silwritersguild | Thoughts on elven growth rates

This ia a quick piece of essay work, taking a look at what Tolkien may have meant when he wrote that elves too around 50 years to mature, and how that can be related to the dates in Annals of Aman. Other thoughts are welcome!

On elven growth rates and the Annals of Aman

According to the Laws and Customs of the Eldar elves become fully grown around the age of fifty, although growth rates vary and some can take up to a hundred years to reach full growth.

The question is: did Tolkien mean years of the Sun, or years of Aman? In the Annals of Aman, which he was apparently working on at the same time or a little earlier, Tolkien stresses several times that one year of Aman is loosely equivalent to ten years of the Sun, so if Tolkien was talking about years of Aman in the LACE elves would take around 500 years to become fully grown.

The passage in question sounds as if he is talking about years of the Sun, since it is specifically comparing elven growth rates to mortal ones, but a comparison with other texts suggests otherwise. [Actually I think the most likely answer is that when he wrote the LACE Tolkien had temporarily forgotten that Aman years were different from Sun years – but that’s no fun!]

It is said in the LACE that elves commonly married around the age of fifty, and according to AA Finarfin married at the age of exactly fifty Aman years. That’s not conclusive of course, Finarfin could simply have married late, but there is further evidence in some of the statements about Feanor. In a text on Finwe and Miriel which is closely related to the LACE [Morgoth’s Ring p239 in my edition] we are told that Feanor “was wellnigh fullgrown ere Nolofinwe [Fingolfin] was born”. Almost fullgrown, but not quite. Now according to the AA Feanor was older than Fingolfin by twenty-one years of Aman, approximately 210 years of the Sun, which means he was either an exceptionally quick developer (if elves on average took 500 of our years to grow up) or an exceptionally slow one (if they took 50 years). And we are in fact told that Feanor “grew swiftly”. [MR p185] Therefore he was a quick developer. Therefore the statement in LACE must mean years of Aman, since otherwise Feanor would have had time to reach full growth four times over by the time Fingolfin was born.

So far so good, but it doesn’t fit with the story of Maeglin. Maeglin was not quite 200 when Gondolin fell, but clearly he was fully adult and had been for some time. So elves in Middle-earth in the First Age can’t take 500 years to reach full growth.* And yet they should.

How do we reconcile this? I believe that (other than admitting that Tolkien contradicted himself hopelessly) there’s only one way. Elves must grow faster in Middle-earth than in Valinor, or at least than they did in Valinor in the ages of the Trees. And there is actually a little evidence that can be used to support that. In an earlier text Tolkien says “after the rising of the Sun and Moon… growth and change were swift for all living things, most swift outside Valinor, and most swift of all in the first years of the Sun.” [Lost Road p.177]

I suggest that in terms of elven growth one year of Aman in Valinor was equivalent to one year of the Sun in Middle-earth. An elf born in Valinor in the ages of the Trees would take on average fifty years of Aman to reach full-growth, an elf born in Middle-earth in the First Age would take fifty years of the Sun. So Feanor probably took about four times as long to reach maturity as Maeglin, even though, by Aman standards, he grew fast.

(One wonders just how the elves calculated the rate of Sun years to Aman years, as we never hear of time pieces in Middle-earth. I rather suspect the calculations, however arrived at, were probably made in Tol Eressea – where there were probably more and more accurate records of Aman – after the end of the First Age. The Exiles probably had to make do with much looser estimates).

That seems the best answer to me. Any thoughts?

*Dior, Elwing and Earendil appear to grow at mortal rates, but then they were all part mortal so that’s not a problem. Indeed you could make a case for Dior being fully mortal, since he was born after Luthien had opted to become a mortal herself.