The War of the Ring brought about a very new and different Age of Middle Earth than those that had come before it. It spelled the end of many things, the closing of many chapters in their history. It brought an end to the evil that Sauron had infected the lands with for hundreds of years and spelled a new era of peace for the free peoples of the world unlike any that had ever been known, even in the legendary days of the Numenorians before their downfall.
But as well as ridding the world of the dark lord’s malice, it also ended the age of elves, the oldest race of beings who had lived for thousands of years, since Eru created the lands and the Valar first began to singsongs of Middle Earth.
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The parting of the elves across the sea, as they traveled west to their sanctuary in the Undying Lands, was a sad loss for Middle Earth, because they took a lot of the magic and the beauty of the realm with them. The destruction of the one ring left the three elvenrings of powerwithout their enchanting effects also, which meant that many of the ethereal kingdoms and dwellings of the fair race also fell into decline.
Iconic places from across theLord of the RingsandThe Hobbittrilogies like Mirkwood and Lorien became totally different after the war had ended, for Mirkwood it became a greener, healthier place away from the malice of Dol-Guldur and the infection of the giant spiders, for Lorien it became an autumnal place, still beautiful, but devoid of the starlight of Galadriel’s ring Nenya. But the most well know elven realm in both films is arguably Rivendell, which was known for its healing and its wisdom. So what happened to Rivendell after the War of the Ring was ended? Was it abandoned as the elves sailed to Valinor?
It is important to note that not all of the elves left Middle Earth straight away. The ending of their part in the world came gradually and had already begun before the war was one. It was certainly hastened by the destruction of the one ring, which took the power of the three elven rings that had brought so much light and magic to the world, but in truth, the elves had been growing restless to journey back across the sea for most of the Third Age, even before the Quest for Erebor set the wheels in motion for everything that followed.
So, once the ring was destroyed, some departed immediately, knowing that their part to play was over, some parted to find healing, but some parted more gradually, traveling around to say goodbyes before making their final journey. And there are even some examples of those who never left to sail west at all, for example, the most obvious being Arwen, who stayed to love and rule beside Aragorn, and laterchose to be buried in the lands of her youthin Lorien.
Both of Arwen’s brothers, Elrohir and Elladan, also chose to stay in Middle Earth even after their fatherLord Elrond had left, and they remained in Rivendell, making sure that the kingdom was not left to abandonment and ruin.They were also joined by Celeborn, the husband of Galadriel who stayed for a few years to walk the trees of Lorien. Before too long, Celeborn began to feel the forest waning in Galdriel’s absence, who had already parted west alongside Elrond and many of the elven people, and he couldn’t bear to stay in Lorien and watch theironce beautiful kingdom dissolve into a shadow of its former self. So he journeyed to live in Rivendell for a long time, before eventually parting west himself to be with his wife.
It is thought that Elladan and Elrohir left alongside Celeborn around the time that Aragorn passed away, over 100 years after the War of the Ring, once the Fourth Age was well established and left in the capable hands of Aragorn’s son to rule the reunited kingdoms of Gondor and Rohan. At the end of Arwen and Aragorn’s tale in the Appendicies of theLord of the Rings, it states that ‘none now walk in the garden of Elrond’, meaning that the Noldorian elves who dwelled there for the longest time had finally parted, leaving Rivendell empty.
Eventually, as the other races filtered out of Middle Earth, and it became the world that humans live in today, the knowledge and the legends of Rivendell were lost and forgotten, and it passed beyond the memory of those who were left at the end of days.
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