Thanks you guys! I did actually, in a singer banner contest.

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Thats awesome! Have the winners been decided or is voting still in session? I will have to go check it out.

Lately, there hasn't been any contests I can enter. Almost all of them are graphic making contests of some sort and I don't have the program to make banners or avatars or anything else like that. Oh well.....

yeah, I could rarely enter any contests back when I didn't have photoshp 7. It really sucked because I saw people making all these rpetty banners and wnated to know how they did it.

I don't know when judging will be held. Soon I hope.

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This has show me how much I need to learn about Elves, I feel so ashamed right now...
*runs of to stdy*

Don't worry hun! We'll tell you all you need to know and the books will give you even more!

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whew!!!!!!

Did you read the article about elven marriages?

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gosh ..just reading about this stuff makes me wanna be an elf lol!!

Yeah, their virtues of life are so pure and ...just nice. We can follow them too but it's not the same thing if the rest of the human race doens't as do all the elves.

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Er, I'm pretty late here, but I just thought I'd answer the first question.

Elves are pregnant for 12 months, so usually the child's birthday is his/her begetting day. They grow at about the same rate as men at first, then slow down, so it takes 50 years or so for them to mature.

Twelve momths? Well, that answers that question! Thank you. Where'd you learn that?

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You're correct, it wasn't 500 years, but if 500 can't be true because Tolkien wrote that Elves usually marry between 50-100 years, how to explain taking 3,000 years to mature, a detail written at about the same time as Laws And Customs (from which the 50 to 100 years comes). "On Earth while an elf-child did but grow to be a man or a woman, in some 3000 years, forests would rise and fall, and all the face of the land would change, while birds and flowers innumerable would be born and die in loar upon loar under the wheeling Sun." JRRT Morgoth's Ring Text XI

So, do we have two ideas here? Seems like it, but the context of this statement is hinted at earlier in this same text, and in my opinion, I take this to be the maturity rate of Elves in the beginning of their history. I also note [with my emphasis here]: "This I can well believe,' said Finrod: 'That your bodies suffer in some measure the malice of Melkor. For you live in Arda Marred, as do we, and all the matter of Arda is tainted by him, before ye or we came forth and drew our hroar and their sustenance therefrom: all save only Aman before he came there. For know it is not otherwise with the Quendi themselves: their health and stature is diminished. Already those of us who dwell in Middle-earth, and even we who have returned to it, find that the change* [*the word change was an emendation to the typescript B (only); the manuscript has growth -- footnote by CJRT] of their bodies is swifter than in the beginning. And that, I judge, must forebode that they will prove less strong to last than they were designed to be, though this may not be clearly revealed for many long years." Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth (and see Author's note 7 on the Commentary)

This work is generally dated to about the same time (late 1950s) as Laws And Customs, noting that the manuscript of the debate is said to be: 'very similar in style and appearance to that of Laws and Customs among the Eldar.' So, is it possible that, over time, the maturity rate of Elves quickened in Middle-Earth, from 3,000 to 50 (or for some 100) by the time Laws And Customs was recorded? I guess it's possible... though it seems a major quickening admittedly, these texts were written, generally speaking, in the same chunk of time. So how much time passed from the beginning of days, to, say, Finrod's discussion?



It's a bit different. The Appendices explain an Elvish system of reckoning time (not maturation rate of Elvish bodies), and the number is 144 rather; thus an Elvish Long Year [called yén, note plural yéni in Galadriel's lament for example] equals 144 Sun Years. And this might be interesting within the context of the notion of a maturation rate taking 3,000 years, as Tolkien had actually greatly expanded the length of time between the awakening of the Elves and Finrod's discussion (after the Exile), and he did this by changing a Valian Year to equal 144 Sun Years [when the Annals of Aman were written, for example, a Valian Year was "only" equal to roughly 10 Sun Years]...

... in other words, the same amount of time that the Elvish Long Year in Middle-Earth was said to be, became the Valian Year in Aman as well. And, JRRT seems to say that the Elven maturation rate remained the same in Valinor, which itself seems to suggest that it did not remain the same in Middle-earth. If so, we arguably have two maturation rates: one in Middle-earth which began at 3,000 years but dwindled... another in Aman which remained 3,000 years.

Under this later conception, Galadriel, being born in Aman, would not reach maturity until about 3,000 years after her birth. Yet doing the math, by Elvish reckoning Galadriel is about 21 Elvish "years" old [by Elvish Long Years], or 21 Valian Years old, when she reaches maturity. I think Tolkien chose 3,000, at least in part, because of the way it works out in Elvish Long Years [note also how old Arwen Halfelven is when she weds Aragorn, in Elvish Long Years]. My next question is: did this all get too confusing (again, if these texts represent one concept), even for the Master himself? Maybe so, for there are yet more texts in which the Elves appear to mature at the same rate as Men: ('they' are the Númenóreans): "Thus (as the Eldar) they grew at much the same rate as other Men, but when they had achieved 'full growth' then they aged, or 'wore out', very much more slowly." Note 1, The Line of Elros, Unfinished Tales

And perhaps most notably, since the following is dated very late; note 1: "C.E. ? netthi. C.E. tth > Q., T. (...) nette meant 'girl approaching the adult' (in her 'teens': the growth of Elvish children after birth was little if at all slower than that of the children of Men). The Common Eldarin stem (wen-ed) (...) 'maiden' applied to all stages up to the fully adult (until marriage).' JRRT Vinyar Tengwar 47, from texts generally dated 1967-70

"... the growth of Elvish children after birth was little if at all slower than that of the children of Men" dated between 1967-1970. It would arguably make things less complicated, easier, if Tolkien had abandoned a two rate system... erm, unless things went from 3,000... ah... dwindling down over the long years to past 50 or 100... to basically end at: the same rate as Men?

Ah me, and here, more than 15 years later, I tried to add some context to make things simpler!

So to summarize, elthir, we have 2 choices:

Either the maturation rate was 3000 years, which is 21 elf years (one of those is 144 of our years), but dwindled in ME to 50-100 of our years (not even 1 elf year), while it remained 3000 in Valinor.

Or the maturation rate is pretty much the same as ours, and you can throw out the elf years entirely.

Either one works. It's entirely up to you how you want to view the life of an elf.

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Yes, that's it Healic, if my theory is correct that Laws And Customs, The Athrabeth, and the text Aman are in accord with each other on this point. It's from the text Aman that the hint I referred to hails from [but I didn't cite it earlier]: "Nonetheless the Eldar 'aged' at the same speed in Aman as they had done in their beginning upon Middle-earth." Emphasis on "in their beginning" here. Aman is clearly a 144VY = 1SY text, and as Christopher Tolkien notes, for example: "a gigantic lapse of time could now be conceived between the 'arising' of Men and their first appearance in Beleriand."

So if we think of Galadriel needing 3,000 years to mature: she was born in VY 1362 [Annals of Aman], so she would be 21 by 1383 [being 3,024 Sun Years old], which is well before Melkor was released from Mandos [VY 1400, Annals of Aman]. So that works well enough, but generally speaking, it's my belief that Tolkien needed to revise certain of the dates in AAM with respect to the new, much greater number, since I don't think the actual time in Sun Years works well in all instances [Annals of Aman being originally written with a much lower number in play].

That all said, in any case one would think that Laws and Customs -- again if my theory is correct, that is -- would at least mention a much longer maturation rate in the early days of Middle-earth, or in Aman itself. Even if the text is arguably mainly concerned with the Eldar in Middle-earth, we have, for example, statements like: "but even in days of old, while the Eldar were still few and eager to increase their kind, Feanor was renowned as the father of seven sons,..."

But we have no similar digression, even in brief, of an Elvish maturation rate being longer, or different (compared to 50 or 100 years), in the early, early days of the Eldar, nor that it was still different in Aman (no digressions that I recall at the moment anyway).

So my theory takes an admitted hit upon that count

I mean, to me it seems a rather notable detail to leave out, even if the information is being transmitted by a mortal. Christopher Tolkien explains about the text Laws And Customs: "It is clear, in any case that it is presented as the work, not of one of the Eldar, but of a Man." [Christopher Tolkien, Laws And Customs Among the Eldar]. I believe that the man here is Elfwine, as he is associated with the text, but I would still wonder why Elfwine had not been schooled about this interesting change with respect to Elvish bodies, or if being taught this, why he appears to skip silently over it.

So I have to admit that we might have at least three different ideas on Elven maturation! And I would tend to give the greatest weight to the latest idea, which would appear to be the one published in Vinyar Tengwar anyway, where the Eldar matured at around the same rate as Men...

... so obviously rather notably shorter than 3,000 years!

So if an wlvish year used to be only 10 sunyears, then changed to 144, but it is possible that they matured at dofferent rates at different times and locations due to Melkor's effects....

Is it possible that all these options could actually point to the same general age from a certain point of view?

Things seem to have been changed up quite some bit from time to time. Maybe 3,000 elf years was about 21 at some point or is that not realy even much of an option?

Also, do we know for certain that elves had tonwait to marry until they were mature? I meam in the history of humans on earth we see some cultures where 13-14 year old were married and even started families. Clearly not "mature" by modern day standards. Perhaps Arwen was a mere teenager when she married Aragorn?

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In elf years (144=1 solar year) she was roughly 19 when she married. That is, if you want to go with that theory. I think that one is my favorite, personally. I mean, considering that Tolkien really never came close to "finishing" ME due to his perfectionism, it's really at the reader's discretion how he wants to view the minor things like the maturation rate of an elf. I don't think it was a high priority for him.

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