The Complete Tolkien Companion (38 page)

Finrod Felagund
– The Friend of Men, called also
The Faithful
and
Lord of Caves;
the founder of Nargothrond and Companion of Beren. His memory is exalted in the tales both of Elves, of whom he was one of the noblest to walk the earth, and Men, towards whom he always behaved as a benefactor. For the sake of one Man Finrod laid down his life in Middle-earth.

Finrod was the eldest son of Finarfin. His three brothers were Orodreth, Angrod and Aegnor; and his sister was Galadriel. The children of Finarfin – though not Finarfin himself – came back to Middle-earth in the Elder Days, and waged war upon Morgoth in company with the Houses of Fingolfin and Fëanor; though only half their people had followed them to Middle-earth. Finrod was the great friend of Turgon, and into the minds of both Elves came dreams (sent at the bidding of the Vala Ulmo), warning them against dark days to come, and putting into their minds the thought of the needs of that future time. And while Turgon founded the Hidden City of Gondolin, as is told elsewhere, Finrod, having learned, from his kinsman Thingol of Doriath, of the Dwarf-delved Caves of Narog in West Beleriand, founded there the city of Nargothrond. He was afterwards called
Felagund,
‘Cavehewer' in the Dwarvish tongue.

It was Finrod, first of all High-elves, who discovered the race of Men, though their arrival had long been prophesied among the Eldar. The Men he encountered were Edain, of the kindred of Balan (Bëor) of the First House of the Edain, as this people were afterwards known; and though Finrod is called ‘Friend of Men', it was with this kindred of Men in particular that his fate was woven. Balan entered Finrod's service – the first of all the Edain to serve a prince of the Noldor. Barahir, his descendant, fought at Finrod's side at the Dagor Bragollach, and indeed saved his life. Barahir's son Beren thus had a claim on Finrod's aid, and Finrod honoured the pledge and accompanied Beren on his Quest, relinquishing his kingship to do so.

But this first attempt to steal a Silmaril was doomed to bitter failure. All the Companions of the Quest were caught and imprisoned, by Sauron the servant of Morgoth, in the tower of Tol-in-Gaurhoth (formerly Tol Sirion) which guarded the Pass of Sirion. There Finrod was slain, by a werewolf, defending his friend Beren from the monster. Thus he repaid the debt, and so passed into the West for ever. Finrod Felagund never wedded, and was succeeded at Nargothrond by his brother Orodreth.

Finwë
– The first King of the Noldorin Elves, and one of the four princes (the other three were Ingwë, Olwë and Elwë) who led the Eldar on the Great Journey out of Middle-earth into the Far West. He was the father of Fëanor, Fingolfin and Finarfin, and thus the founder of one of the most royal Houses of the Eldar. But he was slain, in Aman, by Melkor (Morgoth), and thus was spared the shame which afterwards came upon his House, when two of his sons rebelled against the Valar and returned to Middle-earth, to make vengeful war upon Melkor.

Alone of the High-elven kings of old, Finwë wedded twice. His first wife was Míriel of the Noldor, who bore him Curufinwë, afterwards called Fëanor. But this birthing so taxed her body and spirit that of her own will she died soon afterwards, and passed for ever to the Halls of Mandos. Finwë then wedded one of the Vanyar, Indis the Fair, a kinswoman of Ingwë (who was High King of all the Elves of Aman). This second wedding did not please Fëanor, and by it was created a division in the House of Finwë that bore fruit in after years. Yet Finwë loved Fëanor best of all his three sons – or perhaps it was the memory of Míriel Serindë that he loved. At all events, when Fëanor first went against the will of the Valar, and was banished as a result from Tirion where Finwë ruled, Finwë himself quitted the city upon the hill of Túna and went to live in Formenos, the fortress to the north which Fëanor had built for himself; and Finwë's second son Fingolfin ruled the city of Tirion in his place. So it was that when Melkor came to take the Silmarils from Fëanor's armoury – having already left the Two Trees dying on the mount of Ezellohar – Finwë resisted him, but was struck down. And in the deeds which followed this murder (for such it was) Finwë's house was laid low, and two of his three sons were slain, even as he had been, and by the same foe, and for the same cause.

Fire of Doom
– The volcanic furnace in the ‘Chambers of Fire' (the
Sammath Naur
) in the cone of Orodruin.

Fíriel
‘Mortal-woman' (Sind.) – The daughter of King Ondoher of Gondor, and the wife of Arvedui ‘Last-king' of Arthedain. After the death of Ondoher and his sons, Arvedui claimed the crown of Gondor, basing part of his case on his marriage to Fíriel. However, his claim was rejected, and the crown was instead awarded to a victorious general (albeit of royal blood), Eärnil II.

Fíriel
is also the name of the central figure in one of the more reflective Hobbit-poems, ‘The Last Ship', collected and published as No. 16 in
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.

Though rustic and given to rhetorical jokes, Hobbit-verse occasionally bids fair to glimpse things deeper than were generally known in the Shire. Nevertheless, the obvious allegorical content of ‘The Last Ship' indicates that in origin it is not, in fact, a Hobbit poem at all. For Hobbits did not, as a rule, care for allegory, and verse-advice in the Shire normally took a more practical form. In its original form, therefore, this particular verse almost certainly came from Gondor.

In the poem, Fíriel is watching for the dawn, somewhere near the mouth of a river in Gondor. She runs through the grass to the riverbank just in time to hear the silvery notes of Elf-harps and singing:

like wind-voices keen and young

and far bells ringing.

Three Elf-kings and their retinue sail majestically past in a swan-ship, on their way ‘over-Sea' to the Undying Lands. They summon Fíriel to join them, but her feet sink in the clay of the riverbank and she realises that she must remain behind and accept her (mortal) fate.

The poem dates from the early Fourth Age, from a time when Elves were indeed sailing West in greater numbers than before.

Note:
the -
iel
suffix in names of Sindarin form usually indicates femininity, e.g.
Fíriel, Berúthiel, Galadriel.
The High-elven equivalent was -
ë,
-
ën,
e.g.
Telperiën, Vanimeldë, Silmariën.
(The Grey-elven suffix
-wen
meant specifically ‘maiden', e.g.
Morwen,
‘Dark-maid', and
Arwen,
‘Royal-maid'.)

Firiendale
– The cleft from which the Mering Stream arose.

Firienfeld
– In Rohan, the name for the guarded upland meadow where stood the mysterious Dunharrow.

Firienwood
– This small forest marked part of the border between the realms of Gondor and Rohan, nestling up against the knees of the White Mountains where the fens of Rohan's Eastfold blended into the pastureland of Anórien. The traveller from Edoras to Mundburg (Minas Tirith) passed along a road through the wood, while above him on his right rose the
HALIFIRIEN
, the northernmost of Gondor's seven beacon-hills. It was called the ‘whispering wood'.

Firimar
‘Mortals' (Sind.) – One of the Elves' early names for the race of Men.

Firith
– The Sindarin word for ‘fading', as applied to the fourth of the six ‘seasons' of the Eldarin ‘loa' or year. The Quenya term was
quellë
(or
lasse-lanta
).

First Age
– The assembly of a comparative chronology of the First Age – the ‘Elder Days' of the Elves – has long carried virtually insuperable problems for the scholar, not the least of which has been the absolute dearth of precise information of the kind which compilers need in order successfully to impose systems of dating upon hitherto-undated epochs. Great events were known to have taken place, but their accurate location within a time-scale itself related to the existing time-scales of Middle-earth (such as
The Tale of Years
) has, until now, been impossible to achieve.

However the later publication of several extremely important pieces of ancient literature, many of which provide exactly this kind of cross-datable information, has reversed the situation. By cross-dating – that is, by comparison work – a perfectly adequate chronology of the six-century period which we may term ‘the Years of the Sun', i.e. the late First Age, can now be compiled. But before the onset of this period, the further back we go into the past the more the haziness increases, until before long we find ourselves dealing with quantities of elapsed time so vast that they make all Man-made dating systems seem quite absurdly inappropriate. For this compelling reason the following chronological table does not attempt to assign year-values to, or within, these remote epochs, though brief summaries of the great events they contain are included. All, however, may be assumed to involve spans of years greater by far than the gulf of time which lies between those days and ours.

I have deliberately chosen not to follow the example of Prehistorians who, as all know, assign ancient year-values in reverse order, thus leaving their time-scale conveniently open-ended. It is an effective system, provided it can be made to mesh smoothly with the known dates at the beginning of the New Age (which, of course, run in the proper, forwards, direction). In other words, Year One of the Old Age must be made to precede – by one year – Year One of the New Age. But when Year One (Old Age) is itself unsurely located – as is the case here – then the entire
raison d'être
of the reverse-dating system becomes undermined, and the system itself becomes inapplicable, for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, the closing years of the First Age (i.e. all events postdating the fall of Gondolin) are the least-known of all; in fact they can only be estimated. And as a result the otherwise splendid system of reverse-order-dating must be rejected.

Luckily, the first Year of the Sun provides the necessary ‘fixed point' from which to commence a Chronology proper (without such a fixed point no chronology at all would be possible, unless it was open-ended at both ends). For this year is the earliest date belonging to our relative list (of course, it cannot be located in absolute terms, but all the dates which follow are computed directly from it, until after the fall of Gondolin, when we enter an area of uncertainty). I am therefore obliged to commence the Chronology proper at this point. I have assigned succeeding year-values in ascending order, according to measurable elapsed time.

Although most of the given dates are believed accurate to within a very small margin, some are necessarily of a more tentative nature. I have enclosed these within parentheses.

THE FIRST AGE

The Spring of Arda.
First war with Melkor, who is defeated. The Valar come to Almaren; raising of Illuin and Ormal. Return of Melkor and delving of Utumno, the Pit. Second War with Melkor: Almaren is destroyed and the Lamps are cast down. Founding of Valinor and raising of the Mountains of Defence. Beginning of the Great Darkness and founding of Angband.

The Years of the Trees.
Yavanna Kementári makes the Two Trees of Valinor; beginning of the Count of Time. After many ages the Quendi awake in Cuiviénen. For the sake of the Quendi the Valar make war upon Melkor. Battle of the Powers and destruction of Utumno; Melkor is imprisoned. The Eldar make the Great Journey from Cuiviénen to Aman. Foundation of Doriath in Middle-earth. Birth, in Eldamar, of Fëanor. Dwarves appear in the Blue Mountains. Building of Menegroth. Birth, in Menegroth, of Lúthien. The Nandor come to Beleriand. Release from Mandos of Melkor; he subverts the Noldor. Death of the Two Trees and slaying of Finwë. Theft of the Silmarils. Rebellion of Fëanor.

The Sunless Year.
The Kinslaying at Alqualondë and Curse of Mandos. First Battle of Beleriand. Fëanor comes to Middle-earth; he burns the Telerin ships at Losgar, abandoning Fingolfin in Araman. Battle-under-Stars in the North: Fëanor is slain. Rising of Isil (the Moon). Fingolfin and his hosts cross the northern icefields into Middle-earth after great hardship. Capture of Maedhros son of Fëanor, by treachery. He is tormented upon Thangorodrim.

Years of the Sun.