“It Always Had Been a Vast Globe…”

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It is well-known that in the late 1950s Tolkien made an attempt to revise the cosmology of his imaginary world in order to make it more realistic and scientifically credible than, as he put it, “the Flat Earth and the astronomically absurd business of the making of the Sun and Moon”, which he had been inclined to adhere to in the earlier forms of his mythology. This resulted in a new conception of his world, often referred to as the Round World cosmology, which was widely reflected in his writings of that period, notably (but not exclusively) the texts of Myths Transformed published in Morgoth’s Ring. One of those texts contains an abandoned narrative, on which Christopher Tolkien commented:

It may be, though I have no evidence on the question one way or the other, that he came to perceive from such experimental writing as this text that the old structure was too comprehensive, too interlocked in all its parts, indeed its roots too deep, to withstand such a devastating surgery (Morgoth’s Ring, p. 383).

This passage is sometimes cited as an argument that Tolkien allegedly abandoned the Round World conception due to the difficulty of reconciling his legends with it, but it seems evident that a solution was in fact provided by the new idea of Mannish transmission, which suggests that the legends of the Silmarillion were traditions handed on by Men in Númenor and later in Middle-earth (Arnor and Gondor), but already in Beleriand blended and confused with their own myths and cosmic ideas (see further Appendix A to this article). Thus the problem was largely solved by recognizing that the legends do not have to be fully adjusted to the new cosmology. It seems likely that if the Silmarillion had been published during Tolkien’s lifetime, the actual truths of his world or excerpts from authentic Elven-lore would have been presented in notes or appendices, as indicated by the following remark:

The cosmogonic myths are Númenórean, blending Elven-lore with human myth and imagination. A note should say that the Wise of Númenor recorded that the making of stars was not so, nor of Sun and Moon. For Sun and stars were all older than Arda (Morgoth’s Ring, p. 374).

Another argument for the alleged abandonment of the Round World conception by Tolkien is a reference to “the Change of the World” found in Last Writings (The Peoples of Middle-earth, p. 381). However, similar references occur twice in the texts of Myths Transformed (Morgoth’s Ring, pp. 397, 427). One can conclude that these words do not necessarily imply the previously flat Earth becoming round and may merely refer to the removal of Aman from the physical world, by whatever means, which surely remains a thing in the Round World conception. This problem is considered in the text named The Númenórean Catastrophe & End of “Physical” Aman (c. 1959), published in The Nature of Middle-earth (pp. 343–5), which suggests that after the Downfall of Númenor Aman was removed from the physical world into another mode of existence, being preserved in the memory of the Valar and Elves, its former landmass becoming America. This notion, which probably first appeared here, was reaffirmed a few years later, as will be shown below.

It can be seen that the history of the Round World cosmology in fact goes much further back than the late 1950s. Tolkien considered making the world always a globe and altering the story of the Sun in late pencilled notes on Diagram I of the Ambarkanta (The Shaping of Middle-earth, pp. 242–3). The appearance of such names as Arda and Eä in these notes suggests that they were written in the late 1940s and thus closely contemporary with such experimental writings as the Round World version of the Ainulindalë (see Morgoth’s Ring, pp. 3–7, 39–44) and The Drowning of Anadûnê, in which the concepts of the World Made Round and the Straight Road are expressly presented as Mannish beliefs which arose after the Downfall, while the Messengers of the Valar teach the Númenóreans about the true shape of the Earth:

And behold! the fashion of the Earth is such that a girdle may be set about it. Or as an apple it hangeth on the branches of Heaven, and it is round and fair, and the seas and lands are but the rind of the fruit, which shall abide upon the tree until the ripening that Eru hath appointed (Sauron Defeated, p. 364).

It is remarkable that a passing mention of “the girdle of the Earth” in the speech of the Messengers still appears in the later Akallabêth, but this wording was editorially changed to “the Circles of the World” in the published Silmarillion, as indicated in The History of the Akallabêth (The Peoples of Middle-earth, p. 150).

These ideas did not displace Tolkien’s original Flat World cosmology at once, but it may be noted that even in his writings from the early-to-mid 1950s some details can be found that seem to fit the new cosmological conception much better than the old one. There appears in the Narn i Chîn Húrin the name of one Ithilbor (presumably “Moon-fist”), whose son Saeros was among the Nandor who “took refuge in Doriath after the fall of their lord Denethor upon Amon Ereb, in the first battle of Beleriand” (Unfinished Tales, p. 77), while in the Flat World chronological tradition expressed in the Annals of Aman and the Grey Annals this battle predated the raising of the Sun and Moon. Similarly anachronistic from the point of view of this tradition is the mention of the Moon at the time of the Awaking of the Dwarves in Gimli’s song of Durin, which appears in The Lord of the Rings as published in 1954–5:

The world was young, the mountains green,

No stain yet on the Moon was seen,

No words were laid on stream or stone

When Durin woke and walked alone.

(The Lord of the Rings, p. 315)

Another similar reference to the existence of the Moon in prehistoric times appears in a short poem about the Ents recited by Gandalf to King Théoden later in the book:

‘It is not wizardry, but a power far older,’ said Gandalf: ‘a power that walked the earth, ere elf sang or hammer rang.

Ere iron was found or tree was hewn,

When young was mountain under moon;

Ere ring was made, or wrought was woe,

It walked the forests long ago.’

(The Lord of the Rings, p. 544)

Appendix E to The Lord of the Rings (p. 1123) provides a list of the names of the Fëanorian letters, among which there is “áre sunlight (or esse name)”. It is further noted that “áre was originally áze, but when this z became merged with 21, the sign was in Quenya used for the very frequent ss of that language, and the name esse was given to it” (the number stands for a weak untrilled r, sometimes represented by Tolkien as ř). The word “originally” can hardly mean anything but “at the time when the alphabet was invented”, and in any case earlier than z became merged with ř in the Ñoldorin dialect of Quenya, which happened, according to the Outline of Phonology, “not long before the Exile” (Parma Eldalamberon 19, p. 73). This must mean that the concept of sunlight already existed during the Days of Bliss of Valinor when the Tengwar of Fëanor were devised. The Lord of the Rings as published can thus be seen to allude to the new cosmology no less than to the old one (see further Appendix B to this article).

Much evidence of the Round World cosmology can be found in texts dating from 1958–60 and contemporary with those of Myths Transformed. Tolkien’s final rewriting of the narrative texts of the Quenta Silmarillion mentions the stars in the Dome of Varda, i.e. the lesser firmament over Valinor, the idea of which was introduced in the texts of Myths Transformed (see Morgoth’s Ring, pp. 385–7). A note and Glossary to the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth equate Arda with the Solar System and state that there is nothing in the traditions of the Eldar that seriously conflicts with present human notions of the Solar System and its size and position relative to the Universe (Morgoth’s Ring, pp. 337–8, 349). The Tale of Adanel closely associated with the Athrabeth mentions the existence of the Sun and Moon during the lifetime of the first generation of Men (Morgoth’s Ring, pp. 346–7), whose Awaking at that point had been moved far into the past in comparison with the earlier legend (see Morgoth’s Ring, p. 327 n. 16). Quendi and Eldar mentions “the glooms and the clouds dimming the sun and the stars during the War of the Valar and Melkor” and the Dome of Varda and cites the Valarin names of the Sun and Moon, which must have been recorded before the Exile (The War of the Jewels, pp. 373, 399, 401). The Cuivienyarna (The War of the Jewels, pp. 420–4) has several mentions of the times of day and a direct mention of the Sun at the time of the Awaking of the Quendi. Finally, the large collection of texts published in Part One: Time and Ageing of The Nature of Middle-earth, most of which date from those years, expressly acknowledges the existence of the Sun and Moon as a primeval part of Arda and relies on Sun-years in various chronologies of the early First Age and generational schemes of the Quendi (in connection with which see Appendix C), as well as mentions such a characteristic detail of the new cosmology as the Dome of Varda.

In 1960–1, Tolkien drew a series of heraldic devices for important characters of his mythology, most of which were reproduced in Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien (#47). Among them can be found the devices of Finwë and Elwë, which depict the Sun and Moon (this interpretation is unambiguously confirmed by the inscriptions “Winged Sun” and “Winged Moon” assigned to them in the original manuscript). Of particular interest is the presence of the Sun on the device of Finwë, which would be impossible within the framework of the old cosmology, as noted by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull:

When he assigned this device to Finwë Tolkien would have had in mind his late reworking of his ‘Silmarillion’ cosmology, in which the Sun and Moon existed from the beginning of the world, and so during Finwë’s lifetime. In most early versions of his tales Finwë was slain before the Sun and Moon were created from the Two Trees (J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist & Illustrator, p. 194).

In 1962, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil was published. It included the poem “The Hoard”, which begins with the demiurgic making of silver and gold by the Valar (as explained by Tolkien himself in Concerning… “The Hoard”) and mentions the Sun and Moon as already existing at the time of their labours:

When the moon was new and the sun young

of silver and gold the gods sung:

in the green grass they silver spilled,

and the white waters they with gold filled.

In Anaxartaron Onyalië, presumably written in 1963 and used in the published Silmarillion to form the second part of Chapter 2 Of Aulë and Yavanna, Yavanna speaks of her great trees that “sang to Eru amid the wind and the rain and the glitter of the Sun”. Christopher Tolkien comments on this that “the last words were omitted in S on account of the implication that the Sun existed from the beginning of Arda” (The War of the Jewels, p. 341).

In 1964, Tolkien was interviewed by Denys Gueroult about The Lord of the Rings. During the interview, he said that Aman was part of the physical world until the Downfall of Númenor, and then proceeded to discuss the effects of the Catastrophe on the Earth and the Blessed Realm. (The full recording of the interview can be found at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p021jx7j. The passage quoted below goes from 35:17 to 36:08. Note that there is no official transcription, and the one presented here may contain misreadings insignificant for the purpose of this article.)

Then became an intellectual… People lived there only in memory, it lived in time, but not present time… And of course Númenor was drowned and the earthly paradise removed, so then… you could then get to sail to America. [In the] Third Age the world became round, you see, it always had been a vast globe, but they… but people could now sail around, discovered it’s round. And that’s my solution of the… I also wanted to give the fall of Atlantis some universal application. Because the point is really, I’ve written this as a story [about] language, as they get to that, you suddenly see the real curvature of the world going down like a bridge… You’re on a line which leads to what was. Of course I don’t [know] what your theory of time is, but what was, what is… or it never had an existence must… still has that same existence, but that’s just so… we won’t go too… you can’t go too deeply in[to] those [things], but they really are sailing back to a… to world of memory.

It is notable that in this interview both the idea of Aman existing in memory after the Catastrophe (which can probably be understood through the lens of J.W. Dunne’s theory of time) and the fact that the world of his legendarium “always had been a vast globe” were confirmed by Tolkien publicly and not in his private writings.

By 1965, Tolkien had “nearly completed” The Mariner’s Wife. The tale describes Aldarion’s departure from Númenor as follows: “[Aldarion] sailed from the land; and ere day was over he saw it sink shimmering into the sea, and last of all the peak of the Meneltarma as a dark finger against the sunset” (Unfinished Tales, p. 175). The fact that the land disappears from the bottom up must imply the existence of the Earth’s curvature before the Downfall of Númenor. Curiously, there are passages of similar effect in the Akallabêth, which notes that even the far-sighted Númenóreans could only see the haven of Avallónë in the west “from the Meneltarma, maybe, or from some tall ship that lay off their western coast as far as it was lawful for them to go”, and tells that at the coming of Ar-Pharazôn to Middle-earth “men saw his sails coming up out of the sunset”. Whether these details were retained here purposefully or not, they can be seen to derive from The Drowning of Anadûnê, like the aforementioned reference to “the girdle of the Earth”.

A year later, in 1966, the third edition of The Hobbit was published. Among the changes Tolkien made to the text of the book was the following, in the chapter Flies and Spiders, noted and commented on by Douglas A. Anderson in the revised and expanded edition of The Annotated Hobbit (pp. 218–9):

1937: “In the Wide World the Wood-elves lingered in the twilight before the raising of the Sun and Moon; and afterwards they wandered in the forests that grew beneath the sunrise.” >

1966: “In the Wide World the Wood-elves lingered in the twilight of our Sun and Moon, but loved best the stars; and they wandered in the great forests that grew tall in lands that are now lost.”

In the broader context of this paragraph, the Wood-elves who lingered in Middle-earth “in the twilight of our Sun and Moon” (perhaps a reference to the darkening of the world by Melkor – see esp. Morgoth’s Ring, pp. 377–8) are contrasted with the Light-elves, Deep-elves and Sea-elves who went to Valinor and lived there for ages, and the revised reading thus implies that the Sun and Moon already existed during the Great Journey. Indeed, Douglas A. Anderson comments on this as follows:

The 1937 version of this passage is in full accord with both the early history of the Elves and the story of the making of the Sun and Moon from the last fruits of the Two Trees in Valinor, as is told in Chapter 11 of the published version of The Silmarillion. The revised reading seems to reflect Tolkien’s decision late in life to abandon this idea and accept that Middle-earth was illuminated by the Sun and Moon from its very beginning (The Annotated Hobbit, p. 219).

Sometime in the late 1960s, Tolkien composed a group of texts describing the primitive Elvish astronomical picture of the world, which was published in the chapter Dark and Light in part three of The Nature of Middle-earth (pp. 279–85). These texts clearly imply that the Sun, the Moon and even Venus (mythologically Eärendil) are celestial bodies existing from the beginning of the world, reiterate the equation of Arda with the Solar System, and note that the Earth was apparently conceived by the primitive Elves as spheroid.

Another note from the late 1960s (The Nature of Middle-earth, pp. 353–4) describes the ñaltalma, an Eldarin device for signalling from afar using the light of the Sun and Moon. It is said that the ñaltalma was, as most such things, in later days attributed to Fëanor, but was probably far older. Similar devices were independently used by the Sindar, which indicates that they probably originated in the Common Eldarin period. This scenario would be naturally impossible if the Sun and Moon were created from the Two Trees after their death.

A linguistic text from c. 1967, published in the chapter The Visible Forms of the Valar and Maiar in part three of The Nature of Middle-earth (pp. 241–5), mentions the Common Eldarin stem √phan-, noting “its very ancient application to clouds <…> as (partial) veils over the blue sky, or over the sun, moon, or stars”.

Text 2 of the chapter The Making of Lembas in part three of The Nature of Middle-earth (p. 296), dating from c. 1968, attributes the diminished virtue of the Western Corn during the Great Journey to the “dim sunlight” (another reference, it seems, to the darkening of the world by Melkor).

The Problem of Ros (c. 1968) describes the Menelrond, the great throne hall of Thingol and Melian, the high arched roof of which was adorned with silver and gems set in the order and figures of the stars in the great Dome of Valmar in Aman (The Peoples of Middle-earth, p. 371). It is not quite clear what is meant here by “the Dome of Valmar”, but Christopher Tolkien equates it with the Dome of Varda mentioned in Myths Transformed. If that is true, then the name Valmar in this case must stand for the land of the Valar as a whole, usually called Valinor, as it does in the concluding lines of Galadriel’s lament according to Tolkien’s explicit statement in The Road Goes Ever On (p. 70). In any case, another more transparent reference to the Dome of Varda occurs in a discussion of the Eldarin article dating from 1969 or later, where Tolkien explains that the words tintilar i eleni in Galadriel’s lament refer to “those stars that adorned or shone through the transparent roofs of the Domes of Varda, which were not all visible stars, nor in fact the actual stars of the firmament of the outer world” (Parma Eldalamberon 23, p. 133). Curiously, the words “the Domes of Varda” in this passage seem to refer to the roofs of the domed halls of Manwë and Varda upon Taniquetil (which is not necessarily a contradiction – see the note on the word telluma in The War of the Jewels, p. 399), but the idea of the lesser firmament over Valinor is still present.

Even more hints of the new cosmology can be found in Tolkien’s latest narratives, which contain some references to the change of the time of day, which imply the existence of the Sun at the time when it could not yet exist within the framework of the old cosmology. The Shibboleth of Fëanor (c. 1968) tells the story of the burning of the ships at Losgar:

In the night Fëanor, filled with malice, aroused Curufin, <…>

In the morning the host was mustered… (The Peoples of Middle-earth, p. 354).

Last Writings. Círdan (1972–3) describes the moment when Círdan sees the Lonely Isle departing from the shores of Beleriand:

Then, it is said, he stood forlorn looking out to sea, and it was night, <…>

From that night onwards… (The Peoples of Middle-earth, p. 386).

As a conclusion, it seems evident that the Round World conception, first considered by Tolkien in the 1940s and finally accepted by him in the late 1950s, was adhered to by him throughout the 1960s and up to his death in 1973 and never abandoned as an underlying truth of his imaginary world. The conflict between the new cosmological views and the old legends was largely solved when Tolkien accepted the idea of Mannish transmission of the Silmarillion, which transformed it into an “inner myth” inside his world, while new texts pertaining to the authentic High-elven tradition recognized the new cosmological truth. Some elements of Tolkien’s earlier creation, such as the role of Ælfwine in the transmission of the Silmarillion, had to be abandoned, but the whole continued to live and evolve.

Appendix A. From Westernesse to Rivendell

The Númenórean model of transmission of the legends of the Silmarillion is attested in numerous sources, among which are texts I and VII of Myths Transformed (Morgoth’s Ring, pp. 370–5, 401–2), a late change to the typescript of the Quenta Silmarillion (The War of the Jewels, p. 243), a discussion of Elvish ageing from c. 1959 (The Nature of Middle-earth, p. 22), the contemporary Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth (Morgoth’s Ring, p. 337 n. 2, p. 342 n. 7), the Preface to The Adventures of Tom Bombadil as published in 1962, The Shibboleth of Fëanor from c. 1968 (The Peoples of Middle-earth, p. 357 n. 17), the Notes on Óre from the same time (The Nature of Middle-earth, p. 223), a letter to Roger Lancelyn Green from 1971 (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, #325) and a discussion of Elvish reincarnation from 1972–3 (The Nature of Middle-earth, p. 263 fn. 5). It may be mentioned here that in The Line of Elros presumably dating from the early 1960s (Unfinished Tales, p. 224) the authorship of the Akallabêth is likewise attributed to Elendil of Númenor, and the records about Vardamir Nólimon and Tar-Elendil in the same text (pp. 218–9) may account for the origin of the books in which the Silmarillion was preserved.

This model of transmission does not contradict the Note on the Shire Records, which entered the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings with the second edition (1966) and fixed the idea of Bilbo’s Translations from the Elvish (included in the Red Book) as the chief collection of the lore of the Elder Days acquired by Bilbo in Rivendell. The Preface to The Adventures of Tom Bombadil makes it explicit that Rivendell was a repository not only of Elvish lore, but also Númenórean, including the legends of the Silmarillion; and Translations from the Elvish, of course, does not necessarily mean translations of Elvish works, because the Elvish languages were known to the Dúnedain and used in ancient books (see e.g. The Peoples of Middle-earth, p. 315; The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, #347).

It may be worth noting that, despite the concerns sometimes voiced, there is no reason to assume that Bilbo’s familiarity with the true lore concerning the fashion of the Earth or the origin of the Sun and Moon (perhaps evident in his own book) would have had any serious impact on his translations of the Númenórean legends, because a translator is never supposed to rewrite ancient legends in order to adjust them to his own knowledge of the Universe (as should in any case be clear from numerous modern translations of ancient legends existing in our primary world).

Appendix B. The Lord of Retcons

It has already been demonstrated that The Lord of the Rings contains several references to the later cosmology; but it also contains some references to the earlier one, and this should not be dismissed without consideration. It is perhaps significant that none of them was removed in the heavily revised second edition of the book (despite the removal of a more explicit reference in the third edition of The Hobbit in the same year, as well as Tolkien’s general commitment to the new cosmology demonstrated by other evidence), which may suggest that they were not thought by the author to be problematic.

One of them is a reference to the star-making of Varda in “the Sunless Year” in the Elvish song heard by the Hobbits in the chapter Three is Company (p. 79). Assuming that “the song as Frodo heard it” is reliable (which is not necessarily the case, given the fact that the Elves sang “in the fair elven-tongue, of which Frodo knew only a little”), one may assume that the stars are here implied to have been in existence before the Sun. This agrees with the cosmogonic myths of the Silmarillion, but a different solution may be suggested by text IV of Myths Tranformed:

In the ‘demiurgic period’, before the establishment of Arda ‘the Realm’, while the Valar in general (including an unnamed host of others who never came to Arda) were labouring in the general construction of Eä (the World or Universe), Varda was in Eldarin and Númenórean legend said to have designed and set in their places most of the principal stars (Morgoth’s Ring, p. 387).

Since the name Arda in the texts of this period usually stands for the Solar System, this passage may be taken to mean that in Eldarin legend most of the principal stars were created by Varda earlier than the Sun. This does not seem to be the case from the point of view of our current astronomical knowledge, but the same can be said of the notion that the principal stars were created earlier than the Earth, which in any case follows from this note, as well as from another note previously quoted in this article, which states that “Sun and stars were all older than Arda” (here the Earth). Text II of Myths Transformed (Morgoth’s Ring, p. 375) in any case suggests that the Eldarin legends should agree with our knowledge of the form of the Solar System, but need not follow any scientific theory of its making or development.

In the chapter In the House of Tom Bombadil (p. 131), the Master of the house says that he was there “before the seas were bent”. While it is most natural to interpret this as a reference to the myth of the World Made Round, it does not have to be taken as an authorial declaration of objective fact. In his 1954 letter to Peter Hastings, commenting on a false statement made by Treebeard, Tolkien makes a remark which can just as well be applied to Tom Bombadil:

Treebeard is a character in my story, not me; and though he has a great memory and some earthy wisdom, he is not one of the Wise, and there is quite a lot he does not know or understand (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, #153).

Later in the same letter Tolkien in fact makes a similar remark about the words of Tom Bombadil and Goldberry not being his own and even notes that Tom “merely knows and understands about such things as concern him in his natural little realm”.

In the chapter The Uruk-hai (p. 459), Merry and Pippin peeping out of the shadows of Fangorn are rather poetically described as “little furtive figures that in the dim light looked like elf-children in the deeps of time peering out of the Wild Wood in wonder at their first Dawn”. This is of course a mythological reference to the first rising of the Sun, but, again, it can be quite naturally explained as a device used by the narrator rather than a declaration of astronomical truth.

Another mention of the “bent seas” can be found in Appendix A (p. 1042), but it appears in a footnote presented as an extract from an in-universe source of Númenórean origin and thus can be taken to reflect the Númenórean myth. Indeed, in a letter to Roger Lancelyn Green from 1971 (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, #325), having described the effect of the Straight Road, Tolkien notes that this idea lies behind The Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion, but is not put forward as geologically or astronomically true, and stresses the Mannish origin of the legends. It is worth noting that Tolkien here is clearly aware of the problem and its solution.

Finally, two references to “the twilight of the Elder Days” (or “the Twilight”) appear in Appendix F (p. 1132), but they can hardly be used as an argument either way, because within the framework of the new cosmology they can easily be taken to refer to the “volcanic era” when the Sun was dimmed due to obscurations devised by Melkor (cf. “the twilight before the raising of the Sun and Moon” > “the twilight of our Sun and Moon” in the third edition of The Hobbit).

Appendix C. The Valian and Elvish Year

It has been generally assumed that Tolkien’s decision to change the length of the Valian year to make it equal to 144 solar years (instead of 10 or 9.582 solar years as in earlier writings) in the late 1950s was a consequence of the shift that occurred in the cosmology of his world at the same time. This view was in fact expressed by Christopher Tolkien himself in his comments on text XI of Myths Transformed (Morgoth’s Ring, p. 430 n. 2) and became one of the main reasons underlying the common dislike of the new cosmology due to incompatibility of the new conception of the Valian year with the chronological tradition established in Tolkien’s earlier writings (such as the Annals of Aman and the Tale of Years).

One might wonder how the length on the Valian year was related to the shape of the Earth or the nature of the Sun and Moon and why changes regarding the latter would have triggered a change in the former. If any such relation exists, it is not obvious, and evidence against such a relation can be found in text I of the chapter The Valian Year in part one of The Nature of Middle-earth, which shows that when he wrote it, Tolkien had decided that the world must be round and coëval with the Sun and Moon, but the Valian year in that text was still equal in length to 10 solar years. Another point of interest in that text is the following passage:

The yên, which is merely a mode of reckoning, has nothing to do with the life of the Elves. In Aman this depended on the years of the Trees, or really on the days of the Trees; in Middle-earth on the cycles of growth, Spring to Spring, or löar. In Middle-earth, one löa aged an Elf as much as a year of the Trees, but these were in fact 10 times as long (The Nature of Middle-earth, p. 7).

The statement here that the yên “has nothing to do with the life of the Elves” is in striking contradiction with the idea of the Elvish life-year of the same length, which is well-established in Tolkien’s later writings (particularly those published in part one of The Nature of Middle-earth). All the more curious is the fact that text II of the same chapter, while dealing with the same matters as text I, differs from the latter in that it introduces the equation of both the Valian year and the year of Elvish life at the same time to 144 solar years. This correspondence between the Valian year and the Elvish life-year reoccurs in all later texts which concern Elvish ageing (and is sometimes explicitly noted – see e.g. The Nature of Middle-earth, p. 36), which begs the question of whether there is any profound connection between them.

Some clue can be found in text XI of Myths Transformed published in Morgoth’s Ring (see esp. pp. 425–6), which tells that the Valian year was the minimal unit of time in which the “Ageing of Arda” could be perceived by the Valar, and all corporeal living things (such as plants and animals) that the Valar brought into being in Aman for their delight and use aged no quicker than Arda itself, so that the year of their life was the Valian year (see also The Nature of Middle-earth, p. 89). It is told here that the rate of ageing natural to the Elves accorded with the unit of Valian time, and this was the reason that made it possible for the Valar to bring the Elves to dwell in Aman, and a source of their bliss:

For the Eldar this was a source of joy. For in Aman the world appeared to them as it does to Men on Earth, but without the shadow of death soon to come. Whereas on Earth to them all things in comparison with themselves were fleeting, swift to change and die or pass away, in Aman they endured and did not so soon cheat love with their mortality (Morgoth’s Ring, p. 426).

Another piece of evidence bearing on this question can be found in text B of the chapter The Awaking of the Quendi in part one of The Nature of Middle-earth, where Tolkien, considering various problems of the chronology of the Tale of Years, among other things notes the following:

No scale of Quendian “growth” or “ageing” is devised, but in Valinor events seem to show that they lived at about the rate of 1 VY = 1 year of Elvish life. This fits events in Valinor, for which it was arranged, but makes all the Eldar far too old in later narrative, unless we suppose that they remained unchanged, after maturity, for an indefinite time (The Nature of Middle-earth, p. 34).

It seems very likely that here in these words lies the reason why Tolkien introduced the idea that the Elves aged in units of time equal in length to 144 solar years, the purpose of which was to prevent the Elven characters of The Lord of the Rings from being too old in the course of the Second and Third Ages, and when the concept of the Elvish life-year had emerged, the Valian year was equated to it in length because it was meant to correspond with the rate of Elvish ageing. If that is true, then it must have been Tolkien’s post-LotR conception of Elvish ageing and not his reshaping of the cosmology of his world that resulted in the new conception of the Valian year and the abandonment of the chronology of the Annals of Aman, which was never replaced in full.