In the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, the Halls of Mandos are a physical location in the Undying Lands of Aman, to the west of Middle-Earth, where the spiritual cognition (or souls, or fea in Elvish languages) of elves go, if they should die by violence or unwillingly. Once there, they are subject to a judgment accounting for their actions which led up to their deaths, and to a waiting period intended to allow them to relinquish the more petty and unworthy business of their former life, or to receive punishment for particularly egregious acts such as kinslaying. After this interval, they may, at the discretion of Mandos himself (one of the Valar, deity-like beings who regulate the physical and metaphysical condition of the world), be allowed to return to the world in a new life with a reformed body, under their original identity, and not as a new identity.

One notable example of an elf reincarnated back into his own identity in this manner is Glorfindel, who died in the act of slaying a Balrog, a mighty evil being of divine origin. It is, however, a matter of variable interpretation (due to the author's own inconsistency on the topic, across many iterations of his notes) whether the Glorfindel present in The Lord of the Rings is the same individual as the one who fought the Balrog, or if he is only a namesake who happens to be extraordinarily powerful and a subject of awe for the main characters of the trilogy.

Humans, dwarves, ents, orcs, hobbits, eagles, and other sapient races in Tolkien's Legendarium either have no declared specific afterlife, or they have specific afterlife circumstances declared to be different from those of elves.


Iron Noder 2022, 20/30

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