A song that told of the aftermath of the Darkening of Valinor, which had left the realm of the Valar without light after the fall of the Two Trees. The song, tells how the Valar thought to replace the Trees by making light for the whole world, and not merely their western home. So they created the Sun and Moon from the last golden fruit of Laurelin and the last silver flower of Telperion.
To send these new lights aloft, they were placed in vessels made by the Valar to hold them. Piloted by Arien and Tilion, these last remnants of the Two Trees became the Sun and the Moon. The two shining lights lifted into the sky as the first Men awoke in the far East of the world, and the hosts of the Noldor returned into Middle-earth from Aman. So the Years of the Sun began, and from that time on, Sunlight and moonlight shone down on the lands of Middle-earth that had formerly known only starlight.
Almost nothing is known of the "Song of the Sun and Moon" itself, other than its Elvish name Narsilion (which simply means 'of the Sun and Moon'). While it was not uncommon for Tolkien to produce real versions of songs or poems referred to in his tales, in this case he does not seem to have done so. At least, Christopher Tolkien reports that, 'If there ever was a "song of the Sun and Moon" ... it has disappeared.' (The History of Middle-earth volume IV, part III, notes to the The Quenta).
Notes
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We are lacking almost any information about the origins of the Song of the Sun and Moon, but given its subject matter it must inevitably have been written after the making of the Sun and Moon. At its earliest, then, the song was made at the beginning of the Years of the Sun (that is, the last few centuries of the First Age, following the loss of the Two Trees).
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As with its dating, the authorship of the Song of the Sun and Moon is also shrouded in uncertainty, but we do have some clues to work from. Given the level of detail within the song, we can take it that its maker either saw those events directly, or at least had access to an eyewitness. The song is also mentioned in the Annals of Aman (in volume X of The History of Middle-earth), and those Annals were said to have been the work of Rúmil of Tirion. None of this is conclusive, but taken together these various hints imply that the Song of the Sun and Moon was created in Aman, shortly after the events it describes.
None of this helps to explain how the song came to be mentioned in The Silmarillion, which contains material specific to the Noldor who returned to Middle-earth (which is problematic, because those Noldor departed before the Moon and Sun - and therefore the song - were made). The song must have somehow been carried across the Great Sea later in history (perhaps by one of the Wizards, for example) and eventually incorporated into the full Silmarillion account.
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- Updated 20 December 2025
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