history

All information comes directly from the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. There are footnotes at the bottom of each section and a complete list of those writings used can be found here.

early years in tirion

"...and she grew to be tall beyond the measure even of the women of the Noldor; she was strong of body, mind, and will, a match for both the loremasters and the atheletes of the Eldar in the days of their youth. Even among the Eldar she was accounted beautiful, and her hair was held a marvel unmatched. It was golden like the hair of her father and of her foremother Indis, but richer and more radiant, for its gold was touched by some memory of the starlike silver of her mother the Eldar said that the light of the Two Trees, Laurelin and Telperion, had been snared in her tresses."¹

That quote from the Unfinished Tales' "History of Galadriel and Celeborn" sums up the various descriptions of Galadriel throughout Tolkien's writings. Though the Noldor travelled throughout Valinor, their main home was in Tirion, on the hill of Túna. Galadriel likely spent most of her youth in that city, and probably would have found these years a happy time, as most did during the time of the Two Trees. In the Unfinished Tales is says, "A sister they had, Galadriel, most beautiful of all the house of Finwë; her hair was lit with gold as though it had caught in a mesh the radiance of Laurelin."²

Fëanor greatly admired her hair, and begged her three times for a tress of it, and each time she refused to give him even a single strand. Thereafter they were enemies forever, though Galadriel had long distrusted him.

"From her earliest years she had a marvellous gift of insight into the minds of others, but judged them with mercy and understanding, and she withheld her goodwill from none save only Fëanor. In him she perceived a darkness that she hated and feared, though she did not perceive that the shadow of the same evil had fallen upon the minds of all the Noldor, and upon her own."³

Galadriel is described as proud and strong, and as having dreams of ruling her own realm. But she is also compared to the Vanyar, those of the Eldar who were closest to the Valar, and her admiration of the Valar never ceased.

¹ J.R.R. Tolkien, Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1980) 229-30.

² J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion (New York: Ballantine Books, 2002) 61.

³ J.R.R. Tolkien, Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1980) 230.

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