Ulmo
Lord of Waters; Master of the Deep
Names and Titles
Ulmo is his name, “the Lord of Waters, and King of the sea”; he is the “Master of the Deep”. In Valarin he is called Ullubôz. Among the Valar he is second only in the thoughts of the Elves to the love they bear for Varda and Manwë; indeed “Ulmo the Lord of Waters… loves both Elves and Men, and never abandoned them, not even in the dark years of Morgoth.”
Being and Domain
Ulmo abides in the waters of the world
— the sea, the rivers, the springs, the rain, and the deep streams that thread the very bones of the earth. He “goes swiftly through the veins of the world” and knows its every secret pathway; thus “he has seen all that passes in water, and his eye pierces the gloom of the deeps”. He does not dwell among the Valar’s halls in Valinor, but “abides alone in the Outer Seas, or all the deeps of Arda”, and comes rarely into the councils of the Valar — “for his thoughts are from afar, in deep places, whose tidings they had not heard”. He is the only one of the Valar who never left the world’s substance, never wholly withdrew into Valinor, and the only one who continued to counsel the Exiles of the Noldor directly after the Doom of Mandos. He has no wife; the Valaquenta names him among the Lords of the Valar in a company of seven, and records that he “took no spouse”. His servants are the Maiar of the sea, Ossë and Uinen, and Salmar, the minstrel of his deeps.
In the
Music and the Making of Arda
His place in the Ainulindalë is characteristic: “the deep and the dark waters were in his themes; and the song of the sea, and the unhewn mountains of the rocks”. When the Valar shaped the world, “Ulmo made the waters, and in the earth the seas are his”; and when Melkor sought to dominate the deeps, “the voice of Ulmo was deeper than the thunder of the sea”. His great instruments are the Ulumúri — the “deep toned trumpets” or conches made by Salmar — whose sounding is “the voice of Ulmo”; their music is heard “in the depths of the sea, or upon the shores, a music that no ear can wholly comprehend, the song of the One laid upon the waters”.
Role in the Tale
Ulmo is the guardian-destiny of the exiled Noldor in Beleriand:
To Finrod he reveals Nargothrond and its cave-court, “the most hidden of the hiding-places of the Noldor”, and through the river Narog he counselled him.
- To Turgon he appears in sleep and reveals the way to the hidden vale of Tumladen, bidding him build Gondolin; and guided the water of the region so that the hidden city should not be found — “the work of Ulmo”.
- He commands Turgon to build Vinyamar by the sea and to leave there armour and a sword for a messenger; and at the last he sets Tuor, son of Huor, upon the road to Gondolin in the very gear from Vinyamar — the Vala’s answer to the ruin of the Noldor. He warns the Valar at the fall of Doriath and at the Nirnaeth that Gondolin must not be abandoned, and his counsel — disregarded — is vindicated by the massacre of the hidden city. Because the waters sing his voice to all races, even those whom the Elves despise may hear his call: the seafaring Men of the coasts built their ships and held faith to “Ulmo’s thunders”. He is thus, with Varda, one of the two great intercessors: the Vala who “never wholly forsook the world” and whose element reaches everywhere — “the sea is Ulmo’s road”.
In the Texts
Ulmo is one of the most stable figures of the mythology, present from the Book of Lost Tales as “the great Lord of the Deep” through the Quenta to Unfinished Tales, where his guidance of Tuor and the hidden river to the sea is told at length. The Vinyamar-gear episode and the doctrine that water carries his tidings are among the favourite motifs of Christopher Tolkien’s editorial notes.