Ossë

Nature

Ossë is a Maia in the service of Ulmo, Lord of Waters, but where Ulmo's thought runs through every river and the deep places of the ocean, Ossë's domain is narrower and wilder: the seas that touch the coasts of Middle-earth, the surf, the shallows and the storm. He delights in wind and towering waves and does not go into the great deeps. His spouse is Uinen, the Lady of the Seas, and it is she alone who can calm him when his fury rises. Mariners of later ages feared him and prayed rather to her.

Temptation and pardon

In the earliest days Melkor tried to draw Ossë to his side, promising him the whole realm of Ulmo if he would serve. For a while Ossë listened, and his tumults did great harm along the coasts. At the request of Aulë, Uinen restrained him and brought him back to Ulmo, who pardoned him, and Ossë has remained faithful since. Yet the old delight in violence never wholly left him, and he is apt to raise storms without asking leave.

Friend of the Teleri

Ossë's chief place in the histories is among the Teleri. When that people lingered on the western shores of Beleriand while Ulmo went to fetch them, Ossë and Uinen came to them and made friends, and Ossë sat on the rocks and taught them the lore of the sea. He loved their voices, and when Ulmo returned with the floating island to carry them to Aman, Ossë begged some of them to stay. Those who did became the Falathrim under Círdan, the first shipwrights and mariners of Middle-earth, and they always counted Ossë their friend.

When the rest of the Teleri were carried west, Ossë followed the island, grieving, and at his plea Ulmo rooted it in the bay of Eldamar as Tol Eressëa. There, within sight of Aman but still under the sky and the sea, the Teleri lived for a long age until they longed to reach the light. Ossë then taught them to build ships and gave them swans to draw the vessels across the bay to Alqualondë. The swan-ships of the Teleri, later seized by the Noldor at the Kinslaying, were the fruit of his teaching, and the seafaring skill of Númenor in the Second Age descended from what he had taught.

Legacy

Ossë has no part in the great wars, but the histories remember him wherever ships are built or sailors watch the sky. He remains in the waters of Middle-earth, wild and loyal, the power beneath the storms that have wrecked so many fleets.

Ossë remains in the coastal seas of Middle-earth in the service of Ulmo.