Wood-elves

From the One Wiki to Rule Them All, the Lord of the Rings Encyclopedia.

The best known Wood-elves (or Silvan Elves) are the elves of northern Mirkwood and Lothlórien. In the First Age the Elves of Ossiriand, or Laiquendi, were also referred to as wood-elves.

Silvan Elves were of Nandorin descent, but they were mainly governed by Sindarin and Ñoldorin rulers. Examples of these were Thranduil, king of northern Mirkwood, Amdir, and his son, Amroth, the last Sindarin prince of Lórien before the rule of Galadriel and Celeborn (of Ñoldorin and Sindarin descent, respectively).

Silvan Elves were considered to be less wise than other Eldar, and some of them almost were indistinguishable from the Avari, those who never joined the Great Journey.

[edit] Mirkwood

The Silvan Elves of Mirkwood were described as distrustful of Dwarves, but friendly to Men, with whom they trade. During his journey to the Lonely Mountain, Bilbo Baggins had to rescue the Dwarves of Thorin Oakenshield's company from these Elves. They were also one of the Five Armies in the Battle of Five Armies.

Legolas of the Fellowship of the Ring, although he lived among them and presented himself as one of the Silvan folk, was not one of them. As a son of the Elven-king Thranduil, who had originally come from Doriath, Legolas was actually a Sindarin Elf. This was complicated by the fact that a small minority of Sindarin Elves ruled the predominantly Silvan Woodland Realm of Northern Mirkwood, a minority to which Legolas belonged. The Sindarin minority in that realm, who should have been nobler and wiser than the Silvan Elves, could be seen as having "gone native" at the end of the First Age: after Morgoth was defeated and all of the grand Elf-kingdoms of Beleriand were destroyed, they can be seen as going back to "a simpler time" in their culture.

They have been depicted as having green skin and brown clothes.

[edit] Lórien

The Silvan Elves of Lórien were also called the Galadhrim, literally "tree-folk". After the departure of Amroth in the TA 1981, they were ruled by Celeborn and Galadriel. At the time of the War of the Ring they spoke an accent or dialect of Sindarin which had changed so much that Frodo Baggins, who spoke Sindarin, could not understand them. Additionally, few Elves of Lórien could speak Westron, so that Haldir, one of the few that could, had to accompany them on their way to Caras Galadhon.