sea elves

call this the first tip of an iceberg i've been wanting to take a crack at for a long time; a thorough exploration of the world and culture of the "sea elves"

built into the very roots of tolkien's invented mythos - an essential and inseparable part of it - is this vikingish love and reverence for the Sea; that great, terrible thing that men fear and love in equal measure, beyond which - beyond the reach of mortal men - lies the world of the Gods, and Tol Eressea, the land of the Eldar. Water is the connection, the instrument through which the music that brought the world into being may still be heard by those who know how to listen, and "sea culture," among both elves and men, is a big part of the history of both peoples. Naturally, this being middle-earth, the elves did it first and best, and always a particular kind of elf, the "Teleri" - using the term in it's broadest sense to encompass all the members of the Nelyar; the third tribe of elves which comprise the people of alqualonde, the sindar, the falathrim, the nandor and no doubt other tribes and nations of dark elves east of the blue mountains who we don't get to hear about - silver haired, peaceful, musically inclined, the last, most populace and by many accounts least prestigious of the three races of the elves, and yet, realistically, the telerin language (sindarin) and culture proves to be more varied, and it's influence more enduring in the history of middle-earth than those of the noldor (and certainly moreso than the lofty vanyar)

really at the center of so much of my thoughts about the sea elves, the 'karma' keeps floating in. that freaky, beautiful, oh-so-aquatic looking helmet design by Tolkien that appears on the cover of "Unfinished Tales" remarked to have been worn by the numenorean venturers' guild in the mid-second age. It's the only article in Tolkien's vast and often extensive accounting of the material culture of his fictional universe that actually got it's own illustration by the author, and what Tolkien gave us is a thing completely at odds with the typical, germanic, early medieval aesthetic of maille shirts and conical spangenhelms described everywhere in his writing. I've drawn it many times and in many iterations, attempting to build a feasable niche for it not as a lone oddity but as this one surviving piece from which an entire tradition of art history within middle-earth might be discerned; the tradition of the "sea cultures". Numenorean culture - that of the great "sea kings" - really got it's start in the havens of Cirdan at the end of the first age, this melting pot of refugees from all the varied people and races of old beleriand; the three kindreds of the edain under Tuor's kingship, the Sindar of Doriath, the mixed noldor/sindar remnants of Turgon's kingdom, all living together and learning from one another. It seems a little golden age in it's own right, exemplified by the marriage of two beings of both human and elvish heritage, the cultural crucible out of which emerged the culture of the early numenoreans - remarked to be more like to the elves in all ways than any others among men - and one primarily telerin in character. it seems reasonable to think that perhaps the venturers guild of numenor, devotees to Uinen the sea goddess and patron of mariners, are essentially a continuation of the worship of the sea that the teleri started, so too the karma, taken as a revived thing that might trace it's way back, in various forms, to the people of alqualonde and the falathrim, seems reasonable.

that these studies are mainly of women is not an accident. of the three races of the elves, the telerin seem the most "feminine" in the classical sense; gentle, intuitive, artistic and passionate without being dominating, better suited to working with the World and immersing themselves in it than trying to improve or master it. they are a less "appolonian" people than the noldor, and the virtue, the power, and the wisdom of the "feminine" side is apparent continuously in tolkien's writing, whether by his conscious intention or not. the Noldor, in their purest form (exemplified in my mind by the line of feanor, the "pure bloods" of the house of finwe) are a genius but tormented, bold but warlike and often enough self-destructive race of beings; their greatest figures are always these great-but-doomed males, feanor, fingolfin, fingon, maedhros, celebrimbor, mighty warriors and geniuses who often die violently and whose genius (in feanor and celebrimbor's case) arguably hurt the world more than they help it. the telerin lineage and character by comparison can claim cirdan, galadriel, finrod, luthien, elwing, elrond, gil-galad and arwen, healers and listeners, open minded and hearted, disolvers of emnities, kind and wise, empathetic. They hear the voices of the universe around them most clearly, and are often the better off for it.

Part of the Weekly Tolkien Sketchbook