Halls of Nienna

From Tolkien Gateway
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The halls of Nienna lay at the westernmost border of the world, and it is said that the windows of her house looked "outward from the walls of the world".[note 1] however it is said to be also near the halls of Mandos, which is westward to Valinor. The Valie Nienna dwelt mainly in her halls, and didn't visit often the gladness of Valimar.[1]

Other versions of the legendarium

As described in an early version of the legendarium, Fui Nienna chose for her dwelling a wide and dark hall in the courts of Mandos (in this version, her husband). This hall she named Fui, and therein:

before her black chair burnt a brazier with a single flickering coal, and the roof was of bats' wings, and the pillars that upheld it and the walls about were made of basalt.

At Fui was summoned the Men after death, to await their doom (some of them stay there, some go to Melko's Angamandi, many to Arvalin, and few to Valinor).[2] As Christopher Tolkien also noted, in later versions it is Mandos who appears as the Doomsman of the Valar [3]

Notes

  1. It has been noted that this reference is problematic, as in the published Silmarillion Valinor is surrounded by the sea Ekkaia and not the Ilurambar or the Void as in the earlier Ambarkanta.

References

Dwellings of the Valar
  Halls of Nienna · Halls of Mandos · House of Oromë · House of Tulkas · Ilmarin · Lórien · Mansions of Aulë · Ulmonan