Tolkien's Trees

A piece by guest author Aspiring Misanthrope

The Sun and Moon are natural objects of devotion to the primitive man. They dominate their respective settings, day and night, and do not share each other’s company lightly. Whenever you see the two in the sky together, it is either when they are on opposite ends, as if each wishes to avoid the other’s radiance, or when one is subject to the other, as in a solar eclipse. (Granted, this is from the human perspective. While it could be said that the Moon subjects the Earth during an eclipse as seen from the solar perspective, that is best left to pedantic students of astronomy. Moving on.)

The all-encompassing nature of the Sun and Moon looms large in the depiction of the Two Trees of Valinor, from Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. They were brought into creation by the Valar Yavanna’s song and Nienna’s tears. They grew upon the mound Ezellohar before the gates of Valmar:

Upon the mound there came two slender shoots and silence was over all the world in that hour, nor was there any other sound, save for the chanting of Yavanna. Under her song, the saplings grew and became fair and tall, and came to flower. And thus there awoke in the world the Two Trees of Valinor. Of all things which Yavanna made, they have most renown, and about their fate, all the tales of the elder days are woven.

– The Silmarillion, Chapter 1, “Of the Beginning of Days”

That Tolkien should name and so lovingly write such flora into his pages describes his own feelings. Tolkien was at heart a lover of Nature, and Nature’s God. None of his writing expresses a fondness for technology and machinery. It is these trees — not the many palatial gardens, halls, cities, or realms — that have their own names. They define the Undying Lands of the West with their light and grandeur, and it is their destruction that marks the end of an age and the beginning of another.

Something interesting lies in the choice of names and sexual affinity. Telperion was the first and the male, marked by “leaves of dark green” which had “a shining silver light” all about them. Laurelin, the female, had leaves “of a young green, like the new opened beech,” which radiated a glittering gold light. Telperion gave his light first, and from that the Valar judged their time in a timeless land. The day ended when the golden light of Laurelin was fading and Telperion’s light grew stronger. Thus, in Valinor, the “day” was under the argent domain, and the “night” came in under the warm glow of Laurelin.

The day was most often associated with growth, strength, and dominion to primitive man, and thus linked to masculine deities. The Moon, being hidden, cool, and changing monthly, was seen as feminine. Tolkien’s reversal of this trope may lie again in his fondness for things that grow.

The Sun is nurturing, life-giving, and a comfort to the South England yeoman, rather than a blistering blast of heat, as it is to the Levantine herdsman. The Moon, on the other hand, is stranger. If you’ve ever tried to read in a dark room and had your parents poke in and flip on the lights, chiding you that “It’s bad for your eyes,” they weren’t wrong. The Moon does not provide clarity, but it does bring contrast. The male mind is made to discern the silhouette first and then to fill in the details. Many times throughout the legendarium, we see silver marking a king, and gold marking a lady of great beauty.

Furthermore, it is the descendants of Telperion that are counted, all the way to the children of Nimloth that took root in Gondor — not those of Laurelin. This tracing of the male heir is an echo of primogeniture, the tradition of naming the first-born male in the family line as the future leader of the household-clan-kingdom polity.

The fate of the trees is among the most gruesome in the entire legendarium. Melkor, the malicious, Luciferian stand-in, greatest of the Valar, enlists the help of the evil, devouring spirit Ungoliant to help in his heist of the prized jewels, the Silmarils. Melkor, also called Morgoth, scars the trees, and Ungoliant laps up the luminescent sap. Day and night vanish in the Undying Lands, leaving only the starlight from the heavens. Morgoth uses the darkness to steal the jewels, along with other treasures, from the stronghold of the elves, and he flees into his fortress of Angband to mark the events of the First Age of the Middle-Earth. Tolkien makes the first victims of his work — before Boromir, Glorfindel, Túrin Turambar, Fingolfin, Fëanor, or Elwë — and those are the sibling trees Telperion and Laurelin. Nature is the first to fall when sin enters the world.

Not all traces of the trees are lost, however. Yavanna and Nienna save the last relics before the trees wither — a golden fruit of Laurelin and a silver blossom of Telperion, which the Valar set in the sky as the Sun and Moon.