Nienna

Nature

Nienna is the sister of the Fëanturi, Mandos and Irmo, and dwells alone, having no spouse. She is counted among the Aratar, the eight greatest of the Valar, though she is the least active of them in the outward histories. Her concern is sorrow. She mourns every wound that the World has taken from the marring of Melkor, and she was so full of grief during the Music that her lament was woven into the theme before the World began. But her grief is not despair. Those who come to her halls learn pity, endurance and hope in adversity, and she does not weep for herself. Her house stands in the far west of Valinor, at the edge of the World, with windows that look outward beyond its walls, and she goes often to the Halls of Mandos to comfort the dead who wait there.

In the histories

Nienna's tears have a creative power. When Yavanna sang the Two Trees into being on the mound of Ezellohar, Nienna wept upon the mound and watered it, and the Trees rose. After Melkor and Ungoliant destroyed them she wept again and washed away Ungoliant's poison, and it was her mourning, with Yavanna's power, that allowed the Trees to bring forth their last fruit and flower for the Sun and Moon. When Melkor was brought before the Valar after the Battle of the Powers, Nienna was among those who counselled mercy, and the Silmarillion notes that she supported his plea for pardon after three ages. She was, in that sense, mistaken, but her pity is presented as the same virtue that later saved the world.

Nienna and Gandalf

Her greatest influence on the later ages came through her pupil. Olórin, the Maia who was sent to Middle-earth as Gandalf, dwelt in Lórien but went often to Nienna's house and learned patience and pity from her. Unfinished Tales says that he became the friend of all the Children of Ilúvatar and took pity on their sorrows. The compassion that Gandalf showed to Gollum, his insistence that Frodo and Bilbo spare him, and his statement that pity might rule the fate of many, are the fruit of Nienna's teaching, and the destruction of the Ring at Mount Doom turned in the end on that very mercy.

Legacy

Nienna remains in her house at the western edge of the World, weeping for its hurts. She is the Vala whose lesson mattered most in the Third Age, though she never left Aman: the pity that Gandalf carried out of her halls was the hinge of the War of the Ring.

Nienna remains in her halls at the western edge of Valinor, mourning the hurts of Arda and comforting the dead in Mandos.