Eärendil and Elwing

Hearing of the tragedy that had befallen Arvernien, Eärendil then sought after the home of the godlike and immortal Valar, Valinor, aboard the Vingilot, and he and Elwing found their way there at last. Eärendil thus became the first of all mortals to set foot on Valinor. Eärendil then went before the Valar, and asked them for aid for Men and Elves in Middle-earth, to fight against Morgoth; the Valar accepted his plea.

The Valar marched into the north of Middle-earth and attacked the Throne of Morgoth in the War of Wrath. Morgoth set loose a fleet of winged dragons, which drove the Valar back. Eärendil in Vingilot attacked, with Thorondor and his great eagles, and killed Ancalagon the Black, greatest of the dragons. Ancalagon fell on to Thangorodrim and broke its towers. The Valar won the battle, destroying the dragons and the pits of Angband, captured Morgoth, and took the two remaining Silmarils from his crown.

Tolkien was aware of the name's Germanic cognates (Old Norse Aurvandill, Lombardic Auriwandalo); the question why the Old English rather than the Lombardic or Proto-Germanic form should be taken up in the mythology is alluded to in The Notion Club Papers. The Old Norse together with the Old English evidence point to an astronomical myth, the name referring to a star, or a group of stars; the Old English in particular points to the morning star as the herald of the rising Sun, Christianized to refer to John the Baptist.

Tolkien was particularly inspired by the Crist lines:

thumb|upright=0.6|The [[Phial of Galadriel that Frodo carried contained a tiny fraction of the light of Eärendil's star. It helped the hobbits to defeat Shelob.

These lines from Crist can be taken as the inspiration not only for the role of Eärendil in Tolkien's work from as early as 1914, but for the term Middle-earth (translating Old English Middangeard) for the inhabitable lands (cf. Midgard). Accordingly, the medievalists Stuart D. Lee and Elizabeth Solopova state that Crist A was "the catalyst for Tolkien's mythology".

Analysis

Splintered light

The Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger writes in her 1983 book Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World that a central theme of Tolkien's writing is the progressive fragmentation of the light from the moment of the creation; light symbolises both the divine creation and the author's subcreation.

The light begins in The Silmarillion as a unity, and in accordance with the splintering of creation is divided into more and more fragments as the myth progresses. Middle-earth is peopled by the angelic Valar and lit by two great lamps; when these are destroyed by the fallen Vala Melkor, the world is fragmented, and the Valar retreat to Valinor, which is lit by The Two Trees. When these too are destroyed, their last fragment of light is made into the Silmarils, and a sapling too is rescued, leading to the White Tree of Númenor, the living symbol of the Kingdom of Gondor. Wars are fought over the Silmarils, and they are lost to the Earth, the Sea, and the Sky.

The last of the Silmarils, carried by Eärendil the Mariner, becomes the Morning Star as he sails across the sky with the shining jewel in his ship Vingilot. By the time of The Lord of the Rings, in the Third Age, that is all that is left of the light. Some of the star's light is captured in Galadriel's Mirror, the magic fountain that allows her to see past, present, and future; and some of that light is, finally, trapped in the Phial of Galadriel, her parting gift to Frodo, the counterbalance to Sauron's evil and powerful Ring that Frodo is also carrying. At each stage, the fragmentation increases and the power decreases. Thus the theme of light as Divine power, fragmented and refracted through the works of created beings, is central to the whole mythology.

{| class="wikitable"

! scope="col" | Age

! scope="col" | Splintering of the Created Light Vingilot is mentioned in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Merchant's Tale as the name of Wade's ship; Wade is in turn mentioned in the Old English poem Widsith, while Sir Gawain's horse has a name similar to Vingilot, Gryngolet.

Echoes of other legends

Tolkien's legend of Eärendil has elements resembling the Mabinogion or the Christian legend of St. Brendan the Navigator.

The long-suffering woman

Elwing's staying at home waiting for her husband to return from his vain voyages across the ocean echoes the literary motif of the "long-suffering woman". The choice of fate offered by the Valar to Eärendil and Elwing, resulting in both of them becoming immortal Elves, has been interpreted as a move of Tolkien to solve "several untidy plot points in one fell swoop": being Half-elven, neither of the two would have been allowed to set foot in the land of the Valar, nor was their eventual fate determined since in Tolkien's legendarium Men are mortal, while Elves will live until the world is undone. The metamorphosis of the couple continues as Eärendil's ship is transformed into a flying vessel, so he can continue his journeys in the sky rather than at sea. Still now, Elwing will remain at home, but she is granted a white tower to dwell in. The Song of Eärendil is described by Tom Shippey as exemplifying "an elvish streak .. signalled .. by barely-precedented intricacies" of poetry, an approach derived from the Middle English poem Pearl. The song was recorded by The Tolkien Ensemble on their 2005 CD Leaving Rivendell.

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