InJ. R. R. Tolkien'slegendarium, theTwo Trees of Valinor areTelperion andLaurelin, the Silver Tree and the Gold Tree, which bring light toValinor, aparadisiacal realm where the Valar and Maiar, angel-like divine beings, and many of the Elves live. The Two Trees are of enormous stature, and exude dew that is a pure and magical light in liquid form. The Elf craftsmanFëanor makes the unrivalled jewels, theSilmarils, with their light. The Two Trees are destroyed by the evil beingsUngoliant andMelkor, but their last flower and fruit are made into theMoon and theSun. Melkor, now known as Morgoth (as a result of his slaying Fëanor’s father, Finwë), steals the Silmarils, provoking the disastrous War of the Jewels. Descendants of Telperion survive, growing inNúmenor and, after its destruction, inGondor; in both cases the trees are symbolic of those kingdoms. For many years while Gondor has no King, theWhite Tree of Gondor stands dead in the citadel of Minas Tirith. WhenAragorn restores the line of Kings to Gondor, he finds a sapling descended from Telperion and plants it in his citadel.
Commentators have seen mythic andChristian symbolism in the Two Trees; they have been called the most important symbols in the entire legendarium. Their origins have been traced to themedieval Trees of the Sun and the Moon. Parallels have also been identifiedwith Celtic mythology, where several pairs of trees appear. The White Tree of Gondor, too, has been traced to the medievalDry Tree, a symbol ofresurrection.Verlyn Flieger has described theprogressive splintering of the light of the Two Trees through Middle-earth's troubled history, noting that light represents theChristianLogos.Tom Shippey links thesundering of the Elves into different groups to the Two Trees and to theProse Edda which speaks oflight and dark Elves; Tolkien treats the difference between these as whether they have made the journey to Valinor and seen the light of the Two Trees.
The first sources of light for all of Tolkien's imaginary world,Arda, aretwo enormous Lamps on the central continent,Middle-earth: Illuin, the silver one to the north, and Ormal, the golden one to the south. They are created by theValar, powerful spirit beings, but are cast down and destroyed by the Dark LordMelkor.[T 1]
The Valar retreat toValinor to make their home on the western continent, and there one of them,Yavanna the Vala of living things, sings into existence the Two Trees to provide a new pair of light-sources. Of the two, Telperion is male and silver, while the other, Laurelin, is female and golden. The Trees stand on the hill Ezellohar, outside Valimar, the city of the Valar. They grow in the presence of all the Valar, watered by the tears of the Vala of pity and mourning,Nienna.[T 1] Telperion's leaves are dark green above and silver below.[T 1] His flowers are white like cherry blossom,[T 2] and his silvery dew is collected as a source of water and of light. Varda used the dew to form stars in the sky, in preparation for the arrival of the Elves. Laurelin has leaves of a young green, like newly opened beech leaves trimmed with gold, and her dew is collected by the Vala of lightVarda.[T 1]
Each Tree, in turn, gives off light for seven hours (waxing to full brightness and then slowly waning again), with the ends of their cycles overlapping, so that at one hour each of "dawn" and "dusk" soft gold and silver light are given off together. Each "day" of first silver then gold light lasts twelve hours.[T 1]
![Tolkien stated that the light from the Two Trees of Valinor alternately waxed and waned, overlapping by an hour.[T 1]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aJornada_arboles_de_Valinor.png)
Countless "days" pass, until Melkor reappears. He enlists the help of the giant spiderUngoliant to destroy the Two Trees. Concealed in a cloud of darkness, Melkor strikes each Tree and the insatiable Ungoliant devours whatever life and light remains in it.[T 3]
Yavanna and Nienna attempt a healing, but they succeed only in reviving Telperion's last flower (to become theMoon) and Laurelin's last fruit (to become theSun). These are turned into flying ships crossing the sky, and each is steered by spirits of the same 'genders' as the Trees themselves: male Tilion and female Arien. This is why, inThe Lord of the Rings, the Sun is called "she" and the Moon "he".[T 4] The true light of the Trees now resides only in the threeSilmarils, jewels created with the light of the Two Trees before their destruction, by the ElfFëanor.[T 5]
Because the Elves that first come toValinor especially love Telperion,Yavanna takes acutting from the tree and makes a second tree like it to stand in their city of Tirion. This tree, namedGalathilion, is identical to Telperion except that it does not emit light. It has many seedlings, one of which is namedCeleborn, and grows on the isle ofTol Eressëa.[T 6] In theSecond Age, a seedling of Celeborn is brought as a gift to the Men who live on the island ofNúmenor. It is Nimloth, the White Tree of Númenor. When the dark lordSauron takes control of the island, he makes kingAr-Pharazôn cut it down.[T 7] The heroIsildur saves a single fruit of Nimloth, and plants seedlings in Middle-earth. During the rule of the Stewards of Gondor, theWhite Tree of Gondor, a descendant of Nimloth, stands dead in the citadel of Minas Tirith. On Aragorn's return as King at the end of theThird Age, he finds a seedling in the snow on the mountain behind the city, and brings it back to the citadel, where it flourishes.[T 8]
Tolkien never mentioned any tree made in the likeness of Laurelin, writing that "of Laurelin the Golden no likeness is left in Middle-Earth".[T 9] In the First Age, however, the Elvish King Turgon of the city ofGondolin creates a non-living image of Laurelin, namedGlingal, 'Hanging Flame', which stands in his court.[T 10]
The Tolkien scholarJohn Garth traces the mythology and symbolism of the Two Trees to the medieval Trees of the Sun and the Moon. Tolkien stated in an interview[a] that the Two Trees derived from them, "in the great Alexander stories"[1] rather than from the World TreeYggdrasil of Norse myth. Garth notes that theWonders of the East, anOld English manuscript in the same Codex asBeowulf, tells thatAlexander the Great travelled beyond India toParadise, where he saw the two magical trees. They drip down a wonderfulbalsam, and have the power of speech. They tell Alexander that he will die inBabylon. Garth writes that Tolkien's trees emit light, not balsam; and instead of prophesying death, their own deaths bring Arda's era of immortality to an end.[1]
Marie Barnfield, writing inMallorn, states that the male/female pair of trees has numerousparallels in Celtic mythology, including the pine trees ofDeirdre andNaoise, and the paired rose bush ofEsyllt and vine ofTrystan. Further, the hill of Ezellohar in front of Valimar's western gate matches the "sacred centre of Ireland", theHill of Uisneach "to the west of Tara". The Two Trees of Valinor, in this context, align with the "feminine" Ash tree of Uisnech, and the "masculine"Lia Fáil, the standing stone on the hill of Tara. Lastly, the dews of Telperion and the rains from Laurelin that served "as wells of water and of light" match up, according to Barnfield, withConnla's Well and theWell of Segais.[2]
Tolkien read the FinnishKalevala closely. Its central symbol is the magicalSampo, a device that brought wealth and good fortune to its owner, but whose mechanism is described only vaguely. Jonathan Himes, writing inMythlore, has suggested that Tolkien found the Sampo complex, and chose to split the Sampo's parts into desirable objects. Its pillar became the Two Trees of Valinor with their Tree of life aspect, illuminating the world. Its decorated lid became the brilliant Silmarils, which embodied all that was left of the light of the Two Trees, thus tying the symbols together.[3][4]
Cynthia Cohen writes inTolkien Studies that the White Tree of Gondor inThe Lord of the Rings stands for "the deeper history of Men in Tolkien'sSecondary World, reaching back to [its ancestors,] the Two Trees of Valinor".[5] During most of the action of the novel, the tree is dead, and has been for over a century, but all the same it serves as a symbol of Gondor's strength and national identity, and of hope for the Kingdom's renewal. She suggests that the White Tree parallels theDry Tree mentioned in the 14th century textMandeville's Travels. The Dry Tree had been alive in the time ofChrist, and was prophesied to come to life again when a "great lord from the western part of the world" returned to theHoly Land, just as Aragorn brings the line of Kings back to Gondor. Cohen comments that the dead White Tree's replacement by a living sapling "upholds the metaphor ofresurrection and enables Tolkien to draw an implicit connection between Aragorn and Christ".[5] Finally, she remarks on the verse that Aragorn recites when he sees the White Mountains of Gondor: "West Wind blew there; the light upon the Silver Tree / Fell like bright rain in gardens in the Kings of old," which she states links Telperion, the Silver Tree of Valinor, to the White Tree. SinceTolkien has left it ambiguous whether the Silver Tree of the verse, the place where the West Wind blew, or where the "bright rain" fell, arein long-ago Valinor or present-time Gondor, the ancestry of the tree and the lineage of the Kings merge into a continuum.[5]
Patrick Curry, in theJ.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, writes that the importance that Tolkien gives to the Two Trees shows "theiconic status of trees in both his work and his life."[6] Richard Goetsch adds that the Two Trees are "central to many of the crucial plot developments of the entire saga, from the beginning of the First Age to the end of the Third Age", and further that they "function as the ultimate expression of the natural world in Tolkien's mythos."[7]
Matthew Dickerson writes in theJ.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia that the Two Trees are "the most important mythic symbols in all of the legendarium".[8] He quotes Tolkien's words inThe Silmarillion that "about their fate all the tales of the Elder days are woven".[8] They have that central place because they are the source of the light for the world of Arda while they live, and they are the ancestors of the various trees that symbolise the Kingdoms of Númenor and later of Gondor. Further, they contain the "thought of things that grow in the earth", placed in them by the Vala Yavanna when she sang them into being.[8] Angelica Varandas likewise comments that the Two Trees are "the most significant symbols of peace, prosperity and order" in the legendarium, and calls themaxis mundi trees, like those in theGarden of Eden or the Norse world-tree,Yggdrasil.[9]
Tolkien, as aRoman Catholic, knew the significance of light inChristian symbolism; he equated it with theChristianLogos, the Divine Word.[10] The scholar Lisa Coutras states that transcendental light is an essential element of his subcreated world. In it, the Two Trees embody the light of creation, which in turn reflects God's light.[11]
Verlyn Flieger describes the progressive splintering of the first created light, down through successive catastrophes. After the destruction of the twin lamps of Arda, Yavanna recreates what she can of the light in the Two Trees; Varda catches some of the light, and Fëanor creates the Silmarils, filled with the light. They are the unrivalled jewels that giveThe Silmarillion its name, and serve as the centrepiece of its narrative.[12][6] The whole of the history of Tolkien'sFirst Age is strongly affected by the desire of many characters, including the dark lord Morgoth (as Melkor is now known) to possess the Silmarils that contain the only remaining unsullied light of the Trees. Morgoth desires them for himself, and manages to steal them, provoking the world-changing War of the Jewels.[6][13] One of the Silmarils survives, and Varda puts it in the sky to symbolise hope: it isVenus, the Morning and Evening Star.[6]
Tom Shippey, like Tolkien aphilologist, analyses Tolkien's treatment of the light and dark elves mentioned in the 13th centuryProse Edda: inOld Norse,Ljósálfar andDökkálfar. Tolkien makes the distinguishing feature between these two groups whether the Elves had seen the light of the Two Trees of Valinor, or not. To make this work, Tolkien creates a story in which the Elves awaken in Middle-earth, and are called to undertake the long journey to Valinor. The Elves of the Light, Tolkien's Calaquendi, are those who successfully complete the journey, while the Elves of the Darkness, the Moriquendi, are thoseElves who, for whatever reason, do not arrive in Valinor.[14][T 11][15]
Matthew Dickerson writes that in theSecond andThird Ages, the White Trees ofNúmenor and ofGondor, whose likeness descends from that of Telperion, have a mostly symbolic significance, standing both for the kingdoms in question, and also as reminders of the ancestral alliance between theMen who had lived on Númenor and the Elves. The destruction of one of these trees precedes trouble for each kingdom in question.[8]
Martin Simonson describes the destruction of the Two Trees as setting a "mythical precedent" for the transfer of the stewardship of Arda (Earth) from the Valar to Elves and Men. In his view, this stewardship is central to the moral battle, as the Two Trees, like Men and Elves, are composed of both matter and spirit.[16]Dickerson andJonathan Evans note that Tolkien calls the Elves "stewards and guardians of [Middle-earth's] beauty"; they are constantly preoccupied with maintaining the beauty of nature, something they inherited from Yavanna's making of the Two Trees.[17]
... the lakes of sun and moon from the Old EnglishWonders of the East.