Ring Legends of Tolkien

by David Day

  PROLOGUE

  Flames light up the Valkyrie Rock where the three fatal sisters, the Norns, sing of the ancient days of Wotan’s great deeds, as they weave the golden cord of fate. They sing of the shattering of Wotan’s spear of law and how this released Loge the god of fire, whose flames will soon consume Valhalla. They attempt to learn when the end will come, but the cord snaps. They understand that their own end has come, and they flee in terror to the caverns of Erda. As dawn comes, Siegfried and his bride Brunnhilde emerge from their cave. Although she is afraid that she may lose her lover, Brunnhilde knows how a warrior’s heart yearns for adventure. She gives him her armour and her horse Grane to help in his quest. Siegfried swears his eternal love and gives Brunnhilde the ring as his constant pledge before he sets off into the Rhine valley.

  ACT ONE

  SCENE ONE

  Gunther, the king of the Gibichungs, and his sister Gutrune sit enthroned in the vast hall of their castle on the Rhine. They are in council with their dark, brooding half-brother Hagen, who advises them how they may increase the Gibichung dynasty’s wealth and power. He tells them they both must soon marry: Gunther to the wise and beautiful Brunnhilde, and Gutrune to Siegfried the Dragonslayer, who possesses the treasure of the Nibelung gold. This can be achieved only by guile. They agree that, when the approaching hero comes, Gutrune will give him a magic potion that will make Siegfried forget Brunnhilde and fall in love with Gutrune.

  SCENE TWO

  Siegfried’s horn sounds from a river boat as he approaches the castle. Hagen and Gunther welcome him with friendship and honour, and Gutrune brings to him a horned cup filled with the magic potion. Though he toasts them in the name of his lover Brunnhilde, the moment after the drink leaves his lips he opens his eyes and heart to Gutrune. He swears his undying love for her and asks for her hand in marriage. Gunther agrees on the condition that Siegfried win for him the fair Brunnhilde, whose name now means nothing to the drugged Siegfried. Hagen advises Siegfried that they may achieve their aim with the Tarnhelm, by whose magic he may change his shape to that of Gunther. Gunther and Siegfried swear blood oaths of brotherhood and ride off on their adventure.

  SCENE THREE

  On the Valkyrie Rock, Brunnhilde calls out a greeting of welcome to a sister Valkyrie. But the Valkyrie brings news of disorder and degeneration in Valhalla since Wotan’s spear was shattered. Wotan has no authority to rule or act, and nothing will lift the curse of the ring except its return to its rightful guardians. But Brunnhilde angrily refuses to return the ring to the Rhinemaidens, and drives her sister away. The ring is the token of Siegfried’s love and nothing will make her part with it. After the Valkyrie’s departure, however, a strange man penetrates the flames of the wall of fire. It is Siegfried wearing Tarnhelm, which has changed him to Gunther’s form. As Gunther the Gibichung, he claims Brunnhilde as his bride because he has passed the test of the ring of fire. After he seizes the ring from her hand, Brunnhilde has no power to resist him. He carries her off into the cave as his bride, but resolves to lay his sword between them as they sleep, so as not to dishonour his blood-brother.

  ACT TWO

  SCENE ONE

  In front of the Gibichung hall, on the bank of the Rhine, Hagen, armed with spear and shield, is leaning against a doorpost, asleep. It is dark, but in the moonlight Alberich the Nibelung appears to Hagen in a dream. It is revealed that Hagen is the son of Alberich from a loveless union with Gunther’s mother. Alberich makes his unhappy son swear that he will win back the Nibelung’s ring.

  SCENE TWO

  As dawn breaks, Hagen awakens and Siegfried joyfully returns and greets him and Gutrune with the news that he has won Brunnhilde for King Gunther. He tells how he remained faithful that night, and then how on the journey back Gunther came and took Siegfried’s place, while Siegfried used the power of Tarnhelm to reach the Gibichung castle ahead of them.

  SCENE THREE

  Hagen has summoned all the vassals of the kingdom to welcome King Gunther and his new queen. They offer up sacrifices to the altars of the gods and swear to uphold the new queen’s honour.

  SCENE FOUR

  When Gunther arrives to present his new bride, Brunnhilde sees Siegfried with the ring upon his hand. She realizes at once that Gunther treacherously won her by deception. She tells all that Siegfried the Walsung is her true husband. Siegfried swears upon the point of Hagen’s spear that he has never known this woman as a bride. Brunnhilde is inflamed with a sense of betrayal and swears that his oath is false and that his sword hung on the wall, not between them. Siegfried denies the charge and leaves with Gutrune, although the vassals clearly believe Brunnhilde’s story.

  SCENE FIVE

  Brunnhilde is devastated and bent on vengeance for her betrayal. She turns to Hagen, and tells him that Siegfried is protected from all weapons by a magic spell she wove. There is one way Siegfried may be slain, however; because she knew he would never flee from battle, the spell does not protect his back. So if Hagen drives his spear blade into Siegfried’s back, he will die. Brunnhilde’s taunts, and Hagen’s promises of wealth and power, eventually persuade Gunther to join in the conspiracy to murder, as Siegfried’s wedding procession passes by.

  ACT THREE

  SCENE ONE

  In a woodland on the banks of the Rhine, the three Rhinemaidens lament their lost gold. When Siegfried, who is out hunting, appears, they plead that he give back the ring, but he refuses. They warn him that, if he does not return it to the Rhine, he will be slain this day.

  SCENE TWO

  When the rest of the hunting party arrives, Hagen and Gunther urge Siegfried to entertain them with tales of his childhood with Mime and his slaying of Fafner the Dragon. Finally, after giving him a drink to revive his memory, Hagen asks him to tell of the wooing of Brunnhilde. With a pretence of moral outrage, Hagen drives his spear into the hero’s back. Calling out his love for Brunnhilde with his last breath, Siegfried dies.

  SCENE THREE

  In front of the Gibichung hall in the moonlight, Gutrune is anxiously waiting as an evil dream wakes her in the night. Hagen comes to tell her that Siegfried has been killed by a wild boar. However, when his body is carried in, Gutrune will have none of it. She accuses Gunther of murder, but Gunther denies it and curses Hagen. Hagen defiantly admits the murder, but says it was justice. Then he claims the golden ring for himself. When Gunther disputes his right, Hagen slays him. Yet when he is about to seize the ring, the dead Siegfried’s hand rises threateningly against him. Hagen falls back in fear, as Brunnhilde commands all to stand back from the hero. She orders a funeral pyre to be made for Siegfried. She then takes the ring and places it on her own finger. Then Brunnhilde torches the pyre, calls on the Rhinemaidens to retrieve the gold from the ashes, then rides Grane into the flames. The Rhine overflows its banks as the Gibichung hall is also consumed in the flames. The Rhinemaidens rise with the river. They joyfully seize the ring, and vengefully drag the damned Hagen down to a watery grave. The flood subsides to leave only the burned ruin of the hall, but in the distance, in the heavens, Valhalla can be seen catching alight, and is finally entirely consumed by flames.

  PART

  FIFTEEN

  TOLKIEN IN THE 2O TH CENTURY

  In The Ring Legends of Tolkien, the symbol of the ring and the tradition of the ring quest has been looked at through the millennia. It is clear how Tolkien drew on the myth, history and literature of a score of cultures in the creation of his multilayered epic The Lord of the Rings.

  Without rejecting its heritage, however, Tolkien radically transformed the ring quest and made it into something fresh and relevant to the 20th century.

  Each age has its use for the ring quest, and special circumstances or “accidents of history” in the 20th century have made Tolkien’s version of that quest not only relevant and meaningful but, to some degree, prophetic. That is not to say that The Lord of the Rings is an allegory of our time. Tolkien rightly rejected the allegorical view as too narrow for
his tale. He especially abhorred questions of the “Are Orcs Nazis or communists?” kind. Tolkien’s purpose was both more specific and more universal.

  “APPLICABILITY” VERSUS “ALLEGORY”

  In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien gives us an adventure in the form of a ring quest with a simple human moral truth at its centre. However, the nature of that adventure and that moral position were undeniably “applicable” to the most dramatic conflicts of the 20th century.

  Although Tolkien did not intend to mimic the events of his time, he did acknowledge when he began writing The Lord of the Rings in 1937 that something of the impending conflict with Nazi Germany was discernible in the dark atmosphere of its composition. Furthermore, as the bulk of the book was written through the dark years of World War II, there were aspects of the real war that were inevitably comparable to his “War of the Ring”.

  Orcs

  It is interesting to note Tolkien’s own comments on this in his wartime letters to his son, Christopher, who was stationed with the British forces in South Africa. He sent chapters in serial form to Christopher as he wrote them, along with personal letters with constant references to Hobbits, Orcs and Rings – as similes for individuals and issues relating to actual events in the conflict with Germany.

  “Well, there you are: a hobbit among the Urukhai,” Tolkien wrote. “Keep your hobbitry in heart and think that all stories feel like that when you are in them.” However, this did not mean that real events in the war shaped Tolkien’s invented war. His “War of the Ring” was about ideals, not political realities. It essentially revolved around a human moral crisis, which he perceived in the real war, but not just in the enemy.

  In one letter to Christopher, Tolkien wrote: “We are attempting to conquer Sauron with the Ring. And we shall (it seems) succeed. But the penalty is, as you will know, to breed new Saurons, and slowly turn Men and Elves into Orcs. Not that in real life things are as clear-cut as in a story, and we started out with a great many Orcs on our side…”

  Clearly, Tolkien’s war had its own direction to follow, which had no parallels in the war with Germany. This is not to say that Tolkien was neutral in his view of Hitler and Nazi Germany – far from it.

  In 1941 he wrote to another son, Michael, who was at the time an officer cadet at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst:

  I have spent most of my life, since I was your age, studying Germanic matters (in the general sense that includes England and Scandinavia). There is a great deal more force (and truth) than ignorant people imagine in the “Germanic” ideal… Anyway, I have in this War a burning private grudge – which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler. Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making forever accursed that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light. Nowhere, incidentally, was it nobler than in England, nor more early sanctified…

  Indeed, one might even perceive that this “grudge” against Hitler might have had something to do with Tolkien’s ambitions in writing a new version of the ring quest.

  RECLAIMING THE RING

  In the 19th century Richard Wagner recognized the absolute centrality of the ring quest in the vast mythological themes of European and especially Germanic peoples. He consciously seized upon the ring as a symbol of the German identity, heritage and state. In the 20th century the music of Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung became so closely allied with the Nazi Party and the rise of the Third Reich that they became synonymous in the popular mind. During World War II, the grand themes and traditions of the ring quest were usurped (or, as Tolkien saw it, ruined, perverted and misapplied) by the German state with which Tolkien’s nation was at war.

  On one level, The Lord of the Rings is certainly an attempt by Tolkien to reclaim the ring as a symbol of “that noble northern spirit” which had fallen into such disrepute in Germany. With some justification, Tolkien blamed Wagner and his heirs for the dimming of the “true light”. Although Wagner’s genius was indisputable, his politics were repugnant. The great musician’s family and heirs were not innocent dupes of the Nazi Party. Wagner’s ideological stance may to some degree be evaluated by the fact that he chose to dedicate his collected works to Arthur de Gobineau, the father of Aryan racialist theory – a theory that Tolkien correctly rejected as being as intellectually ridiculous as it was morally repellent.

  Travellers on the High Pass through the Misty Mountains

  To Tolkien’s credit, he saw from the beginning the nature of the Nazi obsession with Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Perhaps what appealed to the Nazis in the ring quest was an idealization of the pursuit of power for its own sake. Tolkien appreciated the ring quest tradition on many levels, but having already lived through one world war, he understood the nature of the curse of the “ring of power” as well as any man could. He believed that even for the good man the pursuit of power was in itself an evil that would enslave the human spirit and soul. And, in the Third Reich, there were not many “good men” to start with.

  There can be little doubt that part of Tolkien’s deeply felt motivation in writing The Lord of the Rings was a desire to set the record straight by reclaiming the ring quest tradition, and presenting the “noble northern spirit” of Europe in its “true light”. Just as Tolkien chose on minor points to “challenge” Shakespeare’s use of myth and history in Macbeth, on a much grander scale he “challenged” Wagner’s use of myth and history in his ring cycle operas by writing The Lord of the Rings.

  Tolkien understood the deep moral crisis at the centre of the ring quest as Wagner perceived it. He saw the devastation that the Iron Age mentality of the ring quest had wreaked in the world, and chose to reshape the ring quest fundamentally for the 20th century. He did this by turning the quest on its head. The ring of power was “unmade” by reversing the spell. The hero of the quest does not seize the ring but destroys it by dropping it into the inferno where it was made.

  In 1937 Tolkien began to forge his “One Ring” imaginatively as a symbol for an absolute power that morally and physically contaminated all who touched it. He could not even have guessed how soon history would catch up with his dark vision and make his tale appear almost prophetic. He certainly could not have imagined how the scientists of the real world would soon create something that was every bit as powerful, evil and contaminating as the “One Ring” of Sauron the Dark Lord.

  THE ONE RING AND THE BOMB

  Although The Lord of the Rings was largely written during the war years, it was not published until 1954, and by this time the atomic bomb had seized the popular imagination. The public was less likely to equate Sauron with Hitler than the One Ring with the Bomb. It was difficult for many to believe that the idea of the One Ring was not inspired by the Bomb. Surely, some suggested, no place could look more like a nuclear testing ground than the ash-laden land of Mordor? There is no doubt that Tolkien was very much against the atomic bomb. On August 9, 1945, he wrote to Christopher: “The news today about ‘atomic bombs’ is so horrifying one is stunned. The utter folly of these lunatic physicists to consent to do such work for war purposes: calmly plotting the destruction of the world!”

  Still, Tolkien was at pains to point out that the One Ring was fully formed long before he had any idea of the activities of atomic scientists. In a letter written in 1956, he found it necessary to state: “Of course my story is not an allegory of atomic power, but of Power (exerted for Domination).” However, he had to acknowledge that in a larger sense the message or moral of his novel certainly did not exclude atomic power. Indeed, Tolkien’s views on nuclear weapons would not have been at all out of place at any Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament or Ban the Bomb meeting or protest march:

  Nuclear physics can be used for that purpose [bombs]. But they need not be. They need not be used at all. If there is any contemporary reference in my story at all it is to what seems to me the most widespread assumption of our t
ime: that if a thing can be done, it must be done. This seems to me wholly false. The greatest examples of the action of the spirit and of reason are in abnegation. When you say atomic power is “here to stay” you remind me that Chesterton said that whenever he heard that, he knew that whatever it referred to would soon be replaced, and thought pitifully shabby and old-fashioned. So-called “atomic” power is rather bigger than anything he was thinking of (I have heard it of trams, gaslight, steam-trains). But it surely is clear that there will have to be some “abnegation” in its use, a deliberate refusal to do some of the things it is possible to do with it, or nothing will stay!

  A COUNTER-CULTURAL HERO?

  Even retrospectively, however, it still seems very unlikely that such a self-confessed “old fogey” of an Anglo-Saxon professor, writing about a remote imaginary world filled with an impossibly obscure invented mythology, could suddenly find a huge American campus cult following in the midst of the radical, politically charged 1960s. Tolkien was nobody’s idea of a radical campus professor, so what was it in his writing that was suddenly so relevant to the lives and politics of the youth culture of the 1960s, catapulting him into the category of one of the most popular authors of the century?

  The answer was that Tolkien’s approach to the ancient grand theme of the ring quest was as unconventional and inventive as his unlikely heroes, the Hobbits. In fact, The Lord of the Rings proved to be the perfect student counter-culture book. It was full of action and adventure, but it appeared ultimately to hold an anti-establishment, pacifist message. Frodo Baggins might not have been exactly a Hobbit Gandhi, but he did reject the temptations of worldly power to an almost saintly degree. The student anti-war and Ban the Bomb movements of the 1960s found an empathetic anti-hero in the Hobbit’s humble values, as did the back-to-the-land hippie dropout culture. Tolkien could not have touched more bases with the youth culture of the 1960s if he had commissioned a market survey.