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In S my father’s conception of the fate of Men after death is seen evolving (for the extremely puzzling account in the Lost Tales see I. 77, 90–3). As he first wrote S, there was an explicit assertion that Men did not go to Mandos, did not pass to the western land: this was an idea derived from contact with the Eldar. But he changed this, and wrote instead that Men do indeed go to their own halls in Mandos, for a time; none know whither they go after, save Mandos himself.

On the ‘fading’ of the Elves who remained ‘in the world’ see II. 326.

ssss1

Neither the brief outlines for what was to have been Gilfanon’s tale of The Travail of the Noldoli (I. 237–41) nor the subsequent abandoned narrative given on ssss1 bear much relation to what came after. Enduring features were the camp by Asgon-Mithrim, the death of Fëanor, the first affray with the Orcs, the capture and maiming of Maidros; but these elements had different motivations and concomitants in the earliest writing, already discussed (I. 242–3). With the ‘Sketch’, however, most of the essentials of the later story appear fully-formed, and the distance travelled from the Lost Tales is here even more striking than hitherto.

The first battle of the Gnomes with the forces of Morgoth is not clearly placed in S (cf. Gilfanon’s Tale, I. 238, 240, where the battle was fought ‘in the foothills of the Iron Mountains’ or in ‘the pass of the Bitter Hills’) – but the idea is already present that the Orcs were aroused by the burning of the ships (cf. §5: ‘The same light also tells the Orcs of the landing’.)

There now emerge the death of Fëanor at the hand of Gothmog the Balrog, the parley with the enemy and the faithless intentions on both sides, the arrival of the second host, unfurling their blue and silver banners (see ssss1) under the first Sunrise, and the dismay of the Orcs at the new light, the hostile armies of the Gnomes encamped on opposite sides of Lake Mithrim, the ‘vast smokes and vapours’ rising from Angband. The only important structural element in the narrative that has yet to appear is that of Fingolfin’s march to Angband immediately on arrival in Middle-earth and his beating on the doors.