Glorfindel

The lord of the Golden Flower

Glorfindel was a lord of the Noldor who came into Middle-earth in the Exile and followed Turgon into hiding. In Gondolin he ruled one of the twelve houses of the city, the House of the Golden Flower, whose emblem was a bright bloom on a green field, and his own name meant golden-haired: he was one of the few of the Noldor with the gold of the Vanyar in his hair. The Silmarillion calls him mighty, and the accounts of the hidden city rank him with Ecthelion of the Fountain as the chief of Turgon's captains. He was there through the whole long secrecy, and marched with the ten thousand to the Nirnaeth Arnoediad in F.A. 472.

The fall of Gondolin

When Maeglin's treason brought Morgoth's army over the Echoriath at midsummer in F.A. 510, the houses of the city fought street by street. Ecthelion destroyed Gothmog in the square before the king's tower and perished with him; Turgon died in the ruin of his own tower; and it fell to Tuor and Idril to lead the survivors out by the secret way Idril had prepared. Glorfindel commanded the rearguard of that column.

Their road climbed to the Cirith Thoronath, the Eagles' Cleft, a narrow high pass in the northern arm of the Encircling Mountains with a sheer fall on one hand. There Orcs were waiting above them, and with them a Balrog. The refugees were strung out on a path where numbers meant nothing and there was nowhere to run. Glorfindel turned and fought the Balrog alone on the pinnacle above the cleft. He killed it, and in its fall it dragged him with it, and both went down into the chasm. Thorondor came down after the body and bore it up from the depths, and the survivors raised a mound for him beside the pass. Yellow flowers grew on that mound afterwards in a land otherwise barren, and Tuor's company came alive to the Sirion because of him.

The return

Glorfindel's spirit went to the Halls of Mandos, and one who died as he died was not likely to be kept there. The published narratives do not say outright that the Elf-lord of Rivendell who bears the same name is the same person, but the tradition is old and the description fits: a lord of the Firstborn who had lived in the Blessed Realm, dwelling at once in both worlds and facing the seen and the unseen with a power the Nazgûl cannot meet. On that reading he was released, restored to his body in Aman, and sent back over the Sea in the Second Age to stand against the growing power of Sauron. By the last centuries of the Third Age he was one of the chief of Elrond's household.

Fornost and the prophecy

In T.A. 1975, after the Witch-king of Angmar had destroyed the last kingdom of Arthedain, a fleet came north out of Gondor under Eärnur, and Elrond sent a force out of Rivendell with Glorfindel at its head. The armies met on the field north of Fornost and the power of Angmar was broken utterly. The Witch-king himself came out in a last charge, and Eärnur's horse bolted from him; Glorfindel rode up on a white horse and the Witch-king fled into the East, and was not seen in the North again. Eärnur wished to pursue. Glorfindel held him back and said that the Witch-king's end was not there and would not come by the hand of man, and that he would fall far off. The words were remembered as a prophecy for a thousand and forty-four years, until Éowyn and Merry unmade him on the Pelennor.

The Ford of Bruinen

In October of T.A. 3018 Elrond sent out riders to search for the Ring-bearer, and Glorfindel took the Road west, drove three of the Nine from the Last Bridge, and left a token there for Aragorn to read. He found the company on the Road east of the Trollshaws with Frodo sinking under the Morgul-wound, set him on his own horse Asfaloth, and led them at speed for the Ford of Bruinen. All nine Riders closed on them at the water. Glorfindel sent Asfaloth across with a word in his own tongue, and the horse outran them; then, as the flood that Elrond had loosed came down the Bruinen with the white riders of foam in it, he and Aragorn drove the last of the Nazgûl into the water with fire. Frodo, half in the wraith-world, saw him for a moment as he truly was, a figure of white light.

The Council and after

Glorfindel sat at the Council of Elrond in Rivendell on October 25 and gave a hard, clear opinion: to send the Ring over the Sea would only defer the peril and would be forbidden them, and to hand it to Tom Bombadil would be to trust it to one who could not guard it and would forget it. He judged that it must be unmade, and he was ready to go. He was not chosen: Elrond took companions who could pass unnoticed rather than the strongest of his house, since open might would only draw the Enemy's eye. Glorfindel remained in Rivendell through the war and after it, and passed over the Sea in his own time.

Fell with the Balrog he slew into the chasm below the Cirith Thoronath in F.A. 510 and was buried above the pass by Thorondor; by long tradition the same Glorfindel returned from the Halls of Mandos and served Elrond in Rivendell until the ending of the Third Age.