When you stop to think about it, what is there to do in Aman?
Before they went into Exile the Noldor quarried the hills and mountains of Valinor for stone with which to build their homes and towers. They must have paved a lot of roads throughout Aman
just to help them move the stone around.
But what else did they do while they were building their civilization? They mined the mountains for ores and gems and hunted in the woods of Oromë (probably alongside the Vanyar).
It may also be that some of the Noldor went sailing with the Falmari on occasion (the Falmari
dove for pearls, which they traded to the Noldor for gemstones and in payment for their help in building Alqualondë). But basically there must have been very little to do except sit around
singing all day long, or feasting with the Valar and Maiar. To a Noldo, who had to be doing
something constructive, life in the Blessed Realm may have been quite boring. Why else would
Melkor's subtle suggestions that they could have had so much more in Middle-earth have struck
a nerve with the Noldor?
After the Exiles returned to Tol Eressëa in the Second Age they don't seem to have remained
content with sitting around and singing all day long. Quite possibly the Eldar who sailed to
Numenor to teach the Dunedain included many Noldor who wanted to get back into the swing of
things. Helping the Edain build a new nation might have been just the trick for them.
The Sindar probably were the Elves who took trees, plants, and animals to Numenor. They, too,
may have gotten bored with the dull life of living in the Blessed Realm. What must the Valar
have had to do to keep the Elves happy through all those thousands of years? There could have
been quite a few horse races, hunting competitions, and probably an excruciatingly long tradition of poetry and singing contests. How many variations on "Lament for the Two Trees" could the Vanyar have composed?
Librarians may have been in great demand among the Elves. Once Rumil invented the Tengwar
and Fëanor revised them, the Elves must have composed a storm of songs, stories, histories, etc.
They must also have spent ages just analyzing all the linguistic knowledge the Noldor and Sindar brought from Middle-earth. After Aman was taken away from the circles of the world, the Elves
must have felt pretty isolated. Sure, a ship or two would come sailing up to Tol Eressëa every
now and then, bearing fresh news of events in the mortal lands, new additions for the genealogies (that probably only changed slightly every few hundred years), and the occasional new idiom
from some half-known dialect in the more distant regions of Middle-earth.
And just where exactly did all the Elves who sailed to Aman settle down? How large did
Avallonë become? Did anyone ever leave the city permanently? The Valar or Noldor of Tirion
must have given the tree named Celeborn to the Elves of Beleriand as a symbol of restored
communion. But were the Elves of Tol Eressëa allowed to move to the mainland?
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Parma Endorion
Since there was supposedly a Palantir in Avallonë that was attuned to the "Elendil stone" which was kept on the Tower Hills near Mithlond, did the Elves set up some sort of message system
whereby the folks in Middle-earth could exchange greetings and news with the folks back in
Aman? Gildor Inglorion apparently spent a lot of time visiting this Palantir. Surely, with
memories as good as they were among the Elves, he didn't need to refresh his vision of the West every couple of years?
And isn't it strange how we know what happened to Ar-Pharazôn after he attacked Valinor? How
did that knowledge survive, unless Elendil (who wrote the "Akallabeth") got on the line with someone in Tol Eressëa and found out what happened?
One must wonder who the Elven lords of Tol Eressëa were. They visited Numenor for the
wedding of Aldarion and Erendis. Was Finrod Felagund one of them? Yet he is said to "walk
with Finarfin his father beneath the trees in Eldamar". Maybe he didn't have to settle in Tol Eressëa.
And did Finrod ever marry Amarië, the Vanyarin Elf who was not allowed to accompany him
into exile? If so, perhaps there were a lot of weddings in Aman after the return of the Exiles. The Noldor did tend to intermarry with the other Elves a great deal.
One might do well to ask what the Elves do all day, now that they've left a legacy of great wars and dooms behind them in Middle-earth. They're unlikely to rebel against the Valar again, nor to be threatened by any evil creatures. Maybe they spread out into all the uninhabited regions of
Aman, building cities, planting forests, digging new mines and quarries, and generally just
having a grand old time building a new civilization that surpassed the ancient one in too many
ways to count.
There must have been quite a few "tribes" in Aman by the time Numenor was destroyed: the Vanyar, the Noldor of Finarfin, the Falmari, the Noldor of Tol Eressëa, the Sindar of Tol
Eressëa, and any Silvan Elves who were starting to show up.
Where did Legolas and Gimli finally settle? For that matter, was Galadriel forced to stay in
Avallonë? What if she wanted to visit Finarfin in Eldamar (or Valinor, assuming Eldamar was
too damaged for the Noldor of Tirion to return there after Ar-Pharazôn's little party)?
Where would Celeborn end up staying once he finally showed up? Would he have to settle for
visiting relatives for the next couple of thousand years?
What about Elrond and Celebrian? And Elladan and Elrohir (assuming they chose to be of Elven
kind)? Did they go north to visit Elwing and Ëarendil? Was Elwing still living in that tower in the far north?
Does Ëarendil ever bring out the Silmaril on high feast days? If Aman was not made into a new
world with new continents to explore, maybe the Elves perfected space travel and inter-
dimensional warping so they can occasionally check up on things back in the mortal lands. If so, we might finally have an explanation of what all those strange sightings of UFOs relate to....
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Essays On Middle-earth