The Encyclopedia of Arda - an interactive guide to the world of J.R.R. Tolkien
Dates
A period of approximately 18,000 years1 from the fall of the Lamps of the Valar to the first rising of the Sun
Location
Middle-earth (the lands in the West beyond the Sea were lit by the Two Trees during most of the Long Night)
Origins
Brought about by the fall of the Lamps of the Valar, which had shed their light over Middle-earth

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  • Updated 4 June 2026
  • This entry is complete

Long Night

The ages of darkness in Middle-earth

In the distant depths of time, the Valar had made their original dwellings on Almaren in Middle-earth, and filled the world with light from the two great Lamps of the Valar. Melkor overthrew those Lamps, and so the Valar left Almaren, crossing the Sea into the West. In Valinor they created the Two Trees to shed Light on their own new land, but without the light of the Lamps, Middle-earth was left in darkness beneath faint stars.

This Long Night of Middle-earth persisted for millennia. The first Elves awoke beneath the starlit skies (and thus gained their name Eldar, People of the Stars), and while many departed from Middle-earth for Aman, many others remained behind in the darkness. The Night only drew to a close when Melkor destroyed the Two Trees, plunging Valinor itself into darkness and causing the Valar to create the Sun and Moon. These new lights passed over the whole of Arda, bringing their light to Middle-earth as well as Aman, and so the Long Night came to a sudden end.


Notes

1

According to The Annals of Aman in volume X of The History of Middle-earth, the Lamps of the Valar fell in Valian Year 3450, then the Two Trees were made 50 Valian Years later, and stood for 1,495 Valian Years. Converting these numbers into solar years is complicated by the fact that Tolkien experimented with various formulations and calculations, but he appears - at least provisionally - to have settled on a figure of 33,530 years from the making of Arda to the fall of the Lamps, and a total of 50,775 from the beginning of the world to the first rising of the Sun.

These numbers give a period of 17,245 between the making of the Two Trees and the rising of the Sun, to which we need to add a further 479 (based on the fifty Valian Years between the fall of the Lamps and the first Light of the Trees), giving a total length for the Long Night of 17,724 years.

Although this might appear to be a remarkably exact figure, it should be emphasised that it is only one possible value from several dating schemes that Tolkien considered. The alternative schemes all use relatively similar values for solar years (within about a thousand years of one another) and so, while this period of 17,724 may not be precisely correct, it certainly gives a realistic idea of the number of millennia that Middle-earth lay under the starlit darkness of the Long Night.

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About this entry:

  • Updated 4 June 2026
  • This entry is complete

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