Palacký University in Olomouc Philosophical

Arda

The story covered in The Lord of the Rings is happening at the end of the Third Age. The time in Middle Earth is counted in days and years, the same as we are doing it now, but there also exists the term “age” which covers irregular number of years every time. The age in Middle Earth usually starts and ends with some really important event.

The First Age started with the awakening of the Elves in Cuiviénen, because the ages generally count the times of the Children of Ilúvatar on Arda. However, these were still the times when years were counted with so called Valian Years and even Tolkien changed his opinion on their length many times during his lifetime. Due to this it is almost impossible to date the events that happened before the time started to be counted in solar years. In about 4500 the Elves were woken up and in about 5000 Ilúvatar’s younger children – Men – woke up in Hildóren. It was the same year the Valar created the Sun, thus since this moment the days and years were counted according to the Sun, staring again with the year 1. The First Age ended in the year 590 after the War of Wrath and casting Morgoth into the Void.⁶³ The Second Age, which saw the uprising of Sauron and creation of the Rings
of Power, as well as the rise and fall of Númenor ended in 3441 after the battle with Sauron. In this battle Sauron was defeated, his physical form destroyed and the One Ring was taken by Isildur.
The Third Age ended in 3021 after the final defeat of Sauron and the destruction of the One Ring. The events from the Shire, written at the end of The Return of the King are already happening in the Fourth Age.⁶⁴ In a letter Tolkien explains the Age we are living in now is probably the Fifth Age or later, saying: “I



⁶² “Most Precise ASOIAF Timeline in Existence,“ Reddit, accessed August 15, 2016, https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/1c07jw/spoilers_all_most_precise_asoiaf_timeline_in/
?st=irvpdaa9&sh=093e1b2b.
⁶³ John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. The Grey Annals: The War of the Jewels, edit. Christopher Tolkien (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), 3-170.
⁶⁴ John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1986), Appendix B, 456.
imagine the gap [between the Fall of Sauron and our Days] to be about 6000 years: that is we are now at the end of the Fifth Age, if the Ages were of about the same length as [Second Age] and [Third Age]. But they have, I think, quickened; and I imagine we are actually at the end of the Sixth Age, or in the Seventh.” ⁶⁵

2.