The Ages of Middle-earth: From the Elder Days to the Fourth Age

Spoiler warning: this timeline runs from the creation of the world to the end of The Lord of the Rings. The early sections summarize how the First and Second Ages end, including major events of The Silmarillion and the Appendices, and the "Major spoilers" section covers how the War of the Ring turns out. If you haven't finished The Lord of the Rings yet, stop at that heading and come back later.

Tolkien's history of Middle-earth is divided into Ages, and each one ends with a world-changing event. Once you know the big shape of that history, the old ruins, swords and songs in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings mean a lot more. Here's the tour.

Before the count of years

In the Elvish creation story that opens The Silmarillion, the world is made, and the Valar come into it to shape and govern it. The St. Bonaventure University Friedsam Library's summary calls them angelic beings. One of these great spirits, Melkor, later called Morgoth, rebels and becomes the first Dark Lord.

The Friedsam Library's First Age timeline walks through the early stages. At first the world is lit by two great lamps, and Melkor casts them down. The Valar withdraw to Valinor in the far West, where two Trees give light, and the count of time begins. The Elves awaken in Middle-earth, and the Valar summon them to Valinor.

The First Age, or the Elder Days

This is the age of The Silmarillion. Christopher Tolkien called that book the history of the Elder Days, the First Age of the world. Most of it takes place in Beleriand, a land beyond the Blue Mountains at the far northwest edge of the Lord of the Rings map.

Here are the key events, drawn from Christopher Tolkien's introduction and the Friedsam timeline:

1. The Elf Fëanor makes the Silmarils, three jewels that hold the light of the Two Trees.
2. Morgoth and Ungoliant kill the Trees, and Morgoth steals the Silmarils and returns to Middle-earth.
3. Many of the Elves rebel against the Valar, leave Valinor and follow him to Middle-earth to make war on him.
4. The war goes badly for them. Their great strongholds are destroyed one by one, some by fire from outside and some by treachery from within.
5. The age ends in a cataclysmic battle, and Beleriand is drowned beneath the sea.

Men don't appear in the story until it's well along. The three great tales of the age, Beren and Lúthien, the Children of Húrin and the Fall of Gondolin, all take place in this period. The Friedsam Library puts the recorded span of the First Age at about 600 years, counted from when dates were first kept. That's short compared to what follows, but that reckoning only starts once the Elves are back in Middle-earth and the long war has begun.

The Second Age

The Friedsam Library sums up the Second Age as 3,441 years, running from the defeat of Morgoth to the first defeat of Sauron. A few highlights:

• Númenor rises. The Men who fought faithfully against Morgoth are rewarded with long lives on the island of Númenor, set in the sea between Middle-earth and Valinor. Unfinished Tales mentions a Númenórean mariner, Vëantur, sailing into the Grey Havens in the six hundredth year of the Second Age.
• Sauron rises too. Sauron, once Morgoth's servant, becomes the new Dark Lord and builds his fortress, Barad-dûr, in Mordor.
• The Rings are forged. Jeff LaSala's Second Age primer for Reactor, which walks through the Appendix B timeline, puts the start of the forging of the Rings of Power at the year 1500. The Three, made by the Elven-smith Celebrimbor, were completed in 1590, and Sauron forged the One Ring in 1600.
• Númenor falls. Sauron deceives the Númenóreans, and their last king sails against the Undying Lands. Christopher Tolkien describes the island toppling into a chasm in the sea, and the Appendix B entry quoted in the Reactor primer dates this to the year 3319. Afterward the world is made round, and only the Elves can still sail the straight road into the True West.
• The Last Alliance. Survivors of Númenor found realms in Middle-earth, Gondor among them, and Elves and Men join forces against Sauron. The same primer dates the climax to the year 3441. Sauron is overthrown by Elendil and Gil-galad, who both die in the fight, and Isildur takes the One Ring. That victory ends the Second Age.

The Third Age

This is the age of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Some milestones, with years from the Friedsam Library's Third Age timeline:

• Year 2: Isildur is killed and the One Ring is lost. Unfinished Tales describes him dying as he struggled out of the mud of the river Anduin.
• About 1000: The Istari, or Wizards, appear in Middle-earth, including Saruman, Gandalf and Radagast.
• 1050: With the founding of Dol Guldur, Greenwood the Great begins to be called Mirkwood.
• 1640: Gondor's capital moves to Minas Anor, later known as Minas Tirith.
• 1981: The Dwarves abandon Moria after a Balrog appears.
• 2002: Minas Ithil falls to the Nazgûl and becomes Minas Morgul.
• About 2463: Déagol finds the One Ring and is killed by Sméagol, who takes it.
• 2850–2851: Gandalf confirms that the Necromancer of Dol Guldur is Sauron, and the White Council meets.
• 2890: Bilbo Baggins is born.
• 2941: The events of The Hobbit. In a 1951 letter to the publisher Milton Waldman, Tolkien set Bilbo's adventure in "the year 1341 of the Shire (or 2941 of the Third Age: that is in its last century)."
• 2968: Frodo Baggins is born.
• 3001: Bilbo's farewell party.
• 3018: The War of the Ring begins.

Major spoilers: how the Third Age ends

Christopher Tolkien called The Lord of the Rings "the history of the ending of the Third" Age. In the 1951 letter, Tolkien listed what the book would show: the overthrow of evil's last incarnation, the unmaking of the Ring, the final departure of the Elves and the return of the true King. Christopher Tolkien notes that The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings end at the same moment, when the Ring-bearers sail from the Grey Havens into the West.

The Fourth Age

With the Elves leaving, Tolkien wrote in that letter, the returned King takes over the dominion of Men and carries on the royal line of Númenor. The Fourth Age belongs to Men, and the great stories end right at its door.

Why the Ages matter when you read

• Old names carry weight. Christopher Tolkien points out that when Elrond recalls the hosts of Beleriand, or Treebeard sings of forests now under the waves, they're remembering the First Age.
• Gondor's grandeur makes sense. Its kings descend from Númenor's survivors, which is why Aragorn's ancestry matters so much.
• The tone shifts with the Age. Christopher Tolkien described The Silmarillion as sweeping across long ages in an elegiac mood. The Lord of the Rings covers only about twenty years and moves with real urgency.
• Small things echo. A ring Bilbo stumbles on in 2941 was forged more than four thousand years earlier, and that's the hook for everything that follows.