How Long Does it Take to Get to Valinor?

[Puddleglum]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

After that, how could time and distance be measured by a Middle-earth denizen, if one started to fly or passed through to another plane of existence?

Well, a Middle-earth denizen is still a creature existing within time. Even in Valinor, the Valar continue to watch the unfolding history of Arda as time flows on.

As such, someone traversing Ilmen on the straight-way to Valinor (if so gifted to find that path) would still experience the passage of time (be it short or long). Just as they would continue to experience the passage of time after arriving at Eressea (or Valinor beyond).

I don't think I would say that such voyagers are "traveling into another dimension (plane of existence)". That sounds too much like trying to shoehorn Tolkien's secondary (sub)creation into our own "current" primary-world "scientific" understandings which may actually be unnecessarily limited in scope.

Had Tolkien been writing a primary-world Sci-Fi novel, it might make sense. But as Eru (God) and pre-existing, self-incarnating spirits (Valar/Maier) are all REAL (within his secondary subcreation), I think there is basis for leaving things a bit more mysterious as Valinor was removed (and thus voyagers travel) "into the realm of hidden (tho still physical and real) things"

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by Puddleglum

As such, someone traversing Ilmen on the straight-way to Valinor (if so gifted to find that path) would still experience the passage of time (be it short or long). Just as they would continue to experience the passage of time after arriving at Eressea (or Valinor beyond).

Yes, time goes on and affects the traveler. However, the traveller would not feel the time. I suppose that Valinor is similar to Lorien in this sense, except even stronger. Sam didn't want to believe that he spent a whole month in Lorien, because he didn't feel the time pass by. Even though Frodo and Bilbo would eventually die in Valinor, they wouldn't really be aware/concious of the years that go by.
I don't think that it was a different plane of existence, but existence would seem to be on a different plane for, I guess, everyone except for Elves. They are used to having time pass by, since they live for millenia. And even for Elves life in Valinor would be different. The fundamental principles of "existence" would remain the same, but existence would be different.
This is all a lot of guesswork, though - existence or not. I guess it's really up to the reader to decide how far/close Valinor became. According to me it is farther, because it is beyond the "circles of the world", but on the other hand, it's closer, because you don't need to travel for weeks to get there, but you need the Valar's permission to go on the straight way. Again, this is a very debatable topic. For me the removal of Valinor from Arda was more a sybolic event than one that could change the plot significantly. When it comes to symbols, everyone has a different interpretation.

[Formendacil]

If we're taking sides, put me down solidly on the Puddlegum/Pitchwife side of temporal vs. spiritual. For what it's worth, I don't think the analogy can be made that Valinor is equivalent to the Christian conception of Heaven--even transposing it into Middle-earthic terms.

For one thing, Heaven in Christian theology* is only a place after Jesus takes a body and dies and ascends to be with his Father. It is also only at that time that the souls of the dead can conceive of Heaven as a post-mortem option--because Heaven is not "place above the world where God is where good people go when they die" but "the place where Jesus is, which is the ultimate goal of the Christian life--to be like Him, so that we may be with Him as He is."

Since Middle-earth never has (or has not had yet, as of Frodo's time, depending how you read the "Athrabeth") Eru Incarnate, there is nowhere that can be considered "Heaven, aka the place where Eru Incarnate lives and we want to live with him." If Valinor is a place of retirement for the Dead, it is more akin to Jewish Sheol (and the Halls of Mandos definitely has shades of this), or even the Catholic conception of Purgatory. If I remember aright, Tolkien does say somewhere that Frodo's stay in Valinor was more of a Purgatory than Heaven--a place to be purified of what had happened in his life. We should note that while Purgatory is generally considered to be an unpleasant place to be, it is not an unpleasant place to be going to, since it means that you've escaped the alternative (aka Hell) and are on the right track to eventually make it to Heaven.

There is another aspect to the Christian conception of Heaven that needs to be taken into account, however, and that is the post-worldly quality of the place. Heaven isn't just somewhere to go after we die, it is the new world after death. It's pretty difficult to separate out "new heavens and a new earth" (aka the heavenly Jerusalem) from "Heaven" per se. And, as far as that goes, there IS a whole tradition in Tolkien of Arda Remade which matches this idea of post-worldly Heaven quite nicely.... but that's after the Dagor Dagorath, after the Elves and the Valar grow weary of this world and envy the Gift of Men, when Eru remakes things.

And Valinor isn't Arda Remade. It isn't even Arda Unmarred... merely a part of Arda Marred that has been preserved from the stain of Melkor in a unique way. It is a sort of Elven purgatory, still attached to the physical world, since the Elves are uniquely bound to the physical world, but it isn't the world as it should be, nor as it will be, when it is remade.

There's also a whole possible distinction to be made between Valinor and Tol Eressëa, but that might be splitting hairs a little more than I need to. I think my point is made...

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

Yes, time goes on and affects the traveller. However, the traveller would not feel the time. I suppose that Valinor is similar to Lorien in this sense, except even stronger. Sam didn't want to believe that he spent a whole month in Lorien, because he didn't feel the time pass by. Even though Frodo and Bilbo would eventually die in Valinor, they wouldn't really be aware/conscious of the years that go by.

The Lórien/Valinor comparison is probably a lot more fruitful than Heaven/Valinor, but I think there are some issues with it. First of all, it's one thing thing to say Valinor is like Lórien, it's another thing to say that the voyage to Valinor is like Lórien.

Aside from that quibble, however, I'm still not sure that Valinor would have the same relationship with time that Lórien did. Lórien's time-dilation effect is directly the byproduct of Galadriel's use of Nenya. It was, in that respect, an artificial defence against the effects of time in the world. While there is a timelessness in Valinor, it stems from different causes (certainly, it doesn't stem from a Ring made with Celebrimbor's craft and Sauron's influence). In Lórien, the effects of time are halted by playing with time itself, it seems. In Valinor, I think the effects of time are avoided, not by avoiding time, but because the stain of Morgoth is kept away, and thus "death" does not enter.

Nonetheless, insofar as even the Valar will someday envy the Gift of Men, I think we can take it for certain that time does flow in Valinor, and presumably at a more or less normal rate.




*I am speaking more specifically of Catholic theology, which is the pertinent theology if we're using Tolkien as our barometer anyway, but I think I'm speaking in generic enough terms that the Catholic/any Christian distinction is unnecessary.

[Galadriel55]

I'd say that the journey takes about a day.

And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragnance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-cutrain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.
But to Sam the evening deepened to darkness as he stood at the Haven...

The Grey Havens

I think that although it says on a night of rain, it means the night. Frodo left onthe morning of one day and arrived in Valinor the morning of the next day. If it wasn't for the paragraph describing Sam, I'd also say that it took Frodo a few days/weeks to get there. However, the way Tolkien compares what Sam and Frodo see, it seems like he's talking about the same night. It wouldn't make sense to say that Sam didn't see something on the first night that happened on the fifth, for example. Of course he wouldn't see something that hasn't yet happened. However, I think that the reason for Tolkien to write that is because he wanted to emphasize the separation between both Frodo and Sam, as well as ME and Valinor. It really depends on how you look at it.

[Galin]

I would agree that Aman and Eressea, after being removed, are still within time.

If I recall correctly there's also a letter where JRRT notes this specifically, but anyway, as Legolas notes concerning Lothlorien, change and decay is not the same in all places. Tolkien toyed with actual time differences in Lorien (as seen from draft texts), but he abandoned this for halting or slowing the unwanted (from an Elvish perspective) effects of time rather -- which still had its confusing effect in any case, as we see from Sam's comments.

Lothlorien still could be said to be 'timeless' in ways, but as Legolas also notes, time does not tarry. In the text Aman (Morgoth's Ring) it's noted that: 'Time in Aman was actual time, not merely a mode of perception. As, say, 100 years went by in Middle-earth as part of Arda, so 100 years passed in Aman, which was also part of Arda.'

Of course the next section titled Aman and Mortal Men begins: 'If it is thus in Aman, or was ere the Change of the World, and therein the Eldar...' but still the reader is given no real reason to think that this bit about time wasn't still true after the Change of the World.

[Puddleglum]

Interestingly, I just ran across something I had forgotten in HoME volume 4 "The Shaping of Middle Earth". In the section "The Ambarkanta" (The shape of the world), there is a diagram drawn by Tolkien (Diagram III) which shows the world after it was made round.

The diagram includes a line, tangential to the surface of the round world, labeled "The Straight Path."

And on that line, at a distance from the tangent point of about 1-1/2 radii, is a dot labeled "Valinor"!

So, if the round world (post downfall) is equivalent to our modern Earth in size, then Valinor would be about 6000 miles out.

Of course, this is just one diagram and Tolkien's ideas may have changed - but at least it suggests the theory may have more documentary basis (in Tolkien's writings) than I had originally thought.

[Pitchwife]

Nice find, Puddleglum! There are also several world maps reproduced in that section (one of them, with the shapes of the continents starting to look similar to what they are now, can be seen here). Judging from those, I'd say Belegaer pre-Fall looks like it's roughly the size of the Atlantic - which is something between 3000 and 6000 km wide, and it took Christopher Columbus a little over three months to cross it; which fits your guess of about 12-14 weeks quite nicely.

[Galadriel]

Originally Posted by Puddleglum

Interestingly, I just ran across something I had forgotten in HoME volume 4 "The Shaping of Middle Earth". In the section "The Ambarkanta" (The shape of the world), there is a diagram drawn by Tolkien (Diagram III) which shows the world after it was made round.

The diagram includes a line, tangential to the surface of the round world, labeled "The Straight Path."

And on that line, at a distance from the tangent point of about 1-1/2 radii, is a dot labeled "Valinor"!

So, if the round world (post downfall) is equivalent to our modern Earth in size, then Valinor would be about 6000 miles out.

Of course, this is just one diagram and Tolkien's ideas may have changed - but at least it suggests the theory may have more documentary basis (in Tolkien's writings) than I had originally thought.

Wow! That's a great find, as pitchwife said. Thanks a lot! But I think I'm going to stick to Galadriel55's answer

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Puddleglum

Interestingly, I just ran across something I had forgotten in HoME volume 4 "The Shaping of Middle Earth". In the section "The Ambarkanta" (The shape of the world), there is a diagram drawn by Tolkien (Diagram III) which shows the world after it was made round.

The diagram includes a line, tangential to the surface of the round world, labeled "The Straight Path."

And on that line, at a distance from the tangent point of about 1-1/2 radii, is a dot labeled "Valinor"!

So, if the round world (post downfall) is equivalent to our modern Earth in size, then Valinor would be about 6000 miles out.

Anyone want to buy me the HOME for Christmas?

Anyway, it still seems to me that one's perception of time would change when making the transition from the "new" world to the "old".

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Puddleglum

But as Eru (God) and pre-existing, self-incarnating spirits (Valar/Maier) are all REAL (within his secondary subcreation), I think there is basis for leaving things a bit more mysterious as Valinor was removed (and thus voyagers travel) "into the realm of hidden (tho still physical and real) things"[/INDENT]

The land of Aman, though still able to be found by those so ordained, was not part of the "real" world any longer after the Downfall.

.....Númenor was destroyed, and Eressëa and Valinor removed from the physically attainable earth.

Letter 154

....Númenor foundered and was utterly overwhelmed......and the Blessed Realm removed forever from the circles of the physical world.

Letter 156

If the Ancient West was not physically part of Middle-earth, how would Frodo possibly estimate the length and distance of his journey there? One may attempt it during the voyage, but when one's estimations are based upon the known world, and they are passing out of that world, such guesses are futile.

[Pitchwife]

Much as I sympathize with emphasizing the spiritual, otherworldly aspect of Valinor and the journey there (of which Legate's earlier post was wonderfully evocative), I think Puddleglum has a good point here. Faery doesn't reckon in hours and kilometers, but neither is it some sort of non-spatial/non-temporal Nirvana. Valinor used to be an earthly paradise, and even when it no longer inhabited the same physical plane as the rest of Arda (whatever that may mean), I think it remained somehow analogous to what it was like when it did; meaning there were still mountains and rivers and plains, and the Pass of Calacirya and a sea between Tol Eressëa and the mainland (otherwise where would be the fun for the Teleri?), and it would still have taken time to get from here to there - although I'd agree that time probably didn't matter for the people there in quite the same way as it does for us on this here side of the Great Sea. And I guess the same applies for the journey as for the country itself.

That quote from the Akallabêth about the Straight Road and the ship on it passing through air and space like on a mighty bridge is a wonderful mythical image, and I feel that trying to translate it into rational terms ruins it somehow. Never mind that this is what Tolkien himself apparently attempted in those letters Zil quoted, for the benefit of 20th century readers presumably unfamiliar with mythical thinking - but when he wrote that quote down, he was thinking like a poet, not like a metaphysicist (or is it metaphysician?).

So what would the journey have been like for those on the ship? I can't see them as entering spiritual hyperspace through some gate or metaphysical wormhole and being zapped to Valinor in no time, like the USS Enterprise with streaming stars blurred into stripes behind them. Rather I'd imagine they would have the experience of sailing on all the way through, first on the bent Sea, then through the air, finally through the region of the stars, until at last, on a night of rain..., they reached that other sea and approached the shore of the Blessed Land. Note there are were obviously still nights and days (even rain!), so the passengers would still have the experience of time passing - even if they'd grow less and less concerned with the reckoning of time during the course of their voyage, so they probably wouldn't have asked Gandalf whether they were going to arrive by tea-time (although with hobbits, I'm not even sure of that.)