Avari
The Unwilling; the Dark Elves who refused the summons
The Avari
Names
- Avari — “the Unwilling”; the Elves who refused the summons of the Valar and never set out on the Great Journey. -
They are the Abari of the earliest speech — the “refusers” — and are counted among the Moriquendi (“Elves of the Darkness”), for they saw no light save starlight.
The Sundering When
Oromë came to the Elves at Cuiviénen and brought the message that the Valar invited them to Aman, the folk divided. The greater part was willing and set forth as the Eldar; but “a part of them refused the summons, and remained in the dark and the forests” — these are the Avari. They “remained by the Waters of Awakening, or wandered in the East”, and are the ancestors of all the “dark” Elves of Middle-earth save the Sindar and Nandor (who are of the Eldar-stock that lingered).
History and Character
The Avari are little recorded — the Eldar who wrote the histories knew them poorly: “they remain unrecorded, and their names and kindreds are not in the books of the Eldar”. Their dialects diverged; their arts were simple; their long life in the eastern shadows fed the legends of the “Dark Elves” that later Men told. Some few, very late, met the Exiles — no certain tale; the Elvish lore of The Hobbit and LotR (the “Dark Elves” of Mirkwood, etc.) lies but descends from these. Tolkien’s own thought: the Avari were not “evildoers” but those who distrusted the Valar or loved the wild; their choice is neither praised nor condemned in the Quenta, and their name is spoken without contempt among the wise — “the Unwilling” who yet kept the freedom of Middle-earth.