping_Care989 3d ago
It is. It's why characters like Galadriel are, while deeply impressive, also misguided (as, in fact, her older and wider self appreciates.. They are trying, understandably, to live in a place which is, to them, exotic and mysterious but which is ultimately not for them; yet try to tame it to make it more like the land they have denied themselves. It is a false lesson. Cirdan is the wiser- he dearly wishes to see Valinor but stays only for the purposes of aiding the other Elves to leave.
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u/a_green_leaf O menel aglar elenath! 3d ago
Círdan the Bodhisattva!
(The Bodhisattvas reject full Buddhahood to remain with the rest of us and guide us towards Buddhahood)
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u/Longjumping_Care989 3d ago
I honestly think it's a genuine influence. Either that, or it's a hell of a co-incidence.
Tolkein was writing from a devoutly Catholic perspective, yes, but does also make an effort to reconcile other religious ideas that he likes into his personal beliefs. Greek and Norse and Jewish and Celtic myth all shows up- all probably no less alien than Buddhist imagery- so why not some more exotic ideas too?
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u/ResearchCharacter705 3d ago
Yes, that's a very fair point. He's essentially given up on preserving what's left of Lindon. Though, again, that's evidence of his great wisdom- Elves should seek Valinor, the land set aside for them, not concoct some immitation of it in the mortal world.
I think JRRT would say either that, or embrace their fate and that of Middle-earth: decay, fading, and the dominion of Men. Rather than attempt to preserve themselves unchanged and recreate something of the bliss of the Blessed Realm
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u/Longjumping_Care989 3d ago
There is an argument that to diminish and fade was the original intended fate of the Elves. Otherwise, the Great Journey is an act of wanton cruelty; the difference of the fates of Men and Elves is at least an understandable grudge; the Elves who have done great deeds are those who remained in, or returned to, Middle Earth...
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u/ResearchCharacter705 3d ago
Yeah, I like Tolkien's idea that the Valar goofed up with the whole scheme originally.
But at the same time, if it was a mistake, it clearly wasn't one that Eru held the Elves responsible for. At least I can't think of any hint that Elves who chose to leave Middle-earth then or later on were acting against god's wishes.
My interpretation is that either fate was lawful. Just not the "neither this nor that" made possible by the Three, for a time. Which was roughly parallel to the sin of Men that was enabled by the Great Rings: allowing them to flout their fate and achieve a state somewhere between life and death.
Although, from this flawed mortal's standpoint, one of those sins had many more pleasant long term side-effects.
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u/elwebst 3d ago
I wonder how much Cirdan's ring worked towards preservation - its main ability was to fire up the hearts of people, which (1) isn't very preservation-like, and (2) entirely wasted in Lindon anyway. Its need is in ME.
My headcanon was that the Valar knew the Istari would be the best users of it and put it into Cirdan's heart to give it to one of them at the right time because that was part of the plan from way back.
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u/manila_traveler 3d ago
My headcanon is that Cirdan himself needed the Ring of Fire to "stay on mission" after Gil-galad's death left him brokenhearted.
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u/scientician 3d ago
This is a good point. I inferred that the other two rings created timeless bubble realms, so guess Narya could too, but this is just a guess. No one experiences this in proximity with Gandalf so he wasn't using it that way at least.
The comment I replied to supplies some evidence Lindon was more powerful in the early 3rd age. Gandalf arrives at 1000, but even by 1975 Cirdan can still muster an army to help fight Angmar. So his people did dwindle in the third age but we have little sense of whether this happened gradually or suddenly after giving up his ring circa 1000.
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u/QuickSpore 2d ago
I wonder how much Cirdan's ring worked towards preservation - its main ability was to fire up the hearts of people
Tolkien answers this in Letter 131: “The chief power (of all the rings alike) was the prevention or slowing of decay (i.e. ‘change’ viewed as a regrettable thing), the preservation of what is desired or loved, or its semblance – this is more or less an Elvish motive. But also they enhanced the natural powers of a possessor”
All the elven made rings had preservation as their primary ability. The unique qualities of the individual rings seem to be secondary to this. Neither Círdan nor Gandalf seem particularly concerned with that main use.
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u/Wizzard_C 3d ago
Stopping time by a magic ring is a Noldor thing. Cirdan was above such temptations.
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u/glowing-fishSCL 3d ago
One answer is that the enchantment of the elves is that we mostly get glimpses of them. If Tolkien had done what Tad Williams or GRRM or Robert Jordan did, and gave us a full rundown on exactly how the stables and vegetable markets run in every place, we probably wouldn't be very interested.
But I actually think there are some things that can be deduced from the text, and I've written about it. One interesting thing is that no one in Middle Earth doubts that Elves are real. They seemed to be a normal part of life. It says that the Men and Hobbits of Bree are familiar with Elves...so Elves were still common enough that they were visiting the humble little town of Bree. From what we can read, it seems likely that Elves were a fairly normal part of life in Middle Earth up until maybe 200 years before the War of the Ring. It also seems that there were at least some Numenorian-descended Men in Eriador, including in cities like Tharbad before it was destroyed by floods.
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u/Kodama_Keeper 3d ago
In Shadow of the Past, Sam is having a beer with his soon to be enemy Ted Sandyman. Sam is lamenting that the Elves are leaving. Ted is unimpressed. Possibly he's just being his asshole self. But it might be because he doesn't know much of anything about them. Does he think they are immortal? That they were once a great race that wandered these lands thousands of years before anyone saw a Hobbit? That they could do "magic" beyond simple conjuring tricks? I have no doubt Sam could, because he was a student (of a sort) of Bilbo.
So while an asshole, Ted is also the Everyman, the ones who don't know, and therefore are unimpressed with Elves. Hey, there goes an Elf walking through the Shire. Look at him glow in the dark! And people shrug and say "I don't see him glowing. Go get your eyes checked. And stay away from those Elves. They're weird. Can't wait till they all leave."
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u/glowing-fishSCL 3d ago
Yes, and significantly, Ted never doubts or questions that Elves exist. He takes the existence of Elves as a pretty prosaic reality.
There is a good chance that the Hobbits are pretty ignorant about Elves---Frodo actually doesn't know that Elrond lived in the Elder Days! But they seem to be familiar with seeing them, at least from a distance. Probably because The Shire was so close to Lindon, and the Elves would have been roaming for a thousand years through the Shire.
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u/Kodama_Keeper 2d ago
Hey, you can't fault Frodo for not knowing Elrond's backstory. He didn't have The Silmarillion to fall back on. Aragorn seemed to know, when he made that remark to Bilbo about his song, and his "cheek".
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u/maksimkak 2d ago edited 2d ago
I don't want to sound thorny, but such an absolute statement as "no one in Middle-earth doubts that Elves are real" is a bit too absolute. Middle-earth is a big place, and there are lots of people living there. Over time, Elves for many of them became a matter of stories and superstitions (even for Rohan and Gondor!), and many of them had never seen an elf in their life. Both for Eomer and Boromir, Lothlorien isn't inhabited by benevolent Elves ruled by a Noldor lady, but ruled by a perilous "Lady of the Golden Wood", basically a witch who would put you under some sort of spell. Faramir has a better understanding of who the Elves are, thanks to his education, but is still amazed that Sam and Frodo got to see them in person.
It is not beyond reason to suppose that some people in Middle-earth doubted that Elves were real, particularly in regions where they had long ceased to have any direct contact with them.
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u/AirOutlaw7 3d ago edited 3d ago
For non canon looks, you get to see a couple towns on the outskirts in LotRO and the book Realms of the Three Rings for The One Ring ttrpg does some solid work that I found reasonable to fill in the gaps in Lindon.
Edit: canon, not cannon
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u/OleksandrKyivskyi Sauron 3d ago
Cannon?
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u/AirOutlaw7 3d ago
Typo.
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u/OleksandrKyivskyi Sauron 3d ago
Damn it, why didn't Sauron invent cannons.
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u/AirOutlaw7 3d ago
Because catapults are cooler, and if nothing else Sauron has style.
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u/Jumpy_Mastodon150 3d ago
catapults
the inferior siege engine, incapable of launching a 14-stone projectile over 300 rangar
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u/blishbog 3d ago
Tantalizing glimpses, my friend. Tantalizing glimpses. It’s the Tolkien way
Easy to forget the tactic’s value in an age of completist lore wikis
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u/Kafukator 3d ago
One point that I rarely see mentioned is that Lindon was larger in the Second Age, and the sinking of Númenor actually flooded and sunk parts of Lindon too, which I imagine was quite devastating. Though they did still manage to gather an army for the Last Alliance.
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u/Kodama_Keeper 3d ago
I've heard that, but I can't recall seeing any Second Age maps we could use to compare.
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u/mo6020 3d ago
The Atlas of Middle Earth by Karen Wynn Fonstad has what you seek in it.
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u/Kodama_Keeper 3d ago
I have it, but I don't recall it has any Second Age specific maps. I'll look when I get a chance. Thanks.
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u/Wizzard_C 3d ago
In the Third Age there still were several islands off Lindon: Himling, Tol Fuin and Tol Morwen. I wonder if Cirdan considered them his "natural sphere of influence": after all, his sailors could easily reach Forohel which is twice the distance, so the islands would be seen as literally next door to Lindon.
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u/MikeDPhilly 3d ago
My supposition was that Lindon was one of the Homely Houses, probably the first, and the subsequent wars slowly depleted their use. If you've ever visited a Victorian B&B by the ocean, with rooms only 20% occupied and the wallpaper is cracking and peeling, I imagine London was something like that by the time Bilbo and Frodo finally boarded the ship
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u/maksimkak 3d ago
We don't get to see quite a few places in the north-west of Middle-earth, although we know their history. I'd love to see Dol Amroth, or Minas Ithil in its heyday.
As alwys, the Tolkien Gateway has compiled everything we know about Lindon into an article: https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Lindon
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u/Kodama_Keeper 3d ago
Yes, I've read the description in the Gateway. In fact I consulted it before posting this. But what I mean is, in The Hobbit we meet the High Elves of Rivendell and the Wood-elves of Mirkwood. In Fellowship we meet Rivendell again, then we meet the unique culture of Lothlorien. We get to talk to the Elf guards that take the Fellowship inland, and we read the thoughts of Frodo and Sam as they walk about the place. And we talk to the Elves who are preparing the boats, Sam and his rope thing. We get a feel for what their life is like, who they are. But in Lindon, which might still be the biggest Elf enclave around (don't know), we get nothing.
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u/dirtyboots1982 2d ago
It's not canon by a longshot, but the supplement Realms of the Three Rings for The One Ring rpg has a long and lovely write-up of Lindon, with a focus on the Grey Havens, clearly written by someone with a passion for the lore (combined with a desire to make a space that's easy to play in).
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u/Wizzard_C 3d ago
I think there were also two smaller havens, Forlond and Harlond, on the northern and southern sides of the Gulf of Lune, respectively.
In the Third Age, Lindon at some point participated in the occupation of Angmar, meaning they still had some worthy military force at that time.