Yavanna
Kementári; the Giver of Fruits
Kementári
Names and Titles
- Yavanna — “the Giver of Fruits”; in Quenya Kementári, “Queen of the Earth”.
Her name denotes “the fruit-giver”, and she is the Vala of everything that grows: plants, grain, trees, and the blossom of the fields and woods of the world.
- She is the elder sister of Vána, the wife of Aulë, and the “spouse of the smith” whose works her own silently outlast.
Dominion and Character
Yavanna’s element is
life that grows. “She loves all things that grow in the earth, the forests and the flowers; and her joy is in the fruit and the harvest.” Unlike the crafts of her husband, her works are living and cannot be hoarded: “she is the kindest of the Valar… by her the corn is filled, and the seed of the earth is not slain”. She it is who from the beginning “stored the seeds in deep places” and made the world green. Her sorrow is the enduring one of the legendarium: all her fairest works — the Two Trees above all — are perished by the malice of Melkor, who “wept for the trees” No — Melkor destroyed them; her lament is the seed of the dooms that follow. Yet her frailty is also her power: her living works spread and renew long after the works of the smith have been broken.
The Two Trees
The chief of her works are the
The Two Trees of Valinor, which she sang into being when the Valar made their realm in Aman to preserve the light from Melkor’s ruin of the Lamps:
- Telperion, the elder, the Silver Tree, whose light was “as of silver, pale and silken”;
- Laurelin, the Golden Tree, whose light was “as of gold, warm and bright, like the rising sun”. Their radiance, mingled, was the
Light of Valinor— the light in which the Silmarils were afterward kindled and the light that the Noldor wept for in Middle-earth. When Melkor and Ungoliant destroyed them, the world passed into a twilight that “was the first winter of the world that ever was”.
The Ents In the famous chapter
Of Aulë and Yavanna, Yavanna, foreseeing that the craft-loving Dwarves of Aulë would not spare the trees, went to the mansions of Aulë and contended with him; and she “spoke to of the love of the growing things of the earth”. From her spoken desire — that the trees should have shepherds — the Ents were born: “shepherds of the trees”, who awake when the Elves awake and last as the very wood of the world. Her words to Aulë are quoted in the tale: “It shall not be that the earth be filled with the children of the smith, and the trees of the earth be made their bondage.” And Aulë answered: “The trees may not be so easily uprooted… but if I have not the love of the One, then the trees may perish.” — and Eru, approving, gave the Ents being at her prayer.
Relations and Character
Her brightness is tempered by a certain quiet melancholy; her sister Vána is “the one who is ever young”, while Yavanna is the patient earth-mother. She and Aulë are the most “married” of the Valar couples — the power-couple of craft and fruit whose union produced the world’s fodder and its forests. Her authority extends even to the birds and beasts in their measure, and Oromë, the hunter, is careful of her woods.
In the Texts
The chapter “Of Aulë and Yavanna” (with its dialogue and the creation of the Ents) is a late and much-loved addition, the germ of which lies in Tolkien’s notes of 1958-59 and in the Lord of the Rings (Treebeard); it explores his twin loves of making and of nature, and the balance he struck between the “human” craft and the “divine” growth. Earlier forms of the mythology give Yavanna the making of the Trees more briefly; her full portrait is the achievement of the Quenta Silmarillion as finally edited.