Cirdan's appearance

[elbenprincess]

Hi all, I have a really dumb question, but I always wonder why Cirdan is described as looking old. I always thought that elves remain young. And then I read something about a thrid life circle, that elves reach with probably 10.000??? years, explaining the growth of beard. Does that mean that elves in the third circle grew old?

Galadriel is nealy 10.000 Years too, does that mean she gets old? (poor gril) And therfore the elves in valinor should be looking very old too (Finarfin, Ingwe...) Or does Valinor stops or delay this process?

Or is Cirdan just an exception? (Maybe his sorrows, never seen Valinor...) Did Tolkien said something about the aging thing?

Should we assume that elves at one point appear as aged? Even the elves in valinor?

About the fourth circle:
Eventually, their immortal spirits (fëar) will overwhelm and consume their bodies (hröar), rendering them "bodiless", whether they opt to go to Valinor or remain in Middle-earth. At the end of the world, all Elves will have become invisible to mortal eyes, except to those to whom they wish to manifest themselves. Tolkien called this process "Lingering", and it may be thought of as a fourth and final cycle of Elven life.



What does that "eventually" mean? 20.000 Years, 30.000 Years...anyway, you could really feel sorry for the elves, I would not like to remain bodiless for dacades...

Before the lingering process, are they grey and old? Whats your opinion?

[The Might]

A dumb question? I actually like it, the best one in some time.

As far as Cirdan's origin is concerned, he may have well come from Cuivienen. We know we was akin to Elwe and Olwe, so this assumption makes sense.
This would indeed make him over 10000 years old and as such probably the oldest Elf in Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age.

As far as facial hair and the third circle are concerned this Wikipedia quotation is useful:

Despite Tolkien's statements in The Hobbit that Elves (and Hobbits) have no beards, Círdan in fact has a beard, which appears to be an anomaly and a simple oversight. However, Tolkien later devised at least three "cycles of life" for Elves around 1960; Círdan had a beard because he was in his third cycle of life. (Mahtan, Nerdanel's father, had a beard in his second cycle of life, a rare phenomenon.) It is unclear what these cycles exactly are, since Tolkien left no notes further explaining this. Apparently, beards were the only sign of further natural physical ageing beyond maturity.
Nevertheless, Tolkien may have ultimately changed his mind about whether Elves had facial hair. As Christopher Tolkien states in Unfinished Tales, his father wrote in December 1972 or later that the Elvish strain in Men, such as Aragorn, was "observable in the beardlessness of those who were so descended", since "it was a characteristic of all Elves to be beardless".[19] This would seemingly contradict the information above.
Elves sometimes appear to age under great stress. Círdan appeared to be aged himself, since he is described as looking old, save for the stars in his eyes; this may be due to all the sorrows he had seen and lived through since the First Age. Also, the people of Gwindor of Nargothrond had trouble recognizing him after his time as a prisoner of Morgoth.

Since other old Elves are not mentioned to have beards a good compromise would be to guess that most remain beardless, but that under stress they would also age bodily.

About the fourth circle, I think it would be even more than 20 or 30000 years. It is said that the Elves and even the Ainur will come to envy men for their gift of Death. So I guess they would retain a body for longer. Anyway, they would still remain bound to the physical plain.

Nice question at the end, I guess that with our compromise above they would all have beards. They would grow weary of the world and this stress would cause them to age bodily as well.

[Pitchwife]

Welcome to the Downs, elbenprincess! The spelling of your name makes me wonder - is that a typo, or are you German, too (like me)? Anyway, enjoy being dead!

The Might has already summed up everything I was going to say very nicely, but I'd like to throw in my two cents about the question of Lingering/Fading and the fourth cycle.
Since we don't meet any bodily visible Elves anymore in our days (except for rare sightings of the kind you mention in your post), we can, I think, safely assume that they're all well into their fourth cycle by now.
Now Tolkien once said (somewhere in the Letters, IIRC) that we're now in the Seventh Age, each age covering something between 2000 and 3000 years (they were longer in the beginning, but have become shorter over time), which would mean that about 6000-7500 years (three ages à 2000-2500 years each) have passed since the War of the Ring and the end of the Third Age. Combining this with the observation that all Elves, even those who were young in Frodo's time, seem to have Faded completely in the meantime, it looks like the process of Fading, too, has accelerated, and they now reach their fourth cycle in much less than 10,000 years - probably due to the growing dominion of Men, I suppose.

As for the Elves in Valinor, that's a different matter - I wouldn't expect them to age in the same way as the Lingerers in Middle-earth, especially since Valinor has been removed from the circles of the world, and certainly not to Fade.

Like TM said, nice question, and not dumb at all !

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Galin

... like Celeborn was old and had silver hair

But Galadriel didn't have grey hair, nor did she appear old in the least. And Celeborn's hair colour appears to be part of the basis for his name, 'silver-tall'. If that was the case, his silver hair wouldn't look to be related to his age, at least not as an expression of his time in Middle-earth.
I wonder if it is indeed not notable that the two grey-haired Elves we see (aside from Gwindor, whose physical appearance was caused by torment and labour under Morgoth) were both of the Teleri. They would certainly have seen more than their share of grief and general stress, much of it due to the Noldor.

[Galin]

Yes, my point was... sorry I deleted the post before anyone responded, but you must have been 'responding' Inziladun...

... that Silver hair need not be because of great age. That is, Celeborn didn't look old (but was old) and had silver hair.

[Pitchwife]

Originally Posted by Galin

... that Silver hair need not be because of great age. That is, Celeborn didn't look old (but was old) and had silver hair.

Yep, silver or white as a natural hair colour seems to have been quite common among the Teleri, especially the close kin of Elwe. Still, it's quite possible that they 'greyed' more easily than Elves of the other kindreds for that very reason. The whole matter has been discussed at some length in another thread, and I especially like the point Roa made in this post:

Originally Posted by Roa_Aoife

It seems clear that originally Cirdan's hair was silver. Perhaps the description of his hair being grey was not so much the loss of color (as the greying that our hair goes through in old age) but the loss of the sheen that made it look silver. The soul of an Elf is a bright burning flame. It stands to reason that as an Elf reaches the third stage of life, that flame dims a little, causes them to lose a little of the shine that follows their description in almost every instance. So Cirdan's hair may have been the same color, but dimmed somehow. Does that make sense?

It does to me - Cirdan's grey hair would be his natural Teler silver dulled, rather than depigmented, by age.

[Galin]

Was silver hair common among the Teleri? at least it is noted as seemingly not common among the Sindar, though found among them occasionally: '... especially in the nearer or remoter kin of Elwe (as in the case of Cirdan)'. (JRRT, Quendi And Eldar). The line in The Lord of the Rings reads...

'... and his beard was long, and he was grey and old, save that his eyes were keen as stars...'

My original (now deleted) post raised the 'technicality' that the line doesn't actually state that Cirdan looked old, but that he was old and grey... but yes I know how weak this is, and agree the implication of the whole sentence is that he looked old.

Reconsidering this, I deleted a post that basically said little or nothing, like this one