Fingolfin

Fingolfin was born in Valinor during the Years of the Trees, in the Noldorin city of Tirion upon the hill of Túna, and belonged to the ruling house of that kindred. He was the second son of Finwë, first lord of the Noldor, but the eldest of the children born to him by his second wife, Indis, a lady of the Vanyar and near kin to Ingwë, the eldest of the Elven-kings. His younger full brother was Finarfin, golden-haired after their mother's people, while Fingolfin himself was dark of hair as the Noldor generally were. The elder son of Finwë, Fëanor, had been born of Míriel, who died after his birth, and the second marriage of Finwë was therefore without precedent among the Eldar; from it descended the division of the house into branches whose rivalry shaped much of the later history of the Noldor.

Among the sons of Finwë he was reckoned the strongest in body, the firmest in purpose, and the boldest in the face of danger, qualities set against the surpassing craft and eloquence attributed to his elder half-brother. He married in Aman, and three children of his are named in the traditions of Beleriand: his sons Fingon and Turgon, and his daughter Aredhel, called the White Lady of the Noldor, who was also known by the name Ar-Feiniel. Through these children his line ran on into the later houses of the Noldor and, by marriage, into the kindreds of Men.

The name by which he is remembered is not the one he bore in Aman but a Sindarin form, for after the Noldor settled in Beleriand they took the speech of the Grey-elves for daily use, and the names of their princes were rendered accordingly. Its opening element recurs throughout his father's descendants, binding the house together in sound as well as in blood. By the rules of stress described for Sindarin and Quenya alike, the emphasis falls on the middle syllable, since it is closed by a pair of consonants. His later styles, High King of the Noldor and King of Hithlum, are titles of office rather than personal names.

The first recorded turning point in Fingolfin's life came in Valinor, when Melkor, released from his long captivity, spread rumours among the Noldor that the sons of Indis coveted the place of the eldest. Fingolfin went before Finwë to warn him of the unrest and to ask that Fëanor's growing hostility be restrained; Fëanor followed him armed, set the point of a drawn sword at his half-brother's breast, and bade him keep his distance. The Valar summoned Fëanor to judgement and banished him from Tirion for twelve years, and because Finwë went with his eldest son into exile at Formenos, the governing of the Noldor in the city fell to Fingolfin. When the term drew near its end and the Valar held festival, Fëanor came at Manwë's bidding, and Fingolfin set aside the injury, offering to follow his brother's lead if he would take up his kingship after their father; Fëanor gave no answer in words, and within that same day the Trees were slain and Finwë killed at Formenos.

In the council that followed the Darkening, Fingolfin and his son Turgon spoke against the counsel of departure, but Fingon and the greater part of the assembly were won over, and Fingolfin held himself bound by the word he had given at the festival and unwilling to abandon those who would go. He led the second and larger host out of Tirion, marching behind Fëanor rather than with him. His people came late to Alqualondë and, finding battle already joined at the quays, some of them fought without knowing its cause, so that the kinslaying lay upon them also; at the Doom pronounced in the north his brother Finarfin turned back, but Fingolfin's sons urged him onward. When Fëanor seized the stolen ships and burned them at Losgar, Fingolfin's host was left in the wastes of Araman with the choice of shameful return or the Grinding Ice. They took the Helcaraxë, and many perished on that road, among them Elenwë the wife of Turgon; the survivors set foot in Middle-earth at the first rising of the Moon, and marched into Mithrim with the first sunrise, sounding their trumpets before the very gates of Angband.

They found Fëanor already dead and Maedhros a captive of Morgoth, and the two hosts camped on opposite shores of Lake Mithrim in bitter mistrust. That estrangement was ended when Fingon sought out Maedhros and freed him from Thangorodrim, after which Maedhros set aside the claim of the elder house and yielded the kingship to Fingolfin, though the resentment of some of his brothers was not extinguished by it. Fingolfin thereafter held Hithlum as his own realm, with the plain of Dor-lómin granted to Fingon, and made his chief fortress at the springs of Sirion in the eastern passes of the Shadowy Mountains, the point of the frontier most exposed to attack from the north.

About the twentieth year of the Sun he held the Feast of Reuniting near the pools of Ivrin, at which princes of the Noldor met with the Sindar and the Green-elves and much goodwill was made; it was in the years after this that the use of Sindarin spread among his people. Forty years later Morgoth attempted a surprise assault, and in the third great battle, the Dagor Aglareb, his armies were destroyed between the northern fortresses; from that victory Fingolfin and his allies drew the leaguer about Angband that held for nearly four hundred years. During that long watch he came to think that the Noldor should attack while their enemy was still shut in, but he found little support, for the lords of the west were content with their lands and few believed the siege could be broken. In this same period Turgon withdrew in secret from Nevrast with a great part of Fingolfin's following and passed into the hidden vale of Gondolin, and the manner of his going was not known.

The siege ended in the year 455 with the Dagor Bragollach, when rivers of fire poured down from Thangorodrim, Glaurung came forth full-grown, and Balrogs and orc-hosts overran the northern plain in a single winter. Dorthonion was lost, Angrod and Aegnor were slain, and though Hithlum itself was held behind its mountain wall, the frontier fortress at the springs of Sirion was assailed and the strength of Fingolfin's people much diminished. Believing the ruin of the Noldor complete and their alliance broken beyond mending, he rode out alone upon his horse Rochallor, in a rage that none dared restrain, and crossed the ash-plain northward. Those who saw him pass fled from his road, taking him for one of the Valar; he came to the gates of Angband, sounded his horn, and summoned Morgoth by name to come out and fight.

The high kingship that fell to Fingolfin was an office of precedence rather than of command. It gave him the first place among the princes of the exiled Noldor, the right to summon a council and the weight of a voice in it, but the realms of Beleriand were governed each by its own lord: the sons of Fëanor held the eastern marches on their own terms, Finrod ruled Nargothrond as he saw fit, and his own second son removed himself and his following beyond reach altogether. Outside the Noldor the title carried no force. Thingol was long established as king in Beleriand and never conceded an overlord among the newcomers, so that whatever accord held between Hithlum and Doriath rested on kinship, marriage and a shared enemy, not on authority Fingolfin could exercise.

His practical strength lay in the land he ruled directly and in the alliances he could keep in being. The levy of Hithlum was counted among the greatest of the Noldorin hosts, and it was increased when Men of the house of Hador took service with him; to their lord he gave Dor-lómin to hold as a fief, and their descendants afterwards fought under his standard and his son's. The leaguer about Angband was maintained by common consent of the northern princes and not by his order alone, and it was never a closed ring: the ways in the far north could not be watched, Morgoth's servants and emissaries went out by them, and the fortress itself was reckoned too strong to be stormed. When Fingolfin urged that the enemy be assailed while he was still shut in, the other lords declined, and no attack was made.

The relation that shaped Fingolfin most was never resolved, only inherited. Fëanor died before any reconciliation could be tested, and what remained was a settlement with his seven sons, made possible by Maedhros and never fully accepted by the others; the two branches kept their distance thereafter, the eldest house holding the eastern marches and Fingolfin's people the north-west, so that peace between them consisted largely in living apart. Older affections cut across that division nonetheless. His daughter had been on friendly terms with Celegorm and Curufin in Aman, and it was to seek them that she later left Gondolin, an episode which shows how little the quarrel of the fathers governed the private attachments of their children.

With his own full brother the tie was closer and its severing more costly: Finarfin's return north left Fingolfin without the one prince of equal standing who shared his misgivings, and their fellowship survived only in Fingolfin's dealings with his nephews, who took the exposed highlands and the caverns of the west and were his most reliable partners in the northern watch. Within his household the same divergence appeared in smaller compass. His elder son was the readier to act and the more willing to trust, his younger the more cautious and the more inclined to withdraw, and Fingolfin's course repeatedly lay between the two.

Fingolfin is absent from the earliest layer of the mythology: in the Lost Tales the lord of the Noldoli and father of Turgon is Finwë Nólemë, called Fingolma in the associated outlines, and no second son of that house is distinguished. The name appears with the Sketch of the Mythology and the Quenta Noldorinwa, where the sons of Finwë are Fëanor, Fingolfin and Finrod, the last being the prince afterwards renamed Finarfin, whose eldest son at that stage bore the name Inglor Felagund. The transfer of Finrod from father to son belongs to the revisions undertaken after The Lord of the Rings was finished, and readers of the published book are apt to mistake the earlier usage. In those same texts the brothers were of one mother; the death of Míriel and the second marriage to Indis were elaborated only in the later Quenta material, so that the half-kinship on which the quarrel turns is a comparatively late refinement. Fingolfin's daughter likewise appeared as Isfin, sister of Turgon and wife of Eöl, until Aredhel displaced that name.

The Shibboleth of Fëanor, among the latest of the writings, supplies the Quenya names standing behind the Sindarin ones: Ñolofinwë for Fingolfin, beside Curufinwë and Arafinwë for his brothers, the received form being a partial translation that sets the paternal element in front. Tolkien there makes the naming itself a grievance, since Fëanor read his half-brothers' incorporation of their father's name as a claim upon the headship of the house. The same body of notes gives Fingolfin's wife the name Anairë and records that she remained in Aman when he departed, a matter on which the published narrative says nothing. The challenge before the gates was first told at length in verse, in the Lay of Leithian, and the later prose account follows that telling closely.