What are the Silmarils?

what actually are the silmarils the silmarillion is named after them but what are they and why are they so important hi everyone this is robert welcome to in deep geek if you'd like to see more videos about great fantasy stories like the lord of the rings a song of ice and fire and the witcher please click on the subscribe button in the bottom right of your screen and click on the bell icon the silmarills are obviously central to the silmarillion or at least the largest part of it the quinta silmaril literally history of the silmarils is the largest of the five books of the silmarillion and the most story driven with great characters and narratives it's clear tolkien loved writing about them but by the time of the lord of the rings the silmarils were ancient history so what were they and why were they so important to understand their creation we have to go way back in time to the years of the trees before even the first age in that time light was brought to the land of the valar by two trees telperion and lorelin the only other source of light then being the stars and the light of those trees was beautiful just pure and bright and beautiful now at the time there was an old or elf by the name of feyenoor i'm sure i'll do more videos on him because he really was a hugely important and charismatic figure heir to the kingship of the noldor a mighty warrior a linguist and craftsman without equal he made the palantiri those powerful seeing stones we come across in the lord of the rings for example but his masterwork was the creation of the silmarils three jewels that held the light of the two trees telperion and lorelin this was an astonishing feat and there are many layers to this story he was inspired so it was said by galadriel's hair yes she was around then which shone bright gold and silver and people said captured the light of the two trees in its tresses feyenoor wanted to capture and preserve the light of the trees forever perhaps this was some premonition of the fate of the trees for they would not last and it was almost certainly also at the prompting of melkor the original big baddie of tolkien's world melkor had been released from his chains and had convinced the valar that he had changed his ways he was actually rather successfully trying to turn the naldor elves against the velar anyway feyenoord poured everything into the creation and crafting of the silmarils they were from an entirely new substance cinema crystalline and unbreakable and somehow as he had intended capturing the very light of the trees they shone in the dark and were even brighter in the light the valar hallowed them so that no mortal or evil hand could touch them without being burned the feat of their creation was unparalleled and unrepeatable feyenoor alone knew the secret of their creation and he had poured so much of himself into it that he knew he could never make any more as is the way with a lot of tolkien's in-world artifacts think of the one ring and the arkhan stone as well their mere astonishing presence started to cause people to covet them and that led to confrontation strife war and tragedy people's desire to possess the silmarils led to much of the conflict of the first age hence the story of the first age in the silmarillion being named quente silverill the first person to succumb to an obsession with the silmarils was probably feyenoor himself he alternately wore them with great pride and then locked them away so that no one else could touch or see them what happened then was that melchor coveted them as we've noted he was pretending to be a reformed character at the time but secretly turning the noldor against the valar feyenoor fell out with his half-brother as a result and went off in exile with the silmarils and his father when he returned to make up with fingolfin his half-brother after the valar had rather belatedly realized that a lot of all of this was melkor's fault melchor struck he enlisted ungollient an horrific spider-like figure that could suck life and light out of the world and killed the two trees poisoning them so that they could no longer provide their light to the world the velar understandably turned to feyeno his silmarils held the light of the trees and the valar could use that to bring the trees back to restore light to arda but feyenoor refused the silmarils were his and he could never replace them so he would never give them up but then the news came melkor had taken the silmarils himself killing fair nor's father in the process feyenoor now king of the noldor grew angry at everyone melkor who was renamed morgoth the valar everyone he led his people to middle middle-earth to reclaim the silmarils from morgoth and he and his sons swore an oath that they would fight anyone who stood between them and reclaiming the silmarils what happened next was perhaps inevitable but tragic feyenoor and the naldor attacked the forces of morgoth and lost feyenoord died though his sons survived to cling to their oath there is obviously a lot more to that part of the story but it's worth pausing to understand the gravity of what had just happened with the death of those two trees light had gone from the world and the only means of saving those trees the silmarils were now in the possession of morgoth the valar cut their losses they salvaged what they could from the trees and made the sun and the moon and with that a new way of reckoning time came into being and the first age proper began the silmarils were not therefore just old and beautiful and precious but the last remnants of that pure light of valino the fact that morgoth held them was an affront to everyone but particularly to feyenoor sons who had sworn that oath that oath and their actions since then had caused them to be cut off entirely by the valar incidentally what happened with the silmarils through the rest of that first age is really a succession of heroic acts and reckless tragedies for much of the age the silmarils remained with morgoth in his stronghold of angband the siege of angband by the naldor lasted four and a half centuries all told with no real progress by either side but eventually morgoth's army broke out and not too long after that baron and luthien broke in the story of baron and luthien is one of the three great stories of the silmarillion and this is just a part of it but basically in order to win the hand of the woman he loved baron was tasked with getting one of the silmarils from morgoth and giving it to thingol luthian's father this was intended as a hopeless task but they managed it anyway so morgoth then had two of the silmarils and single a cinderin elf had the other that silmaril went through a few sets of hands thingol had it set in the nooglermir precious necklace made by some dwarves the dwarves who did it decided that the necklace and the silmaril set in it were actually theirs so they took it killing thingol and a lot of elves along the way berin then got it back off of them killing a lot of dwarves along the way he gave it to luthien his love who wore it until she died it then passed dior her son by which time the sons of feyenoord decided to claim it remember feyenoor had made the silmarils in the first place and he and his sons had sworn an oath to let nothing and no one get in the way of them reclaiming the jewels the sons of fenal attacked and lots more elves died but they didn't get the silmaril that was spirited away by elwing dior's daughter from her it ended up with irendil as i said it passed through quite a lot of hands and wherever it went death and destruction followed but aarendil was the last person to have it he was quite an important person in the history of middle earth and he set sail across the western sea to beg the valar's intervention against morgoth as a general summary of the first age elves fighting each other because of ego greed and misunderstanding and the sons of feyenoor stopping at nothing to try to reclaim the silmarils while morgoth grew in strength is probably pretty close to the mark irendil's voyage to try to stop all the madness is not just understandable but noble the valar did intercede morogoth was defeated and the second age beckoned and to return to the silmarils they each attained their final place irendil's silmaril was attached to his forehead and set as a star more on that in a moment the other two silmarils which morgoth had kept a hold of throughout the first age were captured by the last two of fenor's sons finally but tragedy after all that time striving to fulfill their oath medros and maglor could not keep the silmarils the silmarils were hallowed and couldn't be touched by impure hands and madross and maglor had done a lot of evil acts to their fellow elves in trying to get the silmarils when they held them now the silmarils burned their hands of course if they couldn't have them after all that they were desperate that no one else could have them either maid ross threw himself and his silmaril into a fiery chasm and maglor threw his deep into the sea thus the last resting place of the three silmarils were one in the sky one in the earth and one in the sea the three elements of arda the silmarils had passed out of history but their influence remained it was the light of the star of irendil that guided the edayne to numenor their new home at the start of the second age the legends of the three jewels were still told in the time of the lord of the rings and perhaps most importantly the light from irendil's star played a crucial role in the destruction of the ring the file of galadriel the light that galadriel gave frodo was a parting gift in lothlorien contained light from the star of irendil in other words the silmaril itself it's no coincidence literarily that this gift came from galadriel whose hair had apparently inspired the creation of the silmarils in the first place and also that it was used to defeat shelob the descendant of angoliant the spider creature who had destroyed the light all that time ago these are subtle references that can only be picked up on if you know the history of middle earth tolkien certainly knew how to reward a careful reading of his creation the silmarils or the desire to possess the silmarils also tells us a lot about some important characters like morgoth we often think of him sitting in his dark fortress hating all light and goodness but as is often the case with tolkien's work this characterization is an oversimplification we're told that when he first looked upon the silmarils envy was in his heart not because he hated light and beauty but because he wanted it he wanted the ability to create to craft to be light and beauty this became twisted to him wanting to get rid of the true light and be recognized as the holder of light the holder of the silmarils so he destroyed the trees took the silmarils and set them in his iron crown wanting to be seen as the lord of light even in the darkness the silmarils are often also held up as a precursor of the one ring items of great power that corrupt those who seek to possess them there is definitely an element of this going on but fundamentally the silmarils are different the one ring was created by sauron pouring all of his hatred cruelty and lust for power into it the silmarils on the other hand were hallowed they were though tolkien doesn't use this exact word holy people did lust after them and do horrendous things to get to them but to that came from them not the silmarils themselves it's as if tolkien uses the silmarils to remind us that we can't blame all the ills of the world on evil things corrupting people as could have been the takeaway message from the one ring but he wants to show us that there is evil or the potential for pride envy and a lust for power in all of us it's up to all of us ourselves to be our better selves not just blame it all on the evil magic ring if you'd like to see more videos like this on the law of the lord of the rings please click on the playlist on the left of your screen or if you'd like to support this channel or get access to some more exclusive content please click on the link to my patreon page on the right of your screen that's all for this time take care and i'll see you again soon

Channel: In Deep Geek

Views: 389,349

Keywords: in deep geek, deep geek, lotr, lord of the rings, the lord of the rings, silmarillion, silmarillion explained, silmaril, silmarils, what are the silmarils, silmarils lotr, lord of the rings silmarils, tolkien

Id: 48sHmGT3mBc

Length: 13min 59sec (839 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 18 2021