Without the Walls

Broad enough for many dwellings, yet narrow enough for its full width ever to be within elven sight. The steep slopes of the mountains a bulwark to the west and the sea lying to the east, from north and south any approach would be seen long beforehand. It was only when he began to consider the sighting of watchposts upon tall Hyarmentir that Fingolfin realised he had been viewing the land with the eye of a strategist. Even in new life it appeared old habits died hard.

“I feel no trace of Darkness,” he said.

“It is long indeed since Ungoliant departed,” Angrod told him, “and the Darkness has been cleansed by the light of the sun and the winds of the sea. When Light dwelled in Aman, this was a dark land, although I never journeyed beyond the most northern parts, further south the lurking horror turned even the boldest back. Now it is only wild.”

Wild and bare, Fingolfin thought, as he gazed upon the land called Avathar, but that was in the power of the Eldar to amend even now.

“Where is the Pass?”

“A little south of Hyarmentir. We will need the warmest clothing.”

Fingolfin’s new body appeared to have inherited the hardihood that he had gained during the long years of exile, but for all that he was glad of the warmer clothing they had brought, for the cold was bitter indeed upon the higher slopes, bitter enough to have been the death of a mortal.

“A track for a mountain goat!” he remarked, when at last they reached the deep cleft beyond which the Blessed Realm could be seen. “It would be hard to bring much traffic this way, unless the path were broadened.”

“Did you think to broaden it?” asked Aredhel, the third member of the little party.

It would be a worthwhile challenge, Fingolfin reflected. The Noldor had the skill to accomplish it, and he would relish the planning. “I would need to speak with the Valar. The Pelóri were raised as their defence, it would not do to breech them without consent.”

“Now the roads of the Sea are bent, there cannot be such need for the mountains,” Aredhel argued. “And we could defend the Pass, if need did arise.”

“All the same it is better not to presume too much on the Valar.” Fingolfin found the rulers of Valinor if anything more incalculable now than before.

“Which way does Kôr lie?” his daughter asked.

“There.” Angrod pointed to show the direction. “You should be able to see it if you look, despite the mountain mist.”

Indeed Fingolfin found it not hard to make out his brother’s city, founded in the south of Valinor after the destruction of Tirion.

“It would be a straight enough journey, if the Pass were broadened,” he said.

“Should we go down?” asked Angrod.

“No, not today. I would rather view Avathar more closely. I think it a good site for new beginnings.”

“I am not sure what Gil-galad will say to that,” Aredhel remarked.

“Gil-galad already knows my mind.” A little rueful he glanced at Angrod, Gil-galad was his son’s son after all. “Brother-son, you know I no longer claim the title King, but I do know the hearts of our people. This is what many desire. Tol Eressëa and Avallónë are fair but our numbers increase as more are Restored, and it is time to think on new dwellings.”

It was not, as they all knew, numbers alone that he had in mind. The Sindar had always been more numerous on Tol Eressëa, and the increase in the numbers of the Noldor was breeding tensions. The memory of the Kinslayings lingered on. It would not be just to speak of open anger or bitterness between the peoples, still there was a shadow and it grew. Best to remove.

Valinor was barred. The Valar did not completely rescind their own Dooms, and the Exiles were exiled still. They were permitted at times to pass into Valinor, visit their kindred in Kôr and even in Valmar. But to dwell in Aman was not permitted, save to a few who had received the grant by special grace, like Angrod’s brother Finrod. Avathar, though, was not within Valinor. And there was room in Avathar for many to dwell.

A new beginning would be for the best, Fingolfin thought. He was not wholly at ease with what he had seen in the rembodied Noldor, and even in some of those returned in the ships. Lessons had been learned for certain, but was it good that the fire he remembered seemed so quenched? And was it in truth the inevitable weariness of ages only, the first signs of the foretold fading of their kind? Was more healing yet needed for his defeated folk?

Yes, removal to Avathar would be for the best.

~~~~~

It was long after that Fingolfin stood with his brother Finarfin on the terrace of his home. It had been built upon a low foothill of Hyarmentir, offering a wide view of Arvalin, for such was the name by which the new lands of the Noldor were now called. Arvalin was fair and green, filled with dwellings, although these stood widely spaced, often with much open land between. The sight never failed to gladden him. In the house behind he could hear Anairë and Eärwen laughing about something, a frank discussion of their husbands quite possibly.

A moment earlier Finarfin had asked a question which had surprised Fingolfin, although not so much at the question itself as that it had been asked now, after so much time.

“Why no city?” he repeated. “In Hithlum I learned that founding cities was not to my taste. True, a city would have been a natural target for the Enemy, but I had small inclination for that kind of building in any event. In that, it seems, I resembled our father less than I had thought.” He glanced at his brother with respect and affection. Despite the mountain range that lay between Arvalin and Finarfin’s city of Kôr they were in many ways closer now than they had been in the days when the Trees still bloomed, and Fingolfin had a high regard for the King his younger brother had become.

“It was not, then, that you deemed it unfitting for a defeated people?”

“Defeated. So you also see us that way.” Fingolfin mused. “It was a thought I was aware of, but that alone would not have determined our choices. I never urged that a city should not be built; others might have founded one if they wished. It was never suggested.”

“It has appeared to me those who have returned see themselves as defeated, and perhaps not by Morgoth alone. You have not been to Valmar in a long while.”

“No. That did seem unfitting.”

“I do not go often now, but there was a time of late…” they had been speaking with words, but now Finarfin turned to steadily hold his brother’s eyes and communication of another sort passed between them, pictures and knowledge that could be explained only at great length in words and then with clumsiness even for the skilful speech of Elves.

Through his brother’s eyes he trod the streets of Valmar, city of the Powers, Valmar where quiet reigned even when the many bells of the city chimed in converse. A city seldom visited by Sindar and Teleri, or now by the Noldor whether of Kôr or Arvalin. The Avari dwelt either with Sindar lords on Tol Eressëa, or in the lands of Araman outside the mountains of Pelóri to the north. Those of Araman were for the most part Restored, they looked ever back to Middle-earth and cared little for Valmar, or their kindred of the Eldar.

A city where the weight of the Ages lay in streets which now knew few Elves save the ever faithful Vanyar, where even the songs of the First Kindred were sung more seldom, as though they felt the winds of weariness. This Finarfin showed his brother, and then he showed the Valar, and Fingolfin knew with a sense that was more than simple sight or hearing that even they seemed wearied, strangely both more and less substantial; as though the raiment of Arda, in which they clothed themselves at times had made them more like to the Elves, less like the spirits of thought they had once been. They too were bound within Time.

The seeing narrowed, showing now a particular time, a particular meeting. It was to Tulkas that Finarfin had spoken when he was last in Valmar, and through the shared sight Fingolfin saw the hair of Tulkas’s form was now silver and not gold, although the aging of the Valar was of a different kind from the aging of the mortals he had known long ago. Yet of all the Valar Tulkas had ever had the least discretion, and it was of Tulkas that Finarfin had learned a thing before unknown among the Noldor.

It was with that passage complete that Fingolfin broke again into spoken word.

“We never heard of this! Why did they never tell us this?”

“That I do not know,” said Finarfin, “and I do not think that Tulkas knows it. Indeed he thought we would have known by now.”

“Did they simply overlook our ignorance? No I cannot think that. Tulkas perhaps, but not all of them. If they had told us, not the Exiles only but all the Elves of Beleriand, how different the long looking back would have been.”

“You are thinking: how much less bitter,” said Finarfin.

“I do not deny it. So many, I think, did not voyage West because they could not quiet their anger that the Valar delayed until all was almost lost, for the price fell upon those that had never walked in Aman as hard as upon we of the Noldor. Your own daughter and her husband were among those that held back, were they not?”

Finarfin smiled, a little wryly, at that. “It may have been as well for Middle-earth as things turned out.”

“It may,” Fingolfin agreed. “Yet why did the Valar never explain their reasons? Some of the Úmanyar and the Avari, those that do not blame the Valar, they blame us for the wreck of Beleriand, saying the host of Valinor would have come before, if we had not angered them by our rebellion. I had thought that might be true.”

It did fall into place, the truth Finarfin had learned and shown him. The truth that Morgoth, in the first power and might of his new arising could not have been destroyed, not by all the Valar together, without wreckage as great and terrible or more so than that which had accompanied destruction of Utumno in the first infancy of the Elves and that had reached them even far in the south in great earth tremors, in storm darkness remembered through legend long after. A destruction that would have wrecked land far wider than lost Beleriand and killed all those who dwelled there, destroying the Sindar, doing damage untellable to the other peoples, most of all the Mortal folk. Not such wonder then that the Valar had held their hands.

Yet the greater wonder was that it had been his people, the Noldor and their brave allies, who had dealt the worst and greatest blows to Morgoth in the wars he had for so long thought futile! Morgoth had poured his Vala’s strength into his fortress and his servants, into the breeding of orcs and trolls and great dragons, and the governance of things still worse; until what the armies of Valinor had faced had been no true Vala, but a shell, a husk, bound to a half-wrecked body, (and even Fingolfin’s own last fight had played its part, weakening Morgoth as he put power into keeping a body that would never heal alive). And in the long years of Siege far lands that might have been lost to Dark had instead lightened, and with them the hearts of those that dwelled there, as Morgoth, penned in Angband, called his greatest servants to him to aid the fight.

So when the Host came at last they found a hollow of Empire: a shell still outwardly strong, but which with blows hard enough could be shattered entirely. So despite all, that victory had been bought in the blood of Beleriand’s people.

What a difference it made to know they had not fought in vain!

Behind him in the house Anairë and Eärwen laughed again. The sun was close to setting behind the mountains and Arvalin was bathed in golden light. Below, on the great glassy swarth, stood the fountain that Nerdanel had built, leaping gold-wrought shapes amid the play of water. Beside it two Elves were exercising and, as some still did, they were practising sword-play.

Fingolfin felt like singing, one of the old songs of Beleriand. He felt like calling all the Elves of Arvalin to festival and letting them rejoice in who and what they were. There was in this no lessening of respect for his brother, or any of those that had remained in Aman, for their choices had been no easier and their power much needed both in Aman and in the great Faring Forth. Exiles and Abiders, Arda had needed both.

It did not matter why the Valar had kept their silence: he knew the truth now.

“Thank you,” he said to Finarfin.

“In Arvalin you know the temper of the people better than I, so the final choice of whether to tell them should be yours.”

“Did you ever hear,” Fingolfin said, “what some of the Third Clan say of the Noldor? That we are mostly Avari at heart, and so many left Aman because we needed more room to quarrel in? “

“I had heard that.” Finarfin’s voice was grave, but their eyes met and they both laughed.

“There may be something in it,” Fingolfin admitted. “but I think the Noldor have been afraid of our own natures for long enough.”

The sun almost had slipped behind the mountains; only a few golden shafts now fell between the peaks. By the fountain below the two Elves he had seen before had laid their swords aside, and were seated on the grass either singing or talking. Light spilled over the terrace as someone lit a lamp within. Fingolfin smiled at his brother.

“King of the Noldor, if you are going to cook supper this evening, we had better go inside.”

~~~~~~~~~~~

Author’s Notes

The argument that while the Noldor did not defeat Morgoth they succeeded in weakening him fatally can be found in Morgoth’s Ring section 5 text VII.iii. It makes a lot of sense, but the fact that it doesn’t appear in the mainstream Silmarillion texts led me to speculate on whether it was known to the Elves themselves.

That the returning Noldor were not permitted to live in Valinor seems to have been a recurring, though not consistent, feature of Tolkien’s thinking (see for example Unfinished Tales where Galadriel will not be “content with an island in the sea, whose native land was Aman the Blessed” p.324, or the letter printed as introduction to The Silmarillion where the returning Exiles “were not to dwell permanently in Valinor again” p.xxiii). It seems possible that the same would apply to rembodied Noldor, with perhaps a few fully pardoned exceptions.

The names Kôr and Arvalin (‘outside Valinor’) come from early versions of the Silmarillion. I have reused them in a slightly different context feeling Tolkien’s own names are more authentic than any I can invent. Kôrtirion is used in some of Tolkien’s writings as the name of a settlement on Tol Eressëa but I think Avallónë replaced it.

The destruction of Tirion is not strictly canon, but there seems a fair case for thinking the city may have been destroyed when the Valar overwhelmed the army of Ar-Pharazôn. My earlier story ‘Footnote to the Akallabêth’ explored this idea.

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