Someone please refresh my memory. Do the wood elves, the ones who never knew Valinor, get to go to the West when they weary of life in Middle Earth?
It would appear that the Ents paid for the whole ‘free people’ thing by losing their females and dooming their race to extinction.
Yes they do.
Well they’re given the option too - whether or not they accept this summons might be in question. The Avari don’t know the Ainur in the same way the Eldar do.
Oh and elf gestation is roughly on par with humans…I seem to remember it being exactly 1 year and so a birthday is really a conception day.
The original intention of the Valar was that all of the Elves would come to Valinor to live with them, but some stopped along the way for various reasons. So they wouldn’t be taking the trip, so much as finishing it. Legolas, in fact, was a Wood-elf, though from a line heavily influenced by the High-elves.
My recollection of the taxonomy of the Elves is that the ones who never saw Valinor were the Avari, and they are different from the Wood-Elves. Except for the Avari, all of them eventually made it to Valinor, some in time to see the Trees and some not. Then many of them came back to Middle-Earth to fight Morgoth. After the War or Wrath, some went back and some (like Galadriel) did not. The Wood-Elves, Legolas’ people, were among those who had been there but did not return.
I don’t know that we ever actually see the Avari in the books, after they decide to stay behind.
For what it is worth, Legolas and Thranduil and Oropher, Thranduil’s father were all Sindarin. Most of the Elves of Mirkwood were Avari.
Oropher was a Sindarin Elf from Doriath.
Celeborn was also Sindarin, though Galadriel was a Noldo.
I thought the majority of the elves of Mirkwood (Greenwood) and Lorien were Silvan. There’s a distinction between the Avari, who never left Cuivienen, and the Silvan Elves, who were mostly Teleri who peeled off of the West-bound Host somewhere around the Vales of Anduin.
That is probably more accurate. Thank you.
And thank you all for your thoughtful and knowledgeable responses.