Banning Numenorians from Valinor

[Sartr]

When the Valar created Numenor, they gave the people there one rule: you can't sail west or come to Valinor. They had good intentions with this, as they put it, "like a moth to a flame" visiting would be harmful to humans. But by simply banning them, that made the Numenorians disgruntled and opened an opportunity for Sauron to lie and corrupt them completely.

As a better alternative, why not tell them: "Being in the Undying Lands won't make you guys immortal, but if you don't believe us, send over a couple volunteers who can live here. Fair warning: they're not going to last long, but they're free to come and go as they wish." While this might not be fully effective, it might have staved off the worst case cataclysm that happened.

 

[Oromedur]

When the Valar created Numenor, they gave the people there one rule: you can't sail west or come to Valinor. They had good intentions with this, as they put it, "like a moth to a flame" visiting would be harmful to humans. But by simply banning them, that made the Numenorians disgruntled and opened an opportunity for Sauron to lie and corrupt them completely.

As a better alternative, why not tell them: "Being in the Undying Lands won't make you guys immortal, but if you don't believe us, send over a couple volunteers who can live here. Fair warning: they're not going to last long, but they're free to come and go as they wish." While this might not be fully effective, it might have staved off the worst case cataclysm that happened.

Wouldn’t have worked. And for hundreds of years the Numenoreans accepted it.
I don’t really understand why they couldn’t have visited Tol Erresea though.

I think when entities powerful enough to build a near paradise by raising a continent from the sea for you tell you please not to come to this other place because you will fall to bits, you should probably take then at their word.

Which makes me wonder, did Bilbo, Frodo, Sam and Gimli come to Aman or did they go to Tol Erresea?

 

[Elthir]

As I read Tolkien's explanation concerning this matter, a mortal living in Valinor would neither become immortal nor die quicklier.

See JRRT's Aman And Mortal Men (published somewhere at the end of Morgoth's Ring), a text which explains why living in Valinor would still be ungood for Men -- despite that they would not die fasterer there.

🐾

 

[Olorgando]

...
As a better alternative, why not tell them: "Being in the Undying Lands won't make you guys immortal, but if you don't believe us, send over a couple volunteers who can live here. Fair warning: they're not going to last long, but they're free to come and go as they wish." While this might not be fully effective, it might have staved off the worst case cataclysm that happened.

Humans being as they are, the Valar would have had to repeat this for every generation.
After some decades, and never mind centuries or over a millennium, things that happened in the past start taking on a legendary color for the descendants.
And even with a once-every-generation sojourn, we can expect there to be cantankerous mule-lookalikes who wouldn't believe, wouldn't want to believe, the witnesses.

I do get the impression that after having lavished so much imagination of the Firstborn, the Elves, by the time he got around to the Followers, the Atani, he was in need of a vacation - which, unfortunately he did not take before completing what then turned out to be a rather slipshod affair ... 🤓

 

[Hisoka Morrow]

...wouldn't want to believe, the witnesses....

lol.

...As a better alternative, why not tell them: "Being in the Undying Lands won't make you guys immortal, but if you don't believe us, send over a...

Nver underestimate Dark Side's standard of military's RUSE(JRRT set it as the exclusive trump card of Dark side). Sauron might even persuade the Numenorains like this, "The Valars changed the environment what will kill your health.", or "The use some magical poisonous gas to kill as your witness land Valinor".
Don't forget, even the Noldor states had once been Valar's neighbor in Valinor for centuries, Melkor's RUSE still have unlimited ways that could work bunches of wonders to make Numenor'sgame over.

 

[Elthir]

I have a little more time today. Spoiler alert for some description from Tolkien's text Aman and Mortal Men. First, a couple points of interest:

1) In this text 1 Valian Year equals 144 Sun Years.

2) It's said here that the Valar could not alter the "doom" of Eru, which included the speed of growth and length of life span. Thus in Aman, a Man's full life would last less than a "year" of change and growth in Aman, and:

" . . . such a creature would be a fleeting thing, the most swift-passing of all beasts. For his whole life would last little more than one half-year, and while all other living creatures would seem to him hardly to change, but to remain steadfast in life and joy with hope of endless years undimmed, he would rise and pass -- even as upon Earth the grass may rise in spring and wither ere the winter.

Then he would become filled with envy, deeming himself a victim of injustice, being denied the graces given to all other things. He would not value what he had, but feeling that he was among the least and most despised of all creatures, he would grow soon to contemn his manhood, and hate those more richly endowed. He would not escape the fear and sorrow of his swift mortality that is his lot upon earth, in Arda Marred, but would be burdened by it unbearably to the loss of all delight."

Tolkien then asks what if Men were given a physical longevity in Aman. In brief here: if so, the nature of the fea could not be changed however, and the fea and hroa would come to be not united and at peace, " . . . but would be opposed, to the great pain of both."

🐾

 

[Alcuin]

Which makes me wonder, did Bilbo, Frodo, Sam and Gimli come to Aman or did they go to Tol Erresea?

Yes, Frodo, Bilbo, Sam, and Gimli travelled to Tol Eressëa. The three Hobbits died there, I believe: In Letter 246, Tolkien remarks that

Frodo was sent or allowed to pass over Sea to heal him – if that could be done, before he died. He would have eventually to “pass away”: no mortal … can abide for ever … within Time. So he went both to a purgatory and to a reward…: a period of reflection and peace and a gaining of a truer understanding of his position in littleness and in greatness, spent still in Time amid the natural beauty of “Arda Unmarred”, the Earth unspoiled by evil.

Bilbo went too. … His companionship was … necessary for Frodo’s sake – it is difficult to imagine a hobbit, even one [like] Frodo… without a companion of his own kind, and Bilbo was the person that Frodo most loved. … But [Bilbo] also needed and deserved the favour on his own account. He bore still the mark of the Ring… As for reward for his pain, it is difficult to feel that his life would be complete without an experience of “pure Elvishness”…
​

And we are led to believe, according to the “Tale of Years” (Appendix B in RotK) that after his wife Rose died, Sam also went to the Havens and passed into the West, probably for much the same reason as Bilbo: by that time, Bilbo was likely long departed, and Frodo was 114 years old. He and Sam could spend the last years of Frodo’s life together, and Sam, like Bilbo before him, could enjoy an “experience of ‘pure Elvishness.’”

The situation with Gimli might possibly be different. When he crossed over the Sea into the Uttermost West with Legolas, he was 262 years old: quite old for a Dwarf of Durin’s line. (The average age of Dwarves listed in Appendix A who did not die in battle is 259 years (median 251: Dwalin lived to the immense age of 340). It is conceivable that he was invited to Valinor to meet Aulë, but that is arguably a most unlikely outcome, and in any event, whether in Valinor or Tol Eressëa, he probably died soon after his arrival; besides, he undertook his journey to see Galadriel once more before his death.

As I read Tolkien's explanation concerning this matter, a mortal living in Valinor would neither become immortal nor die quicklier.

See JRRT's Aman And Mortal Men (published somewhere at the end of Morgoth's Ring), a text which explains why living in Valinor would still be ungood for Men -- despite that they would not die fasterer there.

Mortals were not typically admitted to Valinor. Eärendil and Elwing were legally considered Mortal (i.e., of Mankind rather than Elfkind: see Mandos’ judgment in “Voyage of Eärendil”, last chapter of “Quenta Silmarillion” in Silmarillion, “‘Shall mortal Man step living upon the undying lands, and yet live?’” though he was overruled by Manwë concerning the Half-Elven), but were admitted as Elves but never permitted to leave. It is arguable that Amandil, last Lord of Andúnië and father of Elendil the Tall, also reached Valinor to bring some message to the Valar as did his forefather Eärendil, though “never again were [he and his three companions] heard of by word or sign in this world, nor is there any tale or guess of their fate.” (“Akallabêth”, ibid.) Somewhere in Tolkien’s HoMe material there is a mention that while the Númenóreans remained Faithful to Eru and the Valar, the crown prince was taken to Tol Eressëa and allowed to spend one night there, but this is neither “canon” nor repeated elsewhere in Tolkien’s writings, so that it may be (probably is?) an idea Tolkien later discarded.

In an essay feigning to be “A peak at the last entry of Sauron’s journal” in Númenor, in footnote 37, I reference Morgoth’s Ring, “Aman and Mortal Men”, pp 429-430. In my words,

The hröar and fëar are references to the bodies and souls, respectively, of Men. Mortals were … forbidden to enter Aman, or Valinor, except in rare instances. Any Mortal who did so did not lose his Mortality, as Sauron lied to Ar-Pharazôn, but the natural balance between the hröa and fëa would be upset. Once in Valinor, it was believed the fëa of a Mortal would seek to leave the hröa, and that if it were unable to do this, the fëa would go mad; while if the fëa departed, the hröa would act without guidance, effectively becoming a monster.
​

This is obviously my own take on the material presented in “Aman and Mortal Men”, but I think it is a fair and defensible position.

 

[Elthir]

For clarity then, my brief statement concerns the "what if" scenarios that Tolkien illustrates in the text Aman And Mortal Men -- that is, what if a Mortal Man was allowed to live in Aman, and what if he were given physical longevity there.

The point being that this text reveals that merely stepping into Valinor and attempting to live there does not diminish a mortal's lifespan (nor lengthen it of course).