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By Root 1082 0

Valar in the city scarcely anything survived in later writing, and there remain only phrases here and there (the ‘golden streets’ and ‘silver domes’ of Valmar, ‘Valmar of many bells’) to suggest the solidity of the original description, where Tulkas’ house of many storeys had a tower of bronze and Oromë’s halls were upheld by living trees with trophies and antlers hung upon their trunks. This is not to say that all such imagining was definitively abandoned: as I have said in the Foreword, the Lost Tales were followed by a version so compressed as to be no more than a résumé (as was its purpose), and the later development of the mythology proceeded from that—a process of re-expansion. Many things never referred to again after the Lost Tales may have continued to exist in a state of suspension, as it were. Valmar certainly remained a city, with gates, streets, and dwellings. But in the context of the later work one could hardly conceive of the tempestuous Ossë being possessed of a house in Valmar, even if its floor were of seawater and its roof of foam; and of course the hall of Makar and Meássë (where the life described owes something to the myths of the Unending Battle in ancient Scandinavia) disappeared with the disappearance of those divinities—a ‘Melko-faction’ in Valinor that was bound to prove an embarrassment.

Several features of the original descriptions endured: the rarity of Ulmo’s visits to Valmar (cf. The Silmarillion p. 40), the frequency with which Palúrien and Oromë visit ‘the world without’ (ibid. pp. 29, 41, 47), the association of the gardens of Lórien with Silpion and of the gardens of Vána with Laurelin (ibid. p. 99); and much that is said here of the divine ‘characters’ can be seen to have remained, even if differently expressed. Here also appears Nessa, already as the wife of Tulkas and the sister of Oromë, excelling in the dance; and Ómar-Amillo is now named the brother of Noldorin-Salmar. It appears elsewhere (see p. 93) that Nielíqui was the daughter of Oromë and Vána.

(vi) The Gods of Death and the Fates of Elves and Men

(pp. 76–7)

This section of the tale contains its most surprising and difficult elements. Mandos and his wife Nienna appear in the account of the coming of the Valar into the world at the beginning of the tale (p. 66), where they are named ‘Fantur of Death, Vefántur Mandos’ and ‘Fui Nienna’, ‘mistress of death’. In the present passage it is said that Vefántur named his dwelling Vê by his own name, whereas afterwards (The Silmarillion p. 28) he was called by the name of his dwelling; but in the early writing there is a distinction between the region (Mandos) and the halls (Vê and Fui) within the region. There is here no trace of Mandos as the ‘Doomsman of the Valar’, who ‘pronounces his dooms and his judgements only at the bidding of Manwë’, one of the most notable aspects of the later conception of this Vala; nor, since Nienna is the wife of Mandos, has Vairë the Weaver, his wife in the later story, appeared, with her tapestries that portray ‘all things that have ever been in Time’ and clothe the halls of Mandos ‘that ever widen as the ages pass’—in the Lost Tales the name Vairë is given to an Elf of Tol Eressëa. Tapestries ‘picturing those things that were and shall be’ are found here in the halls of Aulë (p. 74).

Most important in the passage concerning Mandos is the clear statement about the fate of Elves who die: that they wait in the halls of Mandos until Vefántur decrees their release, to be reborn in their own children. This latter idea has already appeared in the tale of The Music of the Ainur (p. 59), and it remained my father’s unchanged conception of Elvish ‘immortality’ for many years; indeed the idea that the Elves might die only from the wounds of weapons or from grief was never changed—it also has appeared in The Music of the Ainur (ibid.): ‘the Eldar dwell till the Great End unless they be slain or waste in grief’, a passage that survived with little alteration in The Silmarillion (p. 42).

With the account of Fui Nienna, however, we come upon ideas in deep contradiction