Tol Galen

The Green Isle

Tol Galen was a wooded island in the Adurant, the southernmost of the seven rivers of Ossiriand. Partway down its course the river split in two and ran on either side of the island before rejoining, and from the island the whole of that stretch of country took the name Dor Firn-i-Guinar, the Land of the Dead that Live. It was a place of quiet and of great beauty, remote even by the standards of the Green-elves' hidden country, and no road led to it.

Beren and Lúthien

When Lúthien chose mortality before Mandos and she and Beren were sent back into the world, they did not return to the court of Thingol. They went instead to Tol Galen, and there they lived as no other mortal pair had lived, in a land the Elves believed to be hallowed by their presence. None of the Eldar saw Beren again except the Green-elves, who alone had dealings with them, and their son Dior was born and raised on the island. Beren came out only once, when the Dwarves of Nogrod had slain Thingol and were carrying the treasure of Doriath home. He met them at Sarn Athrad, took the Nauglamír from the dying lord of Nogrod and brought it back to Tol Galen, where Lúthien wore the Silmaril, and it was said that the land grew for a while into a likeness of the Blessed Realm.

The passing of the jewel

Lúthien's wearing of the Silmaril hastened the end of her mortal life. When she and Beren died, at a time no tale records, a lord of the Green-elves came by night to Menegroth and laid the necklace before Dior, and by that token he knew that his parents were gone. With the jewel's passing out of Tol Galen the island fell out of the tales, and it went beneath the sea with the rest of Beleriand.