The Sleep of Yavanna

MithLuin

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At the end of today's session, Dave Kale teasingly suggested that someone should present a paper on the ecosystems of Middle Earth during the Sleep of Yavanna at Mythmoot.

I've taught high school biology, and part of me would not want to touch that topic with a 10 foot pole. I'll draw family trees outlining inheritance patterns for elvish hair color. But, I won't do this. Because, of course, it is impossible without a very strong dose of 'magic!!!' to make it work. There's not much sense in discussing the biology of the Sleeping Beauty castle being put to sleep for 100 years while a forest of thorns grows up around it.

But, you know, if you *were* going to consider it, there are a few things to keep in mind.

One is the slow growth of taiga forests, which can survive with long winters and only short summers. Not, of course, *no* sunlight, as that would not work at all. But if you need an ecosystem that both vaguely resembles Middle Earth *and* can get by on limited energy input...look at boreal forests.
https://www.britannica.com/science/taiga

There are, of course, several types of ecosystems whose primary energy source is not sunlight. These are...not particularly helpful, but perhaps some inspiration could be found there.
There are several types of living things that depend upon the decay of other living things to survive. So, they are only secondarily not dependent on light. Something (which does depend on light) dies or produces waste products, and then this other ecosystem thrives on the remains.
Examples include:
the aphotic zone of the ocean (which is fed from dead things falling to the sea floor),
caves (which depend on organisms moving in and out, bringing back food from the world of light),
fungi (which feed be absorbing nutrients from organic matter) and - perhaps the most interesting -
the bacteria that live under extreme conditions and are not fed by organic material at all.​
Not that I think chemosynthetic archaea in deep sea vents is in any way relevant to our lack-of-sun dilemma in the early days of Beleriand, but...there you are.
https://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Deep_sea_vent
Nor will a whale fall be particularly appetizing to non-deep-sea-creatures, but again, the *concept* of something sustaining an ecosystem without sunlight may be helpful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_fall
A coastal cave ecosystem based on methane (not sunlight or detritus) is a thing that exists. And it's in the Yucatan, ground zero for the meteor that set off the K-T extinction event, so that's...interesting. (We're equating the destruction of the Lamps to the K-T extinction event in SilmFilm, for those who didn't know.)
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-11/ugs-myp112717.php

Still, light is best. Without light from the sun, everything dies. No, seriously, *everything*. Nuclear winter, no hope of recovery. I mean, for a few years, sure, things hang on, struggling to survive. But we're talking millennia in starlight, here, so...not going to cut it. We *need* magic to make this work.

My suggestion would have to be that magic!starlight is sufficient to make magic!plants grow, but only slowly and not as well as under sunlight. So...taiga forests levels of growth.
 
Right, if Middle-earth were a planet without a sun, it would be as cold as Pluto. The very air would freeze into nitrogen glaciers. I have no suggestion for the heat problem, or the winter problem.

I do think it's relevant that the Valar can use their power to make Mortals live without water or even food -- which is a matter not only of energy but of carbon input. Morgoth does it to Hurin, and Ulmo does it to Tuor. I have concluded that Manwe and Varda probably put an enchantment on Earendil so that he doesn't need to breathe in the starless voids. Morgoth probably had to do it for the Orcs for centuries, because Angband and Anfauglith sure aren't prime farmland or hunting grounds. Fortunately plants in the dark only need the energy to be provided.

So after they discover the Elves, the Valar put blessings on the plants of Kuivienen and the route of the Great March to grow with just the light of the stars. Melian does the same for Beleriand, continually until the Sun rose. There is a primeval forest of some kind stretching from Fangorn to the Old Forest, and in parts of Beleriand. However I do think that a great deal of land ought to be the cold-growing steppe-tundra of the Ice Age. Grass can thrive in colder and drier subarctic climates than even trees, though it is dormant during sunless Arctic winters.

What about before the Valar found the Elves? There is a mention that Beleriand awoke for a time from the Sleep of Yavanna, just because the Valar "camped" there while assaulting Utumno. I propose that Orome had passed by Kuivienen and hung out there for a while shortly before the Elves awoke. By "chance" that was really arranged by Illuvatar.

In all cases the available food would be sparser than after the Sun rose, and there would be very few animals and even fewer predatory animals. Meat would be scarce, but fungus abundant. Also there can be a distinction between night-flowers and nocturnal animals, vs. day-flowers and diurnal animals.

In places where the Sleep continues, nothing would grow (except chemosynthetic bacteria and fungi), perhaps not even dead things would decay. Lack of decay may prevent fungi from growing. The Elves may notice this difference from Kuivienen if they stray far -- but of course they'll notice moreso the monsters abducting them.
 
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As I've been thinking about this issue, one of my ideas would be to not have any Entings during the sleep of Yavanna until the rising of the sun. So even if we leave it off as "magical" and somewhat awake with the wakening of the Elves, that the Ents and Entwives reproduce on their own could be a sign of the new life and lifting of the sleep: that natural life now has a newness and fullness of reproduction on its own, but that now it flowers faster and fades earlier. The Entings represent a next phase, just as the awakening of the Elves is mirrored in the awakening of the Ents, and the fading of the Elves is mirrored in the loss of the Entwives, I love the idea of Ent reproduction sort of as a symbol of the coming of Men who are younger and thus need to live on in their children; a time of full flower, representing the sort of world where Elves and Men coexist.

Not sure if I'm fully making sense, but it was just a thought I had. Certainly we don't need to get into the mechanics of Ent gestation, but to see the arising of "saplings" in the light of the sun as a sign of the new phase of life in Arda, and have that parallel the coming of Men, is an attracrtive idea to me.
 
One possibility is tying Yavanna's (and Varda's) blessing to keep the plants growing to the Trees of Valinor. Somehow the Trees sustain the ecosystem of Middle Earth. Maybe the light of the Trees is dim in Middle Earth, but still visible, akin to the Northern Lights. It can be shimmery.

Then when the Trees get destroyed, Middle Earth gets darker and colder. The climate changing from San Diego to Buffalo would be easy to show visually. We could see the elves of Beleriand struggling against a worsening* cold and holding out against famine. Then the Sun saves them from this.



*The worsening cold could also be of use in dramatizing the crossing of the Helcaraxë.
 
Something visible high in the Western sky? Very dim and only for the west coasts of Middle-earth, I'd think. Yavanna really wanted Manwe to give light to Middle-earth, so maybe this is something she introduces many years after the Trees began. Maybe as they get older and larger they get brighter? Probably at the time of Varda's second starmaking, right before the Elves awoke. Maybe Yavanna asked Varda to do something with the hoarded liquid light, like making a mist of it upon the tops of the Pelori?

I do imagine Middle-earth being in the grip of an Ice Age while Melkor ruled Utumno, beginning to warm up a bit while he was chained, and then getting a cold snap when he returned (the Younger Dryas stadial), which was made less severe by the Sun. But the light and Sleep of Yavanna and famine seems to be unrelated to heat or cold. Otherwise, again, Middle-earth = Pluto.

EDIT: I found a passage in the Silm saying "thus it was by the power of Ulmo that even under the darkness of Melkor life coursed still through many secret lodes, and the Earth did not die;" So maybe life continues much as before in rivers and lakes and streams?; maybe even without the participation of live algae or phytoplankton.
 
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Hey, if Melian can make plants grow in Beleriand before the Sunrise, can she make them grow underground? They'd need to be watered, but still... there could possibly be houseplants and living flowers in Menegroth.
 
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Could the Valar have been pouring out the liquid light from the trees, distributing it throughout the waters through the power of Ulmo of Middle Earth to generate warmth?
 
I really like the idea of Menegroth having living plants in it. We are picturing the caves being full of light, and perhaps rather magically so (they're going to light up the caves room by room as Lúthien dances through it to Daeron's song, so...lots of elements of magic there).

Underground plants take a ton of energy, of course. You can always identify the house illegally growing weed in the basement because of the high energy bill, right? But as long as there is light anyway, it's possible not many people will feel cheated if we don't overly explain the energy source. 'Magic lanterns' that don't seem to need to be topped off with fuel all of the time are just a thing that elves have, and so....


So far, we had just discussed Yavanna and Varda's contributions to keeping Middle Earth hospitable, but I really do like the idea of including Ulmo. Because surely he has not forgotten the elves out there! I like the idea that he's the one keeping things temperate, somehow using warm water underground to keep things from freezing too badly. And I'm fine with the streams/rivers/ponds/oceans teeming with life in our weird sunless world because...Ulmo's awesome.

It's all magic anyway, but nods as to *which* magic is making this work are good, I think.

The vats of light from the Trees can certainly be useful. Varda uses them to make the 'new' stars, right? And so that can tie in somehow.
 
The vats of light from the Trees can certainly be useful. Varda uses them to make the 'new' stars, right?
It was that or taken directly from Telperion.

But still the Light of the Trees lives now only in the Silmarils (paraphrasing Tolkien). How exactly is that true if she used the Trees to make some of the Stars? It would have made more sense the other way around, with Varda contributing to the Trees (like in the Lost Tales).
 
It was that or taken directly from Telperion.

But still the Light of the Trees lives now only in the Silmarils (paraphrasing Tolkien). How exactly is that true if she used the Trees to make some of the Stars? It would have made more sense the other way around, with Varda contributing to the Trees (like in the Lost Tales).

Or the addition of that particular line was a mistake. I'd rather remove a problematic line to keep a story than remove a problematic story to keep a line.
 
Ordinarily I'd tend to agree. (And I know that it's no longer relevant to SilmFilm, which showed the starmaking in Season 2.)

But in this case, the line about the Silmarils isn't an isolated offhand comment of no significance. Tolkien emphasizes again and again that the Silmarils are unique and special, and their light is specially holy. The effect of that light on Carcharoth, on the Sons of Feanor, on Shelob, are of huge story importance.

I'd guess that this inconsistency is the result of Tolkien accidentally keeping that idea about the starmaking from earlier versions (probably the Lost Tales) where the Silmarils were far less special and important.

If there's nothing particularly special about the Silmarils, then that greatly diminishes their story significance. That would damage more stories (and more important stories) than taking out the part where Varda (Vala of light) needs Yavanna's light instead of using her own. (Also, she makes the earlier stars before the Trees, so she can't be dependent on Yavanna for light.)
 
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Ordinarily I'd tend to agree. (And I know that it's no longer relevant to SilmFilm, which showed the starmaking in Season 2.)

But in this case, the line about the Silmarils isn't an isolated offhand comment of no significance. Tolkien emphasizes again and again that the Silmarils are unique and special, and their light is specially holy. The effect of that light on Carcharoth, on the Sons of Feanor, on Shelob, are of huge story importance.

I'd guess that this inconsistency is the result of Tolkien accidentally keeping that idea about the starmaking from earlier versions (probably the Lost Tales) where the Silmarils were far less special and important.

If there's nothing particularly special about the Silmarils, then that greatly diminishes their story significance. That would damage more stories (and more important stories) than taking out the part where Varda (Vala of light) needs Yavanna's light instead of using her own. (Also, she makes the earlier stars before the Trees, so she can't be dependent on Yavanna for light.)


I think that the stars, being remote and unreachable, are sufficiently removed from Middle Earth for the Silmarils to retain their singularity. I don't think we need see this as an all or nothing proposition, where the stars carrying the light of the Trees means that the Silmarils have no unique qualities, or that for the Silmarils to be unique, the Trees must be derivative of the stars.
 
But the star of Earendil, being a silmaril, is super unique - Galadriel's phial having the light of *that* star in it (the silmaril) is what makes it so special.

Well, okay, it's unique because it's the planet Venus, but we're getting caught between mythological and not-so-mythological explanations here.

I think that the sense of loss Tolkien wanted to create with the destruction of the Trees should be preserved. The *only* way to see the light of the Trees should be the silmarils. But of course the sun and the moon are derived from the Trees. Having stars in some way derived from the Trees (the vats of light) does not equal Treelight - those stars are Varda's creation.
 
The Sun and Moon are derived from the dying Trees marred by the poison of Ungoliante, so their light is less holy, and kind of cruddy in comparison. The Sun is too bright to look at directly. And somebody burnt the Moon and got grey smears all over it...

If the light in the vats diminished gradually and Varda didn't use it when it was fresh, or substantially altered it.... well it would have to be significantly different. It's true that only the Silmarils include lights from both Trees but that doesn't seem like enough of a difference.

I don't think we need see this as an all or nothing proposition, where the stars carrying the light of the Trees means that the Silmarils have no unique qualities
Not none, but significantly less -- as in the Lost Tales.

Well, okay, it's unique because it's the planet Venus
Shh! There is no 'planet' Venus. There are no textual inconsistencies that the combined brilliance of this forum can't solve.
 
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It contradicts the high significance they have in the rest of the Quenta. (IMO)
 
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It contradicts the high significance they have in the rest of the Quenta.

I suppose one could see it that way. I have never seen it so. As I've said earlier, the stars are remote and untouchable, and clearly not as bright, as a single Silmaril flying amongst them is far brighter, and more unwavering. It is obviously a more pure source of light. No one suggests trying to relight the trees by starlight, nor by the fruit and flower that become the sun and moon. It is clear that whatever Fëanor had done, it is a more clear "reflection" of the Trees' light.
 
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