by David Day
The Battle of Azanulbizar
In Tolkien’s world, there is also continuous conflict between Dwarves and Orcs – their fellow underground dwellers. Dwarves make dangerously persistent enemies, as proved by the War of the Dwarves and the Orcs (2795–2799 TA) that ended with the bloody slaughter of the Battle of Azanulbizar. It is a conflict with echoes in various mining cultures, from Cornwall to China, where goblins or demons have been said to sabotage miners in tunnels, hindering their work out of sheer malice and spite.
* Tolkien explained that he selected the plural ‘Dwarves’ for his imaginary people ‘to remove them, a little, from the sillier tales of these latter days’.
THE BATTLE OF
THE FIVE ARMIES
DATE: 25 NOVEMBER 2941 THIRD AGE
LOCATION: EREBOR, THE LONELY MOUNTAIN
SMAUG
THE
GOLDEN
In ‘On Fairy-Stories’, Tolkien’s celebrated lecture on the art and tradition of fairy tales, he wrote that ‘The dragon had the trade-mark “Of Fairie” written plain upon him’. Tolkien believed that dragons and their golden hoards were to be found buried deep in the heartland of ‘Fairie’. Certainly, these spectacular monsters enriched the imagination of the creator of Middle-earth, as he once declared: ‘I desired dragons with a profound desire.’
When writing his fairy-tale adventure The Hobbit, Tolkien decided that a dragon was not only desirable but essential to his novel. Not just any dragon would do. In the creation of Smaug the Golden, we see a villain of great charm, intelligence and vanity as well as brute strength. Smaug is the last and greatest winged fire-drake of the Third Age: a fire-breathing flying dragon whose wrath and vengeance is somehow both terrible and magnificent.
The destruction of Esgaroth by Smaug the Golden
BEOWULF
AND THE
BATTLE
As a professor of Anglo-Saxon literature and an expert on the Old English epic poem Beowulf, J.R.R. Tolkien did not have to look far to discover inspiration for his monster. On first inspection, there are no obvious similarities between The Hobbit and Beowulf. There are strong parallels, however, in the plot structure of the dragon-slaying episode in Beowulf and the dragon-slaying episode that is found in The Hobbit. Beowulf’s dragon awakes when a thief enters the monster’s den.
The thief steals a jewelled cup from the treasure hoard as he flees for his life. Tolkien adapts this scene into Bilbo Baggins’s burglary of Smaug the Golden’s treasury where he steals a jewelled cup from the treasure hoard. Both thieves avoid being cuptured, escaping the anger of the dragons themselves. In both tales, it is the nearby settlements that suffer the dragon’s wrath.
It is up to their respective champions, Beowulf in the Old English epic, and Bard the Bowman in The Hobbit, to slay the beast. Both heroes succeed in slaying their dragons, but at a cost. It seems that, to some considerable degree, The Hobbit relays the Beowulf dragon scene, but told from the thief’s point of view.
Of course, there are differences: Bard survives to become King of Dale, while the older Beowulf does not long survive the conflict. Although victorious, Beowulf dies of his wounds. However, Beowulf’s death is mirrored in The Hobbit not by Bard, but by that other warrior king of the tale, Thorin Oakenshield, who is also victorious in the Battle of the Five Armies, but dies of wounds sustained on the field.
BEORN
THE
SKIN-CHANGER
The huge Northman Beorn, Chieftain of the Beornings (the ‘man-bear’ people) is a ‘skin-changer’: Tolkien’s fairy-tale version of the bear-cult hero of the real-life berserker warrior cult (‘bear-sark’ or ‘bear-shirt’) of the Germanic and Norse peoples. Although the historical berserkers felt possessed by the ferocious spirit of the enraged bear, these states were only rituals attempting to imitate the core miracle of the cult: the incarnate transformation of man to bear. Yet Tolkien provides the real thing when Beorn has a battlefield transformation from fierce warrior into an enraged were-bear (though Tolkien never uses that word) – an event that turns the tide of battle.
Orc head on a spike
BATTLE TACTICS
Tolkien’s Dwarves resembled the warriors of Norse myth in their fighting style. For example, in Thorin Oakenshield’s sudden entry into the Battle of the Five Armies, the Dwarf-king employed an ancient Norse shock tactic in a formation known as the Svinfylking, or ‘swine array’. This was a wedge-shaped shield-wall formation frequently used by heavily armed Viking warriors to break through enemy lines and create panic among the closed ranks of an army with superior numbers. It could be extremely effective, but it entirely depended on the initial monumental shock. If this flying wedge did not immediately break through enemy lines, the formation would soon collapse. Like many shield-wall tactics, it could often be outflanked and entirely encircled. And, indeed, this would likely have been the fate of Thorin Oakenshield and his warriors had it not been for the sudden arrival of an unexpected ally.
THE EAGES
The Eagles of Middle-earth are generally not prominent players in Tolkien’s narratives, but their intervention is nearly always crucial – as in the Battle of the Five Armies – and they arrive at times of desperate need, frequently when rescue can be achieved only by the power of flight. One has a sense that – even though they may not be physically present through much of the action, the spirit of these Great Eagles senses all and enables them to turn up exactly at the most critical moments: as vehicles of destiny, an interloping deus ex machina. They are part of a tradition of eagle-emissaries in myth, leading from the birds of the Greek god Zeus (the Roman Jupiter) to the vassals of Manwë, the Lord of the Winds of Arda.
MAP OF THE BATTLE
The map on pages 138–139 shows an artist’s impression of the Battle of the Five Armies. For Tolkien’s account of the conflict, see The Hobbit, Chapters XI and XVII, and Unfinished Tales, Part Three, Chapter III.
Thorin Oakenshield
The Battle of the Five Armies
THE
WAR
OF THE
RING
THE WAR
OF THE RING
Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is an epic fantasy that in large parts presents the world as a battleground between the forces of good and evil. But these forces are not simplistic ones, and at the story’s core is a moral struggle that results from a creative wish to acquire power to transform the world – and how that desire may lead to corruption of the soul.
It is also concerned with the nature of evil. In Morgoth’s Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien and Christopher Tolkien attempt to differentiate between the two dark lords, thus defining two categories of evil: destruction and domination. The evil of Morgoth was bent upon outright destruction: ‘Just as Sauron concentrated his power in the One Ring, Morgoth dispersed his power into the very matter of Arda, thus the whole of Middle-earth was Morgoth’s Ring.’ However, the evil of Sauron as the Lord of the Rings was far weaker in its overall power, but far more focused and efficient. This evil of the Necromancer crushes the will and overwhelms the mind of an enemy. Its purpose is not destruction but domination – that is, enslavement of the mind and submission of the spirit to the tyranny of the Dark Lord of Mordor.
Minas Morgul
The Witch-king of Morgul
BATTLES OF THE WAR OF THE RING
3019 THIRD AGE
25 FEBRUARY
First Battle of the Fords of Isen
2 MARCH Second Battle of the Fords of Isen
March of Ents on Isengard
3/4 MARCH Battle of the Hornburg
11 MARCH Invasion of East Rohan
First assault on Lórien
13 MARCH Battle of Ships at Pelargir
Battle under the Trees in Mirkwood
Second assault on Lórien
15 MARCH Battle of Pelennor Fields
17 MARCH Battle of Dale
Siege of Erebor
22 MARCH Third assault on Lórien
25 MARCH Battle before t
he Black Gate of Mordor
One Ring destroyed in fires of Mount Doom
Downfall of Sauron and Mordor
27 MARCH Siege of Erebor broken
28 MARCH Destruction of Dol Guldur in Mirkwood
1 MAY Crowning of King Elessar
3 NOVEMBER Battle of Bywater in the Shire
Final downfall of Saruman
END OF THE WAR OF THE RING
THE
BATTLE
ON THE
BRIDGE
OF
KHAZAD-DÛM
DATE: 15 JANUARY 3019 THIRD AGE
LOCATION: THE MINES OF MORIA (KHAZAD-DÛM)
The Battle on the Bridge of Khazad-dûm between Gandalf the Grey and the Balrog of Moria appears to have been inspired by a famous episode in Ragnarök: the final battle between the gods and the giants, which Tolkien specifically cited as the main influence on the earlier War of Wrath.
In The Lord of the Rings, the Balrog with his whip and sword of fire duels with Gandalf with his sword of cold white flame on the narrow stone bridge over the chasm of Moria. This is a diminished form of the titanic struggle between the fire giant Surt and Freyr, the god of sun and rain, on Bifröst, the Rainbow Bridge of Asgard. Both battles begin with the blast of a great horn: the Norse Horn of the Aesir, blown by Heimdall; and the Horn of Gondor, blown by Boromir. Both battles seem to end in disaster – both bridges collapse, and both sets of combatants hurtle down in a rage of flame to their doom.
The encounter between Gandalf and the Balrog is a breaking point in more than one way. Literally, of course, the stone bridge collapses as the wizard is dragged down into the abyss. The quest itself is taken beyond the point from which there can be any return. They can only go onward now.
MORAL ALCHEMY
Gandalf understands that, ultimately, the only way to defeat Sauron and his evil One Ring is not to attempt to overthrow him or to seize its power, but to undo the alchemical process by which the Ring of Power was made – just as common folklore tells us one can undo a spell by reciting it backwards.
We see in this the ‘backward’ nature of the ring quest. Only where it was forged can the One Ring be unmade, and Sauron’s power destroyed.
Gandalf stands his ground against the Balrog
BALROGS
The most terrible of the corrupted spirits who became the servants of Melkor were the Maiar fire demons, or ‘Balrogs’. Although Balrogs were known the carry the mace, axe or flaming sword, their chief and most feared weapon was the many-thonged whip of fire. Tolkien’s Balrogs were wild and destructive fire demons, not unlike the Furies, the enraged spirits of vengeance who had snakes for hair, carried flaming torches, and used whips to beat their victims.
In many mythologies, there are evil volcanic spirits who live like the Balrogs deep in the roots of mountains. Medieval Christians often saw volcanoes as the vents of the fires of Hell. For the ancient Greeks and Romans, volcanoes were perceived as fires of the smith god Hephaestus (or Vulcan), where the wild spirits of earth and fire were tamed or enslaved by the Olympian gods and turned to more useful purposes at the forge.
Tolkien appears to have been greatly impressed by the fire spirits found in Norse and Anglo-Saxon mythology. Their Midgard was a ‘Land of Men’ which was similar to Tolkien’s Middle-earth. Northern Midgard was closed in by a land of frost giants, while the south was a land of fire giants. This demonic land of fire was called Muspellsheim. It was Muspellsheim that provoked Tolkien’s imagination in his creation of his extraordinary demons of fire, the Balrogs.
MAP OF THE BATTLE
The map on pages 154–155 is an artist’s impression of the Battle on the Bridge of Khazad-dûm. For Tolkien’s account of the battle, see The Lord of the Rings, Book II, Chapter V.
The confrontation on the bridge
THE
BATTLE
OF THE
HORNBURG
DATE: 3–4 MARCH 3019 THIRD AGE
LOCATION: HELM’S DEEP, IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS
King Théoden of Rohan
MAP OF THE BATTLE
The map on pages 160–161 is an artist’s impression of the Battle of the Hornburg. For Tolkien’s account of the battle, see The Lord of the Rings, Book III, Chapter VII.
Sarumans armies attack Helm’s Deep
Riders of Rohan
THE WHITE WIZARD
AND THE BLACK
In Norse myths and Icelandic sagas, we can see one of the primary sources of inspiration for Tolkien’s fictional world of Middle-earth. However, there is a fundamental difference between the Norse Midgard and Tolkien’s Middle-earth. The Norse mythic world is essentially amoral, while Tolkien’s world is consumed by the great struggle between the forces of good and evil. Consequently, the attributes of the Norse world’s greatest wizard, Odin, are necessarily split in two in Tolkien’s morality tale: the ‘good’ aspects of Odin are found in the wizard Gandalf, and the ‘bad’ aspects are found in the wizard Sauron.
The entire epic tale of The Lord of the Rings is primarily about the struggle for control of the world by these conflicting powers as embodied in this duel between the white wizard and the black wizard. And Tolkien’s single great message – entirely foreign to the philosophy and aspirations of the Norsemen – is that ‘power corrupts’.
The Lord of the Rings is about the corruption implicit in a quest for pure power, and how the pursuit of power is itself evil. We learn that, even when that power (as embodied in the ultimate power of the One Ring) is pursued for reasons that appear essentially ‘good’, it will necessarily corrupt the quester.
We see Gandalf’s wisdom and strength of will in his refusal to take possession of the One Ring for a single moment, for fear of his own corruption. He knows full well that he would be morally destroyed by it as surely as others who have tried to harness its power, no matter how good and sound their intentions.
In the Quest of the Ring, we witness the corruption of Saruman, who originally was a ‘good’ wizard but who demonstrated the classic moral error of believing ‘the end justifies the means’. In attempting to overthrow the forces of the evil Sauron, Saruman gathers forces that are just as evil, and is himself corrupted by the desire for power. Unwittingly, Saruman becomes the mirror image and ally of the evil being he initially wished to overcome.
However, by no means was everything in Tolkien’s universe fixed as morally and simply ‘black’ or ‘white’. Such rigidity would have prevented much exploration of character and development of the story. The most significant case in point is that of Saruman, who at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings is represented as one of the forces for good – indeed, as head of the White Council. At first, Gandalf himself has no doubts of Saruman’s virtue and good intentions. Eventually, it becomes all too clear that Saruman, for all his gifts, becomes corrupted. Power, the great seducer, has affected even him. Tolkien was very conscious of power and of the responsibility and self-discipline that ought to go with it. His most admirable leaders, such as Aragorn and Faramir, wear their power lightly or keep it cloaked.
Saruman fails the test; his freedom to choose has led him in the wrong direction. But then, of course, the pursuit of power is the mainspring of the whole saga: and it is the One Ring that sets all the events in The Lord of the Rings in motion.
The assault on Helm’s Deep
THE MARCH
OF THE ENTS
ON ISENGARD
DATE: 2-4 MARCH 3019 THIRD AGE
LOCATION: ISENGARD
Treebeard
Tolkien was an unashamed worshipper of trees. From childhood, he had admired and loved these ancient life-forms and believed that they were in some way sentient beings. When once asked about the origin of his Ents, Tolkien wrote: ‘I should say that Ents are composed of philology, literature and life. They owe their name to the “eald enta geweorc” of Anglo-Saxon.’ The Anglo-Saxon reference, meaning ‘old giants’ work’, is to a fragment of a hauntingly beautiful Old English poem, ‘The Wande
rer’. The phrase related to the prehistoric stone ruins considered to be the work of an ancient lost race of giants.
However, beyond ent being an Anglo-Saxon name for ‘giant’, the inspiration for Tolkien’s March of the Ents came about in a rather negative way: through his dislike and, indeed, disapproval of William Shakespeare’s treatment of myths and legends. His greatest abuse was heaped on one of the playwright’s most popular plays, Macbeth.
The creation of the Ents, Tolkien explained, ‘is due, I think, to my bitter disappointment and disgust from schooldays with the shabby use made in Shakespeare of the coming of “Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill”: I longed to devise a setting in which the trees might really march to war.’ Tolkien felt Shakespeare had trivialized and misinterpreted an authentic myth, providing a cheap, simplistic interpretation of the prophecy of this march of the wood upon the hill.