Legolas: A Strange Elf
Part Four
As always, spoiler warnings...
IV. Time
| 'Many long lives of men it is since the golden hall was built.' 'Five hundred times have the red leaves fallen in Mirkwood in my home since then,' said Legolas, 'and but a little while does that seem to us.' (Book 3, The King of the Golden Hall) |
That Elves would see 500 years as 'but a little while' may not seem surprising. By the end of the LOTR, we have met several Elves who are over 6,000 years old, including Elrond the Half-Elven. Galadriel and Celeborn are roughly contemporaries, and Tolkien, in writings published after his death, sets Galadriel's birth as happening during the time of the Two Trees, so we can calculate she is over 8,000 years old (that's in regular 365-day sun-years) by the time of the LOTR. Glorfindel is likely a bit older than Galadriel, and most peg Cirdan the Shipwright as being quite a bit older, around 10,000.
We do not know Legolas' age, but most attempts to nail that down suggest he is no more than 3,000 and no younger than 500. Let's speculate he's 1,000. Now, he does say 500 years seems but a little while to 'us,' meaning Elves in general, not himself in particular. But that raises a question because even for Cirdan, 500 years is about 20% of his life up to this point. For a 50-year-old human, that's a decade. I don't know many people who would dismiss a decade as 'but a little while.'
However, Elves, as I've been trying to suggest, are strange. They are not long-lived humans, but something quite different. Why might five-hundred years seem like 'but a little while' to them?
Well, let's look at it in the context of their entire lives instead, which are just shy of immortal. Elves are serial longeval, lasting as long as Arda (the Earth). If we take a scientific view, somehow combining Tolkien's mythical creation story with real-world geology and heliophysics, all Elves will exist for about 7.5 billion years. Over this time span, all Elves will end up being just about the same age; Legolas, for example, will only be about 1% younger than Galadriel when all is said and done. At 7.5 billion years old, 500 years is about .000006% of their total life spans. If we put our life spans at 90 years, that comes out to about 3 minutes. 'But a little while,' indeed.
This idea is barely a theory, just a thought experiment trying to make sense of Legolas' statement, but it is designed to illustrate my point about being cautious in making parallels between our experience as humans and Elves'. While a comparison to their entire (past and future) life-span could be the 'reason' for Legolas' comment about 500 years, if Elves are indeed alien to us, they may just have a wildly different experience of time, regardless of their current or ultimate age, and we, as humans, may simply not be able to relate.
Note Legolas' reaction to being in Fangorn, which he also calls 'old even as the Elves would reckon it':
| 'It is old, very old,' said the Elf. 'So old that almost I feel young again, as I have not felt since I journeyed with you children. It is old and full of memory. I could have been happy here, if I had come in days of peace.' 'I dare say you could,' snorted Gimli. 'You are a Wood-elf, anyway, though Elves of any kind are strange folk.' (Book 3, The White Rider) |
(Note that Gimli agrees with me that Elves are strange.) The kicker here, though, which Gimli does not even address, is 'you children.' This to a 140-year-old Dwarf! The Company's average age – the 'children' Legolas has been journeying with - is about 61 (excluding Legolas and Gandalf). And yet: 'children.' From one of the over-6,000 crowd, sure, this would just about be expected, but from Legolas?
Gimli does pick up on the main point, though: that Elves have an emotional connection to the distant past. Similarly, on hearing of the Ents, Legolas says 'even among us they are only a memory. If I were to meet one still walking in this world, then indeed I should feel young again!' (Book 3, The White Rider). It seems that Elves can find, in the old places and old creatures of the world, things that make them feel young.
They can also get bored. When Legolas' people, the Woodelves, are asked to hang on to Gollum, they appear to grow lax out of boredom. 'We guarded this creature day and night, at Gandalf's bidding, much though we wearied of the task.' (Book 2, The Council of Elrond). Legolas also seems impatient to have Merry and Pippen tell their story when they reunite at Isengard. Both the hunters and the hobbits are curious as to each other's doings, but it is Legolas who insists the hobbits go first. 'We were the hunters, and you should give an account of yourselves to us first' (Book 3, Flotsam and Jetsam).
Legolas also forgets - he experiences at least some degradation of memory over time, for after he sings 13 stanzas about Nimrodel, he admits 'That is but a part, for I have forgotten much' (Book 2, Lothlorien). Admittedly, he did remember 13 stanzas...
If we really want to get into the Elvish perception of time, however, we have to do what the Company does. We have to go to Lothlorien, the 'there' in Sam's observation, 'Anyone would think that time does not count in there!' (Book 2, The Great River) when he can't square the Moon's phase with how many days he thinks they spent in Lorien - a number which itself is rather vague.
| 'Well, I can remember three nights there for certain, and I seem to remember several more, but I would take my oath it was never a whole month...' 'And perhaps that was the way of it,' said Frodo. 'In that land maybe, we were in a time that has elsewhere long gone by. It was not, I think, until Siverlobe bore us back to Anduin that we returned to the time that flows through mortal lands to the Great Sea...' Legolas stirred in his boat. 'Nay, time does not tarry ever,' he said, 'but change and growth is not in all things and places alike. For the Elves the world moves, and it moves both very swift and very slow. Swift, because they themselves change little, and all else fleets by; it is a grief to them. Slow, because they need not count the running years, not for themselves. The passing seasons are but ripples ever repeated in the long long stream. Yet beneath the Sun all things must wear to an end at last.' (Book 2, The Great River) |
(If you want to dig into the nature of time in Lorien, and elsewhere in Tolkien's writing, read Verlyn Flieger's excellent book, A Question of Time.)
Let's attend to what Legolas says. First, he is telling Sam and Frodo how time to an Elf is different than time to a mortal. Time does not tarry, ever, even in Lorien. While mortals became befuddled and confused about the passing of days while in faerie (a common fairytale theme), time emphatically does not tarry for Legolas. Change and growth vary, yes, and Galadriel has emphatically slowed change to a great degree in Lorien. That's why the Elves who live there love it so much. The world moves swiftly because everything non-Elvish fleets by, which is a grief. What a relief, then, to be in a place where the world immediately around them moves slowly, if at all.
For Legolas, there was, I'm sure, some amount of this in Northern Mirkwood, as any Elvish kingdom must exert power over its part of the world. But think of what a relief Lorien was to him and how leaving cast him back on the grief-filled great river of time (just as the Company finds themselves on the great river Anduin, where there will also be grief).
Regardless, time is also slow. Just as 500 years is 'but a little while,' each year is but a few repeated 'ripples,' seasons that run by, like days sometime run together for us. (But even quicker, it seems. What is the Elvish equivalent to the movie Groundhog Day? Groundhog Decade? Century?) And again, it is an experience that is not altogether pleasant, because the arrow of time points to the end of all things. Certainly, the works of mortals will 'wear to an end' (and be rebuilt and wear again and so on) quickly to an Elf. But even before 7.5 billion years pass, Elves will fade in Middle-earth or, as will happen to Legolas, feel the call of the Sea, the call to go into the West.
'They need not count the running years, not for themselves.' Left to themselves, locked away in Lorien, for example - but even there the world intrudes. For example, Aragorn, a human, shows up now and again. Then one day he shows up with some Hobbits, a Man, and a Dwarf, no less, all with the strange, alien ways of experiencing everything, especially time. And then there are attacks by Orcs and other servants of Sauron. We can imagine that for all of Galadriel's Elves, every time the mortal world intrudes, they find they have to 'count the running years.'
I wonder what Legolas' experience of the War of the Ring is. After 1,000 years living in an Elven forest, a true faerie-land, he travels to Rivendell and unexpectedly finds himself wandering with a bizarre assortment of mortals (and one sort-of Maia) for half-a-year, through abandoned Elven and Dwarven kingdoms, the most Elvish place outside of the Undying Lands, the Paths of the Dead, an ancient forest full of tree-shepherds, several lands of Men... all the while encountering a cross-section of Middle-earth's evilest creatures, from hordes of Orcs to Ringwraiths to some kind of psycho, vengeful mountain to a Balrog. (If Legolas is different from other Elves, I think we have a strong contender for why that might be so.) What is Legolas' version of The Lord of Rings? What story does he tell his dad?
Maybe only in the Undying Lands are Elves free to experience time strictly as Elves, unencumbered by having to interact with short-lived mortals. The ripples on the stream are just ripples, not to be counted or kept track of. Times moves at the 'right speed,' because both Elves and the world 'change little.' What might that be like? Would time then not be a grief to them?