Gondolindrim

Gondolindrim is a Sindarin collective name built on the name of the city. The ending belongs to a group of plural forms in Elvish naming that denote a whole people or host rather than a count of individuals, so the word describes the folk of Gondolin as one body. The city's own name came in two forms. Turgon first gave it a name in the Quenya of the Elves of Valinor, one that evokes a rock and the music of water. Among the Sindar of Beleriand this was recast as Gondolin, commonly rendered as the Hidden Rock. The Sindarin form prevailed in use, and the name of the people follows it.1

By descent the Gondolindrim were not a single kindred. Their Noldorin core consisted of a third of the host that had come to Middle-earth under Fingolfin, the part that had followed his son Turgon. The larger share, however, came from the Sindar of Nevrast, the coastlands where Turgon had first ruled and where these Grey-elves had accepted him as their lord. When the hidden city stood ready, Turgon led both groups secretly out of Nevrast into the enclosed valley that Ulmo had shown him. Gondolin thus united exiles from Aman and Elves who had never left Beleriand under one king. The name Gondolindrim reflects this: it refers to the shared city, not to a line of descent.2

Outside the older tales the city is remembered chiefly through its craftwork. When the swords taken from the trolls' hoard are examined in Rivendell, Elrond recognises them as work of Gondolin, forged for the wars against the goblins. He describes their makers as High Elves of the West and calls them his own kin. In this account the people have no collective name. They are known only through their city and their smithcraft, and they are placed among the Elves of the West, the kindreds who had returned from Valinor.3

The history of the Gondolindrim begins with years of concealed labour. After Ulmo had guided Turgon to the ring of mountains around Tumladen, the king set a portion of his people to raising the city there in secret while he himself went on ruling in Nevrast. The work lasted for more than half a century. Only when the city was finished did Turgon make ready to leave the coast, and his people departed quietly in companies so that their going would draw no notice. Once they were within the hills the passes were barred, and for many long years the Noldor of the other realms knew nothing of where Turgon had gone.1

Under Turgon the city followed a strict law of seclusion: whoever had entered was not allowed to leave again, and no stranger who found the way in was released. The first breach of this rule came from the royal house itself. Aredhel, Turgon's sister, grew weary of confinement and received her brother's reluctant consent to depart. In the forest of Nan Elmoth she was taken as wife by the dark elf Eöl. Years later she came back with their son Maeglin, and Eöl, having followed them to the gates, was put to death for the killing of Aredhel, who was struck by a dart he had aimed at his son. Maeglin stayed behind in the city, and his rise among its people belongs to the same period.2

For a time the hidden people took no part in the wars of the north, but the ruin of the Siege of Angband gradually drew them into the affairs of Beleriand. Following the disasters that came after the Siege was broken, eagles carried the young Mannish kinsmen Húrin and Huor into the valley. They lived there for close to a year, and Turgon allowed them to go home after they had sworn to keep silent about the city, though Maeglin argued against their release. When the Union of Maedhros assembled its forces, Turgon unexpectedly led out an army of about ten thousand. In the defeat of the Nirnaeth Arnoediad the host of Gondolin fought its way back southward, and Húrin and Huor, together with the Men of Dor-lómin, held the rear at the Fen of Serech so that Turgon could escape. The king went back into his mountains and did not march out to war again.3

Once the battle was lost, Turgon kept the city closed more tightly than ever, but he also tried a different course. He sent messengers in secret to the mouths of Sirion to build ships and look for a way to Valinor, hoping to win the pardon and aid of the Valar. Not one of these ships reached its goal. Voronwë alone survived from the last voyage, and in the end he became the guide who brought Tuor to the city. Tuor came as Ulmo's messenger, with counsel to abandon Gondolin before it was too late. Turgon rejected that counsel, and Tuor stayed on, married Idril, the king's daughter, and fathered Eärendil. Meanwhile Maeglin, who desired Idril for himself, nursed his resentment.4

The end was brought about by betrayal. Maeglin went out beyond the valley against the king's command to search for ore, was taken by Orcs, and purchased his life by telling Morgoth how the city could be reached. The assault struck while the people were holding a festival, and the attackers came over the northern heights with Balrogs, dragons and creatures of iron and fire. Ecthelion and the Lord of Balrogs killed each other at the king's fountain, Turgon perished when his tower fell, and Tuor threw Maeglin from the walls. Idril had earlier ordered a hidden way to be dug, and through it a remnant of the people escaped. At Cirith Thoronath, Glorfindel gave his life fighting a Balrog so that the refugees could get through.5

The Gondolindrim did not continue as a separate realm after the city fell. The survivors reached the mouths of Sirion and settled there alongside the refugees of Doriath, and after Tuor departed into the West with Idril, Eärendil became their lord. When the sons of Fëanor attacked the Havens in pursuit of the Silmaril, the remaining exiles scattered further, and some were taken in by Gil-galad on the Isle of Balar. From that point the people of the Hidden Rock survived only in the lineage of Eärendil and in the memory of their city.6

The life of the Gondolindrim was shaped by a single deliberate act of remembrance. Turgon conceived the city as a memorial of Tirion upon Túna, the city of the Noldor in Aman, and the people who built it on the hill amid Tumladen carried that intention into its stone and water. In the king's court stood images of the Two Trees made by Turgon's own craft: a golden tree called Glingal and a tree with flowers of silver called Belthil. Fountains were a mark of the place, and among the lords of the city was Ecthelion, known by the fountain as his emblem. To those who came upon it from outside, the city appeared white and shining on its hill, a work of Noldorin skill set down in Beleriand.1

Much of the people's craft went into keeping the valley shut. Their guardianship was layered rather than fortified. The approach through the ravine of Orfalch Echor was barred by seven gates in turn, each made of a different substance: wood, stone, bronze, iron, silver, gold and steel. Each had its own guard, and the last and greatest gate was held by Ecthelion. Above the valley the eagles of Thorondor kept watch over the Encircling Mountains and dealt with the spies of the Enemy. Seclusion was a condition that the whole community maintained through service and vigilance, not merely a law laid down by the king.2

Their relation to time followed from the same origin. Ulmo had counselled Turgon at Vinyamar not to love too dearly the work of his hands, and had told him that the true hope of the Noldor lay westward and would come from the sea. In the city that warning faded. Many of the people came to love Gondolin so much that they no longer wished to leave it, and after the Nirnaeth the king turned away from every venture outside. Their customs looked backward and upward rather than outward. At the feast called the Gates of Summer they kept vigil on the walls through the night so that they could greet the sunrise with song. What set them apart from other Elvish peoples was this effort to hold a remembered past unchanged in a hidden present.3

The published accounts rarely divide the Gondolindrim into named subgroups. Apart from the Noldorin and Sindarin strands already described, the people are treated as the following of a single king, and the clearest internal line is the royal kin itself. Turgon, son of Fingolfin, ruled with his daughter Idril Celebrindal beside him. His sister Aredhel brought a second branch into the city through her son Maeglin, whose father Eöl was counted among the kin of Thingol. That gave the king's house a Sindarin tie by blood as well as by allegiance. Tuor of the House of Hador later joined it through marriage, so that Eärendil, the last heir of Gondolin's line, was born of both Elves and Men.1

Below the king the texts do speak of noble houses led by their own chieftains, but they do not list them. In its account of the assault the Silmarillion notes that the chieftains of these houses and their warriors fought with desperate courage, and it names Ecthelion of the Fountain among them. For the full story of those deeds it refers the reader to the older tale of the fall. The detailed arrangement of houses, with their emblems and captains, therefore does not appear in the later narrative and belongs to the earlier versions discussed elsewhere in this article. In the published works only a handful of lords stand out by name, among them Ecthelion and Glorfindel.2

The danger comes not only from Angband but from within and even from friends.

The later account of Tuor's coming shows a further distinction, based on office rather than descent: the guard of the ways into the city. Elemmakil commanded the watch at the outer gate and questioned newcomers there. Ecthelion held the last of the gates, and each gate between them had its own wardens. Voronwë, who guided Tuor to the city, is given a patronymic as son of Aranwë, one of the few ordinary citizens whose family the texts record. Within the city, kinship to the throne and service at the gates were the most visible ways the Gondolindrim were ranked.3

In the narrative the Gondolindrim appear less as actors in their own right than as a presence at the edge of other stories. For much of the Quenta their realm is an absence: a king who has vanished and a people whose dwelling the other Noldor cannot discover. When the reader does enter the valley, it is almost always through the eyes of outsiders, first the young Húrin and Huor and later Tuor. The city is therefore shown as something found and wondered at, not as a place described from within. The longer account of Tuor's journey in Unfinished Tales lingers over each stage of the approach, so that concealment becomes part of how the story is experienced.1

The people also embody one answer to a question that runs through the whole history of the exiles: whether the works of the Noldor can be kept safe from the Enemy and from their own doom. Of the great Elvish strongholds, Gondolin held out the longest, yet the tale treats its secrecy as a strength that slowly becomes a bond. The danger comes not only from Angband but from within and even from friends. After Morgoth released him, the grieving Húrin went to the Echoriath and called aloud to Turgon, and so showed the Enemy's watchers where to search. The king relented too late, and the eagles sent out for Húrin could not find him. When Tuor delivers Ulmo's message, the approaching ruin is presented as the Curse of Mandos nearing its fulfilment.2

The Gondolindrim are nevertheless not written simply as a tragedy of withdrawal. In their city the lines of Elves and Men meet, and from the union of Tuor and Idril comes the mariner through whom the Valar are at last reached. A people that turned aside from Ulmo's counsel thus still carries it to fulfilment through its survivors. Hope comes from the sea, as foretold, but it passes through the fugitives rather than through the kingdom. In this sense the Gondolindrim stand for both the beauty and the limit of preservation: what is held too tightly is lost, and what escapes is carried forward.3

The earliest account of the people is the prose tale of the fall of the city, the first of the Lost Tales to be written. In it the folk of Gondolin are called the Gondothlim, a name built on the Gnomish word for stone, and they are counted wholly among the Noldoli, the Gnomes of that early mythology. The later picture of a population drawn mostly from the Grey-elves of Nevrast had no place in this version, since the concept of the Sindar had not yet taken shape. Many familiar figures already appear under earlier names: the traitor is Meglin, his mother is Isfin, and the mariner is spelled Eärendel. The tale is framed as a story told in Tol Eressëa by Littleheart, son of Bronweg, the figure who later became Voronwë.1

The feature of this early version that the later narrative dropped most completely is the ordering of the people into named houses, each with its own lord and emblem. The houses marched to battle under devices such as the Mole, which was Meglin's house, the Swallow, the Heavenly Arch, the Tree, the Golden Flower of Glorfindel, the Fountain of Ecthelion, the Harp and the Hammer of Wrath, while Tuor led the folk of the Wing. The assault is on a correspondingly grander scale, and Melko's host includes monsters of iron and fire that were devised with Meglin's knowledge. None of these later revisions was ever carried through to a full retelling. The last version of the Tuor story ends just as he first sees the city, so the full catalogue of the houses survives only in the early tale.2