Andreth

Lineage

Andreth was a daughter of Boromir, third lord of the House of Bëor after Bëor and Baran, and the sister of Bregor. She was therefore the aunt of Bregolas and Barahir and a great-aunt of Beren. She lived in Dorthonion in the years of the long peace, when the Bëorians dwelt under the lordship of the sons of Finarfin.

The wise-woman

Andreth was one of the keepers of the ancient lore of Men, the traditions that the Edain had carried out of the east and seldom shared with the Elves. She was on terms of friendship with Finrod Felagund, the Elf-king who had first befriended her people, and it is recorded that the two of them debated at length the difference between the fates of Elves and Men, the nature of mortality, and whether death had been part of the making of Men from the beginning or was a wound laid on them by the Shadow. She held the latter view, and Finrod did not wholly dispute it.

Aegnor

Andreth loved Aegnor, the youngest son of Finarfin and lord of the northern slopes of Dorthonion, and he loved her in return. But Aegnor would not marry a mortal woman in a time of war, knowing that he would watch her age and die while he remained unchanged, and he withdrew from her. Andreth grew old unmarried and unhappy, and Aegnor was slain in the Dagor Bragollach of F.A. 455, in the same fires that overran her people's land. Her fate after that is not told.

Note on sources

Andreth is mentioned only briefly in the published Silmarillion's genealogies of the House of Bëor. The account of her conversation with Finrod and her love for Aegnor comes from Tolkien's later writings outside the eight works this atlas treats as canon, and is summarised here for completeness rather than as an established part of the primary narrative.

Grew old in Dorthonion; her death is not recorded.