Food For Thought: A Meta Feast by Grundy

Main Course - Blinded By The Light

If there is one thing that stands out about the Noldor, it is how important light is to them. Even the struggle for the Silmarils, the motivation for many events of the First Age, is largely a fight over light – for while to Fëanor the jewels are his greatest creations, to most elves they are remarkable for their holy light.  One can speculate that during their years in Aman, light became central to Noldor thought and culture in ways that they themselves may not have fully appreciated.

When the elves first awoke at Cuivienen, the only light was that of Varda’s stars. There was neither sun nor moon, and the Two Trees cast their light only in Valinor. The first elves, therefore, were used to life by starlight, and prior to the Hunter had no inherent fear of the dark. Their first encounter with light other than stars came when Finwë returned from Valinor to tell them of the wonders of what he had seen there, and convinces the majority of his people, the Tatyar, to make the Great Journey to the Blessed Land. Even then, the only one of them who had seen this light was Finwë; they set out for Aman on the strength of his words and desire for the light and splendor of the Trees.

The Noldor are those Tatyar who came to Aman. They dwelt in Tirion, on the hill of Tuna, an area illuminated by the light of the Two Trees. By contrast, those Lindar who came to Aman lived on the shores of the Sea, where their harbor was lit with lamps and the light of the stars was bright and clear - they maintained a comfort level living in darkness and twilight. But any Noldor begotten after the completion of the Journey never experienced life without the light of the Trees. At best, they might visit the darker or twilight regions of Aman, but such visits would have been under their own control and they had the power to return to the light when and as they wished.

Even prior to the destruction of the Two Trees, the (presumably Noldorin in origin) account of the history of the Noldor in Tirion in the Silmarillion speaks of Melkor as a ‘shadow’ and his plotting not being done openly, but rather refers to the unrest he fomented among the Noldor as being a ‘seed sown in the dark’. All this emphasizes the centrality of light to the thought of the Noldor, who also describe thoughts or desires as ‘flame’ (which gives light) and hidden or repressed ones as ‘smoldering’. In short, the Noldor are shown to speak – and presumably think –  in terms of light and fire.

Between their emphasis on light and waning familiarity with its absence, when the Trees were destroyed, the Noldor were poorly prepared for the ensuing darkness. While the Noldor who embarked on the Journey might remember life before the light, the princes to whom leadership fell in the wake of Finwë’s murder did not. It is perhaps unsurprising that the Rebellion of the Noldor, the Oath of Fëanor, the Kinslaying at Alqualondë and the betrayal at Losgar all took place in the darkness prior to the rising of the Sun or Moon, when the movers and shakers of the Noldor were operating not only in a state of bereavement, but also found themselves in wholly unknown psychological territory, deprived the light of the Trees and with no prospect of its restoration.

On their arrival in Beleirand, the Noldorin Exiles continued to demonstrate the importance of light to their thinking, categorizing elves into Calaquendi – elves who have seen the Light – and Moriquendi – Dark elves. They did not seem in any way bothered that some of those Moriquendi were fellow Tatyar, or that to the elves of Beleriand who continued to live by starlight, the rising of the Sun and Moon were just as paradigm-altering as the destruction of the Trees was for the Noldor.  

But it was not merely the term – moriquendi were regarded as inferior to the caliquendi, who had experienced the Light of Valinor, and acquired far greater knowledge and powers by their association with the Valar and maiar. Light, therefore, was also associated with knowledge and power – while their attitude to the latter is debatable, the former was certainly something the Noldor prized.  

This ordering of people into light and dark would perhaps have been somewhat easier for the moriquendi to overlook if the Noldor did not also link dark and shadow to their enemy Morgoth, whose name (coined by Fëanor) contains the word ‘black/dark’.  Given this connection, it is almost impossible that even people who would not necessarily have had negative connotations for dark or night would not view being called dark as pejorative, regardless of Noldorin attitudes toward them.  That Fëanor could conceive no worse descriptor than ‘dark’ to apply to the hated Vala is rather telling. It should be noted that the Sindarin name for Morgoth pre-dating the return of the Noldor, Bauglir (tyrant or oppressor), while still negative, carried no such connotation of light or dark.

The Noldor were either unaware or chose to discount the effects of their emphasis of light as positive and dark as negative on the other elves of Beleriand. Their focus on light may not even have been evident to them. But by operating in a very different conceptual framework than their would-be allies, the Noldor set themselves up for difficulty – they would have likely found dealing with the Sindar difficult even had there been no Kinslaying at Alqualondë.