An Essay on the Sons of Fëanor by clotho123

1. The Oath

The Oath of Fëanor is one of the central elements of the Silmarillion (a main theme of which could be summarised as ‘think before you make any vows’).  It cuts destructively across the history of the First Age, especially in the decades which follow the quest of Beren and Lúthien.  Fëanor, the initiator of the Oath, died too early to feel its full effects, but it dominated the destiny of his sons.  To understand their story it is vital to get an understanding of the part the Oath played in their deeds, and to learn what we can of its nature.

The first thing to note about the Oath is that it is repeatedly indicated there was a lot more to it than words, and that the sons of Fëanor were not kept from breaking it simply by pride or stubbornness or a misguided sense of honour. The Oath indeed is presented as having a force of its own, and an almost sentient will, and the following of it appears as a matter of compulsion rather than free choice.  Tolkien’s comments are brief and widely scattered but consistent, and if we put them together a powerful picture emerges.

“They swore an oath which none shall break and none should take, by the name even of Ilúvatar … so sworn, good or evil, an oath may not be broken, and it shall pursue oathkeeper and oathbreaker to the world’s end.” [S 9]

Tolkien states twice in the space of a few sentences that such an Oath may not be broken, and although there is an apparent contradiction with the reference to oathbreaking at the end (perhaps for ‘oathbreaker’ we should read ‘one who attempts to break it’) the idea of the Oath as possessing a terrible power is clear, and strongly stressed.  Any who swear such an oath will be pursued by it for as long as the world lasts.  They cannot simply make up their minds to break it and walk away in freedom.

The Valar must agree with that view, as Manwë’s rather unhelpful message to Fëanor after the Oath-swearing is “by thine oath art exiled”, since Manwë very much wanted to convince the Noldor not to leave Aman this is strong evidence he did not see breaking the Oath as an available choice. [S 9] If the Oath was mere words, this part of the message is either meaningless or deliberately untruthful (not to mention irresponsible, for, while nothing Manwë said was likely to influence Fëanor at this point, a message saying “You don’t have to keep that Oath,” just might have averted a lot of deaths in Doriath and Sirion later on).  Later, after the Noldor have settled in Middle-earth, it is said of Maedhros, the eldest son, “he also was bound by the oath, though it now slept for a time.” [S 13]  The reference is a passing one, but an oath that can ‘sleep’ is more than words spoken in public.  The implication also is that an oath that slept ‘for a time’ later awakened again, and indeed Tolkien describes this happening.  During the Siege of Angband the Oath was evidently dormant, but once the Siege was broken it is quick to make itself felt.

The turning point here is the quest of Beren and Lúthien.  Finrod is quite explicit about the power of the Oath after Beren asks for his help, and we can assume, I think, that he knows what he is talking about.  “It is plain that Thingol desires your death;” he says, “but it seems that this doom goes beyond his purpose, and that the Oath of Fëanor is again at work. For the Silmarils are cursed with an oath of hatred, and he that even names them in desire moves a great power from slumber; and the sons of Fëanor would lay all the Elf-kingdoms in ruin rather than suffer any other than themselves to win or possess a Silmaril, for the Oath drives them.” [My emphasis, S 19]

It is not clear here whether Thingol has inadvertently awakened the Oath by demanding a Silmaril as the price of his daughter’s hand in marriage or whether the Oath is working through him, and prompted him in some way to make the demand, but it is plain that Finrod sees it as an active force and a very powerful one.  He also says quite specifically that the sons of Fëanor are driven by the Oath, it is not simply a matter of possessiveness.  And although he accurately predicts trouble from Celegorm and Curufin once they know about Beren’s quest Finrod does not seem resentful.  “Yet my own oath holds; and thus we are all ensnared.” [My emphasis] I believe that the ‘we’ here includes Celegorm and Curufin (Finrod cannot be using ‘all’ simply of himself and Beren) although it is fair to say they do not seem troubled by this, or inclined to make any attempt to resist the Oath’s power.  Finrod also again invokes the idea of the Oath as being capable both of sleep and being awakened.  It is awake again now, and he foresees ruin coming from it.

A little later there is a side reference to the Oath and the Valar,  “the oath of Fëanor perhaps even Manwë could not loose, until it found its end, and the sons of Fëanor relinquished the Silmarils upon which they had laid their ruthless claim.”  [S 23] This does sound at first as though they were holding to the Oath of choice, but I believe a closer reading suggests otherwise.  It is not their claim on the Silmarils the sons of Fëanor must relinquish, but the jewels themselves; taken together with other references to the Oath I think this implies that the Oath would only be ended when they (or some of them) had the Silmarils and let them go.  At all events the reference to Manwë being unable to loose the Oath is important even if Tolkien does not entirely commit himself; the Oath is suggested to be a force outside the control even of the Valar. Even if Manwë did have the power to undo the Oath, there is nothing to imply he is willing to do so.

There are also some significant annal entries on the sack of Sirion which are rather more specific than the description of the same events in the published Silmarillion and which have further implications for the power of the Oath.  The first reads: “Sons of Fëanor learn [that the Silmaril is in Sirion] but Maidros forswears his oath.”  Then some years later: “Torment fell upon Maidros and his brethren … because of their unfulfilled oath.” [WJ 3 v; also LR 2 iii]

What these lines reveal is that the surviving sons of Fëanor made a serious attempt to break the Oath (or at least Maedhros did and presumably held the others in check) and ‘torment’ fell upon them as a result.  What kind of torment Tolkien does not say, but it is not a word he is prone to use lightly.  They tried to break the Oath, but it just was not that easy; and the attempt to break it caused them some kind of severe suffering, an affliction of the mind most likely although the text is not specific, which eventually broke them down. That they did try to break it and failed is very significant, especially in the light of Maedhros’s words to Maglor at the end of the Silmarillion.

“But Maedhros answered that if they returned to Aman but the favour of the Valar were withheld from them, then their oath would still remain, but its fulfilment be beyond all hope; and he said: ‘Who can tell to what dreadful doom we shall come, if we disobey the Powers in their own land, or purpose ever to bring war again into their holy realm?’ ”  [S 24] Plainly stirring up more trouble in Valinor is not something he wants to do, but something he anticipates being compelled to do, and the knowledge that the brothers have already tried and failed to break the Oath lends the words additional significance.  “Compelled by their Oath” are the words Tolkien uses when describing the final seizure of the Silmarils by Maedhros and Maglor in the letter printed as an introduction to the second edition of The Silmarillion. They were compelled; it was not simply a character flaw.

Also important here is a passage in the Doom of Mandos spoken to the Noldor, and describing the House of Fëanor.  “Their Oath shall drive them, and yet betray them and ever snatch away the very treasures that they have sworn to pursue.”  [S 9] It is possible to debate whether this particular passage is curse or prophecy (Tolkien indicates the Doom contains both), I think it is prophecy, but if it is a curse laid by the Valar that would still there imply something active and malevolent at work.  Again here we have the image of the Oath as an active and terrible force, one which shapes events with a power of its own.

A question that might be raised here is why, if the Oath was a powerful force in its own right, it was possible for Fëanor’s sons to choose not to attack Lúthien while the Silmaril was in her possession after Thingol’s death (apparently because they were overawed) and suffer no ill effects.  In fact the answer is not hard to deduce from Tolkien’s chronologies.  Although the timelines for this period never reached a fixed and final form it is clear that Lúthien had the Silmaril for about two years at most.  By comparison fifteen years passed between the surviving sons learning the Silmaril was in Sirion and the record of torment falling on them because the Oath was unfulfilled.   [WJ 3 v; also LR 2 iii]  Lúthien simply did not have the Silmaril long enough for the Oath to get to work.  Had she lived longer it is reasonable to assume that the Oath would indeed have returned to torment the brothers.

At one point Tolkien even hints that the Oath had a generally corrupting power, beyond simply compelling those who took it to seek the Silmarils at all costs. In Doriath Melian is represented as saying to Galadriel, “what evil lies on the sons of Fëanor that they are so haughty and so fell?”   [S 15] Galadriel could, of course, have replied that they were born that way, but she does not.  The implication may be that the Oath is at work even in matters not directly connected to the Silmarils, and has a deteriorating effect on character.

All of this is consistent enough, but not very vivid.  Tolkien tells us of the power of the Oath, but he doesn’t make us feel it.  Quite likely that was not his intention, most of the Silmarillion is written in a spare and distant manner.  However it is worth asking what sort of power he may have had in mind.  There is no clear-cut parallel to the Oath of Fëanor in Tolkien’s other writing, but the nearest equivalent may be the Ruling Ring. Here too we have a force of immense power, with a will of its own, that borders on intelligent awareness.  Here too we have an insidious force that enters minds, that may lie dormant for years, but when it wakes is hard to resist; a force which both compels and betrays, and leads those under its influence into evil even when they intend good.  Tolkien makes us understand the power of the Ring, so that we know why Frodo commits the objectively insane act of claiming the ring on Mount Doom and what causes Boromir, a basically honourable man, to assault a companion for selfish ends.  There is no such immediate sense of the Oath of Fëanor, but we should not underrate it for that reason.  To imagine it as a force akin, if different, to the force exerted by the Ruling Ring seems closer to Tolkien’s intention than to view it as a form of words which may be broken or kept at will.

I am not saying here that Fëanor’s sons did not bear moral responsibility for their actions, clearly the image of the Silmarils burning the hands of Maedhros and Maglor implies they do.  It’s likely too that some were more susceptible to the Oath, or resisted less strongly, than others (as is the case with the various people influenced by the Ring).  And not all their actions were dictated by the Oath, by any means: except possibly as a generally corrupting force the Oath had little to do with Celegorm and Curufin’s scheme to force Lúthien into an unwanted marriage or with the burning of the ships at Losgar.  Still I think we do less than justice to Tolkien’s conception if we do not recognise that Fëanor’s sons were victims (some more willing than others) of their own Oath.  They had unleashed a power too strong for them, and there was no way out.  I also think we must conclude that although at the end of the Silmarillion Maglor is undoubtedly right when he says they will do less evil breaking the Oath than keeping it; Maedhros is also right when he says there is no prospect of the Oath letting them alone, even in Valinor.  “Who shall release us?”  They were trapped.

What is it that gives the Oath this terribly destructive force?  Why does Tolkien in the letter already quoted call it ‘evil’?   It is implied that the terrible power in it springs from the naming of Ilúvatar.  But why should that make the Oath a force for evil deeds?  It is suggested that swearing an oath in Ilúvatar’s name is itself a wrong act, blasphemous, one might say, and therefore nothing good can come of it. However, the passage describing the swearing does say an Oath sworn in Ilúvatar’s name may be ‘good or evil’, and certain details in the Tolkien text entitled ‘Laws and Customs of the Eldar’ suggest the same.

According to the L&C the marriage ceremonies of the Eldar included a blessing in which Manwë and Varda were named in witness “and moreover that the name of Eru was spoken (as was seldom done at any other time)”. Elves might at times marry informally “without ceremony or witness  (save blessings exchanged and the naming of the Name); and the union so joined was alike indissoluble”, indicating this part of the ceremony was the binding part.  [MR 3 ii] Although the marriage ceremony is not specifically said to include a vow spoken in the name of Ilúvatar, yet there is enough of a resemblance to the infamous Oath (which also names Manwë and Varda in witness) to make one wonder if Fëanor was taking the marriage ceremony as a model (if so no wonder his listeners were shocked!)  And the marriage bond of the Elves was notoriously unbreakable, except by the Doom of permanent residence in Mandos.  It is not entirely clear whether the Valar can effect a divorce, with both parties living, but it is clear that if they can they will not.  Although Tolkien is unclear about how much is due to the ceremony and how much to the intrinsic nature of the Elves, once again we have the association of the naming of Ilúvatar with a binding force that even the Valar cannot or will not alter.  Here, however, that force is clearly not malevolent and the invoking of the Name is not seen as wrong.

The invoking of Ilúvatar, then, does not seem to be a wrong act in itself, although it is a binding act.  The basic wrongness, or otherwise, must depend on context.  I think the clue here may lie in Finrod’s word’s ‘an oath of hatred’.  Fëanor swore out of hatred.  Understandable hatred certainly, nonetheless his motives were entirely negative.  They were selfish also; he was driven by thwarted possessiveness, that ‘greedy love’ for the Silmarils that is implicitly criticised by Tolkien. [S 7]  Although we are told that Fëanor loved his father more than the works of his hands it is not to avenge Finwë that he swears (as Fingolfin points out in one version of the story [PM 2 xi]).  An oath of vengeance would still have been hate fuelled, but might also have held elements of selfless love – at the least if Fëanor had sworn to avenge his father the second and third Kinslayings probably would not have happened. But he swore to get his stones back. What’s more he swore to get them back, not just from Morgoth, but from anyone else who took one as well; an obvious act of jealous possessiveness (perhaps caused by his conviction that the Valar would seize the stones if they could).  Fëanor’s motives may be understandable, but they are not in any way admirable or good.

Fëanor’s folly, his sin even, may therefore have lain in invoking the name of Ilúvatar not out of love, or at least kind intent, as in the marriage ceremony, but out of hate, fury and selfish possessiveness.  It was because his motives were negative that the force he unleashed was destructive.  Such an oath would always have been a compelling force, but it became actively destructive, evil even, because of Fëanor’s motives for swearing.  It was sworn with bad intent and therefore could never come to good.

His sons’ motives may not have been the same as their father’s.  We are never told what any of them thought about the Silmarils as an object in themselves, rather than as the focus of the Oath, although they do seem to exert a powerful fascination on all who come into contact. It is hard, though, not to think that loyalty to their father would have played a part.  However, Fëanor was the initiator of the Oath, no doubt it was his motives that counted.

Something Tolkien never attempts to explain was exactly what was meant by the ‘Eternal Darkness’ that the oath swearers called down upon themselves. Dramatically the concept is none the worse for being mysterious, but we may ask the meaning all the same.  What was this Darkness, or what did they think it was?

There can be no certain answer, and indeed it is possible that they themselves had no clear idea of what they meant, but some suggestions can be made. It seems to be more than merely an eternity in Mandos – the Halls are not referred to in those terms anywhere else. The Oath was sworn immediately after the Darkness of Ungoliant came over Valinor, the Darkness that was not merely absence of light but, “a thing with being of its own: for it was indeed made by malice out of Light, and it had power to pierce the eye, and to enter heart and mind, and strangle the very will.” [S 8]  That experience was still fresh when the Oath was sworn, and for many of the Elves present, including Fëanor and his sons, it would most likely be not just the most terrifying experience of their lives but the only truly terrifying experience.  It might well have been the worst thing they could imagine at this moment, hence Fëanor’s invoking of it in his vow.

An alternative would be that they meant the Void into which the Valar thrust Morgoth at the end of the First Age, the Dark which lay beyond Valinor, and to the borders of which Fëanor and his sons were specifically said to have travelled. [S 5] Or it may have been simply eternal Nothingness, no doubt a particularly frightening concept for a race born immortal.

There is another possibility, suggested by passages on elvish fear, or spirits, in the L&C.  In the days before they came to Aman, we are told, some of the Elves believed souls of slain elves passed “into ‘the Realm of Night’ and into the power of the ‘Lord of Night’.  These opinions were plainly derived from the Shadow under which they awoke….”  [MR 3 ii]  The Shadow, of course, is Morgoth, or the power of Morgoth, and undoubtedly the ‘Lord of Night’ is Morgoth as well, although the Elves of the time can have had only the vaguest idea of who and what he was.  This idea was mostly mistaken, of course, but not entirely. Ideally all elven spirits would go to Mandos, but they had the power to refuse, and a couple of pages later in the L&C Tolkien tells that an elven spirit  “would flee in terror of the Shadow to any refuge – unless it were already committed to the Darkness and passed then into its dominion.  In like manner even of the Eldar some who had been become corrupted refused the summons, and then had little power to resist the counter-summons of Morgoth.” [MR 3 ii]

Old ideas about the ‘Lord of Night’ might have lingered on in Valinor, if only as stories of the past, and no doubt the Elves would realise that Morgoth/Melkor had been the source of them, although it is uncertain how much they would have known about the possible fate of spirits who refused the call of Mandos. One interpretation of Eternal Darkness then would be the dominion of Morgoth.  It seems unlikely that Fëanor would ever knowingly vow himself to fall under the power of Morgoth; but if, as is possible, they had no clear idea of what Eternal Darkness meant when they swore the Oath, Fëanor’s sons might have come to associate it with Morgoth later, especially if they had heard some of the rumours about the origins of Orcs as they most likely had.  (And what did Morgoth do with the elvish spirits which fell into his power?)

Whatever they imagined it is clear from their final conversation that Maedhros and Maglor took the threat of Eternal Darkness seriously, and there is no reason to think the others did not.  There is here also an interesting contradiction between given forms of the Oath. The prose version, which is the version in the published Silmarillion, calls the Darkness down on them “if they kept it not.”  [S 9]  However there is also a versified version which includes the words “To the everlasting Darkness doom us if our deed faileth.” [MR 2]  Whereas the one version requires they should try their hardest to get the Silmarils back in order to avoid the Darkness, the other, and more chilling, requires they should succeed.  This in turn might well mean that those who survived longer felt a responsibility to complete the Oath for those who had died, in order to free them from the Darkness.

This leads to the question of whether they necessarily were, or would have been, in fact condemned to Darkness (whatever we may understand by that). The question here arises of whether it was in fact possible to swear oneself to Dark, even by invoking Ilúvatar. This would certainly be compatible with Tolkien’s universe: we might compare the fate of the Ringwraiths, bound hopelessly to Sauron even if they were not evil to begin with.  However Tolkien says quite specifically and several times that the spirit of Fëanor went to Mandos which, though apparently not a pleasant experience for rebel Noldor (at least if we believe the Doom of Mandos), was surely better than the Darkness however conceived.  There is no reason to suppose anything worse happened to his sons.  Was that because they had kept the Oath as far as possible or is there something else going on?  It is not possible to go very far in speculation down that road, especially since there is no clear evidence on what the Darkness was, but we may here quote Finrod again.  “If we are indeed the Eruhin, the Children of the One, then He will not suffer Himself to be deprived of His own, not by any Enemy, not even by ourselves.” [MR 4]   Even Sauron’s power over the Ringwraiths did have an end.

A final ambiguity in the Silmarillion is that it is never quite made clear whether the Oath was fulfilled in the end or not.  Certainly it was as far as the two Silmarils which Maedhros and Maglor took from Eonwë are concerned, they were no longer being withheld by anyone.  But what about the third Silmaril?  Although it is in the sky it is also on the head of Eärendil.  Does that not count as being withheld?  Yet Maedhros and Maglor did seem to think that Silmaril had been somehow taken out of the equation.  The question is finally left unanswered.