Death and Beyond

Where Do All Men Go After Death?

A question that has made us Tolkien fans ponder: what happens to Men, Dwarves, and other creatures when they die? Are men doomed to sit forever in the Halls of Manwë, do Dwarves’ souls vanish into thin air, and do evil spirits go somewhere that is equivalent to hell?

Who knows, but this topic deals with the passing of men, so sit back, relax, and enjoy this theory.

In his writings, Tolkien briefly explains what happens to each race after death, but it seems like the fate of man is shrouded in mystery, though there are some holes in this shroud. He does say that men go to the Halls of Manwë for a time and then are allowed to leave, but where, free-float around the universe like Aragorn suggests when he is near death in “The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen”? “Behold! We are not bound to the circles of the world forever.”

Or do they go to a nobler place for heroes, like Norse mythology’s Valhalla, where the great dine? Théoden suggests something like that when he is talking to Éowyn and breathing his last on the Pelennor Fields: “I go now to the halls of my forbearers.”

And what about wicked men? Can’t forget about them…Are they sent to Valinor and tortured by Oromë, who is an avid hunter? I’m sure he’d have fun with those guys, hunting them to teach them a lesson, but if they outwit him, he could grant them forgiveness and let them have another turn at life, though it doesn’t sound fair to the good guys. Or a final theory, could they also be sent to Manwë’s Halls, but locked in a room and be forced to listen to other victims’ innocent screams over and over, till it would drive them insane?

Who knows. Maybe we’ll never find out even if we meet Tolkien in heaven and badger him about this question.

by Myusernamerulea

Dwarves: The Adopted Children

Not much is known about the spiritual life of the Dwarves. At times, it was not clear if they really had a spirit like the Elves and Men; for example, the Noldor believed that dying, the Dwarves returned to the earth and stone of which they were made. And indeed, the custom of the Dwarves was to bury their dead only in tombs of stone; the only recorded exception was the battle of Azanulbizar, after which they burned the bodies of their fallen just because they didn’t have time to build proper graves for them.

But themselves, the Dwarves believe that Aulë, their maker, whom they call Mahal, cares for them and gathers them in their own halls in Mandos. There they can practice their crafts and learn yet deeper lore; and Ilúvatar will hallow them and give them a place among the Children in the End. After the Last Battle, they will help Aulë in the remaking of Arda.

by Morwinyoniel

Elves: the Fate of the Firstborn?

Of the Children of Ilúvatar, the Elves are known as the Firstborn, and Men the Secondborn, or the Followers, characterised by their mortality and their fragile lives. Death, according to Men of the First Age, meant the unnatural separation of the hröa (body) and the fëa (spirit) from each other; however, this occurrence did not hold the same finality or severity for the Elves as it did for Men.

The Elves are considered as immortal in that they cannot die as a result of ageing or diseases. However, they can die if slain in battle or by wasting away in grief, and it is said that some Elves, afflicted by the Shadow of Arda (the world wherein lies Middle-earth and Valinor), chose to yield their lives even if their bodies could be healed. However, what happened after death was originally speculation for many Elves before their dwelling in Valinor – some believed that their fëar were snuffed out of existence, others that fëar came under the influence of Morgoth and the Shadow present in Arda Marred. After the summons, the Calaquendi learnt from Manwë that when a fëa is separated from its hröa, Mandos summons the disembodied spirit to his Halls. To refuse the summons is considered unnatural by most Elves, and a fëa that does is doomed to wander the world; the state of the houseless spirit is comparable to our ‘ghost’. However, a disembodied fëa, if it accepts Mandos’ summons, dwells in the Halls of Mandos, and the length of its stay depends on his judgement. Fëar that are allowed back into the world do so via reembodiment, where the Valar would create a new hröa for a fëa’s ‘rehousing’, and which was resemblant to the hröa it had in its previous life. It is by this that Glorfindel can appear in the Third Age after being slain in the First, and is how ‘Finrod walks with Finarfin his father beneath the trees in Eldamar’.

According to the Elves, their fëar and hröar are inextricably bound to Arda, and unlike Men, there is no escaping the Circles of the World. The fate of the Elves remains uncertain, as Ilúvatar has not chosen to reveal it, yet some believe that as Arda Marred ends, so will the Elves encounter a final and inescapable death. However, others contend that Men, joining in the Second Music of the Ainur, will bring into formation Arda Remade, and that the Elves will be reborn into the new world.

by Fíriel