Fëanor

Birth and youth

Fëanor was the only child of Finwë, King of the Noldor, and Míriel Serindë. His mother named him Fëanáro, Spirit of Fire, and the name proved true: he grew swiftly, burned with an inward flame, and mastered everything he turned his hand to. Míriel gave all her strength to bear him and afterwards chose to die, and Fëanor's childhood was shaped by his father's grief and then by his father's remarriage to Indis of the Vanyar. Fëanor refused to accept his stepmother or her sons Fingolfin and Finarfin, and he lived apart from them, wandering the length of Aman and working in his forge. He married early, taking Nerdanel, daughter of the smith Mahtan, who alone could restrain him for a while and who bore him seven sons: Maedhros, Maglor, Celegorm, Caranthir, Curufin, and the twins Amrod and Amras.

The craftsman

No Elf before or since equalled Fëanor in skill or in learning. He improved the letters of Rúmil into the Tengwar, the script used across the West ever after. He was a loremaster and the first to study the sounds of speech systematically. As a smith he made gems finer than any natural stone, crystals through which distant things could be seen, and, the Silmarillion suggests, the palantíri. His masterwork was the three Silmarils, made at the height of the bliss of Valinor: jewels of an unbreakable substance in which he captured the mingled light of the Two Trees. Varda hallowed them so that no evil hand could touch them without burning, and Mandos foretold that the fate of Arda was locked within them. Fëanor came to love the Silmarils with a possessiveness that grew into greed, and he kept them locked away.

The lies of Melkor

When Melkor was freed from his prison, he studied the Noldor and set to work on the greatest of them. He hated Fëanor most and desired the Silmarils above all things, and he did not approach Fëanor directly, for Fëanor loathed him; he spread rumours instead. He let it be known that the Valar had brought the Eldar to Aman so that Men, when they came, could take Middle-earth without hindrance; and he set Fëanor and Fingolfin at each other's throats with tales that each meant to supplant the other. Fëanor began to speak openly of leaving Aman, and to forge weapons in secret. At last he drew his sword on Fingolfin in the king's own hall, and the Valar summoned him to the Ring of Doom. There Melkor's part was uncovered, but Fëanor was still banished from Tirion for twelve years. He built the fortress of Formenos in the north, and Finwë went with him.

The Darkening and the Oath

Melkor came to Formenos to try Fëanor's heart with talk of the Silmarils, and Fëanor shut the door in his face. But Melkor had found Ungoliant, and at the festival on Taniquetil, where Fëanor was reconciled in word with Fingolfin, they destroyed the Two Trees. Yavanna asked Fëanor for the Silmarils to rekindle the light. Fëanor, torn, refused; and then word came that Melkor had slain Finwë at Formenos and taken the jewels. Fëanor cursed Melkor and named him Morgoth, the Black Foe, and rode back to Tirion. There, in the darkness, he made the speech that swept the Noldor out of Aman, and with his seven sons he swore the Oath: by the name of Ilúvatar, calling the Everlasting Dark upon themselves if they failed, they vowed to pursue with hatred and vengeance anyone, Vala, Elf, Man or Maia, who held a Silmaril from them. No oath in Arda was ever more terrible, and it drove its swearers to every crime of the Elder Days.

The Kinslaying and the Doom

Fëanor claimed the kingship of the Noldor, though most of the people preferred Fingolfin, and led the march north. At Alqualondë he demanded the swan-ships of the Falmari; Olwë refused, and Fëanor's host seized the ships by force and killed many of the Teleri who resisted. This was the first Kinslaying. At the borders of Aman Mandos pronounced the Doom of the Noldor: exile, treachery of kin against kin, and death and sorrow without end for those who followed Fëanor. Finarfin turned back; Fëanor laughed and went on. He and his sons took the ships and crossed to Middle-earth, and rather than send them back for Fingolfin's host, Fëanor burned them at Losgar, abandoning his half-brother to the ice of the Helcaraxë. Maedhros alone stood aside from the burning.

Death

The Noldor landed in Hithlum, and Morgoth's Orcs attacked them under the stars at the Dagor-nuin-Giliath. Fëanor drove them back and, in his fury, pursued them toward Angband far ahead of his host. Near the gates the Balrogs came out against him, and Gothmog their lord struck him down. His sons carried him back toward Mithrim, but on the slopes of the Ered Wethrin he knew he was dying. He looked at the peaks of Thangorodrim, understood that the Noldor could never overthrow them, and cursed Morgoth three times; then he charged his sons to keep the Oath. His spirit left his body in fire, so that the body itself burned to ash. His spirit went to Mandos, and it is said that he will not be released until the end of the world.

Legacy

Fëanor's life is the hinge of the Silmarillion. His genius gave the Elves their script and their greatest jewels; his pride and his Oath ruined his house and cost the Noldor their home. He was foretold by Mandos as the mightiest of the Eldar in every gift and the most self-destructive. His seven sons kept the Oath to their ruin; his grandson Celebrimbor renounced the house and made the Rings of Power. The Silmarils he made became the Evening Star, a fire in the earth, and a light in the Sea, and the lore of the Elves holds that at the end Fëanor will surrender them and the Trees will be rekindled.

Mortally wounded by Gothmog and other Balrogs in the first year of the Sun; his body burned to ash at his death, and his spirit is held in Mandos until the end of the world.