# Elven bedrooms?



## ZehnWaters (Aug 20, 2021)

Okay, so Elves only sleep for an hour a day (and even then it's not normal sleep) do they have bedrooms? I'm sure they do but would they just use it mostly for holding their stuff? At that point would it even be called a bedroom or just a room? Or did elves just have random places where they meditated for an hour? Rivendell seems to mostly just be a manor house with many out-buildings, yet can host an entire army (somehow); did they just live a touch communally?


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## Elthir (Aug 20, 2021)

According to _The Lays of Beleriand_ (The Lay of Leithian, Canto V), Tinúviel had a "bed" in her treehouse, for example.

[one might claim "early text" here, but all I can say is that with respect to Cantos 
V-IX, we have four lines of later recasting for Canto IX, however one interprets this] 

Also, it was said that one of Feanor's sons *"would not come ashore to sleep (he said) in discomfort."* (from a text I call "The Death of Amros" -- but see _The Shibboleth of Feanor_). And Beleg found Gwindor sleeping too. For another example, Frodo had a bed in Elrond's house, which house was also described as a: *"perfect house, whether you like food or sleep or . . ."*

Given this much, but again waiting for whatever might be revealed in *The Nature of Middle-Earth*, 
I'm going to guess that the Elves of Elrond's house slept in beds, if they wished -- beds of some sort. 
Of course various Elves slept in various circumstances, including the flet the Hobbits visited in the chapter Lothlórien.

I'll be interested to see if *The Nature of Middle-Earth* has more to say about Elves and sleep.
In a letter to Mr. Britten [5 November 1956, Tolkien wrote that *"it is plainly suggested that Elves do "sleep", but not in our mode, having a different relation to what we call "dreaming." Nothing very definite is said about it (a) because except at a length destructive of narrative it would be difficult to describe a different mode of consciousness, and (b) for reasons that you so rightly observe: something must be left not fully explained, and only suggested."*

🐾


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