Lothlórien

Name and Place

Lothlórien — “the Golden Wood”, the “Dreamflower” — is the fairest Elven-realm of the later age: the forest between the Celebrant and the Great River, beneath the Misty Mountains, where the mallorn trees rose like golden columns and the year stood in the amber of its ripening. Its name remembers Lórien of Valinor — the gardens of the Vala of dreams — which the Exiles honoured in their naming.

The Lady of the Wood

• Ruled by Galadriel and Celeborn, who had dwelt there since the Second Age (the history is told in Unfinished Tales), Lórien was held by the power of Nenya, Galadriel’s Ring, which preserved the land unwithered while the rest of the world aged — the power of the Elves to hold the halcyon years against the fading of the world. The Fellowship of the Ring passed through Lórien in the winter of the War, were given by Galadriel the gifts and the phial of light from her mirror, and left through the Anduin as the Shadow closed. After the Ring’s destruction, when its power waned with the passing of the Three, Galadriel and Celeborn left Lórien and sailed at last into the West; the Golden Wood faded into memory.

Significance

Lothlórien is the “fairy primeval” survbrout — the living image of the Elven light surviving from Valinor into the late age, and the last garden of the Three Rings; its name ties the later story to the Valar’s Lórien of the First Age.

Related

• Galadriel
• Celeborn
• Nenya
• Lórien (Valinor)
• Irmo