by David Day
The War of Wrath, also known as the Great Battle, led to the breaking of the Iron Mountains and the sinking of Beleriand, bringing the ‘Quenta Silmarillion’ to its fated end in a conflict, which, Tolkien wrote, ‘owes, I suppose, more to the Norse vision of Ragnarök than to anything else’.
An army of Orcs
The winged fire-drake, Ancalagon the Black
And just as the final battle of Ragnarök began with the sounding of the Horn of Heimdall, the Watchman of the Gods, Tolkien’s Great Battle of the War of Wrath begins with the blast of the Horn of Eönwë, the Herald of the Valar. Gothmog, Lord of Balrogs, bears a flaming sword into the Great Battle, as does the fire giant Surt in the Norse legend.
MAP OF THE BATTLE
The map on pages 72–73 is an artist’s impression of the War of Wrath. For Tolkien’s account of the battle, see The Silmarillion, ‘Of the Voyage of Eärendil and the War of Wrath’.
THE SECOND AGE
WARS
OF THE
ELVES
AND
NÚMENORÉANS
THE WAR OF
SAURON
AND
THE ELVES
DATE: 1693-1701 SECOND AGE
LOCATION: ERIADOR
Just as Tolkien once observed that the history of the Elves of the First Age was linked to the fate and significance of the three Silmarilli jewels, so we see this theme recur in the history of the Elves and Men of the Second and Third Ages, which were linked to the fate and significance of the Rings of Power – also forged by the Elves. Further parallels can be drawn between the two stories as Tolkien’s chosen chief protagonist among the Elves of this age was Celebrimbor, the grandson of Fëanor, who forged the Silmarils.
Elven-smiths of Eregion
In Prometheus, the good Titan of Greek mythology who brought fire and light to the human race, we have a mirror opposite to Tolkien’s Sauron, the evil sorcerer who brought death and darkness. However, in the Second Age, when Melkor’s former lieutenant appeared in disguise as the mysterious Annatar the Lord of Gifts among the Elven-smiths of Eregion, he must have seemed to the Elves everything that Prometheus was to humans. For Annatar was a magician-smith who – like Prometheus – defied the gods and gave to them the great gift of forbidden knowledge and skills, but for quite different purposes. With Annatar’s guidance, Celebrimbor and the Elven-smiths of Ost-in-Edhil in Eregion learned skills of forge and fire only matched by the Vala Aulë the Smith. Only after the forging of the Rings of Power did the Elves learn the terrible price of Annatar’s gifts. While in Greek mythology Prometheus’s gifts were freely given, Annatar’s gift of the Rings of Power would ultimately result in enslavement to the terrible Lord of the Rings.
The walls of Khazad-dûm, where they bordered on Eregion
WARS
OF THE
NÚMENÓREANS
DATE: SECOND AGE
LOCATION: NÚMENOR, MORDOR
AND THE LANDS BETWEEN
The island of Númenor, Tolkien’s version of Atlantis
The Second Age of the Sun was the era that saw the rise of the mighty Sea Kings of Númenor, the ‘Land of the Star’. In High Elvish, the name of their kingdom was Atalantë, and it was Tolkien’s version of Atlantis. Its rise and fall is a paradigm of the growth and demise of empires.
The myth of Atlantis is one of the most enduring in human history, an island realm that Tolkien believed had actually existed and endured in humanity’s ‘racial memory’. In Tolkien’s case, this was manifest in a ‘terrible recurring dream’ of a ‘Great Wave, towering up, and coming in ineluctably over the trees and green fields’.
His own ‘great Atlantis isle of Númenorë’ was a newly risen, star-shaped island in the Western Sea that lay between Middle-earth and the Undying Lands. The Númenóreans were greatly strengthened in body and mind by the Valar, yet although they were granted a lifespan many times that of other Men, and gifted with wisdom and skills, they were not without fault. In a letter written in the late 1950s, Tolkien wrote that the Númenóreans ‘were proud, peculiar, and archaic, and I think are best pictured in (say) Egyptian terms.’ So, too, we might observe that the ultimate fate of the Númenóreans had much in common with that of Pharaoh’s army in its arrogant pursuit of the Hebrews of Moses.
It was Sauron who proved their downfall. In Tolkien’s recurring motif of the deceiver who comes bearing gifts, this time the evil Maia allowed himself to be captured in the year 3262 of the Second Age rather than risk the Númenóreans destroying Barad-dûr.
Throughout Tolkien’s chronicles, mortal Men are ruled by their consciousness of death, whether it is Denethor, Steward of Gondor, running defiantly to suicide, or the Númenóreans’ obsession with prolonging life. Far more effective than any military strategy was Sauron’s ability to sow dissent among men and convince them that their true enemies were the Elves and the Valar, who refused to share their secret of eternal life.
Númenor disappears in the cataclysm
THE
LAST
ALLIANCE OF
ELVES AND MEN
DATE: 3434–3441 SECOND AGE
LOCATION: MORDOR
When the Last Alliance of Elves and Men marched on Mordor in 3434 of the Second Age, Tolkien framed the conflict in Arthurian terms.
In 2013 Tolkien’s unfinished poem The Fall of Arthur was published, illuminating similarities between his conception of the Arthurian legends and the battles of the Second and Third Ages of Middle-earth. Many stanzas are strongly redolent of the threat of Sauron: ‘The endless East in anger woke / and black thunder born in dungeons / under mountains of menace moved above them.’ For the Battle of Dagorlad and the Siege of the Dark Tower, Tolkien seems to have drawn particularly on the legend of the Last Battle of Camlann. At Camlann, Arthur destroyed the forces arrayed against him, only for he and Mordred to slay each other in climactic single combat; the Alliance experienced a similarly pyrrhic victory as their armies triumphed but Gil-galad and Elendil received mortal wounds as they finally overcame Sauron.
After Arthur’s death, it was the duty of one surviving knight to retrieve the king’s sword. In Tolkien’s Middle-earth, it was left to Elendil’s son Isildur to retrieve (the shards of) the king’s sword and with it cut the One Ring from Sauron’s hand.
MAP OF THE BATTLE
The map on pages 92–93 is an artist’s impression of the Battle of Dagorlad and the Siege of the Dark Tower. For Tolkien’s account of the battle, see The Silmarillion, ‘Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age’.
Sauron in defeat
THE THIRD AGE
WARS
OF THE
DÚNEDAIN
THE
DISASTER
AT
GLADDEN
FIELDS
DATE: 2 THIRD AGE
LOCATION: THE GLADDEN FIELDS,
BETWEEN MIRKWOOD
AND THE MISTY MOUNTAINS
The death of Isildur
THE NORSE LORD
OF THE RINGS
Tolkien was familiar with the concept of magical rings from Norse literature. Odin, the one-eyed sorcerer god whom Tolkien called ‘the Goth, the Necromancer, Glutter of Crows, God of the Hanged’, has much in common with Sauron – also called the Necromancer in The Hobbit. Odin possessed Draupnir, a great gold ring forged by the Elf-smiths of Alfheim. Its name meant ‘the dripper’ because it dripped eight gold rings of equal size and weight every nine days.
Draupnir provided the wealth and power by which Odin ruled the Nine Worlds of the Aesir and Vanir gods, dwarfs, men, dark elves, light elves, fire giants and frost giants. By possessing this Elf-forged gold ring, Odin was able to rule as the king of the gods.
Just as Sauron lost his ring in the war with the Last Alliance of Elves and Men, so Odin lost his at the funeral of his favourite son, Balder. As his son’s funeral ship was set alight and consumed in flames, Odin placed Draupnir on Balder’s breast. Like Sauron, Odin’s power was diminished without the ring. Like the One Ring, h
owever, Draupnir was not destroyed, but went with Balder into the dark realm of Hel, the prison of the dead. And like Sauron sending out his Black Riders to recover the ring, so Odin mounted his eight-legged steed Sleipnïr, in order to reclaim Draupnir.
There is a third striking comparison between Odin and Sauron, and that is the motif of the single, solitary eye. In the Third Age, Sauron takes the form of a fiery, evil eye. In the Norse canon, we have Yggdrasil, the great ash tree also known as the World Tree, whose mighty limbs support the Nine Worlds. At Yggdrasil’s foot is the Fountain of Wisdom, and it was there, thirsty for knowledge, that Odin went to drink. For one deep draught from the Fountain, Odin had to sacrifice an eye, which he did without hesitation. From that time on, he was always the One-eyed God.
Men of the Last Alliance: Elendil, Anárion and Isildur
MAP OF THE BATTLE
The map on page 99 is an artist’s impression of the Disaster at Gladden Fields. For Tolkien’s account of the skirmish and the death of Isildur the last High King, and the loss of the One Ring, see The Silmarillion, ‘Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age’ and Unfinished Tales, Part III, Chapter I.
THE THANGAIL
The ‘thangail’ shield wall for a double rank of heavy armed knights was one of Tolkien’s own inventions that he attributed to the Númenóreans. Here Tolkien was drawing on real-world military history, as shield walls were an effective infantry strategy in warfare for thousands of years; however, their weakness was in the wall being outflanked, resulting in its collapse. Tolkien’s thangail was a flexible shield wall capable even of curling around on itself and forming an unbroken circle of shields and spears, thus countering any attempt by the enemy to outflank the defenders.
Mount Doom, where the One Ring was forged
WARS OF THE
NORTH
KINGDOM
OF ARNOR
DATE: 1300–1974 THIRD Age
LOCATION: ARNOR
The greatest threat to the northern Dúnedain kingdom of Arnor was the war with Angmar and its Witch-king. Tolkien did not invent the concept behind the Witch-king, that of a sorceror ruling by the supernatural power of a ring. From Mesopotamia through Scandinavia to China, the belief in the power of rings has been with the human race since the dawn of time. This is so much so that – in Northern Europe in particular – the quest for the ring is a pervasive theme in mythology. Even Tolkien’s central concept of a ‘War of the Ring’ has a remarkable historical precedent.
The idea that an empire could be ruinously consumed by war because of a ring may appear an unlikely historical event. However, Tolkien had no less an authority than the ancient scholar Pliny to inform him that, in ancient Rome, a dispute over a ring caused a blood feud, which led directly to the outbreak of the Social Wars and the collapse of the Roman Republic.
The rise and fall of the Dúnedain kingdoms of Middle-earth likely owes much to Tolkien’s intimate knowledge of the history of the Roman Empire. Certainly, Tolkien encouraged this comparison. To begin with, he created a landmass for the Dúnedain kingdoms that was roughly equivalent to that of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece and the British Isles and Ireland combined.
The Barrow-wights sent by the Witch-king to dwell in the burial mounds of deserted Arnor
Also, in an interview with a journalist in the 1950s, Tolkien spoke of the geography of his novels: ‘the action of the story takes place in northwest of Middle-earth, equivalent in latitude to the coastlines of Europe and the north shore of the Mediterranean… If Hobbiton and Rivendell are taken (as intended) to be about the latitude of Oxford, then Minas Tirith, 600 miles to the south, is at about the latitude of Florence. The mouths of Anduin and the ancient city of Pelargir are at about the latitude of ancient Troy.’
The Witch-king of Arnor, the greatest of the Nazgûl
WARS OF THE
SOUTH KINGDOM
OF GONDOR
DATE: THIRD AGE
LOCATION: GONDOR
The history of Tolkien’s South Kingdom of Gondor has even more in common with the chronicles of the Western Roman Empire than does that of the North Kingdom of Arnor. Just as the Roman Empire had to endure centuries of warfare with invading barbarians on its eastern borders, so the South Kingdom of the Dúnedain had to endure centuries of warfare from similar barbarian invasions from the east. Like those Asiatic invaders of the Roman world, the Easterlings of Middle-earth were a confederation of many kingdoms and races.
Gondorian guards
Many of the wars of Gondor are comparable to the early history of Rome in its long rivalry with Carthage over sea and land. Like Umbar, Carthage in North Africa commanded mighty fleets of warships, and allied itself with mercenary armies supported by war elephants and cavalries. And, although it was defeated after a century of war, Carthage’s rivalry with Rome was later reawakened when it became the harbour for a powerful pirate fleet of sea raiders. Again, this is comparable to the history of the Corsairs of Umbar who for centuries raided the coasts of Middle-earth.
One of the most devastating incursions into Gondor was by a confederacy of Easterlings known as the Wainriders of Rhûn who, in 1851 of the Third Age, arrived in wagons and war chariots. This victory echoes the Visigoths’ defeat of the Romans at Adrianople (AD 378). These wild tribesmen made their westward drive using horse-drawn wagons. They were not simply an army of raiders, but were described as ‘an entire nation on the move in great wains’ who came and occupied lands on the eastern borders of the Roman Empire.
Easterling tribesmen
In the resettlement of lands and the aftermath of these battles as well, the histories of Rome and Gondor reveal much in common. In gratitude for the salvation of the Kingdom of Gondor in the Battle of the Field of Celebrant, the Eóthéod, who would later become the Rohirrim, were awarded titles to the depopulated lands of Calenardhon.
Ships of the Corsairs of Umbar
Similarly, after the retreat of the invading Huns, the Goths became the main inheritors of the lands devastated by the barbarians of the Western Roman Empire. In both the Western and Eastern Roman Empires, the Goths – like the fictional Rohirrim – were given lands of their own as reward for their military services to a greater power.
The Wainriders
THE THIRD AGE
WARS
OF THE
DWARVES
THE WAR OF
DWARVES
AND DRAGONS
DATE: THIRD AGE
LOCATION: THE NORTH OF MIDDLE-EARTH
The sagas of Northern Europe show a widespread belief in dwarfs as a powerful but stunted subterranean race that lived within mountains. They were also guardians of treasures and magical gifts, considered masters of fire and forge, and the makers of weapons and jewels.
Tolkien was dissatisfied with the portrayal of dwarfs in the fairy tales familiar to us today, and created his own race of Dwarves,* who were closer to those deep mythological roots. He felt that his Dwarves were comparable to the Norsemen of Scandinavia, that proud race of warriors, craftsmen and traders. Stoic and stubborn, both races were also relentless in their will to avenge perceived injustice. They were alike in their admiration of strength and bravery, in their sense of honour and loyalty, and in their love of gold and treasure. They were all but identical in their skill in the wielding and forging of weapons, in their stubborn pride, and their determination to avenge perceived injustice.
A cold-drake of the north
Dwarf arms and armour
Dwarves are brave and fearless on their own ground, but distrustful and dismissive of all that they do not know. Unlike the Norsemen, they are fearful of the open sea.
Tolkien’s writing was informed and inspired by his intimate knowledge of German and Norse myths that linked gold rings and gold hoards with dwarfs – and ultimately with dragons. In the Nibelungenlied and the Volsunga Saga, there are allusions to the myth of the gold ring known as Andvarinaut, the Ring of Andvari the Dwarf. It was also called ‘Andvari’s Loom’ becaus
e of its power to reproduce itself eternally. It was believed to be the source of the cursed Nibelung and Volsung treasures guarded by Fafnir the Fire-Drake, to whom Tolkien gave the epithet ‘prince of all dragons’.
Scatha the Worm
Yet, in Middle-earth, we also find that Tolkien remains consistent with ancient folk tradition: his Dwarves are the genii of the mountains, just as Hobbits are the genii of tilled soil and farmlands, and Ents are the genii of the forests. Through his research, Tolkien felt that he was able to understand fully the true nature and character of this secretive, stunted, mountain-dwelling race.