High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! In the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien, the Years of the Sun were the last of the three great time-periods of Arda, together with the Years of the Lamps and the Years of the Trees. They began with the first sunrise in conjunction with the return of the Noldor to Middle-earth, and last until the present day. (The history of the fictional Middle-earth is to be taken fictionally as a history of the real Earth, in the same manner as the fantastical voyages of Odysseus are purported to be historical.) The Years of the Sun began towards the end of the First Age of the Children of Ilúvatar and continued through the Second, Third, and part of the Fourth in Tolkien's stories. Tolkien estimated that modern times would correspond to the sixth or seventh age.