How did Sam know he could sail into the West?

[Phantom718]

Something I was just thinking about.

Sam stayed in ME for long after Frodo, Bilbo, Gandalf, Elrond, etc. sailed into the West. So how did he know -- or rather, who told him -- he could go there?

I suppose maybe Legolas could've told him? But then how did HE know? Or after Rosie died did Sam somehow inherently know he was allowed to go? Was this ever written anywhere?

 

[Olorgando]

At least in LoTR Appendix B, it is not stated as an "historical certainty". In the last section "Later Events", interestingly given in Shire Reckoning years, the third from last entry reads a follows:

1482
Death of Mistress Rose, wife of Master Samwise, on Mid-year's Day. On September 22 [Bilbo and Frodo's birthday] Master Samwise rides out from Bag End. He comes to the Tower Hills, and is last seen by Elanor [herself then 61], to whom he gives the Red Book afterwards kept by the Fairbairns. Among them the tradition is handed down from Elanor that Samwise passed the Towers, and went to the Grey Havens, and passed over sea, last of the Ring-bearers.

Off the cuff I don't remember that JRRT wrote anything later, finding its way into UT or volumes 6 to 9 of HoMe, that elaborated on this. My speculation, rather than Legolas, runs to Gandalf, who was after all an emissary of the Valar - and as Gandalf the White, as is implied, even from Eru himself. So he could have told Cirdan that there is one Ring-bearer of the One Ring, only a short while but very crucially before the Orcs of the Tower of Cirith Ungol found Frodo, left in Middle-earth. And that this Samwise Gamgee had the permission to take a ship from the Grey Havens to the undying lands should he wish to.

But this is basically fanfic territory.

 

[Phantom718]

That could well be the case, that it was Cirdan who told him, rather than Legolas. I was thinking of who the last remaining elves were in ME at the time Sam left who would have the "authority" to give him the news. Legolas made some sense...but Cirdan even moreso.

 

[Olorgando]

1482 Death of Mistress Rose, wife of Master Samwise, on Mid-year's Day. On September 22 Master Samwise rides out from Bag End.

That could well be the case, that it was Cirdan who told him, rather than Legolas.

To exaggerate, I don't quite see Cirdan popping by Bag end to give Sam the news. Checking the Shire Calendar at the beginning of Appendix D, there were almost three months between Mid-year's Day and September 22. Now the region bordering on the Tower Hills, added to the Shire by Aragorn in the early Fourth Age as an extension of the West-farthing, was a lot closer to the Grey Havens than Hobbiton or even Michel Delving, the seat of the Mayor. So Undertowers, the Smial of the Fairbairns at the foot of the Tower Hills, may have had some converse with the Grey Havens. And Elanor could have been, as the oldest child of Sam and Rose, something of a matriarch of the whole clan when her patents got close to 100. So the news could have travelled between Hobbiton (where Sam and Rose must be assumed to have retired to after his seventh and last term of Mayor had come to its end in SR 1476) and Cirdan quite quickly. All plausible - and all speculative.

 

[Phantom718]

Well, I, too, don't think Cirdan would have made a special trip to the Shire to bring Sam the news. But whether they conversed at the Havens one day, which, as you pointed out, were near what became Undertowers, or through whatever grapevine the word got to Sam, it would make sense coming from an authoritative elf like Cirdan

I thought there was also a passage somewhere that had someone say something to Sam about "his time may come", regarding leaving the Shire? Or am I thinking of something else?

To further stretch the speculation, is it remotely possible that Gandalf or Elrond told Sam that he would go West one day, and Sam just kept it a secret until he was ready? I mean, I don't know how they would've known to give him permission beyond Frodo/Bilbo, unless they knew that ALL ringbearers would be granted access? It's an interesting question to ponder.

 

[Elthir]

Yes, Frodo said something to Sam about Sam "maybe" sailing West (related to Ringbearer status).
And in the abandoned epilogue Sam told Elanor that his time may come yet . . .

. . . and in the epilogue, the very last bit concerns Sam and the sighing/murmur of the Sea.

 

[Alcuin]

There is a question that precedes this: How did Frodo know he could sail into the West? The two questions are tied to one another, I believe.

On the way home from Rivendell (RotK, “Homeward Bound”), Frodo, Gandalf, Sam, Merry, and Pippin crossed the Ford of Bruinen on 6 October, a year from the day after Frodo was stabbed by the Witch-king. Frodo was reluctant to cross the ford, and when Gandalf asked if he were in pain, he replied that he was, to which Gandalf answered that “some wounds … cannot be wholly cured.” Frodo complained, “Where shall I find rest?” but “Gandalf did not answer.”

At the end of the previous chapter, Elrond quietly told Frodo, “[A]bout this time of the year, when the leaves are gold before they fall, look for Bilbo in the woods of the Shire. I shall be with him.”

Somewhere – I cannot find the citation tonight – I believe Tolkien wrote that Frodo was told that he was welcome to accompany Gandalf and Elrond on the ship to Tol Eressëa. Bilbo was already bound for that voyage. I believe Tolkien says that this was conveyed to him in Rivendell during the two weeks Frodo and his companions were there, but again, I can’t find the passage tonight.

After that, Sam’s knowledge that he could also pass over the Sea to Tol Eressëa is easily understood. Frodo knew exactly when and where to meet Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel, and Bilbo: this knowledge was either given to Frodo in Rivendell or relayed to him by an Elf or (less likely) Dúnadan.

Sam expressed distress when he realized Frodo was also leaving with them. But he remained, as Frodo said, “solid and whole,” at least while Rose his wife lived.

Here I will depart from the written text a bit. I think there can be little argument that Frodo suffered what we now call “post-traumatic stress disorder” or PTSD. In World War II, it was called “battle fatigue”; Tolkien knew it in World War I as “shell shock”. I cannot see how Sam avoided this. I suspect his anchor was Rose, his beloved wife, and to a lesser extent his children, especially Elanor. When Rose died, Elanor was already married and moved to Undertowers in Westmarch. It was then that Sam, too, took leave of Middle-earth: the woman he loved, who kept him “solid and whole,” was gone, and he, like Frodo, was in pain.

How did Sam know that he could go? I think that there can be little doubt that Frodo told him that he could, if he wished, follow Frodo into the West. I suspect this was also for the final healing of Frodo, who likely passed away among the Elves in Tol Eressëa not long after Sam arrived.

It would be another sixty years before Aragorn Elessar gave up his life. Then Legolas constructed a white ship and, accompanied by his friend Gimli, sailed into the West. By that time, I believe all three Hobbits that had preceded them were dead. Gimli also died in Tol Eressëa: it was not Eldamar, on the mainland of Aman, but still received some of the air of Middle-earth (Silmarillion, “…the Hiding of Valinor”: “all those of Elven-race … must breathe at times the outer air and the wind that comes over the sea from the lands of their birth…”).

In Letter 246, Tolkien wrote that Arwen developed this plan of replacing her with Frodo.

…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 could, or can, abide for ever on earth, or within Time. So he went both to a purgatory and to a reward, for a while: 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.
​

And Sam was permitted to join him. How did he learn this? I think Frodo told him; but Sam was also in communication with, and often in physical proximity to Aragorn and especially Arwen, who could also tell him this. Celeborn departed Lórien and moved to Rivendell to be with his grandsons, Elladan and Elrohir; I suspect he could have conveyed this information, too, as perhaps could Elrond’s sons. Upon reflection, that Sam was be aware of his offer to go to the Uttermost West should come as no great surprise.

 

[Phantom718]

Good stuff. I suppose any of those scenarios could be true. I was just always curious of how exactly Sam found out he could go, and from whom.

On a similar topic, though it probably should have its own thread...

I've also often wondered, though his doom was that of man, if Aragorn unwittingly ended up there after his, or later after Arwen's, death. Though she accepted the doom of man on the chance to be with Aragorn in whatever afterlife, I'd like to believe that those two ended up in Valinor as a sort of "surprise reward" from Eru. In other words, they both sacrificed enough, right up to their deaths, even taking that final, mortal leap of faith into the unknown, that they were whisked away to the Undying Lands. I mean if an exception was made for Gimli, surely one could be made for Aragorn and Arwen...

 

[Elthir]

Yet, as Tolkien noted in On Fairy Stories: The Human-stories of the elves are doubtless full of the Escape from Deathlessness.

Just cram for thought

 

[Sartr]

There's a couple references to his possibility of going, but none that definitively say that he made it. So he may have just decided to sail west on his own with the thought that there was nothing to lose. Or he just stayed at the Havens until he died, waiting in case any elves with boats happened to be leaving.

 

[Olorgando]

I would think that Sam, in his way, was also considered an Elf-friend, as were Bilbo and Frodo. I could well imagine him handing this love of the Elves down to his children, especially Elanor, who settled at Undertowers quite close to the Grey Havens. If the distances in Karen Wynn Fonstad's atlas are correct, Undertowers was much closer to the part of Mithlond on the southern shore of the Gulf of Lune than to Hobbiton, and if there was a path crossing the Tower Hills by way of the White Towers, even closer than to Michel Delving. For both of these reasons, as I speculated above, the Fairbairns could have had some contact with the Grey Havens, so Elanor might have known that Sam had been taken on a ship heading for the Undying Lands.
On the other hand, had Sam died without leaving Middle-earth, I'm all but certain that this would have been mentioned, and at the very least the Elves would have notified Elanor, perhaps even brought him to her, so that Sam could be buried together with Rose.

 

[Hisoka Morrow]

My dear...the operation-fellowship of the ring, has already enough make every it's member big guys, able to know almost everything classified of all high command on both political and military stuff of every factions, so why shouldn't Sam didn't know how to sail to Valinor?XD