Weather and the Ainur

The Ainur (Valar, Maiar, etc.) and the weather is an interesting topic. While many of the Valar are basically given mastery of some sort of elemental force (for example, Manwe and the air; Ulmo and the water), they weren’t much taken to combining forces early on. In fact, when it comes to “inventing” weather, the…

Middle Earth’s Oceans

The oceans are such an important part of Middle Earth, historically and culturally. But Tolkien didn’t really spend any time describing them physically – other than the storms caused by Osse, I guess. If anything, his best descriptions of the oceans tend to emphasize the mystery of them. For example, Gandalf once says that the…

Valarin Names of the Valar

The names for the Valar that you see used most often in The Silmarillion are their Quenya names, and were the names used by the Vanyar and Noldor in Valinor, as well as the Noldorin exiles in Middle Earth. Presumably all the Valar had names in Sindarin, though not all of them were recorded (the…