Sirion

Sirion is a Sindarin name, belonging to the tongue of the Grey-elves who dwelt in Beleriand long before the exiles returned out of the West. The notes on name-elements appended to the published Silmarillion connect it with a root expressing the idea of flowing, the same root that yields the ordinary Sindarin word for a river. The name therefore says little more than that this is the river, the flowing water; its lengthened form suggests the stream above all others rather than one among many. The same element recurs in Ossiriand, the land of seven rivers in the east, so the name of the great river belongs to a wider family of watery names across Beleriand.1

That the river carries a Grey-elven rather than a Quenya name reflects the linguistic situation of the Elder Days. The Noldor who came to Beleriand took up Sindarin for daily speech, and after Thingol forbade the High-elven tongue in his realm, the names of the land were used almost wholly in their Sindarin forms. The river's name was thus not given by the newcomers but inherited by them from the people already living along its banks.2

Because the river ran through so much of the country, its name became a fixed point for naming the places along it. Its spring on the eastern face of the Shadowy Mountains was called Eithel Sirion, the Well of Sirion, and the narrow way between the highlands of the north was known as the Pass of Sirion, with the island in its midst named Tol Sirion. Further south the Falls and Fens of Sirion and, at its end, the Mouths and Havens of Sirion took their names from it in the same plain, descriptive manner. In this way the river lent its name to a whole chain of places, and a traveller could follow the map of Beleriand by following that single word.3

Sirion was the spine of Beleriand, a single river that ran from the northern highlands down to the southern sea and gave the land its principal division. It rose at its spring beneath the eastern slopes of the Shadowy Mountains, on the borders of Hithlum, and turned south through the narrow country between those mountains and the heights of Dorthonion, where the island fortress of Finrod once watched the way. Below the pass it ran on past the Forest of Brethil and the lands west of Doriath, gathering tributaries from both sides as it went: the Teiglin came to it out of the west, and the Mindeb flowed down from the east.1

In its middle reaches the river spread out into a region of pools and marshes, Aelin-uial, the Meres of Twilight, where the Aros came in from the east and the stream lost itself for a while among reeds and mists. Beyond this the land fell sharply at the Andram, the Long Wall, a line of high ground that crossed Beleriand from west to east and separated the northern country from the southern. Here Sirion plunged into the earth and ran for some distance underground, coming into the light again through rocky arches and continuing south, much enlarged, through gentler country. In the willow-meads of Nan-tathren it received the Narog from the west before approaching the coast.2

At its end the river divided into many channels across a broad delta and entered the Bay of Balar, with the Isle of Balar lying out to sea beyond. Because its line ran almost the full depth of the land, the realms of the Elder Days were grouped by it: Hithlum, Nevrast, Nargothrond and the Falas lay on the western side, while Doriath and the wide lands reaching toward Ossiriand lay on the eastern, and hidden Gondolin stood in its ring of mountains west of the upper river. The river was held to be especially dear to Ulmo, whose power was felt in its waters long after most of Beleriand had passed under the shadow of the north.3

The river belongs to the oldest shaping of Beleriand. In the account of the Great Journey, Sirion is already present as the stream coming down from the northern highlands that had been thrown up in the wars of the Valar against Melkor, and it was toward the shores near its outflow that the Eldar pressed when they reached the sea. There Ulmo came to ferry the Vanyar and the Noldor westward on an island drawn like a ship across the waters. When that island was later moved again, a part of it broke away and remained in the shoals off the river's mouths, and this fragment became the Isle of Balar. From its beginning, then, the lower river marked the place where the Elves either passed out of Middle-earth or chose to stay.1

In the long peace before the Noldor returned, the country along Sirion was Grey-elven land, with Thingol's kingdom lying close to the river's eastern bank. That peace was broken when Orcs came south out of the north, and the Sindar fought their first great battle in defence of their realms. After the return of the Noldor the river became a line of settlement and of vigilance. Finrod and Turgon, travelling as guests of Thingol, lay one night beside the Meres of Twilight, and Ulmo troubled their sleep with dreams that set each of them seeking a hidden place of refuge. Finrod then raised the watch-tower of Minas Tirith on the island in the northern pass, so that the valley of Sirion was held against the enemy for the length of the Siege of Angband.2

The Battle of Sudden Flame ended the siege, and the upper river was the first part of its course to be lost. Orodreth held the tower on the island for a time, but Sauron came against it, drove him out, and made the place a fortress of dread; it was afterwards remembered as the Isle of Werewolves, and from it the pass was watched for Morgoth. It was there that Finrod and Beren were held captive, and there that Lúthien, with the hound Huan, overcame Sauron and freed the island, after which its walls were cast down. The victory was local and did not return the pass to Elven keeping; the way down the valley stayed open to the north.3

After the Nirnaeth Arnoediad the enemy spread over much of the land, and the havens of the Falas on the western coast were besieged and taken. Círdan and those of his people who escaped, with Ereinion Gil-galad among them, took ship to the Isle of Balar and there made a refuge, while an outpost was also kept at the Mouths of Sirion. Turgon, who had withdrawn again into Gondolin, sent ships from there into the West to seek pardon and aid from the Valar, and none of them returned save the one that brought Voronwë back to the shore. The river's lower reaches thus became the only remaining approach to the sea for the Elves of Beleriand.4

When Gondolin fell, the survivors led by Tuor and Idril went south along the river, rested for a time in the willow-lands of Nan-tathren, and then came down to its mouths. Elwing joined them there with the remnant of Doriath, bringing the Silmaril that Beren had won, and the settlement grew into a small people of Elves and Men under the lordship of Eärendil. It came to an end in blood. While Eärendil was at sea, the sons of Fëanor fell on the havens to take the jewel; the dwellers there were overcome, Elwing cast herself into the waters with the Silmaril, and her young sons Elros and Elrond were taken by Maglor. Círdan and Gil-galad came too late to save the place, and the survivors went with them to Balar.5

The river did not outlast the First Age. In the War of Wrath the host of the Valar overthrew Morgoth, and the northern lands were broken so thoroughly that the sea flowed in over them; Beleriand with Sirion's whole valley sank beneath the waves. In the Third Age only memory remained. When Treebeard spoke to Merry and Pippin of the lands where he had walked in his youth, he named the willow-meads of Tasarinan among them, a trace in the Third Age of the river country that had long since passed under the sea.6

No single realm ever ruled the whole of Sirion. The river served rather as a boundary that several peoples shared, and the lordship of its banks changed from reach to reach. In its upper course the valley was a march held by the Noldor of Nargothrond, who kept the northern pass as the gate between the lands of the Siege and the peaceful south. The eastern bank of the middle river lay under the shadow of Thingol's kingdom, whose wardens watched their borders closely and let few strangers pass. West of the lower river, below the Andram, the country belonged to the realm that Finrod ruled from his hidden halls on the Narog. The wide forest between Sirion and Gelion south of the Long Wall, by contrast, remained wild and trackless, and few dwelt there.1

Men came to the river only by leave of the Elves. The people of Haleth, after much hardship, settled in the Forest of Brethil, which lay between the Teiglin and Sirion. Thingol regarded that forest as part of his own domain. He nevertheless permitted them to live there, on the condition that they guard the crossings of the Teiglin against the enemy and keep Orcs out of the woods. Their tenure was thus a form of service rather than independent lordship. The arrangement tied a small nation of Men to the defence of the Grey-elven kingdom beyond the river.2

The river's name was thus not given by the newcomers but inherited by them from the people already living along its banks.

At the river's end, the refuge described above had its own short line of rule. Tuor at first led the exiles of Gondolin there. When he felt old age coming upon him, he departed into the West by sea with Idril, and Eärendil succeeded him as lord of the people of Sirion. Eärendil took Elwing to wife, which joined the heirs of Gondolin with the heirs of Doriath in a single household. The havens stood in close friendship with Círdan, whose shipwrights helped Eärendil build his ship, and they looked to the High King on Balar as their nearest ally.3

In the tales of the Elder Days Sirion works less as a scene than as a thread along which the narrative moves. Armies, fugitives and messengers travel up and down its valley, and the shifting balance of the war can be read in which reaches of the river are still safe to walk. At the Nirnaeth Arnoediad the fate of a whole kingdom turned on its northern gate. Húrin and Huor held the rearguard in the fens where the pass opened northward, so that Turgon could withdraw south through the valley and vanish again into his hidden city. The river's course gives shape to that sacrifice. Men stand at its head so that the Elves can escape down it.1

The river is also the chief channel through which the Valar still act in Beleriand. The narrative returns more than once to the idea that Ulmo's power remained in its waters when the rest of the land lay open to the enemy. When the young Húrin and Huor were cut off near the ford of Brithiach during the Battle of Sudden Flame, a mist rising from the river hid them from their pursuers, and the eagles then carried them to Gondolin. In moments of this kind Sirion behaves almost like a presence in the story rather than a feature of the map. It shelters those whom Ulmo means to use for purposes the characters themselves cannot yet see.2

Taken as a whole, the river traces the direction of the book's grief. Its tales begin with watch-towers in the north and end with a remnant crowded onto its southern shore, so that its line from source to sea mirrors a long withdrawal. Yet the mouths are where that movement reverses. From the coast at the river's end Eärendil set out on the voyage that finally carried the plea of Elves and Men into the West. The river that had marked the slow loss of Beleriand thus also leads to the turning point that brings its deliverance.3

The river is among the most stable elements of Tolkien's geography. The name Sirion already appears in the earliest prose tales of the legendarium, and it was never replaced during the decades of revision that changed so much else in Beleriand. Some of the events tied to it, however, shifted considerably. In the original tale of the fall of Gondolin, the Land of Willows on the river is more than a resting place for the fugitives. Tuor comes there himself before he ever reaches the hidden city and lingers under its spell, and it is in that country that Ulmo appears to him and sends him on his errand. In later versions the willow-meads keep their beauty but lose this role. The meeting with Ulmo moves elsewhere, and Nan-tathren becomes only a pause on the exiles' road to the sea.1

The island in the northern pass took shape more slowly. In the early Tale of Tinúviel the captor of Beren is Tevildo, Prince of Cats, whose dwelling is not linked to the river at all. In the Lay of Leithian the role passes to Thû, a necromancer in Morgoth's service. He seizes the tower on the isle in Sirion that had been Felagund's, and there Felagund and Beren are held. Thû is the figure who became Sauron, and with the Lay the Isle of Werewolves first takes the form it keeps in the published narrative. In his etymological notes of the 1930s Tolkien also recorded the river's name under a base meaning 'flow', which shows that the later explanation of the name was already settled at that stage.2