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Abstract
[...]she concludes her lament with a wish or prayer that Frodo may as a special grace be granted a purgatorial (but not penal) sojourn in Eressea, the Solitary Isle in sight of Aman, though for her the way is closed. [...] On arriving in Middle-earth after the tortuous crossing of the Helcaraxë (the Grinding Ice) necessitated by Fëanor 's burning of the ships at Losgar (Sil. 97), Galadriel dwelt for a time in Doriath, where she met her future husband Celeborn, kinsman of Thingol, King of Doriath and brother of Olwë. [...]Thingol was also Galadriel's maternal uncle.)3 There, Galadriel also befriended Melian the Maia, wife of Thingol and mother of Lúthien Tinuviel. The History of Galadriel and Celeborn Before turning to consider the most striking illustration of this transformation of Galadriel's "sin" in the late work "The Shibboleth of Fëanor" which dates from after Feb. 1968 (HME 12:331), it is necessary at least briefly to consider the accounts of "The History of Galadriel and Celeborn," which Christopher Tolkien included in The Unfinished Tales, published in 1982. Since these accounts deal with the history of Galadriel, Celeborn and Amroth in the Second Age of Middle-earth, they are only indirectly relevant to the topic of this paper. The fact that Tolkien continued to think about Galadriel and her place in his own private mythology of the First Age right until the very end of his life, indicates also how important Tolkien himself considered her. 1 An earlier version of this paper was given on 27th July, 2004 at Mythcon XXXIV in Nashville, Tennessee. Since there are many editions of The Lord of the Rings available and readers may not have access to the (one-volume) edition used in this paper, reference is made to both the book and chapter number, and the volume and page numbers (e.g. Book JL.8; p.364).