Was Legolas immortal?

[Letty]

Was Legolas immortal?

[Glirdan]

No. No Elf is immortal. Yes it is true that they have everlasting life and are free from falling ill. However, they are still in danger of being killed by arrows or a sword. Also, if you've read the Silmarillion, Luthien (who is an Elf [obviously ]) died of grief because Beren was slain. I'm sure, however, that there will be more experienced members who would love to go into greater detail with you about this. I, on the other hand, do not have my book in front of me and can't pull out more quotes and proof and facts to help. So, if anybody would like to take over, be my guest.

[The 1,000 Reader]

In a sense.

[Earendilyon]

The Elves' life is the life of Arda itself. If they aren't killed or die of grief, they will live on and on and on and on .... . Even if they die, they will be rehoused in their bodies in Valinor by the Valar and live on in Valinor, untill the end of Arda. What happens to them after the End not even the Valar seem to know.

[Raynor]

What happens to them after the End not even the Valar seem to know.

We have this two bits:

Originally Posted by Of the severance of marriage, Laws and customs of the Eldar, The Later Quenta Silmarillion, HoME X

Since the Elves (and Men) were made for Arda, the satisfaction of their nature will require Arda (without the malice of the Marrer): therefore before the Ending the Marring will be wholly undone or healed (or absorbed into good, beauty, and joy). In that region of Time and Place the Elves will dwell as their home, but not be confined to it. But no blessed spirits from what is still to us the future can intrude into our own periods of Time. For to contemplate the Tale of Arda the Blessed must (in spirit or whole being) leave the Time of Arda. But others use another analogy, saying that there will indeed be a New Arda, rebuilt from the beginning without Malice, and that the Elves will take part in this from the beginning. It will be in Ea, say they - for they hold that all Creation of any sort must be in Ea, proceeding from Eru in the same way, and therefore being of the same Order. They do not believe in contemporaneous non-contiguous worlds except as an amusing fantasy of the mind. They are (say they) either altogether unknowable, even as to whether they are or are not, or else if there are any intersections (however rare) they are only provinces of one Ea.

Originally Posted by Notes on motives in the Silmarillion, Myths Transformed, HoME X

Men will also 'fade', if it proves to be the plan that things shall still go on, when they have completed their function. But even the Elves had the notion that this would not be so: that the end of Men would somehow be bound up with the end of history, or as they called it 'Arda Marred' (Arda Sahta), and the achievement of 'Arda Healed' (Arda Envinyanta). (They do not seem to have been clear or precise - how should they be! - whether Arda Envinyanta was a permanent state of achievement, which could therefore only be enjoyed 'outside Time', as it were: surveying the Tale as an englobed whole; or a state of unmarred bliss within Time and in a 'place' that was in some sense a lineal and historical descent of our world or 'Arda Marred'. They seem often to have meant both. 'Arda Unmarred' did not actually exist, but remained in thought - Arda without Melkor, or rather without the effects of his becoming evil; but is the source from which all ideas of order and perfection are derived. 'Arda Healed' is thus both the completion of the 'Tale of Arda' which has taken up all the deeds of Melkor, but must according to the promise of Ilúvatar be seen to be good; and also a state of redress and bliss beyond the 'circles of the world'.)

[Legolas]

The simple answer (and the answer I think you're looking for) is yes. Legolas will live forever unless slain or grieved enough to decide to die. Even if this is the case, his spirit will eventually be reembodied. At that point he'll continue to live forever, to the end of the world.

There have been threads to pick apart elves' "immortality," like http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?t=785.

My response on that thread:

Yes, this has been covered before. Even if elves 'die' (whether slain or of grief), their spirits remain in the world and (most) are given a new body in Valinor. Even when slain, they do not leave the world. 'Immortal' in the elven sense means not subject to death by natural causes such as sickness or old age, and for one's fate to be tied to the fate of the world, destined to remain therein until that fate comes.

This matter popped in a few of the letters that Tolkien wrote in response to questions:

'Elves' are 'immortal', at least as far as this world goes: and hence are concerned rather with the griefs and burdens of deathlessness in time and change, than with death.

The doom of the Elves is to be immortal, to love the beauty of the world, to bring it to full flower with their gifts of delicacy and perfection, to last while it lasts, never leaving it even when 'slain', but returning – and yet, when the Followers come, to teach them, and make way for them, to 'fade' as the Followers grow and absorb the life from which both proceed.

Elves and Men are evidently in biological terms one race, or they could not breed and produce fertile offspring – even as a rare event : there are 2 cases only in my legends of such unions, and they are merged in the descendants of Eärendil.1 But since some have held that the rate of longevity is a biological characteristic, within limits of variation, you could not have Elves in a sense 'immortal' – not eternal, but not dying by 'old age' — and Men mortal, more or less as they now seem to be in the Primary World – and yet sufficiently akin.

I do not see that 'reincarnation' affects the resulting problems at all. But 'immortality' (in my world only within the limited longevity of the Earth) does, of course. As many fairy-stories perceive.

Here he notes that the Elvish immortality is 'limited immortality':

Túor weds Idril the daughter of Turgon King of Gondolin; and 'it is supposed' (not stated) that he as an unique exception receives the Elvish limited 'immortality': an exception either way.

elvish 'immortality' (which is not eternal, but measured by the duration in time of Earth)

One of the better ones:

They also possess a 'subcreational' or artistic faculty of great excellence. They are therefore 'immortal'. Not 'eternally', but to endure with and within the created world, while its story lasts. When 'killed', by the injury or destruction of their incarnate form, they do not escape from time, but remain in the world, either discarnate, or being re-born. This becomes a great burden as the ages lengthen, especially in a world in which there is malice and destruction (I have left out the mythological form which Malice or the Fall of the Angels takes in this fable).

immortality, strictly longevity co-extensive with the life of Arda, [...] Mortality, that is a short life-span having no relation to the life of Arda,

Here, a side note mentions true immortality:

Longevity or counterfeit 'immortality' (true immortality is beyond Ea) is the chief bait of Sauron – it leads the small to a Gollum, and the great to a Ringwraith.

Elves are 'immortal' enough to be called so by men:

The Elves were sufficiently longeval to be called by Man 'immortal'. But they were not unageing or unwearying. Their own tradition was that they were confined to the limits of this world (in space and time), even if they died, and would continue in some form to exist in it until 'the end of the world'.

I like his wording here - instead of true immortality, it's limitless (within the confines of the world, and thus time) serial longevity:

Though it is only in reading the work myself (with criticisms in mind) that I become aware of the dominance of the theme of Death. (Not that there is any original 'message' in that: most of human art & thought is similarly preoccupied.) But certainly Death is not an Enemy! I said, or meant to say, that the 'message' was the hideous peril of confusing true 'immortality' with limitless serial longevity. Freedom from Time, and clinging to Time. The confusion is the work of the Enemy, and one of the chief causes of human disaster.

In Letter No. 325, Tolkien is careful to indicate a difference. When referring to the elves, he uses single quotes -"the 'immortals'"; when referring to the Ainur, he removes them - "the angelic immortals."