Dragons
‘Then dragon’s ire more fierce than fire/Laid low their towers and houses frail.’(The Hobbit, Ch. 1).
According to the texts that have come down to us, it seems that the Dragons were created by Morgoth, the master of Sauron the Necromancer, in the First Age of Middle-earth, some 6,000 years before the adventures of Bilbo Baggins. The learned Elves of the First Age recorded that there were at least four types of dragons: the Urulóki, or ‘Fire Drakes’; the Rámalóki, or ‘Winged Dragons’; the Foalóki, or ‘Spark Dragons’; and the Lingwilóki, the ‘Fish Dragons’ or ‘Sea Serpents’, but only the first two types are described in any detail in the stories now available to us.
Physically, Dragons resembled giant snakes or lizards, with or without wings, depending on their family. Their bodies were covered with scales, apart from the weak point of their breast, which they sometimes protected with armour made of gemstones from their treasure trove. Dragons spat fire through their mouth and nostrils. Their sense of smell was highly developed and their piercing stare, combined with their eloquence, enabled them to hypnotize their victims. Their intelligence made them very astute, and they loved playing riddle games that allowed them to glean considerable information from an enemy, even when the latter spoke very little. Finally, like all good guardians of treasure, they coveted wealth and were extremely avaricious. The corrupting power of their treasure meant that this avarice would also contaminate anybody else desirous of getting their hands on it.
The first Dragon in Middle-earth was an Urulókë named Glaurung, the Father of all the Dragons. He made his earliest appearance in the year 260 F.A., at the siege of Morgoth’s castle laid by the Noldor Elves. Glaurung was still a youngster and was quickly repelled by Fingon, the Lord of the Elves, but he re-emerged in 455 F.A., accompanied by Balrogs and followed by many Orc soldiers. This time, the attack proved a success, as the Elven and Mannish troops were defeated in the Battle of Dagor Bragollach. Glaurung then participated in the destruction of Middle-earth by triggering the collapse of major cities on behalf of his master, before being killed in 495 F.A. by the hero Túrin Turambar (as recounted in The Children of Húrin). Dragons were also involved in the fall of Gondolin, one of the biggest of the Elven cities, in 510 F.A. The famous swords Glamdring, Orcrist and Sting that Bilbo and the Dwarves discovered in the treasure of the three trolls Tom, Bert and William came from Gondolin. A mere 40 years after Gondolin fell, the first winged Dragons appeared. At that time, the Valar, the divine powers, were assembling their armies to fight against Morgoth alongside Elves and Men. Morgoth chose this moment to unveil the first winged Dragons, led by the most powerful of all, Ancalagon the Black. Eärendil, the father of Elrond the Half-Elf, navigated his flying ship, the Vingilot, and, with the support of an army of birds led by the Eagle Thorondor, defeated Ancalagon in an epic aerial battle. The fall of the enormous Dragon destroyed the towers in Morgoth’s castle, Thangorodrim, allowing the troops of the Valar to overcome the armies of the Dark Lord. Only a couple of winged Dragons survived this battle, and they fled eastward. We can assume that they settled in the Grey Mountains, to the north of the Forest of Great Fear and the Lonely Mountain, and that they gave rise to a new generation of Dragons, from which Smaug emerged.
Little is known about Dragons’ activities during the Second Age, but they seem to have used this period to consolidate themselves. They start to be mentioned again in the middle of the Third Age, particularly on account of their frequent conflicts with Dwarves and Men. We know, for example, that the celebrated hero Fram, an ancestor of the Rohirrim, had a fight with the Dragon Scatha in 2000 T.A. After valiantly defeating him, Fram kept some of the Dragon’s treasure to hand on to his descendants. The horn offered to the Hobbit Meriadoc Brandybuck by Éowyn, a warrior princess from Rohan, came from that hoard. Two hundred years after the death of Scatha, Thorin I (the ancestor of Thorin II Oakenshield) led some of his subjects into the Grey Mountains in order to exploit the local resources. They settled there and enjoyed prosperity for a while – until they found themselves confronting Dragons eager to acquire the treasures that the Dwarves were bringing to light. This war raged for almost 380 years, until the deaths of Dáin I and his son Frór, who were killed by a large Cold-drake, a Dragon that could not breathe fire.
The first Dragon in Middle-earth was an Urulókë named Glaurung, the Father of all the Dragons.
The Dwarves then returned to their former homes but, 200 years later, in 2770 T.A., Smaug the Golden, the last and most powerful of the great Dragons, flew from the Grey Mountains to the Lonely Mountain. He inflicted destruction on the lands of Erebor and chased the people of Thrór – the grandfather of Thorin Oakenshield – out of the Kingdom under the Mountain. Thrór and his son Thráin II, Thorin’s father, escaped through a secret door in the side of the Lonely Mountain, just as Smaug was sacking the palace and installing his bed in the Great Hall. Smaug was not killed until 2941 T.A., during the Quest of Erebor, when Bard the Dragon-Slayer pierced his breast with an arrow during his attack on the lake town of Esgaroth. Smaug destroyed the town in his death throes, although it was later rebuilt further north of the Long Lake. The water into which Smaug fell was considered to be cursed and his bones were left there, in the midst of the ruins of the old town.
Tolkien mainly drew inspiration from Western mythologies and Scandinavian, Germanic and Old English literature for the creation of his Dragons. The character Glaurung was particularly influenced by the dragon Fáfnir from the legend of Sigurd, taken from The Völsunga Saga, a Norse text that Tolkien rewrote and published under the title The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún. The circumstances of Glaurung’s death, for example, are an almost identical reworking of those of Fáfnir’s: Glaurung is pierced from top to bottom by Túrin’s magic sword, just as Fáfnir is by Sigurd’s sword, Gram. The dragon Ancalagon and his fight against Eärendil can be traced back to Nordic mythology, where the dragon Jörmungand confronts the god Thor at Ragnarök, or the end of the world, as well as St John’s biblical account of the Apocalypse, in which Satan, in the guise of a dragon, enters into combat with St Michael the Archangel and is defeated. Nevertheless, Tolkien’s main source of inspiration was undoubtedly the Old English text of Beowulf, which provided a model, for example, for Bilbo Baggins’ theft of Smaug’s cup and the destructive madness that ensued. In Beowulf, an unidentified character steals a cup from a dragon sleeping on a treasure trove, sparking such a fury in him that he lays waste the surrounding countryside until the hero arrives on the scene to confront the monster.
Dwarves
‘The dwarves are exceedingly strong for their height, but most of these were strong even for dwarves.’(The Hobbit, Ch. 17).
The Dwarves were one of the most distinctive peoples in Middle-earth, with a history that dated back to the Elder Days. Their small stature and beards made them instantly recognizable. They were fearsome warriors who were robust and resilient, as well as being goldsmiths highly skilled in working in forges and mines. Their ideal habitat was the interior of mountains, which served as their fortress, their workshop and the location for their mining operations. Their life expectancy was far longer than that of Men or Hobbits, but they were not immortal like the Elves. They were a secretive people who revealed little about their history and culture: Gandalf, for example, was kept in ignorance of even an event as decisive as the death of Thrór, the head of Durin’s Folk, for a full 150 years. Despite the Dwarves’ adoption of the common languages of the regions in which they settled, their taste for secrecy led them to preserve their own language, khuzdul, for internal use and to prevent any rare outsider who penetrated their circles from ever learning it.
The origins of the Dwarves can be traced back to the start of the First Age: the Vala Aulë, known to the Dwarves as Mahal, made the Seven Fathers of the Dwarves under a mountain in Middle-earth, out of impatience for the arrival of the Elves and the Men, which had been predicted since the beginning of the world. The Creator, Ilúvatar, forgave Aulë for his impatience but ordered him to wait for the Elves to be the Firstborn before permitting the Dwarves to awaken in their turn. Aulë then laid the Dwarves under the Blue Mountains, beneath Mount Gundabad, in the Misty Mountains, and also further to the east. Each of the Seven Fathers gave rise to a clan, with the following names: the Longbeards, the Firebeards, the Broadbeams, the Ironfists, the Stiffbeards, the Blacklocks and the Stonefoots. Durin I founded the kingdom of the Longbeards in the mines of Moria, near Lake Kheled-zâram, while the Firebeards and the Broadbeams settled in the cities of Nogrod and Belegost under the Blue Mountains, and they were the ones who came across the Elves from Beleriand. For a long time, the Dwarves and the Elves enjoyed a relationship based on mutual aid: the Dwarves fitted out the palaces for the Elf Kings of Doriath and Nargothrond, as well as forging their weapons, gold and jewellery, while the Elves taught the Dwarves how to write runes and paid them with pearls from Balar, which they valued enormously. When the Goblins attacked the Elves of Beleriand, the two peoples joined forces in their defence. This cosy understanding would be tested, however, by a dispute over a sumptuous necklace, fashioned by Dwarves with materials provided by the Elves. This quarrel took a dramatic turn and eventually descended into outright warfare when the Elf King Elu Thingol, Lúthien’s father, was murdered and Doriath was ransacked, leading to reprisals against the Dwarves of Nogrod.
Also in the First Age, the Dwarves of Moria, who had had no particular contact with the Elves, encountered the first Men, newly arrived from the East. And, when Beleriand was submerged under flood waters, many Dwarves came to the Misty Mountains to join up with the Line of Durin.
In the Second Age, the Dwarves of Moria established close links with the New Elf kingdom of Eregion, and it was probably in this period that the Elves gave them the Ring of Power of Durin’s Folk. Soon, however, Sauron forged the One Ring, destroyed Eregion and set about bringing all the rings under his own power. He turned Men into his servants by distributing the Nine Rings among them. He tried the same ruse with the Dwarf Lords, but these proved harder nuts to crack: the only effect that the Rings had on them was to fan the flames of their lust for riches. After the destruction of Eregion, the Dwarves of Moria helped the surviving Elves to escape towards the North, where Elrond would soon found Rivendell. The Dwarves then took shelter in their homes under the mountains, where they would later have to fight against the advance of the Goblins.
In the Third Age, the wealth of Moria was particularly dependent on its deposits of mithril, which was becoming scarce. While they were excavating far beneath the surface, the Dwarves roused a Balrog, an ancient demon from the First Age. The Balrog killed first Durin VI and then Náin I, which led the Dwarves to abandon Moria and establish new kingdoms in the Grey Mountains, Erebor and the Iron Hills, while fighting against both Dragons and Goblins. After the death of Dáin I and his youngest son, the Dwarves abandoned the Grey Mountains too. The death of Thrór, the Lord of the oldest branch of the seven clans, triggered the War of the Dwarves and Orcs, in which Dwarves from the other houses joined forces with Durin’s Folk to exact revenge for the Goblin Azog’s insult to their race. Apart from this episode, however, Durin’s Folk had little contact with the other clans. After Smaug’s death, Thorin Oakenshield asked Roäc to provide all the Dwarves in the region with messenger crows, in order to improve Erebor’s defences.
There were considerable improvements in the relationships between Dwarves, Elves and Men after the Battle of the Five Armies, even though old suspicions and prejudices still persisted and each party kept a certain distance out of pride. The Dwarves’ misfortunes made them reluctant to trust other peoples and slow to open up to outsiders, giving rise to strange misconceptions. For example, as female Dwarves were few in number, sported a beard just like the males and were rarely seen in public, rumour had it that the Dwarves did not have wives and that their females were made of stone. Similarly, mystery surrounded the circumstances of their death, as they did not form part of the original creation plan: it was sometimes thought that Dwarves returned to the stone from whence they came, while they themselves believed that they would be called upon to rebuild the world after the Last Battle. The Dwarves maintained that, as adopted children of Ilúvatar, they would finally be recognized as the equals of Elves and Men after this reconstruction, and that the Seven Fathers would return amongst them.
Also in the First Age, the Dwarves of Moria, who had had no particular contact with the Elves, encountered the first Men, newly arrived from the East.
Practically all the names of the Dwarves in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are derived from the Scandinavian Edda, particularly the Dvergatal, or ‘Catalogue of Dwarves’, in the great mythological poem, the Völuspá. Tolkien wanted to extricate his dwarf characters from fairy tales and anchor them in a mythical but historically coherent past. Accordingly, he opted to use the plural ‘dwarves’, instead of the then more standard ‘dwarfs’, in order to distance his characters, however subtly, from the debased images of these creatures in modern stories. Although the inspiration for the Dwarves clearly lay, therefore, in Northern Europe, the language that Tolkien invented for them drew, in contrast, on Semitic languages. This is also true of some of the customs that Tolkien attributed to them: shaving beards during mourning and the insistence on burying the dead (there was only one case of cremation in the Dwarves’ entire history – after the Battle of Azanulbizar). Furthermore, the history of the Dwarves is of a people in exile, and Tolkien himself stated that he had modelled the Dwarves of Middle-earth on popular depictions of Jews.
Eagles
‘What’s all this uproar in the forest tonight?’, said the Lord of the Eagles. He was sitting, black in the moonlight, on the top of a lonely pinnacle of rock at the eastern edge of the mountains. ‘I hear wolves’ voices! Are the Goblins at mischief in the woods?’(The Hobbit, Ch. 6).
The great Eagles of the Misty Mountains made two interventions in the Quest of Erebor. The Lord of the Eagles, intrigued by the night-time screaming of the Wargs and the fire started by the Wizard Gandalf, assembled his vassals in order to find out more. He saved Gandalf at the last moment, just as the Wizard was about to jump from a treetop, and he dispatched some of his followers to disperse the Wargs and Goblins. Other Eagles went to save the Dwarves in the flaming trees. Bilbo Baggins was almost forgotten in this rescue operation and had to cling to Dori’s legs during the journey to the Eagles’ eyrie. Thorin and Company were then ushered onto the Great Shelf, where Bilbo discovered that the Lord of the Eagles was willing to help them, in appreciation of the treatment that he had once received from Gandalf after being wounded by an arrow. The Eagles put the group up for the night, and the next day they took the group to the Carrock, an enormous rock in the middle of the River Anduin, but they refused to go any further because they did not want to get too close to the homes of the Woodmen.
The reader learns that the Eagles in the Misty Mountains had observed the movements of the Goblins in the Battle of the Five Armies and had assembled for the confrontation. They were spotted from afar by Bilbo, and their arrival rekindled the courage of the Elves in the Forest of Great Fear, the men in Lake-town and the Dwarves on the Iron Hills. The Eagles dislodged the Goblins from the slopes of the Lonely Mountain and changed the course of the battle. Following the victory of the Free Peoples, Dáin II Ironfoot thanked the Lord of the Eagles by giving him a golden crown, as well as a gold necklace for each of his principal fifteen vassals. Some of the Eagles helped track down the last of the Goblins before returning home.
The origins of the Great Eagles of the Misty Mountains are obscure. Their first manifestation was the Maiar, who adopted the appearance of birds of prey to serve as messengers for Manwë, the chief of all the Valar. When Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, fled from Middle-earth, some Eagles followed to keep an eye on him and find out who was summoning him to the Valar. They initially stayed on Thangorodrim, the triple-peaked mountain that overlooked Morgoth’s home. When Morgoth became too powerful, they settled in the Crissaegrim, the mountains surrounding Gondolin. The Eagles’ chief, Thorondor, made an alliance with the Elf king Turgon, an ancestor of Elrond, and ensured that Morgoth’s spies did not discover the location of Gondolin. During the Beleriand Wars, the Eagles kept watch over the Elves and their allies from a distance and sometimes came to their assistance, although without becoming involved in any battles between the Elves and the forces of Morgoth (the Noldor Elves having rejected the protection of the Valar). Thorondor also helped Fingon when he ventured onto Thangorodrim to rescue his friend Maedhros, who had been taken prisoner by Morgoth. In the year 456 F.A., Thorondor witnessed the fight between Morgoth and the Great King Fingolfin and subsequently carried the latter’s body to Gondolin for burial. Two years later, the Eagles saved the young Húrin and Huor, who had got lost on the arid foothills of the Crissaegrim, and took them to Gondolin. Turgon then delivered them to the family after they had sworn never to tell anybody about their adventure.
In 466 F.A., Beren and Lúthien seized one of the Silmarils from Morgoth’s crown, but Beren was wounded by the wolf Carcharoth and lost the Silmaril. Thorondor and his two most powerful vassals, Landroval and Gwaihir, came to their rescue and took them to Lúthien’s home country. In 510 F.A., Morgoth attacked and razed Gondolin. The survivors were caught in an ambush in the mountains, but the Eagles attacked the Goblins, thus enabling Tuor and the Elves to escape. Thirty-five years later, the Valar finally came to the aid of Middle-earth, in response to the pleas of Eärendil: this was the start of the War of Wrath, which would last until 587 F.A. In desperation, Morgoth released winged dragons against the forces of the Valar. Eärendil then came to the rescue with his flying ship, aided by Thorondor, who led the great Eagles and all the birds of the sky into battle. Ancalagon the Black, the most powerful of all the dragons, was overcome after a long fight, and the Valar forces thus emerged victorious.
The reader learns that the Eagles in the Misty Mountains had observed the movements of the Goblins in the Battle of the Five Armies and had assembled for the confrontation.
When Men settled on the island of Númenor, their alliance with the Valar was witnessed by the Eagles, the only birds who ventured to the sacred peak of Meneltarma. If anybody happened upon the peak, three Eagles would appear to stand guard on three rocks close to the western ridge. During the festivities in honour of Ilúvatar, however, these three Eagles, known as the Witnesses of Manwë, did not stay on their perches but instead circled above the crowd. When the last king of Númenor, Ar-Pharazôn, was persuaded by Sauron to make war against the Valar, large clouds in the form of Eagles regularly appeared from the West at nightfall, sometimes accompanied by thunder. During the evening when the forces of Ar-Pharazôn set off in the direction of Valinor, the Eagle-shaped clouds approached again, in an endless row, their wings sweeping the sky from North to South, presaging the anger of the Valar and the devastation of Númenor.
At the start of the War of the Ring, many birds were asked by the Wizard Radagast to keep watch on the movements of Sauron. The Eagles were the first to spot troop movements and the Nazgûls’ ride in search of the One Ring. They also observed Gollum’s escape from the prison in which he was being held by the Elves of Thranduil and passed this news on to Gandalf, who set off for Orthanc. Gwaihir was able to free Gandalf, who was being held captive by Saruman, and to take him to the Rohirrim to find a horse. Gwaihir later rescued Gandalf again on the peak of Celebdil, after the latter’s victorious fight against the Balrog of Moria, and took him to Lórien to be cared for by Galadriel.
The Eagles of the Misty Mountains intervened on another occasion to assist the troops of Aragorn, who had been attacked by Goblins outside the Black Gate of Mordor. At the request of Gandalf, Gwaihir, Landroval and a young Eagle called Meneldor headed towards Mount Doom in order to rescue Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee and lead them to safety. During this period, another Eagle flew towards Minas Tirith and announced the victory of the Free Peoples.
Tolkien first introduced Eagles into the early versions of The Book of Lost Tales and often gave them a role of deus ex machina at times of ‘eucatastrophe’. Despite the importance of the Lord of the Eagles in The Hobbit, we are not told his name, although we are given to understand that he is not Gwaihir, who only transports Gandalf in the War of the Ring. The Eagle was frequently considered a royal bird in European mythologies, reputed to be able to stare into the sun without blinking (an attribute borrowed by Tolkien). To the Ancient Greeks and Romans, the Eagle was the symbol and messenger of Zeus-Jupiter, although its long-sightedness was little appreciated, as the chief of the gods was already supposed to be able to observe all things from his throne on Mount Olympus. In contrast, the Eagles’ role as Manwë’s eyes is directly inspired by Odin’s two crows, Huginn and Muninn, in the Eddas, who roam the world every day so that they can bring back news to the one-eyed god. Tolkien wrote in his letters that he had refrained from involving the Eagles too often in his narrative, for fear of devaluing them and undermining their credibility.
Elves
‘The feasting people were Wood-elves, of course. [ . . . ] They differed from the High Elves of the West, and were more dangerous and less wise. For most of them (together with their scattered relations in the hills and mountains) were descended from the ancient tribes that never went to Faerie in the West’.(The Hobbit, Ch. 8).
The Elves were one of the peoples inhabiting Middle-earth, distinguishable from Dwarves and Men by their exceptional longevity, verging on immortality. They were often over two metres (6ft 6in) tall and proved particularly attractive to Men (hence their popular name of the Beautiful People). Bilbo Baggins and the Dwarves of Thorin and Company encountered the Elves twice during the Quest of Erebor. The first occasion was at Elrond’s house in Rivendell, where the travellers were well received, but the second, with the Elves of the Forest of Great Fear, was less agreeable, as the Dwarves were taken prisoner, under orders from King Thranduil.
Elves cannot be considered a homogeneous or unique people, as they divided into many branches over the course of their very long history. Almost at the dawn of time, before any illumination from the sun or moon, 144 Elves awoke on the shore of Lake Cuiviénen, in the far east of Middle-earth. They called themselves Quendi, meaning ‘those who speak’, because at that time they were the only inhabitants of Middle-earth with the power of speech. After their Awakening, they separated into three clans: the Minyar, the Tatyar and the Nelyar. When the Valar found out about this awakening, they invited the Elves to live with them in Faërie, also known as Valinor, across the sea to the West. Some Elves turned down the offer, preferring to remain below the stars: these were the Avari. Those who agreed to follow the Valar were called the Eldar, the People of the Stars.
The Eldar maintained their division into three clans and formed three peoples: the Vanyar, or Pale-Elves; the Noldor, or Deep-Elves; and the Teleri, or Latecomers. The Vanyar went to Valinor, accompanied by some Noldor and Teleri. Some of the latter took fright in the Misty Mountains, turned back and settled in the Anduin Valley, giving rise to the Nandor people. Other Teleri crossed the mountains, but came to a halt at the shores of the Great Sea or in the forests of Beleriand; these were known as the Sindar and were ruled by Thingol, the future king of Doriath. The Teleri who did reach Valinor became expert navigators – hence their popular name of Sea-Elves. At this time, Valinor was illuminated by two extraordinary trees, one silver and one gold. The Elves who reached Valinor were then called the Calaquendi, or High-Elves, while those who remained under the stars in Middle-earth, the Avari, were grouped together, along with the Nandor and the Sindar, under the generic name of Moriquendi. The Elves in Valinor cultivated their knowledge and lived in peace. Fëanor, the eldest son of the Great King of the Noldor, created the Silmarils, three sacred jewels containing the light of the Two Trees. Centuries later, Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, the master of Sauron, stole these precious jewels, killed Fëanor’s father, destroyed the Two Trees and fled to Middle-earth.
Valinor was plunged into darkness, and Fëanor and his seven sons swore to seek revenge and recover the Silmarils at any cost. A substantial portion of the Noldor rallied to their cause, but the Teleri from Alqualondë refused to come to their assistance – so Fëanor decided to steal their ships. The Teleri defended themselves, however, and the first ever fratricidal battle between Elves ensued. The Fëanorians emerged victorious, and the event would go down in history as the Alqualondë Massacre. This intervention was sternly condemned by the Valar, but Fëanor, consumed with pride, rebelled and crossed the sea, having first promised to send back ships to look for those Noldor who had been unable to obtain a place for the crossing. When Fëanor landed in Middle-earth, however, he began to doubt the loyalty of those whom he had left behind and decided to burn the ships. Those Noldor who had been abandoned on the shores of Valinor did not give in but instead embarked on a long and difficult journey across the icy North in order to return to Middle-earth. A number of them died on the way. During this time, the Valar made the Sun and the Moon with the final fruits from the dying Trees. Their first ascent into the sky coincided with the arrival of the Noldor in Middle-earth and the start of the measurement of the Ages.
The entire First Age was marked by long and bloody battles between Morgoth and the Elves. Fëanor was killed by a Balrog in the Battle under the Stars. The Noldor then founded several kingdoms in Beleriand and laid siege to Morgoth in his castle in Angband, eventually gaining the upper hand. Nevertheless, Morgoth gradually recovered the advantage, thanks to support from Goblins, Balrogs and Dragons. He was further assisted by the impulsiveness of Fëanor’s sons, who twice attacked the heirs of Beren and Lúthien, who had succeeded in winning back one of the three Silmarils. Their behaviour also led to the ultimate destruction of the kingdom of Doriath and the pillage of the harbour on the Sirion. All hope seemed lost once Morgoth had defeated the Noldor. Eärendil, recently back from a long journey, went to beg the Valar to intervene. The First Age ended with the victory of the Valar army over Morgoth and his banishment beyond the Circles of the World. The irresponsibility of Fëanor’s two living sons resulted in the loss of the two remaining Silmarils in the sea and in the depths of the Earth.
Distrust between the survivors of the kingdom of Doriath and the Noldor exiles still flared up occasionally, particularly regarding Oropher and his son Thranduil, who eventually left to found their own kingdom in Greenwood-the-Great (later the Forest of Great Fear). Over the course of the Second Age, Sauron, formerly Morgoth’s servant, assumed his master’s lust for power. Disguised as an Elf, he insinuated himself into the entourage of Fëanor’s grandson, Celebrimbor, who was leading a group of goldsmiths to the Elven kingdom of Eregion. With their help, Celebrimbor forged the Rings of Power, including the Three Rings intended to protect his people. Sauron, however, secretly forged the One Ring, destined to control the other Rings, and a new war broke out when Celebrimbor realized that he had been duped. Sauron suffered an initial defeat thanks to military assistance by Men from Númenor, but he eventually succeeded in corrupting their kings, who revolted against the Valar and were annihilated. When Sauron returned to Middle-earth, he was confronted by a huge coalition army, the result of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men. It comprised members of all the Free Peoples and was jointly commanded by Elendil and Gilgalad, the last Great King of the Noldor. This army laid siege to Mordor for many long years. The war was particularly disastrous for the Silvan Elves in Lórien and Greenwood-the-Great, who were poorly armed and reluctant to obey Gilgalad. They lost more than a third of their troops, as well as two kings, Amdír and Oropher, in the conflict. Sauron was defeated in the final battle, however, but Gilgalad was also killed.
The Third Age was more peaceful for the Elves protected by the Rings of Power in the possession of Elrond (in Rivendell) and Galadriel (in Lórien). As for the Silvan Elves, they experienced a gradual encroachment of shadow in their forest, which was being invaded by monstrous Spiders. The Noldor realized that their time was coming to an end and that the time of Men was at hand. They trickled out of Middle-earth and headed towards Valinor, boarding ships in the Grey Havens or the port of Edhellond, although some stayed behind to take part in the War of the Ring. Elrond provided the Fellowship of the Ring with material support, while Thranduil’s son, Legolas, personally participated in the great battles of Helm’s Deep, the Pelennor Fields and the Morannon, where he forged a celebrated friendship with the Dwarf Gimli, the son of Glóin. Galadriel and Thranduil, meanwhile, endured attacks from Sauron’s forces from Dol Guldur, but they succeeded in pushing them back. After Sauron’s defeat, Galadriel destroyed Dol Guldur and the Elves purified the forest. Peace having been restored, Legolas settled for a time in Ithilien, where he nurtured the woodlands back to their former glory. Galadriel and Elrond, however, decided to leave Middle-earth, in the company of Gandalf, Bilbo and Frodo Baggins. The Elf population began to decline. Elves could sometimes be taken for extremely good-looking Men. Although the Noldor generally had brown hair (give or take a few blondes and redheads) and great physical agility, the Vanyar were known for their blonde hair and wisdom. As for the Teleri, they had an unrivalled reputation for singing; they usually had chestnut-brown hair, although some sported silvery locks. Elves retained a smooth face for a long time, although some would end up with a beard in old age, as in the cases of Mahtan and Círdan. Elves married only once (with one known exception, which had tragic consequences) and had very few children: Fëanor and his seven sons were the exception that proved the rule. From the very first year of their existence, Elves displayed great mastery over their bodies, being capable of walking and even dancing. They then took between 50 and 100 years to grow to full size. Their ageing process was also very slow (following the same rhythm as the Earth itself, unless they were subjected to gruelling challenges). They were highly resilient, capable of recovering from wounds that would kill a Man, and they had immunity from most diseases. Although they barely experienced an ageing process, they nevertheless felt the burden of the passing years. Elves would then tire of life, as manifested in a reduction in physical strength and size. Although they remained on their earthly lands, they started to become transparent; this is why they gradually left Middle-earth and headed towards Valinor, which exerted a great attraction over them. Any Elf possessed by the desire to take to sea and go to Valinor could never be completely happy in any other circumstances. Furthermore, Elves did not die in the same way as human beings. When an Elf’s body expired, their spirit left for the Halls of Mandos, the Vala responsible for the dead. There, they underwent a prolonged healing process for any wounds that they had sustained in their life.
Once their spirit had found peace, they could be resuscitated and retake their place amongst the living in Valinor. Only one Elf who died in Middle-earth ever returned there: Glorfindel, the hero of Gondolin, who died while killing a Balrog to protect Eärendil, Elrond’s father. At the request of the Valar, he went back to serve Elrond when Sauron made a reappearance in the Second Age.
Tolkien devoted most of his writing to Elves. They lie at the heart of his Middle-earth, and their adventures were partly conceived as a framework for the Elven languages that he had invented. Tolkien’s Legendarium was built up over time, and the definition of the nature of Elves was only gradually revealed. In his early versions, as found in The Book of Lost Tales, Tolkien was still heavily influenced by elves from Victorian literature: small fairies that he had already evoked in poems. He later decided that these small creatures had once been big and powerful but had degenerated when human beings took possession of the world. This notion caused him to ponder on the Elves in their peak period, and for this he turned for inspiration to the Alfar in the Eddas (although some of the Elven kingdoms that he invented are reminiscent of the Irish Sîdh). When Tolkien came to write The Hobbit, these two diverging notions were both evident: the Elves of Rivendell are singing creatures who are light and joyous, but their chief, Elrond, is wise and serious.
Goblins
‘There in the shadows on a large flat stone sat a tremendous goblin with a huge head, and armed goblins were standing round him carrying the axes and the bent swords that they use. Now goblins are cruel, wicked, and bad-hearted’.(The Hobbit, Ch. 4).
The Goblins (also referred to as Orcs by the Hobbits) were depraved, unnatural creatures bred by the fallen Vala Melkor out of Elves, Men and corrupted Maiar. They were small and stocky, with yellowish skin, long arms, arched legs, a flat nose, a big mouth and slanting eyes. They stayed away from sunlight. They were often fearful by nature, but they were always rude, spiteful and bloodthirsty. Any obedience on their part was due more to fear than choice. They reproduced in the same ways as Men and Elves. Their long-standing allies, the Wargs, allowed Goblins to ride them like horses.
Goblins made their initial appearance in the First Battle of Beleriand, in the First Age, before human beings found the Eldar. Melkor subsequently used them regularly in his army, but when he was expelled from the Circles of the World, the leaderless Goblins dispersed, although they continued to multiply. Some Goblins established independent colonies in the Misty Mountains, where they entered into conflicts with the Dwarves and took over some of their cities. Others were eventually reassembled in Mordor by Melkor’s former servant, Sauron. In the Second Age, Goblins took part in the invasion of the Elven kingdom of Eregion and faced up to the troops of the Last Alliance. In the Third Age, Goblins took advantage of the Dwarves’ flight from the Balrog to colonize Moria. The Goblin Azog unleashed a war between the Dwarves and the Goblins by murdering Thrór, and many of the Goblins in the Misty Mountains were wiped out or escaped to Rohan.
When Thorin and Company tried to cross the Misty Mountains in 2941 T.A., the Dwarves took shelter in a cave from a storm and from the Stone Giants. Orcs from Goblin Town emerged from the depths of the cave as the Company slept and took them prisoner. Goblin Town was a network of caves and galleries underneath the Misty Mountains, near the High Pass to the northeast of Rivendell. It was ruled by the Great Goblin, a ferocious Orc with an enormous head. Thorin and Company were presented to him after their capture. While the Great Goblin was ruminating on their fate, Gandalf, who had previously escaped, reappeared and killed him with Glamdring, and the prisoners took advantage of the ensuing uproar to make their escape. Unfortunately, Bilbo Baggins was knocked out in the chaotic rush. When he regained consciousness, he found the One Ring, although he did not yet realize its importance. He then came across the sinister Gollum, who was paddling a boat across an expanse of water. Gollum reluctantly took Bilbo to the exit, allowing him to rejoin his companions. So, Thorin and Company crossed the Misty Mountains via Goblin Town, from the main door on the western side to the rear door over to the east. The enraged Goblins pursued the Company and eventually trapped them in treetops, where they had already been detained by the Wargs. Gandalf started a fire in an attempt to disperse the attackers, and the Goblins were saved from the resulting conflagration by Giant Eagles.
The Orc Azog’s son, Bolg, recruited an army of Goblins and Wargs, spurred by a desire to avenge the death of the Great Goblin and by news of the death of Smaug, the dragon who had guarded the treasure of Erebor. These troops headed for the Lonely Mountain. Their arrival was presaged by a swarm of black bats. At that time, a war over the treasure between Dwarves, Elves and Men seemed imminent, but the Free Peoples put their differences aside to defend themselves. The result was the Battle of the Five Armies, which ended with the decimation of the Goblins of the Misty Mountains, thanks to the arrival of the Eagles and the intervention of the skin-changer Beorn, who killed Bolg. The Woodmen, who had long endured the threat of attacks by Goblins, would thus be free of their presence for many years.
They were small and stocky, with yellowish skin, long arms, arched legs, a flat nose, a big mouth and slanting eyes.
Around 2475 T.A., Sauron made improvements to the Goblin race, creating bigger and stronger Orcs with black skin who first appeared in Ithilien, on the edge of Mordor. They were known as Uruk-hai. These Uruks were led by the Nazgûl or by the Mouth of Sauron. They were most notably involved in the Battles of the Pelennor Fields and the Morannon. Saruman, for his part, was driven by his lust for the One Ring to recruit these large Mordor Orcs and make them couple with Men, resulting in Half-Orcs. They had a more Mannish appearance, albeit with a sallow complexion and squinty eyes, and they did not shy away from sunlight. Saruman used the Half-Orcs to build the Ring of Isengard fortification and to form the army that he sent to invade Rohan in 3019 T.A. After its defeat, Saruman turned on the Shire, with the help of some of his Half-Orcs, and plunged the land of the Hobbits into turmoil. He was eventually stopped by Frodo Baggins and his companions, after their return from the Battle of Bywater.
The origins of the Goblins are unclear, as Tolkien drew up several different versions that left him unsatisfied. They initially came from stone, but Melkor, like Aulë, the creator of the Dwarves, is not supposed to have the power to give life. Tolkien then imagined them as corrupted Elves, but that option came up against the immortality of the Elves, which would also have to apply to Orcs. He then saw them as corrupted humans, but this was unviable because Tolkien’s chronology showed Orcs appearing before Men, and he had not made sufficient changes to render this version totally compatible with the rest of the Legendarium.
In The Hobbit, Tolkien preferred the terms ‘Goblin’ and ‘Hobgoblin’ over ‘Orc’, which appears only a few times. Tolkien’s Goblins are heavily indebted to the goblins of Victorian literature, particularly those in George MacDonald’s novel The Princess and the Goblin, published in 1872. In 1915, Tolkien wrote a poem Goblin Feet, about fairy-like goblins resembling those of MacDonald, far closer to leprechauns than the future Uruk-hai. Tolkien himself ended up hating this concept of goblins. Accordingly, in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien almost completely suppressed the word ‘Goblin’ in favour of ‘Orc’, derived from the Old English orcneas, meaning ‘demon’, most notably found in the phrase from Beowulf of eotenas ond ylfe ond orcneas (trolls and elves and orcs). Going further back in time, it also echoes Orcus, a god of the Underworld in the religion of ancient Rome.
The origins of the Goblins are unclear, as Tolkien drew up several different versions that left him unsatisfied.
The physical appearance of Tolkien’s orcs was inspired by the false but enduring conception of Mongols that had become deeply rooted in the popular European imagination after the attacks perpetrated by Attila the Hun and the Mongols of Genghis Khan.
Hobbits
‘And the world being after all full of strange creatures beyond count, these little people seemed of very little importance.’(The Lord of the Rings, Prologue).
The major events of the Third Age revealed to the world the importance of a people who were usually overlooked: the Hobbits. Even wise men had considered these modest and peaceful creatures to be so insignificant that it was unimaginable that one of their number would play a crucial role in delivering the North from one of the period’s greatest scourges: the dragon Smaug. It would be even harder to contemplate that the very same Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, could discover Sauron’s One Ring, or that his descendant, Frodo Baggins, could, along with three other Hobbits, help the Free Peoples of Middle-earth to emerge victorious from the terrible War of the Ring. Even Gollum, the strange creature who had possessed the Ring for over 500 years, was born from Hobbits, from another time and place (he was then called Sméagol). Gollum’s great resistance to the power of the Ring – greater than that of any human – and his affinity with Bilbo in the riddle game, during their encounter in the depths of the Misty Mountains, are striking characteristics typical of Hobbits. The Wizard Gandalf, a member of the White Council but guided more by his heart than his reason, was the only one of the Wise to show any initial curiosity about the Hobbits. Gandalf understood that, behind their insignificant exteriors, the Hobbits were a people worthy of interest. But what do we really know about them? According to the Elves and the Men of Gondor, the Hobbits were Half-Men. In effect, by the end of the Third Age, their height usually ranged between 60 and 120 cm (2ft and 3ft 11in); furthermore, their tastes and lifestyle revealed links to the human race. Physically, they barely resembled the Dwarves, who were bearded and more robust. The Hobbits were smooth-faced, with slightly pointed ears and curly hair. As a general rule, they abhorred adventure, preferring an orderly, peaceful and sensible life. They also enjoyed food, drink, conviviality and smoking pipe-weed. They had round, cheerful faces and displayed a tendency to portliness, largely because they were accustomed to eating six meals a day. They liked clothes in bright colours, particularly yellow and green. Apart from their diminutive stature, two other features were specific to the Hobbits: their feet and their traditional dwellings. They generally went barefoot, as their soles were as tough as leather and their hands, feet and backs were covered with a brown fuzz similar to the hair on their head. They used to live in comfortable, well-equipped galleries, with varying degrees of size and luxury according to their personal affluence. These homes, which they called smials, were round, with circular doors and windows, although they also built less distinctive structures for their workshops, farms and barns. The name that they gave themselves in their own language – ‘Hobbit’ – meant somebody who lived in holes, and it was probably derived from the term ‘Holbytla’, used to describe them by the Men from Rohan. The Hobbits gradually assimilated the common language while still preserving a repository of words from their ancient tongues to identify, for example, the months and the days, as well as a host of proper names.
Hobbits were a very sociable people who loved chatting, jokes, parties, giving presents at the slightest excuse and writing letters to each other on a regular basis. They were also extremely faithful friends. They were not drawn to sophisticated technologies, but they did enjoy gardening, farming and all types of craftwork. They were very dextrous, with thin, elegant fingers. They had a taste for rumours, despite their unerring common sense, and they were fascinated by genealogies. They were also endowed with other qualities that served them outside the domestic sphere. They were highly discreet, rendering them capable of going unnoticed. Hobbits had an acute sense of hearing, as well as exceptional eyesight, which made them formidable archers and stone slingers. They had astonishing powers of resilience against even the most difficult conditions, as they demonstrated during the Great Plague that ravaged the Shire in 1636 T.A., and in the famine resulting from the Long Winter of 2758. Although they were not aggressive, they were nevertheless capable of defending themselves and difficult to kill, as shown by their resistance against the invasion of Goblins in 2747. These demanding tests were just distant memories for Bilbo, however, when, following encouragement by Gandalf and the thirteen Dwarves, he embarked on the Quest of Erebor, under the leadership of Thorin II Oakenshield. Bilbo lived in a particularly luxurious smial in Bag End, in the western neighbourhood of the village of Hobbiton. The Shire, in the midst of the old kingdom of Arnor, was the main territory of the Hobbits. In those times of peace, it was prosperous, lush and well-ordered, and the Hobbits took little notice of the outside world. They colonized it in 1601 T.A., after receiving authorization from the king of the Dúnedain of the North. This date thus became year 1 in the Shire’s calendar.
It was unimaginable that one of their number would play a crucial role in delivering the North from one of the period’s greatest scourges: the dragon Smaug.
Prior to that, the Hobbits had shown little interest in history beyond their own family trees, and they only had a few legends to evoke their distant past. These suggest that the Hobbit people originated from the upper valleys of the Anduin, between the Misty Mountains and Greenwood-the-Great. The shadow that fell over this forest, which was then renamed the Forest of Great Fear, was probably one of the reasons behind the exodus of the Hobbits. Over the course of their westward migration, the Hobbits divided into three separate branches, which were still discernible in Bilbo’s time. The Harfoots were the most numerous and representative branch. They were smaller than the others, and preferred to live on highlands and hills. They were also the most attached to the tradition of smials. The Stoors, who were the last to arrive in the Shire, were bigger and gravitated towards river banks and lowlands. They were the least fearful of the Men. Finally, the Fallohides constituted the smallest branch, to the north, but they were the most adventurous of them all. They were present in the large Took and Brandybuck families. Bilbo, who was Baggins on his father’s side and Took on his mother’s, found two conflicting impulses within him: one more reasonable and more domestic, in keeping with the Harfoots, and another more adventurous, driven by the spirit of the Fallohides. Of these three branches, the Fallohides most often assumed a role of leadership. Thus, after the disappearance of the kings of the North, the Shire was placed under the authority of the Tháin, a title traditionally granted in Bilbo’s time to the head of the Took family. In times of war, the Tháin was responsible for the armed forces, but his post was more of a formality in peacetime, less important than that of the mayor of Michel Delving, the Shire’s main town, as the mayor was in charge of both the Messenger Service and the Watch. The former, responsible for postal delivery, was by far the most significant and well-resourced department. The Watch was divided into two: the Shirriffs were charged with maintaining order but essentially acted as land rangers, while the Bounders, or border guards, increased in numbers at the end of the Third Age in response to an increase in strange and unsettling incidents.
Tolkien’s creation of the Hobbit people dates back to a time in the 1930s when he was immersed in the tedious task of correcting exams but was offered an unexpected moment of respite by a blank sheet of paper. He turned it over and wrote on the back: ‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.’ He then wondered what a hobbit was, and that was the starting point for Bilbo’s story, which, years later, would lead to the account of the War of the Ring. Tolkien did not merely dream up a character, he also invented a creature and, even more, an entire people. Several sources seem to have inspired Tolkien. He stated that it had never occurred to him that there was any link between a Hobbit and a rabbit, even though the two terms rub shoulders several times in The Hobbit, and Hobbits traditionally lived underground. He may well have been influenced, however, by The Marvellous Land of Snergs, a children’s story that he much admired, written by E.A. Wyke-Smith in 1927. The Snergs were small creatures who lived together off the beaten track and enjoyed drinking, eating and having fun. Tolkien went on to establish a connection between the term ‘hobbit’ and a hypothetical, newly minted Anglo-Saxon word ‘holbytla’, which would mean ‘inhabitant of holes’. The name hobbit also appears in a collection of folklore published between 1846 and 1859, The Denham Tracts, where it signified ‘a class of spirits’. Nevertheless, the Hobbit people is an invention of Tolkien’s, although when he started telling Bilbo’s story, he never imagined that it would occupy such a central place in his Elven Legendarium. He then considered that their great contribution would be as a means to present the ennoblement of modest, down-to-earth creatures, albeit with some heroic potential. When, in 1937, his publisher asked him to write a follow-up to The Hobbit, which had found great success, Tolkien did not initially think that there was any more to be said about these funny-looking, home-loving and eminently sensible little individuals. During the long years of writing The Lord of the Rings, however, he became fascinated by the juxtaposition of hobbits with darker and weightier far-reaching subjects. These stories from Tolkien’s Legendarium thus opened up new perspectives, as they were no longer centred on Elves but rather on Hobbits, who offered a fresh vision of Faërie. So, the modern reader can now discover the Elder Days and the enchantment of the riches of Middle-earth with the same wonder as Sam, Frodo’s gardener, encountering the ancient kingdom of Moria under the Misty Mountains. The invention of the Hobbit people considerably enriched Tolkien’s Legendarium by allowing him to develop whole new territories and new periods of Middle-earth as habitats for Hobbits and settings for their adventures. The maps that Tolkien created for The Hobbit led him to dream up Middle-earth’s Third Age, which permitted him to develop more fully the Elven legends of the Elder Days and delve into the new lands to the northwest of the Old World, after immersing himself in the areas in which the stories of the First Age unfurled.
Men
‘West, North, and South the children of Men spread and wandered, and their joy was the joy of the morning before the dew is dry, when every leaf is green.’(The Silmarillion, ch. 12).
The Men constituted one of the principal races inhabiting Middle-earth. The Elves referred to them as the ‘Secondborn’, because they were the second incarnated race to be created by the supreme deity Ilúvatar, after the Elves themselves. Physically, the Men were very similar to the Elves, to such an extent that their children could not always be told apart. They had one distinctive gift, however: the capacity to die by leaving the world for an unknown destination.
The Men’s awakening occurred sometime in the First Age, to the east of Middle-earth, apparently coinciding with the first ever sunrise. Morgoth, the evil power whose foremost servant was Sauron the Necromancer, took advantage of their isolation and attempted to corrupt them. Many of the Men did choose to follow Morgoth, but others opted to flee westward. Over the course of this migration (which lasted for centuries), some Men stopped and settled in the Wildenland or in Eriador, beyond the Misty Mountains. Three peoples of Men succeeded in crossing the Blue Mountains in 310 F.A.: those of Bëor, Haleth (the Haladin) and Marach (later to be known as the people of Hador). These three peoples formed the three Houses of Edain.
After the Elves encountered the Edain who had crossed the mountains, the Noldor gave them land and helped them settle in. An alliance was forged between Elves and Men, but the Elves became less trusting when Men professing allegiance to Morgoth began to trickle into the west of Middle-earth. After Morgoth’s defeat at the end of the First Age, however, the Valar decided to reward the Edain for their loyalty. They gave the Men a new plot of land, halfway between Middle-earth and Valinor: the island of Númenor.
The Númenóreans, moreover, had a life expectancy that was three times that of an ordinary Man, but pride, envy and fear slowly corrupted their spirit. They became consumed by a desire to go to Valinor and live for ever. The kings of Númenor created colonies in Middle-earth to increase their power and showed no scruples about enslaving the local populations. The numbers of the Men who still followed the teachings of the Valar and the Elves dwindled, as they were increasingly persecuted by the King’s Men. The Númenóreans tried to invade Valinor, urged on by Sauron, who had arrived at Númenor as a prisoner but managed to wheedle his way into the confidence of King Ar-Pharazôn. In response to this attack, a huge storm sent by Ilúvatar destroyed Ar-Pharazôn’s fleet and flooded Númenor. The last of the Faithful had anticipated the island’s submersion, however, and returned to Middle-earth, where they founded the kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor. At the end of the Second Age, under the leadership of Elendil, they formed part of the Last Alliance between Elves and Men, which resulted in the first defeat of Sauron. Over the course of the Third Age, the Elves gradually lost importance compared to the Men. Although few of the Dúnedain, Men from the West (the descendants of the Númenóreans), remained, and their numbers were continually diminishing, other Mannish peoples were thriving, as were the Hobbits. During the Quest of Erebor, the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins and the Dwarves of Thorin and Company first came into contact with the people of Bree, the descendants of an ancient autochthonous people with links to the Haladin, and then with Beorn, a skin-changing inhabitant of the Vales of Anduin, and, finally, the residents of Lake-town, who regularly traded with the Elves of the Forest of Great Fear. On his return, Bilbo again met the Woodmen in Beorn’s house, where the latter was celebrating the Mid-Winter feast.
Although Tolkien introduced Men into his Legendarium very early on, his primary interest was their relationship with the Elves, because the Elven legends could only be passed on by Men once the Elves themselves start to dwindle in numbers and then eventually are wiped out. His first texts thus focused on the great heroes of the First Age, such as Beren, Túrin and Tuor. Beren and Tuor both married Elven princesses: respectively, Lúthien, daughter of the King of Doriath, and Idril, daughter of the King of Gondolin. Elrond Half-Elven is descended from both these unions. Tolkien’s Legendarium is shot through with the idea that the Men’s only true nobility comes from their Elven blood, or at the very least their familiarity with Elven teachings. Even in his writings on Men, Tolkien concentrated on the small minority of the Edain and their descendants the Dúnedain and gave limited space to ‘Lesser Men’ (with the notable exception of the Hobbits).
The Elves referred to them as the ‘Secondborn’, because they were the second incarnated race to be created by the supreme deity Ilúvatar, after the Elves themselves.
Tolkien was thus claiming a place in the lineage of the Scandinavian Edda and the Finnish Kalevala, in which men are evoked essentially for their relationships with gods and higher beings.
Spiders
‘As he drew nearer, he saw that it was made by spider-webs one behind and over and tangled with another. Suddenly he saw, too, that there were spiders huge and horrible sitting in the branches above him . . .’(The Hobbit, Ch. 8).
Gigantic and terrifying Spiders lived in the Forest of Great Fear. They were endowed with a poisoned dart and produced long, sticky, silken threads. They were intelligent, with the power of speech, which was manifested in a kind of croaking or thin hissing sound and which Bilbo Baggins managed to interpret when he spied on them. Nevertheless, we do not know whether this power was granted them through the One Ring or whether Spiders simply expressed themselves in a popular dialect. There were hundreds of these Spiders, and the enormous webs that they weaved in the heart of the forest blocked out the daylight. They used these webs to trap imprudent travellers who strayed from the beaten paths. The Elves of Thranduil, who lived in the eastern part of the Forest of Great Fear, were merciless enemies of these creatures and killed them whenever they had the chance. The Spiders seemed to fear them and invariably avoided treading on the Elves’ trail that passed through the forest. During Thorin and Company’s journey across the Forest of Great Fear, the Dwarves were imprisoned by the spiders in their sleep and they found themselves hanging in silk cocoons. The same misfortune almost befell Bilbo but, luckily, he woke up before being entirely enveloped and managed to stab the Spider who was trying to trap him. (He christened his small sword Sting in memory of this exploit.) Bilbo then set out in search of his companions and eventually found the Spiders’ lair. Before the Spiders could devour the Dwarves, Bilbo used his ring to make himself invisible and drew the monsters away from their prey by raining down on them both insults and stones.
In Tolkien’s sub-creation, the first giant Spider was Ungoliant, a malevolent evil spirit embodied as a monstrous arachnid. In the First Age, Ungoliant was an ally of Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, and she was responsible for the destruction of the Two Trees of Valinor. Ungoliant had numerous offspring in Beleriand, and one of the greatest exploits of Beren, a distant ancestor of Aragorn, was his successful crossing of their territory, the fearsome valley of Nan Dungortheb. The last of Ungoliant’s children was Shelob, a giant Spider living in the Mountains of Shadow, near Mordor, the land of Sauron. Gollum handed Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamgee over to Shelob, in the hope of being able to recover the One Ring once she had eaten them. Frodo was stung by Shelob, leaving him paralyzed, but Sam put up a brave fight and managed to wound her and make her run away. The countless Spiders in the Forest of Great Fear were all spawned by Shelob, and they all had the peculiarity of swathing themselves in shadow, which they appeared to weave around them like a living web.
They were intelligent, with the power of speech, which was manifested in a kind of croaking or thin hissing sound.
Legend has it that Tolkien introduced spiders into his Legendarium in the guise of monsters because he himself hated arachnids on account of a tarantula bite that he had suffered as a child. Tolkien dispelled this myth by insisting that he had no precise memory of this incident, that he had nothing against spiders and that their presence in the story simply served to make it more frightening and thus make a bigger impression on his children – particularly his second son Michael, who was afraid of spiders.
Stone Giants
‘When he peeped out in the lightning-flashes, he saw that across the valley the stone-giants were out and were hurling rocks at one another for a game, and catching them, and tossing them down into the darkness.’(The Hobbit, Ch. 4).
The Stone Giants appear only in The Hobbit. They constitute an oddity, and it remains unclear as to whether Tolkien saw them as real, living creatures inhabiting Middle-earth or as poetic licence to add colour to the story of Bilbo Baggins’ journey. They are barely seen again after Thorin and Company leave Rivendell. The Dwarves hoped to reach the Wild quickly, but Gandalf knew that the journey was fraught with difficulties and was not convinced that the Misty Mountains could be crossed without a serious challenge. And, indeed, this did not take long in materializing: one night, when they had stopped on a high corniche, they were surprised by a storm, or rather a duel of storms. All the surrounding peaks were shaken by awe-inspiring thunderbolts, and flashes of lightning enabled Bilbo to see Stone Giants in the valley gleefully hurling down boulders. The ponies whinnied with fear, terrified by the noise and the lashing rain. Thorin II Oakenshield, afraid of being struck by lightning or blown away by a gust of wind, dispatched his nephews Kili and Fili to look for shelter. They soon returned, having found a cave big enough to hold them all. This turned out to be one of the gateways into the kingdom of the Goblins, and the Company ended up being captured there and led underground.
There are two possible hypotheses for the somewhat surrealistic appearance of these Giants in the story. In view of their total absence elsewhere in the Legendarium, the first is that the Giants could be the hallucination of a Hobbit scared out of his wits, metaphors invoked by Bilbo to personify the two competing storms, which result in enormous rocks plummeting into the abyss. The other theory would be that Bilbo’s eyes do not betray him and that there really are Giants made of bone and stone. They could thus be a variety of trolls, related to the ones found petrified a few chapters earlier. In fact, Bilbo is not alone in mentioning Giants. When Thorin insists on the urgent need to find shelter, he points out that, even if they weren’t swept away by the wind, Giants could grab them and kick them into the air. Gandalf himself mentions the Giants three times. After Bilbo rejoins the Dwarves at the exit from the mountains, he asks Gandalf to explain how he saved them from the Goblins. The Wizard replies that, although he knew that this part of the mountains was infested with Goblins, he was unaware that they had opened a new entrance on the path that the Company were following. He finishes by promising to find a Giant to block it off. Gandalf refers to the Giants again when he speculates about the origin of Beorn, who could have been a descendant of the ancient mountain bears who used to live there before the arrival of the Giants. Gandalf mentions the Giants for a third and last time when he tells Beorn about the Company’s eventful crossing of the Misty Mountains. The fact that even Gandalf seems to confirm the existence of the Giants leads us to doubt that that these creatures are merely figments of the imagination of an impressionable Hobbit. Finally, the narrator himself mentions them, while describing the Carrock as an enormous fragment of a mountain flung on to the plain ‘by some giant’. Is this an explicit reference to the Stone Giants from the start of the story, or is it just a rhetorical device designed to make the Carrock seem more imposing? That is for each reader to decide but, before forming an opinion, it is worth noting that Tolkien himself illustrated the storm in the mountains with an Indian ink drawing that was published in the first edition of the book. It showed the mountains under assault from bolts of lightning, but there are no Giants. This illustration was probably inspired by Tolkien’s trip to Switzerland in 1911. In a letter addressed to Joyce Reeves, he described a hike on the Aletsch Glacier: ‘It was while approaching the Aletsch that we were nearly destroyed by boulders loosened in the sun rolling down a snow-slope. [ . . . ] That and the “thunder-battle” – a bad night in which we lost our way and slept in a cattle-shed – appear in “The Hobbit”’. No mention of any Giants here either, although the duel between the storms is definitely present.
Are the Giants real? We shall probably never know for sure, for it is possible, as Gandalf tells us in Book III of The Lord of the Rings, that ‘far, far below the deepest delvings of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things. Even Sauron knows them not. They are older than he.’
Trolls
‘But they were trolls. Obviously trolls. Even Bilbo, in spite of his sheltered life, could see that: from the great heavy faces of them, and their size, and the shape of their legs, not to mention their language, which was not drawing-room fashion at all, at all.’(The Hobbit, Ch. 2).
The Trolls, or Torog in Sindarin, were evil creatures used by the Dark Lords Morgoth and Sauron during their wars in Middle-earth. The Ent Treebeard claimed that the Trolls were created by Morgoth in the First Age to taunt the Ents, just as the Goblins had been created out of derision for the Elves. At some point in the Second or Third Age of Middle-earth, Sauron subjugated them and taught them both the Common Speech and the Black Speech. Like their models, the Ents, the Trolls were big and strong but they were also different in that they usually had only limited intelligence. They hid from daylight, out of fear of being turned into stone, and they were as ready to eat the flesh of Men or Dwarves as that of any animal. Until around the end of the Third Age, there seemed to have been five types of Troll: Stone-Trolls, Hill-Trolls, Cave-Trolls, Mountain-Trolls and Snow-Trolls. The Stone-Trolls lived in the Ettendales, to the north of the Rivendell Valley, on the edge of the Wilderland. The three Trolls – Tom, Bert and William – that Bilbo Baggins met on the Quest of Erebor came from this branch. This trio had come down from the mountains before their encounter with Thorin and Company in order to pillage the neighbouring villages. They devoured their inhabitants and stole their food and drink – as well as their treasures, which they stored in a cave not far from their camp. It was probably during the course of this looting that the three trolls came across the Elven swords Glamdring, Orcrist and Sting, which had been forged in the First Age in Gondolin. Gandalf, Thorin II Oakenshield and Bilbo found them in a cave after shaking the Trolls off when they turned to stone at the dawning of the day. The Hill-Trolls lived in the same area. In 2930 T.A., a year before the birth of Aragorn, the latter’s grandfather, Arador, was killed by one or more Hill-Trolls who emerged from the slopes of the Misty Mountains. The Cave-Trolls lived deep within the mountains. In the War of the Ring, the Fellowship, led by the Wizard Gandalf, was confronted by a Cave-Troll in the mines of Moria as they crossed the Misty Mountains. It is not clear how they differ from the Mountain-Trolls. Sauron used these in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, but, other than that, we know virtually nothing about them. The Snow-Trolls are mentioned only in the Chronicles of Rohan, when its landscape was covered by snow in 2758–2759 T.A. In this period, King Helm was subject to an invasion by the Dunlendings and found himself cornered in Helm’s Deep, where, dressed all in white, he defended himself – earning a comparison with a hungry, cannibalistic Snow-Troll. Finally, there were creatures in Far Harad with white eyes and red tongues who seemed like Half-Trolls or Men-Trolls. They were introduced into the Battle of the Pelennor Fields by Sauron to fight against Gondor’s army.
At the end of the Third Age, a new family of trolls appeared, especially created by Sauron for their strength and ferocity: the Olog-hai, who could resist sunlight and lived to the south of the Forest of Great Fear and on the borders of Mordor. They were involved in the Battle of the Black Gate of Mordor, during which one of their number was killed by Peregrin Took. The relationship between the Ents and the Trolls goes further, however, than the kinship between the two races claimed by Treebeard. In fact, the term ‘ent’ used by Tolkien to name his Tree-men was taken from the Old English ‘eoten’, which means ‘troll’ or ‘giant’. It can be found in the text of Beowulf, applied to the evil monster Grendel, and in the phrase eotenas ond ylfe ond orcneas – ‘the trolls and elves and orcs’. The word crops up again in the name ‘Ettendales’, to the north of Rivendell, where the Trolls in The Hobbit originated. Apart from the text of Beowulf, Tolkien was also inspired by Scandinavian sagas in which trolls are monstrous creatures who live inside mountains and turn into stone in daylight. This notion of transformation into stone at dawn is also familiar from the Eddas, where the dwarf Alvíss is turned into stone after Thor keeps him talking until the morning comes.
Wargs
‘All round the clearing of the Wargs fire was leaping. But the wolf-guards did not leave the trees. Maddened and angry they were leaping and howling round the trunks, and cursing the dwarves in their horrible language, with their tongues hanging out, and their eyes shining as red and fierce as the flames.’(The Hobbit, Ch. 6).
The Wargs were a race of wolves characterized by their size and ferocity. Gandalf presented them as creatures in the service of Sauron, like the Goblins, Trolls and Werewolves. The origins of the Wargs remain unclear, but they could be related to the werewolves of the First Age – creatures with evil spirits imprisoned within them by Morgoth – or to the numerous wolves who served the Dark Lord and his vassal Sauron. In the First Age, Sauron himself had the capacity to assume the form of a wolf and was known as the master of the werewolves. By the Third Age, the Wargs seemed to form the main category of evil wolves in Middle-earth. They lived in packs, mainly to the northeast of the Misty Mountains. They joined forces with the Goblins to harass, pillage and subjugate the Woodmen living to the west of the Forest of Great Fear and in the Vale of Anduin. Although they allowed the Goblins to ride them like horses, these wolves were no ordinary animals, as they demonstrated a certain intelligence and even had their own language. Just like normal wolves, the Wargs took on specific roles within the organization of the pack, with the guards, for example, being answerable to the chief. The Wargs only began to really be described as a distinct species in the Third Age, more specifically during the Quest of Erebor and the War of the Ring. One night in the year 2941 T.A., when the Wargs were planning to pounce on the villages of the Woodmen and kill all their inhabitants, they surprised Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf and Thorin and Company in the clearing where they had agreed to join up with their allies, the Goblins. Convinced that this small group was in cahoots with the Woodmen, the Wargs forced them to take refuge in the trees. Gandalf managed to repulse the Wargs by starting a fire with pine cones that he set alight with his stick (the Wargs were terrified of fire). The chief of the pack, a large grey wolf, had his muzzle burned by the flames, and the guards, afraid of abandoning their watch, also sustained injuries. The Goblins, however, did not share this terror of fire, and Gandalf and his companions were extremely lucky to be able to make their escape. The Wargs also intervened in the Battle of the Five Armies, both in the front lines (ridden by Goblins) and, unmounted, elsewhere in the army. This battle, which resulted in victory for the Men, the Elves and the Dwarves, temporarily put an end to the Wargs’ attacks on the Woodmen and brought peace back to their villages.
At the time of the War of the Ring, the Wargs formed part of the troops serving Saruman and Sauron. Wargs attacked the members of the Fellowship of the Ring after they had failed to climb Caradhas via the Redhorn Pass. Later on, wolf-riders were among the troops chasing Théoden’s army, which was heading towards Helm’s Deep to confront the forces of Saruman. Although the latter are not explicitly identified as Wargs, their large size and treatment by the Goblins suggest that this is what they are, rather than a species of ordinary wolves.
The word ‘warg’ is supposedly derived from the language of the Men of the North. Tolkien drew on several ancient languages to create this term: Old English (wearg), Old High German (warg) and Old Norse (vargr). Although these words resemble one another, they do not share exactly the same meaning. The Old Norse word vargr does mean ‘wolf’ but, by extension, it also denotes an outlaw or criminal, and this meaning is predominant in the Old English term. Tolkien’s invented word thus seeks to combine the two ideas of a wolf and antisocial activities. In the Eddas, the monstrous wolf Fenrir and his sons Sköll and Hati are vargar, destined to participate in the Ragnarök, where they fight against the Scandinavian gods. This concept could also have influenced Tolkien’s Wargs. Be that as it may, their appearance in The Hobbit was directly inspired by an episode in the novel The Black Douglas, by Samuel Rutherford Crockett, which appeared in 1899, as Tolkien himself indicated in one of his letters.
The origins of the Wargs remain unclear, but they could be related to the werewolves of the First Age.
Wizards
‘Will thou learn the lore / that was long secret of the Five that came / from a far country? One only returned. / Others never again under Men’s dominion.’(Unfinished Tales, IV ; 2).
The Second Age of Middle-earth finished with the victory of the Free Peoples against the Dark Lord Sauron and his supposed annihilation. When the shadow of evil began to make itself felt, however, around the year 1000 of the Third Age, the Valar dispatched mysterious emissaries charged with helping both the Men and the Elves of Middle-earth to fight against any possible return of Sauron. These envoys were known as Wizards, and they often introduced themselves as such.
Wizards were divine beings endowed with great powers, in the same way as the Valar, and they were chosen to counter Sauron, in the event that he recovered the power that he had wielded in the Second Age. Wizards were thus of the same essence as Sauron himself. When they arrived in Middle-earth they created the Order of the Istari, ‘the ones who know’.
Despite the apparent simplicity of their mission – opposing the return of an enemy who was theoretically within their grasp, the Istari had very little margin for manoeuvre. They had been forbidden to confront Sauron directly, and neither could they make way for Men or Elves to start the fighting with a preventive attack against their enemy. They had been dispatched to Middle-earth to help the Free Peoples to make enlightened decisions. They had to commit themselves to following the path of good, without abusing their power to hold sway over both Men and Elves by pushing them into war.
Moreover, the Valar were keen for their emissaries to act as guides and not as warlords, and so they agreed that the Istari should arrive in Middle-earth in the bodies of elderly men. This appearance was inoffensive but it also conveyed wisdom. They had to learn how to gain love and respect so that, when the time came, they could serve as guides in the struggle against Sauron.
We know of five representatives of the Order of the Istari. After departing from Valinor, they landed in the Grey Havens, where they were welcomed by Círdan the Shipwright, a wise Elf who had distinguished himself over the course of the Ages in the fight against the Dark Lords – first, Morgoth, then his lieutenant, Sauron. The first of the five to set foot on Middle-earth was Curumo, who was bearded and dressed entirely in white. He would soon be nicknamed Saruman, or ‘Talented (or Crafty) Man’. He was generally considered the most powerful of the Istari, and this attribute, coupled with his trailblazing arrival, led him to be naturally considered the leader of the Order.
Next came Alatar and Pallando, both dressed in blue and thus known as Ithryn Luin, or the Blue Wizards. Aiwendil then appeared, in his turn, dressed in brown. The colour of his clothes and his affinity with animals and birds earned him the name Radagast the Brown, with Radagast meaning ‘animal lover’ in an ancient language of the Men.
The last Wizard to arrive in Middle-earth, Olórin, initially seemed less important than his predecessors, as he was smaller in size, appeared to be older, dressed in grey, and walked with the help of a stick. Círdan, however, immediately saw that he was the most venerable of all. The Elves entrusted him with their Ring of Power (Narya, The Ring of Fire) in order to help and sustain him in his endeavours. This gentle Wizard with a long white beard is now the most familiar to us, as he is Gandalf, also known as Mithrandir, the Grey Pilgrim.
The Wizards were thus incarnated in Mannish bodies prior to their mission in Middle-earth, so, despite their divine essence, they had to accept the limits of their carnal shroud, and their wisdom was put to the test by Mannish scourges like fear, hunger, old age and the possibility of death. They were immortal by nature, but they discovered the price of life by assuming a fleshly form. This incarnation was very important because it made them into fallible beings. Of the five Istari, only Gandalf remained focused on his higher mission, while the others ended up abandoning it or betraying it.
Saruman the White was the most powerful member of the Order of the Istari, but he was also the proudest, and this would bring his downfall. He took his task extremely seriously, meticulously examining Sauron’s strategies in an attempt to outmanoeuvre him, but, unfortunately, Saruman’s own arrogance and lust for power caused him to deviate from the path of wisdom. Saruman ended up betraying his primary objective by manipulating the White Council and trying to impose his views, in the hope of ousting Sauron. Saruman’s main purpose, however, was now not merely to defeat Sauron but rather to take over his power.
As regards the Blue Wizards, we know little about these, as they did not stay very long in the lands of the West. They soon headed eastward and disappeared from view, so it cannot be said whether they were distracted from their mission or simply failed to accomplish it effectively.
Radagast the Brown renounced the company of Elves and Men to devote himself to animals, and thus he too distanced himself from his primary mission. Beorn the skin-changer generally had little time for the Wizards but he did have a soft spot for Radagast. So, when Gandalf described Radagast as ‘his good cousin’ to Beorn, he managed to get into the skin-changer’s good books, and Beorn subsequently agreed to play host to Gandalf, Bilbo Baggins and the Company of Dwarves. Later on, at the start of the War of the Ring, Radagast allowed himself to be manipulated by Saruman and unwittingly contributed to Gandalf’s fall into the trap set for him by the leader of the Istari. Radagast immediately made amends, however, by using his friendship with the birds to set up an intervention by the Eagle Gwaihir that helped Gandalf evade Saruman’s clutches.
Gandalf the Grey was thus the only member of the Order of the Istari who did not allow himself to be distracted from his mission. He spent his time travelling throughout the Westlands of Middle-earth, from Gondor to Angmar, from Lindon to Lórien, implacable in his opposition to Sauron, offering the flame of hope and healing as an antidote to the latter’s cruel and brutal devastation. Gandalf was, therefore, the only one of the five Wizards who ended up returning to Valinor. The decisions taken by Gandalf perfectly illustrate the quandaries faced by the Wizards. In his desire to face up to Sauron, whose presence he could discern behind the shadowy figure of the Necromancer, Gandalf opts to support and encourage, as far as possible, the Quest of Erebor, in order to ensure the elimination of Smaug the Dragon, a potential ally of Sauron. But despite his commitment to this venture, Gandalf never neglects his principal objective, and so he later separates from his friends to address the White Council and participate in the preparations for the fight against the Necromancer.
Gandalf’s narrative arc reveals the constraints to which he bound himself. Despite all his wisdom and authority, he was reluctant to unleash his powers, and only did so when the survival of his group was threatened – whether by the misadventure with the trolls, or the capture of Bilbo and the Dwarves by the Goblins, or by the Company’s encirclement by the Wargs and Goblins in the forest. Gandalf’s respect for the spirit of the mission entrusted him by the Valar led him to avoid imposing his views – or even the presence of Bilbo – on Thorin through any magical artifice: instead, he simply opted for discussion. Ultimately, Gandalf was able to enact his decisions because of the friendships that he had forged and the reputation that he had earned over the course of long centuries spent in Middle-earth, and not because of any spells or incantations. Finally, although he was fully conscious of the possibility of his own death, Gandalf was prepared to sacrifice himself for his friends: in a joint attack by the Goblins and Wargs, he was ready to jump into the fray, without any hope of victory, solely to give a chance of survival to those who had guided him thus far. The behaviour of Olórin (Gandalf in The Hobbit) thus corresponded with the expectations laid down by the Valar for the Order of the Istari, and Tolkien developed this theme more explicitly in his unfinished tales and legends. He used the formula ‘“I am Gandalf”, said the Wizard’, echoed a few lines later by ‘“I am a Wizard”’, said Gandalf’ to stress that Gandalf represents the essence of a Wizard, and of the emissaries of the Valar. Through this wordplay, Tolkien defined this key character in terms of his function, which had merged with his personality. This juxtaposition of Gandalf/ Wizard and Wizard/Gandalf adds further depth to his initial introduction: ‘I am Gandalf, and Gandalf means me.’
Wizards were divine beings endowed with great powers, in the same way as the Valar, and they were chosen for their capacity to strike against Sauron,
Woodmen
‘This was dreadful talk to listen to, not only because of the brave woodmen and their wives and children, but also because of the danger which now threatened Gandalf and his friends.’(The Hobbit, Ch. 6).
The Woodmen were a Mannish people who lived in villages to the west of the Forest of Great Fear and on the plains close to the River Anduin during the Third and Fourth Ages of Middle-earth. They had blood ties with the Rohan horsemen who once lived in the Anduin Valley. Although they could speak the Common Language, the Woodmen also had their own tongue.
At the end of the Third Age, the Woodmen endured hostile living conditions and harassment from various malevolent creatures that emerged from Dol Guldur’s castle, to the southeast of the Forest of Great Fear. They were also subjected to raids carried out by the Goblins and their allies, the Wargs. Any survivors of these assaults would be transported to the Goblins’ lairs in the Misty Mountains, where they were treated like slaves. Despite their name, the Woodmen were much more than mere lumberjacks, as they also reared livestock, particularly sheep. They thus had to cope with Eagles who enjoyed eating their animals. These neighbourly discords explain why the Woodmen, after rescuing Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf and Thorin and Company from the Goblins, refused to install this group close to their own houses and instead opted to take them to the Carrock, close to Beorn’s home. However, the Woodmen were not entirely defenceless against either enemies or poachers. They were feared by both Goblins and Wargs, who only dared to attack the Woodmen in large numbers – and at night, in the hope of catching them unarmed. The Eagles, in their turn, feared the Woodmen’s large wooden bows.
At the beginning of the War of the Ring, Gollum sowed terror amongst the Woodmen, after escaping from the prison of the Elf King, Thranduil. Gandalf then discovered that dark rumours were circulating in the forest, particularly among the Woodmen, who reported a new hostile presence in the forest: a bloodsucking ghost that fed on fledgling birds and snatched new-born babies from their cradles. It may well be that the Woodmen, a superstitious people, exaggerated the abuses committed by Gollum, but he undoubtedly enjoyed playing with defenceless prey. In fact, Gollum only spent a short time in the forest before heading to Moria. The Woodmen gradually found greater tranquillity at the end of the Third Age. They were defeated by an array of Wargs and Goblins in the Battle of the Five Armies. Their numbers dropped as a result, but peace returned to their lands, although they were attacked once again in the War of The Ring. The destruction of Dol Guldur’s castle in 3019 T.A. dispelled the baleful aura of the forest. Following the defeat of Sauron, the Woodmen took possession of all the forest that stretched between the kingdoms of Thranduil and Celeborn.
