Do Elves BURY their dead?

[Sauron the White]

Please ignore the typo in the similar thread title.

What would happen with all the Elves killed at the Battle of the Five Armies? Are they buried in the ground? Mounds? Burned in pyres?

[Morthoron]

Burial mounds are evident in many passages of the Silmarillion. Glorfindel's mound is near the pass where he fell with the Balrog, then of course there is Haudh-en-Elleth wherein Finduilas was buried. Also, the Elves of Doriath buried Turin in a mound, and there is the mound of dead Eldar and Edain slain at the Battle of Unnumbered Tears (in Anfauglith if I remember correctly). I'm at work, but that's what I can recall off-hand.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Morthoron speaks well. However I am not sure whether a band of Elves would be buried in the proximity to the Mountain. Is there told whether the Elves were buried (or whatever) in the place? I guess not. For me, it will seem logical that the dead Elves were first carried to Mirkwood (however many there were), and "buried" there. I say "buried" because I am not sure, however some mounds would make sense. I would imagine it the way that on some beautiful sun- or in the night moonlit glade in the proximity of Thranduil's halls, there is Haudh-en... wait, it would probably have to be in the language of the Wood-Elves... well, never mind, simply some Hill of Slain in the Battle of the Five Armies, a place often visited by the friends and relatives of the dead Elves.

[Mithalwen]

I have been pondering this because I have an elvish corpse to dispose of in a RPG (though I am going with the possibly uncanonical wished of the player concerned for that and cremating him).

I don't know whether it is one of the latent Catholic elements in the works (The Vatican only relaxed its ban on cremation in 1967) but cremation is seldom the fate of good characters (the burned dwarves of Nanduhirion being the exception, and presumably Gil Galad and Elendil if they were frazzled in combat with Sauron). Good characters get buried in grave or tomb. There was quite a bit about death customs in the discussion of the Breaking of the Fellowship episode of the Radio Series which might interest those not otherwise interested in that thread.

However I am sure I read somewhere in Home that an Elvish body even unburied would go to dust quickly - I think it is on the development of the idea of Elvish rebirth. However some bodies (those of Luthien & Miriel for example) do not decompose - though clearly those are both unusual circumstances.

The different relationship with elves of body and soul - and indeed the different relationship with death probably affects the funeral rites. I imagine that there might be a great variance between the Exiled Noldor (for whom the Valar and Valinor were a matter of fact not faith - as Terry Pratchett said about the discworld gods, saying they believed in them would be like us saying we believed in the postman, the Sindar who had a lesser immediate experience, and the Silvan elves for whom such things are not real in the same way - think of Haldir's conversation with Merry. Presumably the elves of Thranduil, not living under the rule of a living link with Valinor found the the idea of passing West as even more remote and unappealing. Legolas implies that he has interpreted Galadriel's message as "speaking of his death".

Therefore it is likely that the Silvan elves of Mirkwood might regard death more seriously than say the Noldor and consequently have the most elaborate funeral rites since the death would seem more drastic.

I cannot find a reference to a non-burial funeral (including cairns and mounds with graves) Some are more elaborate than others - Beleg is buried in a shallow grave. The graves seem to hold a residual power. Glorfindel's cairn in a barren landscape yields grass and the yellow flowers enblematic of his house while "the green grave of Finrod.. remained inviolate, until the land was changed... but Finrod walks with Finarfin, his father beneath the trees in Eldamar".

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Just for completeness' sake, add also Turgon burying his father's body after Thorondor rescued it from Morgoth.

Tolkien, good Catholic that he was, apparently found cremation distasteful- note that Gandalf charges Denethor with imitating the 'heathen' kings.

[Mithalwen]

Thanks William. Heathen is an interesting choice of word for ME (as is Eomer's repeated us of devilry). It is interest that in their earnestness not to leave Boromir lying like carrion, cremation is not raised as a possibility. Obviously there were no doubt good reasons why raising a great fire would not be the best idea but it is not even recognised as a possibility.

A final point to legate is that it was customary until very recently that the war dead were buried near where they fell. I say customary but the fact is that do do otherwise would have been impossible. The British only started repatriating their War dead in 1982 (within my memory) with the fallen of the Falklands War, and this was not automatic, but offered if the families wished it and not all accepted. While obviously there has been progess in transport and refrigeration the main issue is numbers. We lost 255 in the Falklands, a number which has yet to be matched I think by fatalities in both Gulf wars but nearly 20,000 in just one day at the Battle of the Somme. I suppose it is possible that Thranduil might have taken his dead back but I think Theoden, is the only case of of a body being repatriated, and he was a king - and it was possible to remove his body to the city immediately. His lords lie "under grass in Gondor". I think Eomer's eored buried their dead from the battle with the orcs at the scene, even in their own land.

[alatar]

Considering the number of elven fallen, where exactly are all of these cemeteries? I know that the Dead Marshes is one such place, but with the gazillions of elves that lost their lives to Morgoth and Sauron (even with lands broken and reformed), you'd think that there'd be some mention of such places in the texts.

Was Hollin such a place? Was it Aragorn that said something like, "The elves have to be gone a long time for the land to forget them," meaning that their dust (beyond their living presence) did something to the land as well.

Me? I'm thinking it's more like in video games where the fallen fade away after some time, leaving whatever artifacts that they carried behind. Great and important (and unusual) persons are 'buried' in the sense that their remains are interred when possible, but for the most part it's just a marker/symbol/memorial for the fallen.

"Here lies Glorfindel the Third,
no bones below will you find interred,
he's gone on the to Blessed West,
leaving behind not but his crest."