The White Council

Re: Eldarin Fertility (was Re: In what ways did the Elves use their Rings?)

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

: : Of course from a biological and ecological view - as elves were : : immortal and immune to disease it would be a very good thing if : : they were infrequent reproducers.

: Indeed. But in MORGOTH'S RING Tolkien explains how they actually lost a part of their strength or spirit in reproducing, so they would normally have at most only four or so children. Feanor and Nerdanel were highly remarkable for producing seven sons.

: In the later ages they had fewer children, though Tolkien doesn't specify how much later or what the average was. Among human populations each woman needs to bear approximately 2.1 children in today's industrial societies just to maintain the population. In more primitive societies that number was higher due to the increased death rates. So it follows that when an Elven population achieved what might be called an "optimal level" the Elf-women would have to bear fewer children to prevent a population explosion. That might penalize the younger generations if they desired to have children, but then, they were immortal -- they could wait.

: I think we can all agree that even if the Eldar of Lindon recovered some of their numbers early in the Third Age (say, in the First Millenium, before the rise of Dol Guldur), at some point their population started declining again due to the departures of Elves over Sea. Tolkien implies that an immense number of Elves were leaving Middle-earth in the years just prior to the War of the Ring. That may be the sole reason for Elrond's comment in the Council that neither he nor Cirdan any longer had the power to withstand Sauron. Or it may be that the Eldar simply never recovered their late Second Age numbers. As so many male Elves must have died in the war, their wives and perhaps many of their children might have sailed over Sea early in the Third Age.

: There should be SOME reason for why the Elves didn't increase their numbers throughout the Third Age -- after all, so many Elves were departing they must have been making room for new generations. They suffered losses in the various wars, of course -- but I don't see that a decline in fertility (or fecundity) is implied. Many of the younger Elves may simply have been deferring the begetting of children because Middle-earth was becoming a more dangerous place again.

I have always thought that the immortality of the Elves raised a lot of problems. One being the difficulty of rationalising the linguistic, social and cultural divergence of the Elves after their awakening. In short-lived humans this sort of thing is quite explicable due to the accumulation of small changes over the generations. I have always thought it unlikely that a figure such as Thingol would deliberately drop the language of his youth (proto-Quenya) to develop a differing speech (Sindarin).

Ignoring these difficulties I would imagine that the desire to reproduce would be very much less for an immortal being than for a mortal. The apparently low reproduction rate need only be a manifestation of social forces and natural inclination rather than any physical dysfunction.

In many ways I think that the motivations and social make up of Elves described by Tolkien are too close to the human. The possession of immortality would, in my opinion, be likely to lead to something far more "Other." However, Tolkien was trying to create a heroic society not a reasoned view of the mores of an invented immortal race. I suspect that the motivations and actions of a true immortal race would be rather unheroic in our eyes.