Do Elves BURY their dead?

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Just for completeness' sake, add also Turgon burying his father's body after Thorondor rescued it from Morgoth.

Tolkien, good Catholic that he was, apparently found cremation distasteful- note that Gandalf charges Denethor with imitating the 'heathen' kings.

[Mithalwen]

Thanks William. Heathen is an interesting choice of word for ME (as is Eomer's repeated us of devilry). It is interest that in their earnestness not to leave Boromir lying like carrion, cremation is not raised as a possibility. Obviously there were no doubt good reasons why raising a great fire would not be the best idea but it is not even recognised as a possibility.

A final point to legate is that it was customary until very recently that the war dead were buried near where they fell. I say customary but the fact is that do do otherwise would have been impossible. The British only started repatriating their War dead in 1982 (within my memory) with the fallen of the Falklands War, and this was not automatic, but offered if the families wished it and not all accepted. While obviously there has been progess in transport and refrigeration the main issue is numbers. We lost 255 in the Falklands, a number which has yet to be matched I think by fatalities in both Gulf wars but nearly 20,000 in just one day at the Battle of the Somme. I suppose it is possible that Thranduil might have taken his dead back but I think Theoden, is the only case of of a body being repatriated, and he was a king - and it was possible to remove his body to the city immediately. His lords lie "under grass in Gondor". I think Eomer's eored buried their dead from the battle with the orcs at the scene, even in their own land.

[alatar]

Considering the number of elven fallen, where exactly are all of these cemeteries? I know that the Dead Marshes is one such place, but with the gazillions of elves that lost their lives to Morgoth and Sauron (even with lands broken and reformed), you'd think that there'd be some mention of such places in the texts.

Was Hollin such a place? Was it Aragorn that said something like, "The elves have to be gone a long time for the land to forget them," meaning that their dust (beyond their living presence) did something to the land as well.

Me? I'm thinking it's more like in video games where the fallen fade away after some time, leaving whatever artifacts that they carried behind. Great and important (and unusual) persons are 'buried' in the sense that their remains are interred when possible, but for the most part it's just a marker/symbol/memorial for the fallen.

"Here lies Glorfindel the Third,
no bones below will you find interred,
he's gone on the to Blessed West,
leaving behind not but his crest."

[Eönwë]

Anyway, don't thheir bodies "fade to dust..quickly" (thats a paraphrase by the way) or something like that. That would explain the non-existent demand for cemetaries.

[Maedhros_the_Tall]

Other than Turgon/Fingolfin and Glorfindel, are there many other examples of elves burying elves? Just, from the examples suggested by Mithalwen, Finduilas was buried by Dorlas and the men of Brethil, Haudh-en-Ndengin was raised by Orcs following the Nirnaeth, and while Turin was buried by Mablung and his Grey Elves, it could it be argued that he was doing it after the manner of Turins own kin?
(obviously, for the benefit of this topic, the same could be argued about the men of Brethil's burial of Finduilas! Lol)

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

I belive that they must have burried their dead or at least have had some form of tradition for what to do with the dead, since the elves somewhat resembles men.

One of the first signs of human activity other than what remains from hunting and so forth is human burrials, we don't know why our ancestors burried their dead but they did.

It could be that it was because they did not like leaving their kin to be eaten by animals, I am quite sure that elves would feel the same way.

Since the elves could be seen at the deadmarshes I take that they did not turn to dust when dead. . .if they did it would have meant that the Nirnaeth Arnoediad would have been a living hell for people with dust allergies and a sourse to extreme coughing for the rest of the participants.

Anyways, I don't seem to remember any massive graveyards of men ever being mentioned. . .if they are then please correct me. Surely men was burried even though the sites is not pointed out to us,

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Rune Son of Bjarne

Anyways, I don't seem to remember any massive graveyards of men ever being mentioned. . .if they are then please correct me. Surely men was burried even though the sites is not pointed out to us,

Rath Dinen, the Silent Street in Minas Tirith, was probably the most famous place of internment for the race of Men (next to the Barrow Downs, of course). It would seem those of Numenorean descent were drawn to ornate entombment, most likely in envy of elvish immortality. Then, of course, there are the burial mounds of the Rohirrim, a direct link to Sutton Hoo and other such mounds that mark early Anglo-Saxon (and directly, their Norse/Germanic heritage) burial rites.