He is the Lord of the Waters of Arda. Unlike his fellow Valar,
he would never forsake the children of Iluvatar - helping, advising, and directly appearing to them.
Today, on Nerd of the Rings, we cover Ulmo, the King of the Sea.
Before the world was made, Ulmo was already close in friendship with Manwe.
While it was noted in my Manwe video that the King of the Valar was closest to Iluvatar, it was
Ulmo who was most deeply instructed in music. So integral was music to the Lord of Waters,
that it is said the Eldar could hear echoes of the Music of the Ainur within water itself.
Alongside Manwe, Ulmo most faithfully served the purpose of Iluvatar,
and their powers combined in creating the clouds of the air, mists, and dew. It is said that
Ulmo is third in majesty among the Valar - being behind only Manwe and Varda. Among the Valar,
Ulmo is unique in many ways. First, he is one of the few Valar who has no spouse. He
also did not dwell in Valinor, but from the very beginning he lived in Ekkaia,
otherwise known as the Encircling Sea, which surrounded all the lands of Arda. In the Book
of Lost Tales, his halls, located at the bottom of the ocean, are named Ulmonan.
As expected, Ulmo often acts independently from his fellow Valar. During the Sleep of Yavanna,
when most of the world is covered in darkness and the Valar retreated to Valinor,
Ulmo remained in the Outer Sea, keeping the earth alive under the darkness. He also only
occasionally attends councils of the Valar - one such example is when the Valar prepare
to make war upon Melkor for the sake of the newly-awakened Elves. The resulting
Battle of the Powers would land Melkor in chains and prisoner in the Halls of Mandos.
Ulmo also led a minority of the Valar in the belief that the elves should remain
free to dwell in Middle-earth, rather than be brought to Valinor. He believed that the
elves would set order to and heal the hurts of the lands of Middle-earth,
but in the end, he is overruled, and the Valar invite the elves to dwell alongside them in Aman.
Despite his disagreement, Ulmo still helps the elves who make the journey
reach the Blessed Realm. He tears a great area of land off the shores of Beleriand
and twice uses it to ferry elves across the great sea. Knowing the minds of the Teleri,
who would become famous for their love of the sea and for building great ships,
Ulmo tethers the island in the Bay of Eldamar, and it becomes known as Tol Eressea.
Later, when the time came for Melkor to ask for the pardon of the Valar,
Ulmo and Tulkas remain distrustful of him. But once again,
Ulmo obeys the bidding of Manwe as the King of the Valar releases Melkor.
After Melkor’s deception is revealed and the Noldor pursue him and the stolen silmarils
to Middle-earth, Ulmo would be the Vala most involved with the guiding
and protecting of the Children of Iluvatar. He protected the rivers Sirion and Gelion,
and would be instrumental in the founding of two great elven realms.
In the year 50 of the First Age, Turgon and his cousin Finrod were
traveling south through Beleriand when they rest in the Meres of Twilight.
Ulmo comes to them and places them in a deep sleep with heavy dreams. While neither would
speak to the other of their dreams, Ulmo places upon both their hearts to build hidden realms.
Soon after, Galadriel’s brother would found the kingdom of Nargothrond. Turgon would not, however,
find his location. Returning to Nevrast, Turgon meets the Lord of Waters face to face. Ulmo bids
him to go forth alone into the Vale of Sirion, and at the guidance of the vala, Turgon discovers
the hidden vale of Tumladen in the Encircling Mountains, where he would later build Gondolin.
While it is said Ulmo would not often wear a fana (that is, a physical form), when he did appear,
he was dreadful and terrible “as a mounting wave that strides to the land”. He wore a dark
foam-crested helm and a shimmering silver-green mail, and his voice was deep like the ocean.
Most of the time, however, Ulmo would come unseen to the shores of the sea or in the
rivers. It is said his spirit was in the very veins of the world, and that he spoke
through the sound of water itself. He made music with his horns the Ulumuri - producing
a sound that could not be forgotten by those who heard it. This phenomenon, the Unquiet of
Ulmo, is more commonly known as sea-longing, something we see awaken in many hearts throughout
history - from Tuor and Earendil in the First Age, even unto Legolas in The Return of the King.
Later in the First Age, he would guide the mannish brothers Hurin and Huor to Turgon’s hidden city.
It is said that when they are driven to the ford of Brithiach, they would have been slain by the
attacking orcs, if not for the power of Ulmo within the river Sirion. This assistance was
no mere coincidence, for it was said that Ulmo had great love for the house of Hador, and that even
then, before his birth, Ulmo had chosen Huor’s son Tuor as his instrument for a later task.
After his escape from thralldom, Tuor becomes the first man to pass through
Nevrast and reach the great sea. At this moment, a sea-longing would awaken in his
heart and stay with him forever after. He received a sign from Ulmo and follows seven
swans southward to Turgon’s abandoned city of Vinyamar. There he discovers a sword,
armor, and a shield which bore a white swan on a field of blue. These had been left by Turgon
at the behest of Ulmo himself. Tuor takes the items and makes his way to the shore.
But there came a great storm out of the west, and out of that storm
Ulmo the Lord of Waters arose in majesty and spoke to Tuor as he stood beside the sea.
When Tuor shows doubt in what he may achieve attempting his appointed task,
being a mere mortal man, Ulmo responds:
‘If I choose to send thee, Tuor son of Huor, then believe not that thy one sword is not
worth the sending. For the valour of the Edain the Elves shall ever remember as the ages lengthen,
marvelling that they gave life so freely of which they had on earth so little. But it
is not for thy valour only that I send thee, but to bring into the world a hope beyond thy sight,
and a light that shall pierce the darkness.’ And as Ulmo said these things the mutter of
the storm rose to a great cry, and the wind mounted, and the sky grew black;
and the mantle of the Lord of Waters streamed out like a flying cloud.
Then there was a noise of thunder, and lightning flared over the sea;
and Tuor beheld Ulmo standing among the waves as a tower of silver flickering with darting flames;
and he cried against the wind: ‘I go, Lord! Yet now my heart yearneth rather to the
Sea.’ And thereupon Ulmo lifted up a mighty horn, and blew upon it a single great note,
to which the roaring of the storm was but a windflaw upon a lake. And as he heard that note,
and was encompassed by it, and filled with it, it seemed to Tuor that the coasts of
Middle-earth vanished, and he surveyed all the waters of the world in a great vision:
from the veins of the lands to the mouths of the rivers, and from the strands and estuaries
out into the deep. The Great Sea he saw through its unquiet regions teeming with strange forms,
even to its lightless depths, in which amid the everlasting darkness there echoed voices terrible
to mortal ears. Its measureless plains he surveyed with the swift sight of the Valar, lying windless
under the eye of Anar, or glittering under the horned Moon, or lifted in hills of wrath
that broke upon the Shadowy Isles, until remote upon the edge of sight, and beyond the count of
leagues, he glimpsed a mountain, rising beyond his mind’s reach into a shining cloud, and at
its feet a long surf glimmering. And even as he strained to hear the sound of those far waves,
and to see clearer that distant light, the note ended, and he stood beneath the thunder
of the storm, and lightning many-branched rent asunder the heavens above him. And Ulmo was gone,
and the sea was in tumult, as the wild waves of Ossë rode against the walls of Nevrast.
Thanks to Ulmo’s gift of a cloak and guidance, Tuor comes to the hidden city of Gondolin,
delivering Ulmo’s warning that the doom of Gondolin was approaching, and that Turgon should
abandon his city and seek travel to the Blessed Realm. Turgon chooses not to heed this advice,
though Ulmo’s direction of Tuor would still eventually bring about Morgoth’s downfall.
In the south of Beleriand, Ulmo would come to Cirdan the shipwright - giving him a warning
that great peril draws nigh to Nargothrond. In 495 FA, the same year Tuor meets Ulmo himself,
word comes via messengers to the King of Nargothrond, Finrod’s nephew Orodreth,
and his advisor Turin Turambar. Ulmo’s warning was they should destroy their bridge and fortify
their defense against Morgoth’s forces to come, for Ulmo’s power was withdrawing from the river.
However, Turin refused to heed this warning, wishing to continue their offensive strikes
against the orcs. Orodreth, valuing the words of his adviser, ignores
Ulmo’s warning, and in that very year, the realm is destroyed by the dragon
Glaurung and a force of orcs, who use Nargothrond’s own bridge against it.
Gondolin meanwhile, lasts until the year 510 FA when its location is discovered and destroyed by
an army of Morgoth’s orcs, dragons, and balrogs. Tuor escapes with his wife Idril, who was the
king’s daughter, and their son Earendil. They would escape and retreating to the havens founded
by Cirdan, Earendil would meet Elwing. They would marry and have twin sons - Elrond and Elros.
Later, when the havens are sacked by the Sons of Feanor in the Third Kinslaying,
Elwing would cast herself into the sea with the silmaril of Beren and Luthien. Ulmo saves Elwing
from a certain death, granting her the form of a white bird. She flies to her husband’s ship and
travels with him to Valinor where he pleads for the intervention of the Valar against Morgoth.
Thus, the choosing of Tuor by Ulmo was not in vain, for Earendil,
Tuor’s son would rouse the Valar to aid the men and elves of Middle-earth. Morgoth is
then defeated in the war of wrath, and cast through the door of night.
As mentioned earlier, Ulmo, like other valar, has maiar who serve him. The most well known of these
were the husband and wife of Osee and Uinen - who would come to be the most well-known maiar
to the elves. Another is quite possibly Salmar - who entered Arda in the early days along with
Ulmo. It was he that crafted the Ulumuri, the great white conch horns of Ulmo.
That these horns would cause a sea-longing was a concept Tolkien devised far earlier in
his writings than some may assume. While it would not be published until 1986’s
The Shaping of Middle-earth, a great poem called “The Horns of Ylmir” was
written by Tolkien back in 1914. The poem, in which Ulmo is called Ylmir,
is written in-world by Tuor for his son Earendil and describes, among other things,
the sea-calling of the horns of Ylmir which Tuor says he will hear til his death.
While Ulmo was alone in never forsaking the Children of Illuvatar, he did this not out of
rebellion toward his kin. Instead, Tolkien tells us it was a role to which Ulmo was appointed ere
the making of the World. Just as Ulmo had selected Tuor to be his instrument in the First Age,
Iluvatar had selected Ulmo to be his instrument in aiding the men and elves of Middle-earth.
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