.R.R. Tolkien is the beloved author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Most people who love Tolkien love him because of these amazing novels. What enriches the magnificence of these novels is the amazing mythology behind them. Tolkien created an entire world for his readers, complete with its own distinct peoples--Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits and Men--its own landscape with many different lands belonging to different people, and even its own languages. One aspect of any particular culture-whether it be Greek, Roman, Native American or otherwise-is that they all have their own distinct mythologies. Tolkien, besides creating an entire world for his novels, created a rich and beautiful mythology for his world of Middle-Earth. His mythology, like most mythologies, begins before the beginning of time and proceeds through the coming of the gods, the creation of the world, and the peopleing of the world to the many adventures the people of that world have. The Silmarillion is Tolkien's book wherein he relates to his readers the mythology of Middle-Earth from before the beginning of time.

As The Silmarillion can be a difficult book to get through for many people, I wanted to create a site to help people understand what is going on. There is a lot going on--many different names of gods, elves, men, etc and many different places and events occurring--that many people have a hard time keeping track. Though I cannot relate every story in The Silmarillion, I have tried to choose a few of the most important ones that are often referenced in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

The first section is about The Valar themselves, the gods of Tolkien's Middle Earth. I tried to give the most important of the Valar their own pages, and I grouped the less important--or at least the less referenced ones--onto one page. The second section is about Stories of the Valar. This includes The Music of the Ainur, The Creation of the World, The Two Trees of Valinor, and The Sun and the Moon. All of these stories have only to do with The Valar, and they occur before the coming of Elves and Men. The third section is about Stories of Elves and Men. There are so many stories of Elves and Men, so it was difficult to choose only a few, but I felt that the most important were of Fëanor and the Silmarils, of Beren and Luthien, and of Eärendil the Mariner.

I did get a lot of pictures from various books, and I took quotations from The Silmarillion itself. To see those Credits and Citations, you can visit this page.

 

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