The Battles of Tolkien Read online

  Little can be told of the discord in the Music of the Ainur because, although Tolkien’s account of that war in the heavens is vastly operatic in nature, it is an ethereal conflict in a timeless dimension that no mortal could comprehend.

  However, once the Ainur entered Arda, Tolkien tells us that these angelic spirits could choose to take on shape and form by putting on ‘the raiment of Earth’. And in these forms they might be recognized as ‘beings of the same order of beauty, power and majesty as the “gods” of higher mythology’. They became known as the Valar and the Maiar, and they began to shape the world. In this, Tolkien’s Arda has much in common with myths worldwide, which explain geography as a result of a war among supernatural beings.

  In the ancient Greek Titanomachy, much of the Greek world was given shape as Titans and giants fought against the gods. As the Titans would stack mountains upon mountains to gain advantage over the Olympians, so in Tolkien’s First War the conflict between Melkor and the Valar toppled mountains and boiled seas, leading to the Marring of Arda. War ceased only when the Valar called upon Tulkas the Strong, the equivalent of the Greek Heracles, who was so formidable that Melkor declined to challenge him, and instead passed into the darkness of the Void.

  The opposition of light to the darkness of chaos plays a key part in Greek creation myths, and so it is with Tolkien. In the aftermath of war, the Valar raised the two Great Pillars of the Lamps of Light: Illuin in the north and Helcar in the south, and founded their first kingdom on the Isle of Almaren. Likewise, the Greek gods founded Olympus in a world where four pillars of light held the sky apart from the Earth.

  However, this long peace was eventually broken after Melkor secretly reentered Arda and toppled the Great Lamps. Once again, the return of light in Tolkien’s world symbolized the reestablishment of order, as the Valar created the realm of Valinor and raised two mighty Trees of Light – one of silver and one of gold. In later ages, these were to bear the fruit that became the Sun and the Moon, an idea perhaps rooted in the myth of the Garden of the Hesperides where, as W.B. Yeats wrote, enchanted trees bore ‘The silver apples of the moon / The golden apples of the sun.’

  Aulë, Maker of Mountains

  THE BATTLE OF

  POWERS

  DATE: AGES OF THE STARS

  LOCATION: NORTHWEST MIDDLE-EARTH

  The Battle of Powers was the climactic conflict that brought an end to the long War for the Sake of the Elves in the Ages of the Stars. It was a battle that has its literary precedence in Greco-Roman mythology, as well as parallels with religious folklore.

  Although far more powerful, the Valarian Queen Varda Elentári (meaning ‘Noble Queen of the Stars’) had an ancient Greek progenitrix in Astraea (meaning ‘Star-Maiden’), who was associated with the constellation Virgo. It was Varda who rekindled the stars above Middle-earth, so awakening the Elves.

  The Elves awoke far to the east of Middle-earth, so were unseen by the distant Valar, but Melkor discovered them. Through captivity and torture he twisted them into the cannibal goblin race of the Orcs. In this, Tolkien enriched and darkened the ogres who are familiar to us from fairy tales. As he explained: ‘Orc I derived from Anglo-Saxon – a word meaning demon.’ The term originated as orcos, spirits from the underworld ruled over by the ancient Romano-Etruscan god Orcus, and was used for the cannibal demons known as ‘orcs’ in Anglo-Saxon before reaching us as ‘ogres’.

  In Tolkien’s story, it was for the salvation of the Elves that the Valar returned to Middle-earth to make war on Melkor. Just as Zeus, the king of the gods, led the Olympians into the War of the Gods and Giants, so Manwë, the king of the Valar, led the Host of the Valar against Melkor. And just as the Olympians overwhelmed and laid waste to the giants’ mountain fortress of Ossa, so the Valar overwhelmed and laid waste to Melkor’s rebel Maiar and his ‘iron fortress’ of Angband.

  The Host of the Valar then laid siege to Melkor’s greatest fortress of Utumno. Before the gates, Melkor (or Morgoth, as he was now known) was forced to come forth in open combat with Tulkas the Strong in a test of strength reminiscent of Heracles’s famous Olympian victory over the invincible wrestler, Antaios the Giant, and Melkor was defeated. Like the rebel Titans and giants held captive by the Greek god Hades (Roman Pluto) in the vaults of Tartarus, so Morgoth was held for many ages in the deep underground Halls of Mandos, the Master of Doom.

  Meanwhile, the Valar offered the Eldar the choice of whether to stay in their land, Cuiviénen, or journey to dwell in the Undying Lands. In this, Tolkien shows the difference between his powers and the gods of classical mythology: although some could be fickle, such as Ossë, master of the waves, who delighted in shipwrecks, the greatest of them were driven by the sacred charge laid upon them by Ilúvatar, to care for his children. In this, the Valar resembled more closely the protective angels of some Christian folklore.

  Tulkas the Strong challenges Morgoth, the ‘Dark Enemy’

  Tolkien describes how, after three ages of the Trees of Light, Morgoth feigned repentance and was released. However, he secretly created an alliance with Ungoliant the Great Spider, a female spirit whose closest analogue is perhaps the Hindu goddess Kali, ‘she who is death’. Together they slew the Trees of Light, and Morgoth killed Finwë, King of the Noldor, and stole the Silmarilli jewels from the stronghold of Formenos.

  The Maiar Ossë and Uinen

  As they held the only trace of the Light of the Trees left in Arda, these gems took on a symbolic significance that can be paralleled with relics of the True Cross in Christian folklore. Tolkien tells how Morgoth forged an iron crown and set it with the three radiant jewels; so it is interesting to note that one of the oldest and most famous crowns in Christendom is known as the Iron Crown of Lombardy. This heavily jewelled crown was worn by historic rulers from Charlemagne to Napoleon and takes its name from the claim that it has a central iron ringlet forged from a nail used in the crucifixion of Christ.

  Ungoliant the Great Spider

  Morgoth achieved the corruption of the Noldor in two ways: firstly by going among them in fair form and revealing hidden knowledge, infecting them with pride and greed, and then by blatant murder and theft so cruel that Finwë’s son Fëanor, maker of the Silmarils, was stirred to madness, and swore along with his seven sons a blasphemous oath of vengeance against any who would ‘hold or take or keep a Silmaril’. Here Tolkien establishes one of his repeated themes: corruption and war through forbidden knowledge and unwarranted pride, a motif to which he would return with the influence of Sauron upon both the Númenóreans and the Elven-smiths in later ages.

  As Tolkien observed in his letters, ‘the first fruit of their fall is war in Paradise, the slaying of Elves by Elves’. Just as one son of Adam and Eve murdered his brother after their parents gained forbidden knowledge, so the Noldor slew the Teleri and stole their swan ships to pursue Morgoth to Middle-earth.

  BATTLES

  OF THE

  FIRST

  AGE

  THE

  WAR

  OF THE

  JEWELS

  THE FIRST BATTLE OF BELERIAND

  DATE: AGES OF THE STARS

  THE BATTLE-UNDER-STARS

  DATE: AGES OF THE STARS

  THE GLORIOUS BATTLE

  DATE: 60 FIRST AGE

  LOCATION FOR ALL THREE: BELERIAND

  The Noldor returning to Middle-earth

  The history of the War of the Jewels is the main focus of The Silmarillion, and as Tolkien wrote, ‘the legendary Silmarillion is peculiar, and differs from all similar things that I know in not being anthrocentric. Its centre of view and interest is not Men but Elves.’ Indeed, the War of the Jewels has its beginning before the origin of the human race. The arrival of the Noldor in Middle-earth surprised Morgoth; twice he sent his armies of Orcs to destroy them, and twice the Orcs were routed. In this, Tolkien showed us not only the Eldar’s strength of arms, but the power of the Light of the Trees that still shone in the eyes of those new-come from Valinor.r />
  The tragedy of mortal Men is in their struggle against their ultimate fate of death. The tragedy of the immortal Elves is in their struggle with eternal life in a mortal world where nothing lasts, and all else changes and perishes.

  In The Silmarillion we learn how the most gifted kindred of the Elves leaves the immortal paradise of Valinor and reenters the mortal lands of Middle-earth in a doomed attempt to reclaim the three Silmarilli jewels. And, as Tolkien observed in the history of the Elves of that age, ‘the events are all threaded upon the fate and significance of the Silmarilli (“radiance of pure light”) or Primeval Jewels’.

  THE SILMARIL

  THE SAMPO

  AND THE GRAIL

  The influence of Finnish language and literature on The Silmarillion has been considerable, and frequently stated by Tolkien. He wrote that the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, was the germ of The Silmarillion.

  The prizes of both epics seem equally obscure. In the Kalevala, the object that brings tragedy is called the Sampo. It is the work of the smith Ilmarinen, handed over as payment for a bride. When stolen back, it is broken in pursuit, and survives in fragments. Yet no one knows what it is – or rather, what it was, for its loss is irrevocable and complete. This is similar to the Silmarils, which were also forged by a master-smith, Fëanor the Noldo. Meanwhile, philologists suggest the Sampo is variously something bright, something made in a forge, a kind of mill, a thing that brings luck, or something to do with sea salt.

  Some have suggested it is something like the Golden Fleece, or even the Holy Grail, believed to be the chalice used by Christ at the Last Supper. The Grail, in many stories surrounding it, has become an elusive and enigmatic symbol; it doesn’t belong to this world, as it is far too pure for mortal beings. Only Galahad was pure enough to lift it, but then both he and the Grail ascended straight to heaven. Good in itself, the Grail ruined Camelot, and many good knights died pursuing it. Tolkien surmised the Sampo was at once both an object and an allegory – real and abstract. He saw it also as the quintessence of the creative powers, capable of provoking both good and evil. His Silmarils were intended as objects of similarly intense but obscure symbolism, focal points of the inexorable pattern of fate.

  The Grail, the Sampo and the Silmarils all serve as a reminder to the created beings that the mystery of ultimate destiny and purpose was something they could not penetrate. And yet they all generated an ardent yearning to find them and hold them, which led to much shedding of blood. The paradox is that the gems shine with divine light, yet for all who have pursued them, they have provoked a descent into darkness and tragedy.

  THE BATTLE OF

  SUDDEN

  FLAME

  THE FOURTH BATTLE IN THE WAR OF THE JEWELS

  DATE: 455 FIRST AGE

  LOCATION: BELERIAND

  In the winter of the year 455 of the First Age, the Dagor Bragollach – the Battle of Sudden Flame – ended the Long Peace and broke the Siege of Angband. The battle was well named, for it was heralded by volcanic rivers of fire pouring out of Angband. The fire incinerated the Noldor troops in the hillforts and encampments on Ard-galen ‘the green plain’, which thereafter became known as Anfauglith, or ‘the land of gasping dust’.

  In the train of these rivers of fire came wave after black wave of Orcs led by Balrog fire demons and Morgoth’s most terrible creation, Glaurung the Golden. Tolkien reveals the full force of Morgoth’s evil genius with the appearance of the Father of Dragons and his dreadful brood. Tolkien’s dragons are creatures of powerful and ancient evil, inspired by the brutal and primitive world of the earliest Old German epics.

  In his ‘On Fairy-Stories’, Tolkien speaks of the inspiration for Glaurung: ‘best of all was the nameless North of Sigurd of the Volsungs, and the prince of all dragons’. This ‘prince of all dragons’ was the spectacularly patricidal, fratricidal, genocidal and, in general, deeply unpleasant Fafnir the Fire-Drake, the usurper of the cursed golden treasure of the (mysterious and extinct) Nibelungs.

  Yet, however evil the dragon is, Tolkien believed that ‘the world that contained even the imagination of Fafnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever cost of peril’. And so, at great peril to all the Free Peoples of Middle-earth, Glaurung appears in the Battle of Sudden Flame.

  Glaurung

  MAP OF THE BATTLE

  The map on pages 54–55 is an artist’s impression of the initial wave of destruction and chaos as the Siege of Angband is broken. For Tolkien’s account of the conflict, see The Silmarillion, ‘Of the Ruin of Beleriand and the Fall of Fingolfin’.

  Glaurung at the Battle of Sudden Flame

  THE QUEST

  OF THE SILMARIL

  Tolkien seems to have blended classical and Celtic sources in the tale of Beren and Lúthien, which takes place in the dark years between the Battle of Sudden Flame and the Battle of Unnumbered Tears. One of the very first stories of Middle-earth to be written, and inspired by Tolkien’s own great love – on his and his wife Edith’s gravestone is written ‘John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) Beren’ ‘Edith Bratt Tolkien (1889–1971) Lúthien’ – this tale tells of how two lovers descend into the underworld.

  Tolkien himself acknowledged that the story was based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, with the male and female roles reversed. Orpheus played his harp and sang to make Cerberus the hound guardian fall asleep before the gates of Hades so that he could steal in and retrieve his beloved Eurydice, while the song of Lúthien lulled the wolf Carcaroth, so that she and Beren might descend into the pits of Angband and seek for a Silmaril. The song of Lúthien before Morgoth was a single combat as potent in its way as any duel of arms. Perhaps the most injurious to the fallen Vala’s pride, as the lovers bested him in his very throne room, and ‘together wrought the greatest deed that has been dared by Elves or Men’.

  Morgoth, the Dark Enemy

  Lúthien sings before Morgoth

  THE BATTLE OF

  UNNUMBERED

  TEARS

  THE FIFTH BATTLE IN THE WARS OF THE JEWELS

  DATE: 472 FIRST AGE

  LOCATION: BELERIAND

  The armies of Morgoth

  In the Battle of Unnumbered Tears an alliance of Elves, Men and Dwarves made one last desperate attempt to overthrow Morgoth and reclaim Beleriand. With their utter ruin, Tolkien brought the atmosphere of Norse and Old German saga to bear in creating one of the grimmest times in the history of Arda.

  Fingolfin, High King of the Noldor

  It was in the long aftermath of the Battle of Unnumbered Tears that the bleakest and, yet, grandest individual tragedy of the War of the Jewels took place. In the tragic figure of the mortal Túrin Turambar, nemesis of Glaurung, we have the first of Middle-earth’s dragon-slayers, whose tale is rooted in Northern European epic. His story is inspired both by the cursed hero Kullervo from the Finnish Kalevala who unwittingly sleeps with his long-lost sister and afterwards falls on his sword, and Sigurd, who slays Fafnir the Prince of Dragons by thrusting his sword into the creature’s soft underbelly. The tale of Túrin takes us into the world of Northern European epic, with its bitter, doomed heroes.

  MAP OF THE BATTLE

  The map on pages 64–65 is an artist’s impression of the Battle of Unnumbered Tears. For Tolkien’s account of the conflict, see The Silmarillion, ‘Of the Fifth Battle: Nírnaeth Arnoediad’.

  As Tolkien wrote in a letter to W.H. Auden, ‘… the beginning of the legendarium […] was in an attempt to reorganize some of the Kalevala, especially the tale of Kullervo the hapless, into a form of my own’.

  One of the most desperate battles in the War of the Jewels took place in the ancient Sindarin kingdom of Doriath, as the Sons of Fëanor sacked the stronghold of Menegroth. So the oath that began the War of the Jewels led once more to Elf turning against Elf, and the corruptive lure of the gems culminated in ruin as the surviving sons pursued the Silmaril, borne now by Lúthien’s granddaughter.

  Yet, ultimately, Tolkien’s use of thes
e ‘Primeval Jewels’ is symbolically ambivalent, as it is the desire for the possession of the gems that results in disaster, while the Silmarils themselves remain symbols of ultimate good, the last remnant of the Trees. After long travels, the Silmaril of Doriath came to travel the skies in the winged ship Vingilot, becoming a beacon to Middle-earth and explaining, in Tolkien’s cosmology, the origin of the morning and evening ‘star’ that we know as the planet Venus.

  Túrin Turambar slays Glaurung the Father of Dragons

  THE WAR OF

  WRATH

  DATE: 587 FIRST AGE

  LOCATION: BELERIAND

  In keeping with their mingled roots in Greco-Roman mythology and the Christian concept of angels, the Valar had remained in the paradise of Aman yet never truly ceased to care for the sufferings of the Children of Ilúvatar. They acknowledged that the time had come to end the suffering and break the evil dominion of Morgoth over Middle-earth.