Tirion

Tirion is a Quenya name, given by the Elves who raised the city on the green hill of Túna in the Calacirya, the pass through the Pelóri that opens the Blessed Realm toward the sea. In the notes on name elements that accompany the published Silmarillion, the name is glossed as 'great watch-tower'. It is built on the stem tir-, which carries the sense of watching, guarding, or keeping watch over something. The name therefore describes the city by its function rather than its founders. It presents Tirion as a lookout, set high on its hill and facing the gap in the mountains through which the light of the Two Trees passed outward into the dimness beyond.1

The same stem recurs in several better-known names, and together they illuminate one another. The Sindarin Minas Tirith, a tower of guard, uses the cognate form, and it is applied both to Finrod's fortress on Tol Sirion in the First Age and to the later city of Gondor. The palantíri, the seeing-stones, take their name from a compound of the same element with pal-, 'far', and so denote things that watch from afar. Tirion thus belongs to a family of Elvish names in which watchfulness is the defining quality of a place or object. In each case the name emphasises vigilance and a wide view rather than splendour.2

In the narrative the city is regularly paired with its hill, as Tirion upon Túna, so that the name of the settlement and the name of its site are usually given together. The hill itself carries a separate name, and the region around them is Eldamar, the Elvenhome of the western shore. Within the city stood a tower whose own name, Mindon Eldaliéva, contains the Quenya word for a tower, mindon. Beside Tirion, then, the naming of the place is layered: a watch-city on a named hill, crowned by a named tower, within a wider Elvish land.3

Tirion stood on the western shore of the Blessed Realm, in the one place where the wall of the Pelóri was broken. The pass that holds the hill of Túna runs east and west through the mountains, so the city lay between two worlds: behind it, over the heights, the plain of Valinor and the city of the Valar; before it, the bay of Eldamar opening toward the sea. The Valar made that gap in the mountains so that the light of the Two Trees could reach the Elves who remained near the shore. Through the pass that light flowed out over the waters of the bay and fell on the western side of the Lonely Isle, which lay anchored in the bay within sight of the coast. The city was thus both a threshold and a lookout, facing outward from the lit land toward the lands that lay in shadow.1

The city is described as built of white walls and terraces raised on the crown of the hill. The tower mentioned under its name stood highest, and its lamp was said to be visible far out on the sea, so that the tower served mariners as a beacon. In the court beneath the tower grew a lesser image of Telperion, the White Tree, which Yavanna made for the Elves of Tirion. Seedlings of that tree were later carried to the Lonely Isle, and in later ages its line reached Númenor and then Gondor. The Noldor made the city their own and practised their crafts there. The Vanyar, who first shared it with them, came to prefer the full light beyond the mountains and withdrew into Valinor. The Teleri kept to the coast of Eldamar, where they later built their haven of Alqualondë.2

Tirion was the seat of Finwë, King of the Noldor, and his house and hall stood there. That role gives weight to Fëanor's banishment to Formenos, a stronghold in the north of Valinor: he was sent away from the city itself. When Finwë followed him into exile, Fingolfin held rule in Tirion in his place. After the Darkening of Valinor, the Noldor gathered by torchlight in the great square on the summit of Túna. The city's high place then became the scene of the assembly that led to their departure from Aman.3

Tirion was founded in the Years of the Trees, after the Vanyar and the Noldor had crossed the sea and the Valar had opened the pass and raised the hill of Túna for them. The two kindreds built the city together. The published narrative gives no years for its founding or for most later events, and only the order of events and a few spans of time can be stated with confidence. Once the Vanyar had moved inland, Tirion became essentially a Noldorin city. In the long peace that followed, the Noldor learned much from Aulë, and in the workshops of the city they first brought forth gems from the earth and devised new ones. Tirion in these ages was a place of making rather than of arms, and its people went freely across the mountains to Valinor and down to the shore.1

The height of the city's prosperity coincided with the beginning of its troubles. Melkor was released after his long confinement in Mandos, and in feigned humility he went among the Eldar and offered them counsel. The Noldor, eager for knowledge, heeded him most readily. In this same period Fëanor made the Silmarils. Melkor's whispers then spread through the Noldor: that the Valar meant to confine them, that Fingolfin schemed to supplant Fëanor in their father's favour, and that the jewels were coveted. Weapons began to be forged in secret, and the city that had known only craft learned to bear swords and shields marked with the devices of its houses.2

The quarrel came into the open in Finwë's own hall, where Fëanor threatened his half-brother with a drawn sword. He was summoned before the Valar, and although Melkor's hand in the unrest was uncovered, Fëanor was judged for breaking the peace of Valinor. He was banished from Tirion for twelve years, and the rule of the city passed to Fingolfin, as already noted. Before the term was out, Fëanor came to a festival in Valmar at Manwë's bidding and was outwardly reconciled with Fingolfin. At that festival the Two Trees were destroyed, and in the same hour Melkor slew Finwë at Formenos and carried off the Silmarils.3

Fëanor then returned to Tirion in defiance of his banishment and claimed the kingship of the Noldor. On the hilltop he urged his people to leave Aman and pursue Morgoth. There he and his seven sons swore their oath to recover the Silmarils from anyone who withheld them. Fingolfin and Finarfin counselled caution but could not prevail, and the greater part of the Noldor resolved to depart. Fingolfin chose to go with them rather than abandon his people. The city emptied as the two hosts set out northward along the coast, and on that road the kinslaying at Alqualondë took place.4

Tirion was not abandoned. After the Doom of the Noldor was spoken, Finarfin turned back with part of his following. He received the pardon of the Valar and ruled the Noldor who remained in the Blessed Realm. Late in the First Age, when Eärendil came ashore in Aman, he climbed to the city and found its streets empty, because its people had gone to a festival beyond the mountains. In the War of Wrath that followed, the Noldor who had never left Valinor marched in the host of the West under Finarfin. Of the city's later fate the narratives say little. After the downfall of Númenor, Aman was removed from the circles of the world, and Tirion passed with it beyond the reach of mortal lands.5

The people of Tirion were the Noldor, the second of the three kindreds of the Eldar who made the Great Journey to Aman. Their king throughout the Years of the Trees was Finwë, who had led them out of the east. His kingship did not stand on its own. Above him stood Ingwë, lord of the Vanyar, who was held to be High King of all the Elves and lived at the feet of Manwë. Above both, the Valar held final authority over the Blessed Realm. The rule exercised from Tirion was therefore that of a kindred's lord within a realm governed by greater powers, and the city had no separate sovereignty to defend.1

The royal house of Tirion was divided from within. Finwë's eldest son, Fëanor, was the child of his first wife, Míriel. His second marriage, to Indis of the Vanyar, a kinswoman of Ingwë, gave him Fingolfin and Finarfin. That second union linked the ruling line of the Noldor to the Vanyar by blood. It also produced the rivalry between half-brothers that Melkor later used to such effect. Fëanor took as his wife Nerdanel, the daughter of a smith devoted to Aulë, and her kin were counted among the craftsmen for whom the Noldor were known. Rule in the city passed through this family alone; the narratives name no council or lesser lords who shared it.2

The bond was also sealed by marriage: Finarfin wedded Eärwen, daughter of Olwë, lord of the Teleri in Aman.

Toward the Teleri on the coast the Noldor were for long ages close friends. They gave them many gems, and their gifts helped adorn the shores of Alqualondë. The bond was also sealed by marriage: Finarfin wedded Eärwen, daughter of Olwë, lord of the Teleri in Aman. Through her, the children of Finarfin, among them Finrod and Galadriel, were kin to the Teleri through their mother. This friendship made the later bloodshed at the Teleri's haven all the heavier, and Finarfin's Telerin ties were part of the reason he turned back. Afterwards, the Noldor who stayed in Aman under his rule made common cause with the Vanyar at the end of the First Age. The two kindreds went east together in the host of the Valar.3

In the narrative of the Elder Days, Tirion is the picture of the Noldor at home. It is the one place in Aman where their gifts, their pride and their family quarrels share a single hill, and the story of the Blessed Realm keeps returning to it. The city is where the Silmarils are kept. Fëanor locked them away in the deep rooms of his treasury and brought them out only on high feast days, so their hiding marks the change from making for delight to making for possession. Melkor built his slander around that same fact, suggesting that the Valar begrudged the jewels their place in Tirion. The city's treasure thus becomes the axis on which suspicion turns.1

Tirion also works as a stage for choice. The Noldor decide their fate on its summit, and the city therefore stands for everything they give up by leaving: light, kinship with the Valar, and the settled life of craft. Once the hosts depart, the story does not stay with the city. It follows the exiles, and Tirion becomes something remembered rather than something seen. That remembrance takes built form in Beleriand. Turgon raised Gondolin as a likeness of Tirion upon Túna, so the hidden city is in part an exile's copy of the lost home.2

The city's final appearance in the tale reverses its first. Eärendil comes to it as a messenger from the mortal lands and finds it silent. He fears for a moment that evil has reached even the Blessed Realm, so the place that once sent the Noldor out into darkness now receives the plea that ends their exile. In this way Tirion frames the whole history of the Noldor. It is where their errand begins, and it is the goal toward which the story finally turns back.3

The city on the hill in the pass of the Pelóri was imagined long before it received the name Tirion. In the earliest form of the mythology, the Book of Lost Tales, the Elves in Valinor build their city on a hill by the shore, and both hill and city bear the name Kôr. The connection with Tol Eressëa was already present in that early work. There the chief town of the Lonely Isle, Kortirion, recalled the old city in its name. In the later prose Quenta of the 1930s, the naming began to divide. Kôr increasingly served as the name of the hill, and the city itself was called Tûn or Túna. The two names later exchanged roles: Túna passed to the hill, and the city received a new name of its own.1

The name Tirion is securely attested in the Etymologies of the later 1930s. There the stem TIR-, 'watch, guard', is given with the Quenya derivative tirion, glossed as 'watch-tower' or 'tower'. The word first stood as a common noun, and only in the revised Quenta Silmarillion did it become the fixed name of the city. In the post-war revisions printed in Morgoth's Ring, the pairing familiar from the published text, Tirion upon Túna, is established. Kôr survives only as an older name for the hill. The drafts therefore show the familiar arrangement taking shape in stages: a single Kôr at the start, a divided name in the middle period, and Tirion at the end.2