Voronwë

Lineage

Voronwë was a Noldo of Gondolin, the son of Aranwë, a lord of Turgon's house; in Unfinished Tales his mother is of the Sindar of the Falas, kin to Círdan, which explains both his love of the sea and his skill in ships. His name means the Steadfast, and his life bore it out.

The voyages

After the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, Turgon sent messengers secretly out of the hidden city to Círdan at the Mouths of Sirion, asking him to build ships and send them West to beg the help of the Valar. Voronwë was among those sent, and he lingered on the way in the willow-meads of Nan-tathren, enchanted by its beauty, so that he came to the last of the seven ships. For seven years it beat about the western seas, was turned back by the Enchanted Isles and the Shadowy Seas, and at the end was wrecked in sight of Middle-earth by a great storm. Voronwë alone was saved: Ulmo lifted him from the waves and cast him on the shore below Vinyamar in Nevrast, where the Vala had already sent Tuor.

The road to Gondolin

Tuor found him on the beach, and when Voronwë saw that the Man wore the arms Turgon had left in Vinyamar at Ulmo's command he understood that this was the messenger of the Lord of Waters. Ulmo had spared him for one purpose: to guide Tuor to Gondolin. The two set out in the autumn of F.A. 495, and their journey ran through the Fell Winter, the worst in memory, along the feet of the Ered Wethrin and past the ruined pools of Ivrin, which Glaurung had defiled. There they saw a tall Man in black go by in haste, and Voronwë did not know that it was Túrin. They crossed the Sirion and came at last to the Dry River and the Guarded Way, where the guards of Gondolin took them. Voronwë had broken Turgon's law by bringing a stranger to the hidden way and was under the King's judgement; he was pardoned, and Tuor's message was delivered.

Afterwards

Voronwë stayed in Gondolin and became Tuor's friend. He is not mentioned among the dead at the Fall, and the tradition of Unfinished Tales is that he survived and went again to the Havens of Sirion, where he was among those who followed Eärendil. No later record of him exists.

Legacy

Voronwë is the mariner who did not reach Valinor, and whose failure was itself the instrument of Ulmo's design. His account of the western seas is the fullest picture in the published texts of the Shadowy Seas that stood between Middle-earth and Aman until Eärendil, with the Silmaril, passed them.

Survived to the Fall of Gondolin according to the fullest account, and afterwards dwelt at the Havens of Sirion; his end is unrecorded.