Indis
the Fair; second wife of Finwë; mother of Fingolfin and Finarfin
Name and Lineage
Indis — “the Fair”, a kinswoman of the Vanyar (of a Vanyarin house), and the second wife of Finwë. Her marriage to Finwë — permitted only because the first wife Míriel would not return from the Halls of Mandos — produced the second and third houses of the Noldor: Fingolfin and Finarfin, and through them (as grandmother) the lines of the later kings and the Half-elven.
Position and Character
The
Quenta portrays Indis as good and beloved: — her gentleness and her blood from the light-loving Vanyar tempered the fierce pride of her sons’ house; the wise of the Noldor held her in honour. Yet she stands at the centre of the feud: Fëanor, Míriel’s son, did not forgive the union — the bitter estrangement between the two halves of Finwë’s house (which Melkor used to the ruin of them all) begins with her second marriage. Tolkien’s later writing (Morgoth’s Ring, “Laws and Customs”) turns Indis into a figure of almost heroic patience: she endures, in the marriage doctrine of the Eldar, the strange second place — a wife married in Míriel’s shadow, bound to the grief that Míriel “had lain down the burden”. Her own later letters — she was called the “mother of the estrangement”, though faultless.
In the Tale
Her sons’ fate both vindicates and wounds her: Fingolfin and Finarfin, and their children, are the noblest of the Exiles; and her grandson is finally king of all the Noldor. She ends the age in Valinor, among the Vanyar, having outlived the ruin her house incurred
— the quiet, bright survivor of the great grieving.