(The following is a replication of a page describing one of the people groups in Middle-earth, the Númenoreans. Each of the groups or individuals listed in the Sidebar {”Peoples”} has or will have a link to a page providing more information for that particular heading.)

Who, or what, are Númenoreans?

The short answer is that Númenoreans are those survivors from Númenor who came to Middle-earth following the destruction of the island Kingdom. Númenor was Tolkien’s Atlantis mythology: both sank into the sea.

The long answer is again provided by Tyler:

Númenor [was] the greatest realm of the world in the Second Age, apart from the Undying Lands. Founded by the Edain, at the very beginning of the Age, for three thousand years this land continued to grow in both power and splendour until ultimately, the vaulting ambitions of the Númenoreans caused them to commit the most appalling act of sacrilege. As a punishment, the island-realm was thrown down and buried under the waves, with only a chosen few of the Faithful surviving to start afresh in Middle-earth . . .

“[A] number of the Faithful escaped this downfall and, led by Elendil the Tall, sailed to Middle-earth to found the Númenorean realms-in-exile: Arnor and Gondor . . .

“The Realms in Exile, although less imperial and magnificent than ancient Númenor, were thus no whit less royal; for many years both North- and South-kingdoms flourished in Middle-earth, before they were gradually diminished in various ways. Yet even at the end of the Third Age much still survived in Middle-earth of the last remnant of Númenor, originally founded – with the full blessing of the Valar – nearly two full Ages before.”

This somewhat begs the question, however, for it remains to be explained what set this particular group of men apart from other men, who were also the Atani, the ‘Second People,’ the second-born Children of Ilúvatar. This requires some background on the creation and origins of Men in general, also provided by Tyler:

[Men are,] after the Elves, the noblest of all ’speaking-peoples’; for whom the Gift of Mortality was expressly conceived as an alternative for life everlasting (the fate of the Elves) . . .

“[Following the awakening of the Elves] at last the Second People awoke, in the land of Hildórien in the wide East. For centuries they wandered gradually away from their birth-place, in all directions save north; and at last the westerly vanguard came first into Wilderland, and then into Eriador, and finally into Beleriand. These were the Edain (the Sindarin form of the more ancient Quenya name Atani). Originally the term [Edain]had been applied to the race of Men as a whole, but everafter the Elves of Beleriand used it specifically for the Three Houses of the Elf-friends who fought alongside them in their wars against Morgoth, and who dwelt with them in allied kingdoms . . . their providential contact with the Elves at such a crucial stage in their development singled out this people from all other Mannish races for elevation. Consequently, their direct descendants, the Dúnedain, eventually came to deem themselves a ‘High People’ – in comparison with other Men, whom they divided into ‘Middle’ and ‘Wild’ Peoples.

“The ‘Middle Peoples’ shared the same origins and earliest histories as the ‘High People’, but their development was largely unaided by Elven-lore or fortuitous circumstance. For the ancestors of the Middle People were those of the Edain and their close kin who did not pass west to Númenor after the end of the First Age, remaining instead in Middle-earth where they elevated their culture at a far slower rate. However, they greatly increased in number and, by the end of the Second Age, their descendants were far more numerous than those of the Dúnedain who had returned meanwhile to Middle-earth . . .

“One may note close parallels with the ‘High’ and ‘Middle’ Elves, i.e., the Noldor and the Sindar, likewise separated at an early point in their history but later reunited under circumstances both grievous and uplifting . . .

“So, while the cultural differences among the Mannish peoples were (and still are) immense, ultimately, they were (and are) cancelled out by the great factors in common, most notably Free Will, the gift of all Free Peoples, and the possession of immortal souls tempered by Mortality: the Gift of Men.”

From The Complete Tolkien Companion by J.E.A. Tyler

The similarity between the name “Númenoreans” and the term “numinous” is hardly accidental. Duriez discusses the importance of the numinous in Tolkien’s writings:

[Numinous] is a term created by the German Lutheran theologian Rudolf Otto (1869-1937). He was concerned to isolate the universal element in human experience that is religious. He rejected the attempts to explain away such experience by materialistic theories . . . The numinous experience involves a sense of dependence upon what stands wholly other to humanity. This otherness (or other-worldliness) is unapproachable and awesome. At the same time it has a fascination and attraction. Rudolf Otto believed that Christianity has the clearest concept of the numinous.

“Whatever the rights and wrongs of Otto’s analysis, the implication is that the experience of the numinous is captured better by suggestion and allusion than by a theoretical analysis . . .

“Much of the numinous in Tolkien is the effect of his linguistic creativity . . . His use of Elvish names, words and phrases, which are beautiful and yet foreign, often invokes a numinous quality, similarly his employment of Runes . . .

“Tolkien has great ability in capturing the numinous through the symbolic . . . whether in landscape (as in Doriath or Lórien) or the natural elements . . .

“The numinous is embodied most of all, in Tolkien’s work, in his idea of faerie . . . an other world in which it is possible for beings such as elves to live and move and have a history . . . Some of his elves (like Lúthien or Galadriel) are incarnations of the numinous.

“Where the numinous is capture, its appeal is firstly to the imagination, which also senses it most accurately. It belongs to the area of meaning rather than concept.”

From Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings, by Colin Duriez.

Númenoreans, therefore, more than any other race of Men, are more spiritually- minded. In this sense, they have more in common with the Elves than with other races of Men.



Namárië.