Nandor

Turning back

On the Great Journey the Teleri came last, and when the long march reached the Misty Mountains many of them were afraid of the heights and unwilling to go on. Their leader was Lenwë, and under him they turned south down the great river Anduin and gave up the Sea. They were called the Nandor, those who go back, and they were the first of the Eldar to make Middle-earth their permanent home. They are counted among the Eldar because they set out on the journey, and among the Úmanyar and the Moriquendi because they never finished it.

The wide lands

The Nandor spread along the Anduin and into the woods on either side. Some settled at the mouths of the river, some in the forest that Men later called Greenwood the Great, and some in the golden wood of Lórien. They became a people of the woodlands, close to birds and beasts and running water, with no cities and little metalwork. Their tongue drifted far from that of their kin in the west and became the Nandorin from which the Silvan dialects descend. They had no dealings with the Valar and knew the greater Eldar only as a memory.

The Green-elves of Ossiriand

Long afterwards, in the Years of the Trees, Lenwë's son Denethor heard of the peace of Thingol's realm beyond the Blue Mountains, and led a great part of the Nandor west into Ossiriand, the Land of Seven Rivers. Thingol welcomed them as long-lost kin, and there they became the Laiquendi, the Green-elves, clad in green and hidden among the trees. Denethor fought and died in the First Battle of Beleriand, and after that the Green-elves fought no more in open war.

The Silvan Elves

The Nandor who stayed east of the mountains became the Silvan Elves, the Wood-elves of the later ages, whose realms in Greenwood and Lórien came under Sindarin lords in the Second Age. It is likely, according to the accounts in Unfinished Tales, that some Avari who had wandered west mingled with them in the vales of Anduin, so that the Silvan folk were of mixed Nandorin and Avarin blood. By the Third Age the Silvan Elves had adopted Sindarin from their lords and their old tongue survived chiefly in names.

What sets them apart

The Nandor were the least grand of the Eldar and the most at home. They had nothing of the fire of the Noldor or the lore of Doriath, but they knew the living things of Middle-earth better than any other Elves and lived in the woods as if they were part of them. Their weakness was that they were few, scattered and lightly armed, and could not stand against Orcs in battle; the Green-elves lost their king and went into hiding, and the Silvan Elves in the Second and Third Ages depended on Sindarin kings for leadership in war.

Relations with other peoples

The Green-elves of Ossiriand were the first Elves to meet Men, when the people of Bëor came over the Blue Mountains, and they did not like them; they asked Finrod to move the newcomers on. In the Third Age the Silvan Elves of Thranduil traded with the Men of Lake-town and had old grudges against the Dwarves, and the Elves of Lórien kept apart from everyone.

Fate

The Nandor never left Middle-earth in any number. Their descendants lingered in Greenwood and Lórien into the Fourth Age and beyond, and it is they above all whom later Men remembered when they spoke of Elves in the woods.

The Nandor were of Telerin stock, dark or brown of hair for the most part, less tall and less shining than the Elves of Aman. The Green-elves dressed in the colours of leaf and bark and were nearly invisible in the forest.

The Nandor were woodland dwellers who knew beasts, birds and plants better than any Elves. They built no stone cities, made little metal, and fought if at all with bows. Their language became Nandorin, and from it descend the Silvan dialects of Mirkwood and Lórien, though Sindarin later replaced it. Their society was loose and clannish, led by chieftains rather than kings until Sindarin lords came among them.

The Nandor were Teleri who refused the crossing of the Misty Mountains under Lenwë and went south down the Anduin. A part of them under Denethor later crossed into Ossiriand.

As the Green-elves of Ossiriand they vanished with Beleriand; as the Silvan Elves they endured in the forests of Rhovanion longer than any other Eldar.