Falmari

The last to cross

The Falmari are the Teleri who finished the Great Journey. When Ulmo came back to the shores of Beleriand for the third kindred, Elwë was still lost in Nan Elmoth, and his brother Olwë took the lordship of those who would not wait any longer. Ulmo drew them across the Sea on the floating island, but Ossë, who had befriended the Teleri on the coast and grieved to lose them, persuaded Ulmo to anchor the island in the Bay of Eldamar within sight of Aman. So for a long age the Teleri lived on Tol Eressëa, the Lonely Isle, apart from the other Eldar, and their speech drifted from the Quenya of Tirion into a tongue of its own.

Alqualondë

In time the Falmari yearned for the light of the Trees, which reached their island only dimly. Ulmo sent Ossë to teach them shipbuilding, and on ships drawn by swans they came to the coast of Aman north of the Calacirya. There they built Alqualondë, the Haven of the Swans, a city of quays and arches of living rock, whose ships were shaped like swans with golden beaks and eyes of jet. The Noldor, their friends in those days, gave them pearls and taught them stonework; the Falmari in turn were the only Eldar who kept ships and sailed the bay. Olwë was their king, and his daughter Eärwen married Finarfin of the Noldor, so that the golden house of Finarfin was half Telerin, and Galadriel counted the Falmari her mother's kin.

The Kinslaying

The Falmari did not join the rebellion of Fëanor. When the Noldor came north along the coast demanding the swan-ships, Olwë refused to give away the work of his people's hands or to help the Noldor defy the Valar. Fëanor's host tried to take the ships, the mariners resisted, and there was battle on the quays; the second host under Fingon, coming up behind, joined in without knowing the cause. Many of the Falmari were killed, and their ships were stolen and afterwards burned at Losgar. This was the first Kinslaying, and it brought the Doom of Mandos upon the Noldor. Uinen raised a storm in her grief that wrecked many of the stolen ships.

The Falmari never forgave it. When the host of the Valar sailed to Middle-earth at the end of the First Age, the Teleri of Alqualondë, remembering the Kinslaying, would not send their sons to fight beside the Noldor but only lent their ships, which others crewed. Their coolness toward the Exiles endured, and it is said that the returning Noldor were long unwelcome in the Haven.

What sets them apart

The Falmari are the Elves of the Sea. Their whole art was shipwrighting and the music of the shore, and they were closer to Ossë and Uinen than to any of the greater Valar. They were the only Elves of Aman whose city faced outward across the water, and the only ones with a fleet. Their hair was often silver, as in the house of Olwë. Like the other Calaquendi they had the light of the Trees in their faces, though they came to it late and after long delay.

Relations with other peoples

The Falmari's history is chiefly a history of the Noldor: friendship, then bloodshed, then long estrangement. They had no dealings with Men or Dwarves, and their kin in Middle-earth, the Sindar, they never saw again except as the survivors of Beleriand who sailed west after the War of Wrath and settled on Tol Eressëa.

Fate

The Falmari dwell at Alqualondë beyond the end of the histories, under Olwë their king, and their ships still sail the Bay of Eldamar.

Silver hair was common among the Falmari and marked the house of Olwë; they were somewhat slighter than the Noldor and had the sea in their voices.

The Falmari built and sailed ships, made music by the shore, and lived in a harbour city of white and grey stone lit by lamps. Their tongue, Telerin, was a close cousin of Quenya. They were ruled by Olwë from Alqualondë.

The Falmari were the Teleri who crossed to Aman under Olwë when Elwë was lost. They lived long on Tol Eressëa, learned shipcraft from Ossë, and came at last to the coast of Eldamar.

They remain at Alqualondë in the Undying Lands, having taken no part in the wars of Middle-earth beyond lending ships to the host of the Valar.