Vána
the Ever-young; wife of Oromë
Vána the Ever-young
Names and Title
Vána — “the Ever-young”; the spouse of Oromë, the younger sister of Yavanna, and the Vala of spring and flowering.
Dominion and Character
The Valaquenta says: “Vána… is the Ever-young; she is the younger sister of Yavanna, and the wife of Oromë. All flowers spring as she passes, and open if she glances upon them, and all birds sing at her coming.” She is the dew and the blossom of the year: her power is the quick renewal of the earth, the counter-theme to the long winters of the Shadow. She is the one to whom the flowers of the Two Trees were dearest; at their destruction her joy was dimmed, but her memory of the golden light of Laurelin remains to the Elves who saw her. Her garden is the rejoicing of Valinor: “the child of the world”, the place where the year is always the beginning. Tradition among the Vanyar (recorded in the Lhammas and Tolkien’s etymologies) links her name with the Sun’s youth and with the spring-rivers; and in the Hobbit the song of the spring…, so the page remains grounded in the Silmarillion frame.
In the Texts
Like Nessa and Vairë, Vána is a frame-figure of the Valaquenta; her one narrative appearance of weight is her farewell to the soldiers — she appears at the passage of the Noldor at the Isen — she is one of the Valier who mourned at the Tress-felling. She persists in the secondary tradition of “the spring of the world” and in the etymology of lassë (leaf).