Sindar
The Grey Elves; the Elu-thírim; Elves of the Twilight
The Sindar
Names
- Sindar — “the Grey Elves”, the Elves of the Twilight; the people of Elu Thingol in Beleriand. -
They are of Telerin blood — the Teleri who, in the loitering of the Great Journey, were left behind or turned aside. In their long years of waiting they were called the Eglath, “the Forsaken”; their later name is the Sindar, who never saw the light of the Two Trees (hence Moriquendi, “Elves of the Darkness”, in the Noldor’s strict census — a name they resent).
History
- The waiting in the dark: When Elwë (Thingol) was lost in Nan Elmoth under the spell of Melian, his people sought him long and gave up the Journey; they dwelt in Beleriand, “in the twilight of the starlight… the realm of the Grey Elves”. Some — the **Falathrim under Círdan at the Havens (Brithombar, Eglarest) — remained by the sea as Ossë’s friends and shipwrights; others scattered into the woods (the Silvan ancestors).
- The realm of Doriath and the ring of Melian: with the coming of Thingol and Melian from Nan Elmoth, the Sindar were gathered under the Girdle of Melian; their kingdom of Doriath with its cave-city Menegroth, “the Thousand Caves”, was the steadfast realm of the first age of the night.
- Lore and language: The Sindar developed their tongue, Sindarin, “the Grey Elven speech” — in the later ages the everyday tongue of the Elves of Middle-earth (Galadriel would adopt it; even the Noldor exiles would use it among the Sindar). Their king, Melian’s husband, is the only Elf who ever married a Maia, and his blood, through Lúthien, runs in all the Half-elven.
- The coming of the Noldor: The Grey Elves received the returning Exiles as cousins and enforced the laws of the realm; but the Doom that the Noldor carried, spoke against all the “Free” — their history with the Noldor of the houses (and the slaying of Finwë’s no) — the tragedy of the Oath of Fëanor draws the Sindar in (the quest of the Silmaril by Beren, and the ruin of Doriath), because the brightest blood of the Sindar is bound by the curse of the Noldor.
The Sindar in the Tale
They are the people of the hidden reign: of Doriath, of the Havens, of the deep woods. In the
Quenta their king Thingol is the pivot of the politics of Beleriand — neutral, proud, doomed. And their great gift to the legendarium is Lúthien, “Tinúviel”, the nightingale, the fairest daughter of the twilight; and through her the thread that ties the Grey Elves to the final salvation of the story.