Vardamir by Himring

Vardamir was the eldest child and heir of Elros Tar-Minyatur, the first king of Númenor.¹ He is noteworthy for his love of lore and for having passed on the sceptre and rule of Númenor to his eldest son, Tar-Amandil, immediately after Elros's death.

Vardamir was born in year 61 of the Second Age, in the twenty-ninth year of his father's reign. In other words, he was born in the early years of the settlement of the Edain in Númenor. We do not know anything at all about his mother, Elros's wife, but we are unusually well informed about genealogical details of the early generations after Elros, thanks to the later succession debate under Tar-Aldarion and associated records.² Thus, we know that Vardamir had three younger siblings, two brothers and one sister. He was himself to have three sons and a daughter (although, once again, we are told nothing of his wife). The size of Vardamir's immediate family supports what we can otherwise deduce about early Númenor: that it was a stable and supportive environment. Some of the names given to family members, including Vardamir's own, seem to show reverence for the Valar; Vardamir's own name apparently means something like "Varda's jewel or treasure" and the name he gave his daughter Vardilmë also refers to Varda.³ These names were given in Quenya, due to the close connections of the early Númenóreans with the Elves of Tol Eressëa and the love of learning that is the hallmark of Vardamir's own life.⁴

Vardamir was an exceptional scholar, which earned him the by-name Nólimon. The first element of this name, Nól-, alludes to his study and knowledge of lore. Vardamir is credited with having collected ancient lore from Elves and Men. This may have included written sources, either salvaged from the destruction of Beleriand or brought over by the Elves from Tol Eressëa. We could possibly imagine Vardamir in correspondence with the historian Pengolodh or his colleagues, although this is nowhere mentioned. The invention of Vardamir as a character belongs to a period when the role of Pengolodh as main narrator and source of historical knowledge in the Legendarium was receding into the background.⁵

But it seems that Vardamir also may have relied much on oral sources, among Elves and Men, as we are told that it fell to his grandson Tar-Elendil to write down much of the lore Vardamir had collected in his own hand, earning himself the by-name Parmaitë (apparently meaning "book-handy" or "book-handed') for this activity.⁶ So we see that this team of grandfather and grandson is assigned quite a significant role in the transmission of knowledge of the First Age and Eldarin matters to later Ages. This connects with the idea that the role of the Númenóreans as a whole was important in this transmission, which comes up elsewhere in the Legendarium, although not specifically tied to Vardamir.⁷

We see here the first signs of an antiquarian bent among the Númenóreans, although it is probably not yet meant to be an ambiguous or even negative trait, as later when it is related to the obsession with the past (and with immortality) in the mindsets of Númenor and Gondor.⁸ In the case of Vardamir and Tar-Elendil, it seems to bespeak rather times of peace and the leisure to undertake tasks that are not merely the business of the day or the hour. This sense of leisure seems to be reinforced by the lengthened lifespans of the early generations in Númenor (and will be later criticized by Erendis, who interprets it as a refusal to grow up).⁹

In the personality traits of Vardamir, interest in lore is coupled with his lack of interest in political power. This lack could be said to be fortunate for him, as the long rule of Elros, exceptional even by Númenórean standards, could have otherwise proved frustrating for his heir. By the time Elros stepped down, Vardamir was a well-established scholar and already 381 years old; he was to die twenty-nine years later, at 410 years of age. He passed the Sceptre immediately on to his son Tar-Amandil, who was of a more fitting age for the beginning of a new rule.

Vardamir's refusal to rule even for a short time can be compared to Tar-Meneldur's later decision to step down early in favour of his son Tar-Aldarion¹⁰ and also more generally with the habit of early rulers of Númenor to pass on the Sceptre to their successors before their deaths. It is clearly meant to contrast sharply with later tales of far more power-hungry kings of Númenor and of the occasional unlawful seizure of the Sceptre, by Vardamir's descendants Tar-Ciryatan, Herucalmo, and particularly Pharazôn.¹¹

Although Vardamir had never taken up the Sceptre, the historians of Númenor gave Vardamir the royal title of Tar-Vardamir and assigned him a courtesy or nominal rule of one year. This rather characteristic kind of pedantry is still more wholesome than the later Númenórean insistence on inscribing royal names in the rolls in Quenya out of superstition, even though that use no longer accorded in any way with the spirit of the rule of Númenórean kings.¹²

We do not have quite sufficient detail on Vardamir to form a true idea of his personality. Nevertheless, he seems one of the more attractive characters of those quiet times at the beginning of the Second Age, collaborating in his scholarship with his grandson to bridge the period from the First Age to the Second and helping to make the best of the gift of the isle of Númenor to Men, before, almost inevitably, things turned sour and, more than twenty generations later, ended in the disaster of the Akallabêth.

Works Cited

1. The main source for Vardamir's life is the entry on his reign in Unfinished Tales, The Line of Elros: Kings of Númenor. Where no other reference is given, the information in this biography is derived from this source.
2. This refers specifically to the genealogical tree included in: Unfinished Tales, Aldarion and Erendis: The Mariner's Wife, "The Further Course of the Narrative."
3. The etymologies of these two names, and also of the by-names discussed below, follow Parf Edhellen , accessed October 15, 2019.
4. The Silmarillion, Akallabêth.
5. Compare Dawn Felagund's discussion of the role of Pengolodh in the Legendarium.
6. Unfinished Tales, The Line of Elros: Kings of Númenor (entry on Tar-Elendil).
7. For instance, The Silmarillion, Akallabêth, and The History of Middle-earth: Morgoth's Ring, Myths Transformed, section VII, iii.
8. This connection is made by Faramir, for instance, in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, "The Window on the West."
9. Vardamir's and Tar-Elendil's lives overlap by 121 years. Erendis's criticism is found in Unfinished Tales, Aldarion and Erendis: The Mariner's Wife, "The Further Course of the Narrative."
10. Unfinished Tales, Aldarion and Erendis: The Mariner's Wife. Compare Oshun's biography of Meneldur.
11. Unfinished Tales, The Line of Elros: Kings of Númenor. Compare also the biographies of Tar-Vanimelde and Ar-Pharazôn.
12. Unfinished Tales, The Line of Elros: Kings of Númenor.