Elemmakil by Narya

Elemmakil is one of many characters in Tolkien's legendarium who appears only briefly on the page, but who nonetheless plays a pivotal role in the history of Middle-earth. Despite not being mentioned in the published Silmarillion, he is a key figure in The Fall of Gondolin, one of Tolkien's three great tales of the First Age: it is Elemmakil and his company who first encounter Tuor and Voronwë at the borders of Gondolin, and who guides them through the Seven Gates, eventually giving them into the keeping of Ecthelion of the Fountain.¹

As with many of Tolkien's briefly-mentioned characters, canonical facts about Elemmakil are scarce. He is one of the Noldor, the captain of the Guard of the secret way into Gondolin, and a friend of Voronwë's.² He first appears in the last extant draft of The Fall of Gondolin—the 1951 text, written following the composition (but not the publication) of The Lord of the Rings.^3,4 He is not mentioned in earlier drafts and so appears to be a relatively late addition to the legendarium.

As readers we first encounter Elemmakil after Tuor and Voronwë have crept through the cavern leading towards the Guarded Gate, where he challenges their approach:

Suddenly an elven lantern was unhooded, and its bright ray was turned upon Voronwë before him, but nothing else could Tuor see save a dazzling star in the darkness; and he knew that while that beam was upon him he could not move, neither to flee nor to run forward.

For a moment they were held thus in the eye of the light, and then a voice spoke again, saying: 'Show your faces!'⁵

Elemmakil here functions as an archetypal "threshold guardian," as described in Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces:

With the personifications of his destiny to guide and aid him, the hero goes forward in his adventure until he comes to the "threshold guardian" at the entrance to the zone of magnified power […] The adventure is always and everywhere a passage beyond the veil of the known into the unknown; the powers that watch at the boundary are dangerous; to deal with them is risky, yet for anyone with competence and courage the danger fades.⁶

The Elves guarding the secret way are certainly dangerous—even Voronwё, one of their own, fears "some stroke in the dark" as they approach,⁷ and it is not altogether clear whether the assertion that Tuor "could not move, neither to flee nor to run forward" is due to his own fear or to some power of the guards. One might draw comparisons between the "eye of the light" and the Two Watchers from The Return of the King, or even with another Eye from the same period in the legendarium. The threat posed by Elemmakil and the guards is something the reader experiences alongside Tuor, offering us a rare "mortal's eye" glimpse of the Noldor at the height of their terrible beauty. Small wonder that Tuor is more afraid than he has yet been on his quest.⁸

But the star imagery is telling; few beings associated with starlight in Tolkien's world are truly evil, though they may well be perilous. Another complicating factor is the weight and history of Elemmakil's exchange with Voronwё:

And Voronwё cast back his hood, and his face shone in the ray, hard and clear, as if graven in stone; and Tuor marvelled to see its beauty. Then he spoke proudly, saying: 'Know you not whom you see? I am Voronwё son of Aranwё of the House of Fingolfin. Or am I forgotten in my own land after a few years? Far beyond the thought of Middle-earth I have wondered, yet I remember your voice, Elemmakil.'⁹

There is the suggestion here of a long-standing friendship, which is confirmed by Elemmakil a few paragraphs later,¹⁰ adding a poignancy not often seen in a traditional "threshold guardian" encounter. (It is tempting, too, knowing that this tale was originally sketched out during World War I,^11,12 to imagine Tolkien in the role of one of the protagonists here—crawling through the dark back to base, challenged by a sharp voice and a sudden beam of light, terrified of being shot by one of his own comrades.) Only when Voronwё has spoken with Elemmakil does Tuor's fear recede and allow him to state his purpose, as though taking heart from the friendship between the guide and the guard—though as Elemmakil makes clear, Tuor's danger is still very real:

'As one of alien kin that has dared to enter, I should slay him—even though he be your friend and dear to you.'¹³

When Tuor declares that he is a messenger of Ulmo, bearing "an errand to the son of Fingolfin," Elemmakil looks on him "in wonder" and asks:

'Who then are you? … And whence came you?'¹⁴

Again, there is an echo of The Lord of the Rings here (cf. Gandalf's inquiry of Radagast in The Fellowship of the Ring: "Who told you, and who sent you?"¹⁵)—and, in Tuor's answer, an echo of the Gondolindrim's past:

'From Nevrast I have come through many perils to seek [Gondolin].'

'From Nevrast?' said Elemmakil. 'It is said that none dwell there, since our people departed.'

'It is said truly,' answered Tuor. 'Empty and cold stand the courts of Vinyamar. Yet thence I come. Bring me now to him that built those halls of old.'¹⁶

This passage evokes the grief for a vanished past that permeates so much of Tolkien's work, and that is inherent in the fate of the Elves who dwell in Middle-earth. It is following these words that Elemmakil relents, and agrees to take Tuor and Voronwё onwards towards Gondolin:

'In matters so great judgement is not mine,' said Elemmakil. 'Therefore I will lead you to the light where more may be revealed, and I will deliver you to the Warden of the Great Gate.'¹⁷

Competence and courage (and, appropriately for Tolkien, perhaps a measure of both friendship and sorrow) defeat this threshold guardian with no need for combat. From thereon in, Elemmakil becomes their guide, raising gates and portcullis with a touch, providing them with food and drink, and leading them along a road forged by the Valar, which outsiders are not permitted to walk.¹⁸ There are clear parallels here with other parts of legendarium where mortals are led into the dwellings of Elves—the Fellowship being led to Caras Galadhon ("the heart of Elvendom on earth,"¹⁹ a description which at this point in time could easily be applied to Gondolin); to a lesser extent, Thorin's company being taken prisoner by the Elves of Mirkwood; and, beyond Tolkien, many other tales of mortals being led to the hidden realms of Faerie.

Elemmakil's name means "star-sword" (elen, "star," + macil, "sword"²⁰). While the second element is clearly appropriate for a captain of the guard, and starlight is associated with Elves in general (as well as being a comparator for the light of the guards' lamps earlier in the text), the two parts taken together serve to underscore Elemmakil's role in the text. According to Elvish legend, ele was a primitive exclamation "Behold!" made by the Elves when they first saw the stars.²¹ In guiding Tuor and Voronwё, Elemmakil functions as the starlight that cuts through the darkness, just like his own lamp from earlier in the text—and like the Silmaril of the Air, and, ages later, the Phial of Galadriel in Shelob's lair. He lights their way to Gondolin, and allows Tuor (and the reader) to focus on the wonders of the road they walk; the descriptions of the Gates, those who guard them, and the lands around them are among the most detailed representations of Gondolin's surrounds.

Elemmakil's last mention is during the introduction of Ecthelion, when they reach the Seventh Gate:

High and noble as was Elemmakil, greater and more lordly was Ecthelion, Lord of the Fountains, at that time Warden of the Great Gate. All in silver was he clad, and upon his shining helm was set a spike of steel pointed with a diamond; and as his esquire took his shield it shimmered as if it were bedewed with drops of rain, that were indeed a thousand studs of crystal.

Elemmakil saluted him and said: 'Here have I brought Voronwё Aranwion, returning from Balar; and here is the stranger that he has led hither, who demands to see the King.'²²

Given Ecthelion's heroic deeds during the final battle for Gondolin, and the narrative importance of that steel spike, it is perhaps not surprising that Elemmakil suffers by comparison. "The Last Version" was abandoned shortly after this passage, but even if it had not been, he had delivered Tuor, the hero, to his destination. It seems likely that Elemmakil's role in the story was complete.

As such, we have no canonical confirmation of Elemmakil's fate. He is absent from the published Silmarillion, perhaps because the limited third-person point of view of "The Last Version" did not fit with the more distant style of the consolidated text. Nonetheless, he is one of many characters who lends verisimilitude to the legendarium by implying a life and depth beyond the deeds of the great heroes—an untold story, one of the many threads of possibility that draw fans back to these tales again and again. He both embodies and complicates the well-known archetype of the threshold guardian, and is unusual among the named First Age characters, in that many of them (and their deeds) predate and inform The Lord of the Rings. Elemmakil, on the other hand, appears to have been created after Tolkien wrote his famous trilogy, or at the very least during its period of composition. The brief passage in which he appears creates echoes like those that run through the Orfalch Echor on Tuor and Voronwё's approach, shining lights into unexpected places, and helping to connect Tolkien's "'intricate web of story"²³ together.

Works Cited

1. The Fall of Gondolin, "The Last Version."
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, various letters in the range between "61 From a Letter to Christopher Tolkien" and "132 From a Letter to John Tolkien."
5. Ibid.
6. Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Novato: New World Library, 2008), 64-7.
7. The Fall of Gondolin, "The Last Version."
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. The Fall of Gondolin, "Prologue."
12. John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013), 217.
13. The Fall of Gondolin, "The Last Version."
14. Ibid.
15. The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, "The Council of Elrond."
16. The Fall of Gondolin, "The Last Version."
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, "Lothlórien."
20. "Elemmacil," Parf Edhellen, accessed June 1, 2022.
21. The Silmarillion, "Appendix: Elements in Quenya and Sindarin Names."
22. The Fall of Gondolin, "The Last Version."
23. On Fairy Stories, "Origins."