Is Tamar’s claim about Elves not needing sleep true in The Lord of the Rings? Here’s what we know. Galadriel’s presence on Númenor causes a major stir in Amazon’s The Rings of Power, as isolated islanders fear pointy-eared folk are coming to steal their jobs. Once upon a time, Númenor and the Elves traded on a friendly basis. The island’s first king was even something of an elf himself. Alas, bitterness has grown over time, and many Númenóreans have now grown jealous of a race that’s stronger, lives longer and, quite frankly, is better looking.

Galadriel is the first elf to step foot on Númenórean shores in many years, and her arrival ignites this undercurrent of ill-feeling. Jason Hood’s Tamar – a member of Númenor’s blacksmiths’ guild – stands in a courtyard at Armenelos and warns his fellow Númenóreans that they’re inching perilously close to becoming second-class citizens under the Elves. He warns, “Elf workers taking your trades? Workers who don’t sleep, don’t tire, don’t age…”

While it’s well known that The Lord of the Rings‘ Elves don’t age upon reaching maturity, the suggestion that they don’t even sleep is more curious. Thanks to their superior biology, it is true that Elves take far longer to tire and require much less rest than the average mortal. It’s also true that Elves don’t sleep in the traditional manner of closing one’s eyes and drifting off. In The Two Towers, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli are chasing after their two lost hobbits. Though Gimli (and to a lesser extent Aragorn) requires rest along the way, Legolas continues undaunted. That’s not to say Elves don’t possess their own version of sleeping. Tolkien writes, “He [Legolas] could sleep, if sleep it could be called by Men, resting his mind in the strange paths of Elvish dreams, even as he walked open-eyed in the light of this world.” Elves do, therefore, get tired to some extent, but because they can recover whilst awake, outsiders might assume they never grow weary at all.

What Númenor’s Attitude Gets Wrong About The Elves

Tamar is broadly correct in that, on paper, an elf makes for a better worker than a Númenórean in The Lord of the Rings, but in the blind rage he and many others feel toward their fair cousins, key details are missed. The likes of Tamar strangely assume that elves would want to sail for Númenor, gain employment, and get paid to toil as smiths, builders and artisans. That belief works upon the assumption that Elvish motivations and values are identical to mortal Men – find a job, earn a living, raise a family, die. In their immortality, Elves’ purposes were often rooted in legacy, community, and nature. The Númenóreans are scared Elves will flock to their island and steal their jobs – in reality, most wouldn’t be interested.

An even deeper irony lies behind Númenor’s anti-elf sentiment. Those who share Tamar and Pharazôn’s nationalist philosophy believe friendly relations with the Elves make them weak. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s lore, the original Númenóreans were granted greater physiology and longer lives – not quite to the Elves’ standards, but still better than other men. The more Númenor abandoned its old principles, the more this blessing faded, and the Númenóreans gradually lost their gifts. The great irony is that by resenting Elves for their physical superiority in The Rings of Power, the people of Númenor lose what makes them superior to Men of Middle-earth.