An Encyclopedia of Tolkien: The History and Mythology that Inspired Tolkien’s World

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Galadriel and Her Mirror

GALADRIEL A Noldor noblewoman, only daughter of Finarfin, and, in The Lord of the Rings, the ruler of the enchanted Elven realm of Lothlórien, “the land of blossoms dreaming.” In that hidden wooded land, robed in white and golden-haired, she commands great powers of enchantment and prophecy.

In ancient Welsh mythology we find forest and water nymphs who closely resemble Galadriel, the guardians of sacred fountains, wells, and grottoes hidden in deep forest vales. Like Tolkien’s “Lady of Light,” White Ladies have eyes like stars and bodies that shimmer with light, betokening their close affinity with the starlit night. To reach their realms it is commonly necessary to pass through or across water that was—as is said when the Fellowship cross over a river into Lothlórien—“like crossing a bridge in time.” These White Ladies often lived in realms “outside of time” in crystal palaces beneath water or floating in air, all glowing with silver and golden light.

In Arthurian tradition, Vivien, the Lady of the Lake and perhaps in origin a Celtic White Lady herself, rises dressed in white from her palace beneath the lake to present the sword and scabbard of Excalibur to the rightful king. Vivien also raises Lancelot du Lac before sending him into the world with the arms of war. We might see a similar figure in Greek mythology, the sea nymph Thetis, mother of Achilles, the greatest hero of the Trojan War, who gifts her son with his armor.

Across cultures and times we find water and forest deities who give protection, prophecies, inspiration, invisibility, and strength to their protégés. Galadriel, too, belongs to this tradition, presiding over a realm of dreams and desires, visions and illusions, and gifts and blessings.

GAMGEE Surname of Samwise Gamgee, the constant loyal companion of the Ring-bearer Frodo Baggins in the great Quest of the Ring. Samwise Gamgee is the son of the Bag-End gardener, Hamfast Gamgee.

Father and son’s working-class family name Gamgee is both descriptive and playful. The original Hobbitish name is Galpsi, an abbreviated form of Galbasi, meaning from the village of Galabas (Galpsi), a name derived from galab, meaning “game,” “jest,” or “joke,” and bas, meaning “village” (in Old English, wich). So we have “Game Village,” which translates into English as Gamwich (pronounced Gammidge), becomes Gammidgy, and ends up as Gamgee.

In Samwise Gamgee we have the perfect foil to his master, Frodo Baggins. Simple, down-to-earth Sam Gamgee is both game for any challenge and, despite terrible hardships, always willing to attempt a jest or joke to keep everyone’s spirits up during the Quest of the Ring.

GANDALF THE GREY One of the Istari (order of Wizards)—Maiar sent to Middle-earth in about 1,000 TA to aid in the struggle against Sauron. Known to various peoples as Mithrandir, Tharkûn, and Incánus, in Valinor he is Olórin, of the people of Manwë. He is one of the central figures in both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Gandalf has multiple sources of inspiration in the mythologies of many nations. He is akin to Merlin of the Britons, Odin of the Norsemen, Wotan of the Germans, Mercury of the Romans, Hermes of the Greeks, and Thoth of the Egyptians. All are linked with magic, sorcery, arcane knowledge, and secret doctrine. Most obviously, in appearance, Gandalf, like Merlin, Odin, and Wotan, takes on the form of a wandering old man in a gray cloak carrying a staff. Gandalf is comparable to these figures in his powers and deeds, like Merlin or Hermes, for example, serving as a guide to the hero and helping him to win against impossible odds by using his supernatural powers.

In The Hobbit, however, Gandalf appears largely as a standard fairy-tale character: a rather comic, eccentric magician in the company of a band of Dwarves. (He even has something of the character of an absent-minded history professor about him, of which Tolkien would have had firsthand experience.) Like his fairy-tale counterparts, Gandalf also fulfills the traditional role of mentor, adviser, and tour guide for the hero and in so doing moves the plot rapidly forward. Wizards usually provide a narrative that comprises a reluctant hero, secret maps, translations of ancient documents, supernatural weapons (and how to use them), some monsters (and how to kill them), location of treasure (and how to steal it), and an escape plan (negotiable).

Galadhrim. Within the forest of Lothlórien is the concealed Elven kingdom of the Galadhrim, the “tree people.” They are mostly Silvan Elves, but their lords are Sindar and Noldor nobles.

Gandalf the Grey certainly fits into this tradition. It is Gandalf who brings the Dwarves and the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins together at the start of the story and sets them on their quest. It is his injection of adventure and magic into the mundane world of the Hobbits that transforms Bilbo Baggins’s world. It is Gandalf who leads the band of outlaw adventurers in the form of Thorin and Company to Bilbo’s door. It is just this combination of the everyday and the epic that makes The Hobbit so compelling. Grand adventures with Dragons, Trolls, Elves, and treasure are combined with the afternoon teas, toasted English muffins, pints of ale, and smoke-ring-blowing contests.

In The Hobbit, then, Gandalf is an amusing and reassuring presence, something like a fairy godfather. In the opening chapter of The Lord of the Rings, he seems to reprise the role, appearing much like an odd but much-loved uncle who always amuses everyone with his amateur magic tricks. Gandalf’s subsequent transformation into a grave and formidable figure is something of a surprise. As the book continues, the force of his personality and ethical purpose increases tenfold as he is revealed as a powerful archetypal wizard. His later transformation into Gandalf the White is even more shocking. In this, Tolkien seems to be making the point that behind all fairytale magicians are the powerful archetypes from myth and epic.
See also: ODIN

Gandalf the White

GANDALF THE WHITE The powerful reincarnation of the wizard Gandalf the Grey after his battle with the Balrog of Moria in The Lord of the Rings. In this startling transformation, Gandalf fully reveals his status as one of Istari, the order of Wizards who in origin are among the immortal angelic powers known as the Maiar. Sent to Middle-earth at the end of the first millennia of the Third Age, the Istari, as emissaries of the Valar, serve as advisers to the rulers of the mortal lands.

Gandalf’s name derives from the Old Icelandic Dvergatal, “Roll of the Dwarves,” where it appears as Gandalfr. The two Old Norse elements of Gandalfr are either gand, or gandr, and alf(r). Alf(r) means either “elf” or “white.” If the first element is gand, it suggests magical power, while, if it is gandr, it means an object used by sorcerers, such as an enchanted staff.

As to the direct translation of the name Gandalf, then, there are three fairly solid alternatives: “elf wizard,” “white staff,” and “white sorcerer.” All three translations are admirably suitable names for a wizard. However, Tolkien would likely argue that each translated aspect of this particular Wizard has other definitions hidden within, and we can see how the implications of both layers of meaning played a considerable part in shaping the fate of the character. The translation “elf wizard” is appropriate because Gandalf is the Wizard most closely associated with the Elves of Middle-earth and the Undying Lands. “White staff” is an apt name as the staff is the primary symbol by which a wizard is known. The translation of Gandalf as “white wizard,” meanwhile, is initially confusing, as his Grey Elven name is Mithrandir, meaning “gray wanderer” (echoed in his common epithet, “the Grey”), and may seem to make the name a more suitable one for Saruman the White. However, this conflict in meaning appears to be a foreshadowing of a twist in plot in which Gandalf the Grey is transformed into Gandalf the White.

Beyond these relatively straightforward translations of the name, we may contemplate an alternative one for the first element in Gandalf’s name: gand, meaning “astral traveling.” After falling with the Balrog from the Bridge of Moria, the Wizard’s salvation and resurrection seem to come about through a form of astral traveling. As Gandalf the White, the Wizard offers no explanation for his resurrection, but simply states: “I strayed out of thought and time.” A better definition of “astral traveling” could not, perhaps, be imagined.

As an astral traveler, Gandalf is comparable to the Norse god Odin who, in his shamanic wizard form, traveled between the world of men and the worlds of spirits, and even into the land of the dead. Certainly, Tolkien had this in mind when he gave Gandalf’s horse the name Shadowfax meaning “silver-gray.” Shadowfax has a direct counterpart in Norse myth in Grani, Sigurd’s horse in the Völsunga Saga. Shadowfax, moreover, is the offspring of the supernatural horse Nahar, the Valarian steed of Oromë the Hunter, while Grani is the offspring of the supernatural eight-legged horse Sleipnir on which Odin rode down through the Nine Worlds.

GARM In Norse mythology the gigantic dog or wolf that is the guardian at the gates of Helheim, the realm of the dead. This bloody and ferocious monster will be chained at the entrance to Gnipahellir, his kennel-cave, until Ragnarök, when his chains will be broken and he will join in that final battle with the giants against the gods. Garm will attack Tyr the One-handed, god of war, and engage in a battle that will end in their mutual destruction.

In Tolkien’s world we have a comparable monster in the gigantic Carcharoth, meaning “red maw,” the greatest wolf of the First Age and the unsleeping guardian at the gates of Morgoth’s underworld realm of Angband. In the Quest for the Silmaril, Carcharoth bites off hand of the hero, Beren (henceforth, like Tyr, known as the One-handed). Both Garm and Carcharoth are comparable to the ancient Greek Cerberus, the unsleeping three-headed hellhound that guards the underworld gates of Hades.

GESER KHAGAN In the mythology of Central Asia and northeastern South Asia, a warrior, magician, smith, and king who rules the greatest mountain kingdom in the East. The story of this culture’s hero is recorded in poetry and prose across Asia, together forming a loose epic cycle. Although there is no definitive version, it is reputed to be the longest oral epic in existence with well over a million recorded verses in multiple languages and dialects.

Geser is a warrior-king who is both a smith and a magician. To such a hero, all things are possible. He assumes many forms, creates invulnerable weapons, conjures up phantom armies, and creates wealth and prosperity for his people. In Asian myth and history, the ancient connection between alchemy or metallurgy and the power of kings and heroes is often made explicit (the connection is also present but obscured in European ring quest epics like the Völsunga Saga and the Nibelungenlied). Tradition insists, for instance, that the great historic Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan was descended from a family of smiths, as was the legendary Tartar hero Kok Chan.

The multiskilled hero Geser becomes king of his lands by virtue of many feats of heroism and magic. His confirmation as king comes when the supernatural guardians of the kingdom allow him entry into a crystal mountain where the treasures of the kingdom are kept. The most important of these is the emblematic throne of the realm. On this rests a huge gold mandala ring, at the center of which is a crystal vessel from where the shining “waters of immortality” flow. His archenemy, the evil Kurkar, has a similar ring or talisman that must be kept safe and by whose power he rules his kingdom.

There is no indication that Tolkien knew or was inspired by the tales of Geser and Kurkar, but both The Lord of the Rings and the stories of Geser share an ancient and widespread archetypal theme of kings as magician-smiths and ring lords. Sauron the Ring Lord shares many characteristics with both Geser and Kurkar. Like Geser, Sauron is both a supernaturally gifted smith capable of creating unmatched wonders in his forge, and a magician capable of terrifying acts of sorcery. Both have mountain strongholds, and both must keep safe the golden rings by whose powers they rule their kingdoms.

At this point, the comparison between Geser and Sauron largely ceases. Sauron the Dark Lord is much more closely akin to the malevolent Kurkar. Kurkar’s iron talisman, too, is much more like Sauron’s One Ring because both are inherently evil, and the sorcerers’ lives depend on the survival of the rings. Kurkar’s iron ring also shares the One Ring’s characteristic of being almost indestructible. Normal fires do not even cause the metal to redden, and both require supernatural fires of volcanic intensity to melt them down.

Warrior-king. There is an ancient and widespread archetypal theme of warrior kings as magician-smiths and ring lords.

GHOST WITCH In the mythology of the Mi’kmaq, indigenous First Nations people, a terrifying wraithlike entity, properly known as a skadegamutc. The Mi’kmaq ghost witch arises out of a widespread tradition in which an evil spirit inhabits the dead body of a black sorcerer. Although Tolkien was unlikely to have known of this particular myth, the ghost witch bears some resemblance to his Nazgûl, who used the Rings of Power to establish themselves as mighty kings and sorcerers. Like the Nazgûl, ghost witches avoid daylight and emerge by night to track down and murder their prey. They have the power to paralyze with terror or enthrall with a glance of the eye or the sound of their voice. Also like the Nazgûl, as shown in the attack on the Hobbits on Weathertop in The Lord of the Rings, they appear to be repelled by fire.

GIGANTOMACHY The war between the Olympian gods led by Zeus (the Roman Jupiter) and the giants. Like the Titanomachy—the primordial war between the Olympians and the Titans—before it, it is comparable to the first battles on Tolkien’s Arda between the Valar and Morgoth and the rebel Maiar. An epic on the battle has been lost (if it ever existed), but accounts or allusions can be found in, among other places, the works of the Greek poet Pindar and the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In the latter we find extraordinary descriptions of the giants’ attempt to seize “the throne of Heaven” by piling “mountain on mountain to the lofty stars” that may well remind us of Tolkien’s descriptions of the rending and splitting of mountains that takes place during Arda’s primordial cosmic wars.

GIL-GALAD Elven nobleman, son of Fingon, and high king of the Noldor—and indeed the Eldar—through the Second Age. At the end of that age he leads the Elves in the Last Alliance of Elves and Men and, with Elendil, duels with Sauron, resulting in both Sauron’s and his own death.

Gil-galad’s story was in part informed by the legends relating to the downfall of Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. Even his name, meaning “Star of Radiance,” cannot help but conjure up the most perfect knight of the Round Table, Sir Galahad, even if the characters meet very different—even inverted—fates. While Galahad achieves the Holy Grail and ascends into Heaven, Gil-galad is burned by the heat of Sauron’s hand and passes to the Halls of Mandos.

The Last Battle of the Arthurian Age at Camlann and the Last Battle of the Alliance of Elves and Men at Dagorlad both result in the downfall of the dark forces—of Arthur’s enemy, Mordred, and Middle-earth’s enemy Sauron. However, in both realms, this victory of the righteous and good comes at the cost of the lives of their kings and the loss of alliances that can never be recovered. The end of the knights of the Round Table and the descent of Arthur’s kingdom into chaos is echoed in the end of the Alliance of Elves and Men, with the retreat of the Elves to hidden kingdoms and the slow decline of the kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor over the millennia to come.

Also, in Arthur’s world and in Tolkien’s Middle-earth, both wars ultimately come down to one final duel. King Arthur slays and is slain by the forever-damned Mordred, while Sauron slays both Gil-galad and Elendil, but is finally overthrown when the One Ring is cut from his hand.

GIMLI The only Dwarf in the Fellowship of the Ring in The Lord of the Rings. His father, Glóin, is one of the thirteen Dwarves in the Company of Thorin Oakenshield in the Quest of Erebor in The Hobbit. After the Battle of Hornburg, Gimli is forced to take refuge and defend the redoubt in the caverns of Helm’s Deep, and thereby discovers the Glittering Caves of Aglarond. These, he believes, are the greatest interlocking network of caverns and grottos in all of Middle-earth, a discovery that could make it a potential paradise for Dwarves. Here, once again, Tolkien’s precise use of language is worth noting. In this case, it is in the relationship between the word “glittering” and the name Gimli.

All of Tolkien’s Dwarves’ names—except for one—were taken from the Dvergatal, an Old Norse list of dwarf names. That one is Gimli, which is mentioned in a very different Norse text, an ancient poem entitled Völuspá, or Sybil’s Prophecy, the first poem of the Poetic Edda. However, Gimli in this instance is not the name of a dwarf or man but rather a place. Gimli actually means, “glittering,” and is the name given to the Norse paradise: a great golden-roofed hall and kingdom that will appear after the great battle of Ragnarök as a new Valhalla.

It seems that, just as Gimli will be revealed in the wake of Ragnarök as a glittering paradise for the Norse people, so in the wake of the War of the Ring, Gimli reveals a new paradise for Dwarves by colonizing the Glittering Caves of Aglarond.

GJALLARHORN In Norse mythology, the horn of Heimdall, the vigilant watchman of the gods of Asgard. It was foretold that the final battle of Ragnarök between the gods and the giant would begin when Heimdall sounded the Gjallarhorn (“resounding horn”) as Loki and the jötnar stormed Bifrost, the Rainbow Bridge.

Heimdall’s horn has two key parallels in Tolkien. First, there is Valaróma, the hunting horn of Oromë, the Huntsman of the Valar, whose terrifying sound (like lightning striking clouds), resounds as the Vala pursues the servants of Morgoth. And second there is the Horn of Gondor blown by Boromir before the battle on the Bridge of Khazad-dûm and just before his own death near Parth Galen, two crucial moments in The Lord of the Rings.

GLAURUNG, THE FATHER OF DRAGONS The first and greatest of the Urulóki, or fire-breathing Dragons, of Middle-earth. This mighty serpent is depicted as being of massive size and strength, and protected by scales of impenetrable iron. His fangs and claws are rapier-sharp, and his great tail can crush the shield-wall of any army. An original creation and villain, Glaurung was—like all of Tolkien’s creatures—nonetheless deeply rooted in ancient literature and language.

As his principal inspiration for Glaurung, Tolkien looked to the dragon Fáfnir, the “Prince of All Dragons” in Norse myth and legend, where he guards a mighty treasure horde and is ultimately slain by the hero Sigurd. Glaurung, however, is perhaps an even more malevolent figure than Fáfnir, because beyond dragon-fire and serpent-strength, Glaurung is cunning (though his intelligence—like all of his species in Norse and Germanic legends—is tempered by the flaws of vanity, gluttony, and greed).

The life and death of Glaurung is one of the central tales of The Silmarillion, a tale very much inspired by the Völsunga Saga. In Tolkien’s tale, the Dragon-slayer is Túrin Turambar, who shares many of the characteristics and adventures of Sigurd, the Norse hero of the Icelandic saga. The hero’s guile and battle tactics are certainly comparable. For just as Túrin plunges his sword Gurthang into Glaurung’s soft underbelly in the slaying of the “Father of Dragons,” so Sigurd plunges his sword Gram into Fáfnir’s soft underbelly in the slaying of the “Prince of All Dragons.”

GNOMES In European folklore a stunted race of beings that dwell under the earth and are associated with its mineral riches. They seem to have been originally invented by the Swiss alchemist Paracelsus (1493/4–1541), who described them as measuring “two span” (18 in.) in height and capable of moving through solid earth as easily as humans move through air. He derived their name from the Latin genomos, which in turn was probably a transliteration of a Greek word meaning “earth-dweller.” Over time, gnomes became associated with the much older Germanic dwarfs and by the twentieth century were reduced to the status of garden ornaments throughout Europe and North America.

However, just as Tolkien rehabilitated fairy-tale dwarfs and reinvented them as his Dwarves of Middle-earth, in early versions of The Silmarillion Tolkien attempted to rehabilitate these Gartenzwerge (German “garden dwarfs”) by reinventing them as his Second Kindred of Elves. In Tolkien’s original drafts, this powerful kindred of Elves was to be called the Gnomes, a name that Tolkien derived from the Greek gnosis, meaning “knowledge.” In the end, the difficulty of overcoming popular conceptions of gnomes as tubby garden fixtures probably proved too much of an obstacle, and Tolkien settled on the name Noldor instead.

Glaurung at the Fifth Battle

However, so as to keep to his original intention of associating the Second Kindred with knowledge, he derived the new name from his invented Elvish language Quenya, where noldo means “knowledge.” Some of the gnomes’ association with the earth and minerals also survives in the Noldor: on settling in the immortal land of Eldamar, they become apprentices to Aulë the Smith. From him they learn all the secrets of the treasures to be found in the deep earth, and become the greatest craftsmen of the Elves in the shaping of jewels and forging of metals. For this knowledge and skill, the Noldor—once related to the humble garden gnome—become the “Wise Elves” and “Deep Elves” of Tolkien’s epic tale The Silmarillion.

GOBLINS In European folklore, grotesque, devil-like creatures akin to imps and kobolds, usually but not always malevolent, or at least mischievous. In Tolkien’s legendarium, they appear in The Hobbit, as the Goblins and as the Great Goblin of Goblin-town, used as a synonym for the evil race of Orcs.

Tolkien’s The Hobbit and its Goblins owe a debt of inspiration to the Scottish writer George MacDonald (1824–1905) and his 1872 novel The Princess and the Goblin, as Tolkien explicitly acknowledged in a letter. Even without this admission, we have some clear textual evidence: a little MacDonald song, included in his novel, begins: “Once there was a Goblin / Living in a hole …”. This is very close to Tolkien’s opening line in The Hobbit: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” However, while both Goblins and Hobbits are hole-dwellers, they are quite different in their nature.

In The Hobbit the narrator warns the reader that the Misty Mountains are made perilous by hordes of “goblins, hobgoblins, and orcs of the worst description.” Each of these names is a synonym for the other, or very nearly, as Tolkien himself explained in the preface to his novel: “Orc is not an English word. It occurs in one or two places [in The Hobbit] but is usually translated goblin (or hobgoblin for the larger kinds).” Orcs, of course, in Middle-earth, are the evil foot soldiers of the Dark Lords Morgoth and Sauron. However, the publishing history of Tolkien novels ensured that readers would first encounter them under the Goblin name.

The Hobbit was written decades after most of The Silmarillion was conceived, but with his young audience in mind Tolkien needed to somewhat mute the evil nature of his cannibalistic Orcs, adopting instead the rather more mischievous comic nature of the fairy-tale goblins found in MacDonald’s work. However, readers who progress from The Hobbit to the high romance of The Lord of the Rings and the heroic age of The Silmarillion soon discover that Tolkien no longer portrays Goblins simply as comic grotesques, but as the seriously irredeemably evil race of Middle-earth in thrall to the Dark Lord.

In his letter mentioning the influence of George MacDonald, Tolkien speaks of his borrowing from “the Goblin tradition,” so one must also acknowledge the international nature of these creatures. His Goblins share many aspects with Germanic, Nordic, and British traditions, with kobolds, bogies, knockers, bugbears, red caps, demons, imps, sprites, and gremlins, as well as with beings from the folk traditions of Asia, such as the Malayan Toyol or Cambodian Cohen Kroh, evil, twisted spirits animating the bodies of murdered children or fetuses.

GOLDBERRY In The Lord of the Rings, Goldberry is the wife of Tom Bombadil and the “River-woman’s daughter.” While the text is not explicit about her origin, she is the perhaps the entity in Tolkien’s world who comes closest to being a Greek Naiad, or water nymph, a genius loci (spirit of the place) of the River Withywindle.
See also: NYMPHS

GOLLUM Originally known as Sméagol, a Hobbit who, under the influence of the One Ring, becomes a murderous ghoul and cannibal that shuns the light and finds grim solace in dark caverns and dank pools. He plays a key role in both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, where he appears as a foil and even alter ego of the main protagonists, Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, respectively. There is some inconsistency in his portrayal across the two books: in The Hobbit he is shown as some sort of murderous, cannibalistic Goblin feared even by other Goblins, while in The Lord of the Rings Tolkien reveals Gollum to be an ancestral Stoorish Hobbit long banished from his people and corrupted by the One Ring.

Goblins. In The Hobbit, the foul race of Orcs are most often called by the more familar name of Goblins.

The evolution of the character Sméagol and his alter ego Gollum draws on a considerable body of mythology related to ring legends. In the Icelandic Völsunga Saga, the most famous ring legend in Norse mythology, Fáfnir, the son of the dwarf king (also called “Magician-King”) Hreidmar, murders his own father because of his desire to possess a cursed ring and its treasure. This is comparable to Sméagol’s murder of his cousin Déagol because of his desire to possess the One Ring. Retreating, like Sméagol, to a mountain cave, Fáfnir broods over his ring and eventually transforms into a monstrous dragon. Similarly, Sméagol, who through the power of the One Ring extends his life over many centuries, transforms into a ghoul twisted in mind and body, ultimately emerging as the cannibalistic Gollum brooding over his “precious.” The Icelandic narrative poem Völundarkvitha, part of the Poetic Edda, reveals a similar ghoul, Sote the Outlaw. Sote steals a cursed ring, but he so fears it may be taken from him, he has himself buried alive with it, and sleeplessly guards it with his weapons drawn.

Gollum

Gollum’s name cannot but remind us of the Golem of Jewish folklore, a creature created out of clay and of a similar ambivalent nature. The Modern Hebrew word golem means “dumb” and popularly is applied to someone who serves another under certain conditions, but is just as likely to turn against him if given the chance—a description that perfectly describes the relationship between Gollum and Frodo in The Lord of the Rings. In Gollum, this characteristic might be called pathological, so that in Sméagol–Gollum we have a classic case of a split personality, of the kind portrayed in Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or Charles Dickens’s The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
See also: JEKYLL AND HYDE

GONDOR The greatest realm of Men in the west of the Middle-earth, founded at the end of the Second Age by the Númenórean exiles Isildur and Anárion as the South-kingdom of the Dúnedain. Increasingly during the Third Age the realms—first under its kings and later under the Ruling Stewarts—provide a bulwark against the growing power of Sauron and Mordor and Easterling and Southron hordes. Its capital lies first at Osgiliath and later Minas Tirith.

In elaborating the history of his fictional kingdom, Tolkien drew extensively on his knowledge of ancient history. We thus find echoes of events and characters from the history of not only the Roman Empire—Gondor’s most obvious analogy—but also to the Western and Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empires that succeeded to it after its division.

Thus, many of the wars of Gondor on its southern borders, especially with the Corsairs of Umbar, have a parallel in Rome’s long rivalry with the city-state of Carthage both on sea and land. Like Umbar, Carthage in North Africa commanded mighty fleets of warships, and allied itself with mercenary armies supported by war elephants and cavalries. Similarly, one of the most devastating incursions into Gondor, by a confederacy of Easterlings known as the Wainriders of Rhûn, in 1851 TA, echoes the Visigoths’ defeat of the Romans at Adrianople in AD 378. The Western Roman Empire, too, had to endure centuries of warfare with invading barbarians on its eastern borders. Likewise, the South-kingdom of the Dúnedain has to endure centuries of warfare from similar barbarian invasions from the east.

The ascension of King Elessar at the end of the War of the Ring marks the restoration of the kingdom of Gondor and a new, more prosperous age in its history. Here there is an analogy with the creation of the Holy Roman Empire—a restoration of the old Western Roman Empire—under the rule of Charlemagne.

GOTHS An East Germanic people who, in the first few centuries AD, dominated a vast area of Central and Eastern Europe, often threatening the integrity of the Roman Empire especially during the Gothic Wars (AD 259–544).

Both historically and linguistically, the Goths fascinated Tolkien from an early age. His study of Joseph Wright’s Grammar of the Gothic Language (1910) was a critical event in his intellectual life. In Gothic, Tolkien observed the first recorded language of the Germanic people and the first recorded language spoken by the progenitors of the English people. Tolkien believed that through his study of the language, and the surviving fragments of Gothic texts, he would gain new insights into this elusive people.

The Goths were partly Tolkien’s inspiration for the Éothéod (meaning “horse people”), the Rhovanion ancestors the Riders of Rohan and Lords of the Mark. Both peoples were migrants from the north of their respective continents, and both had legendary dragon-slaying forebears. The Éothéod claimed Fram, son of Frumgar, as slayer of Scatha the Worm, the Cold-drake of the Grey Mountains, while the Goths claimed their culture hero Wolfdietrich as slayer of the Cold-drakes of the Tyrolean Mountains.

From time to time, too, the Goths allied themselves with the Roman Empire, most notably at the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields (AD 451) where Gothic cavalry staged a dramatic rescue of the beleaguered Roman troops. A comparable event occurs in the history of Gondor, where the Éothéod cavalry of Eorl the Young arrives at a critical moment in the Battle of the Field of Celebrant.

GRAM (“WRATH”) In Norse mythology the dynastic sword of the Völsungs forged by the elves of Alfheim. The sword is wielded by King Sigmund until the blade is broken in a duel with Odin, the Lord of Battles. Reforged, it later comes into the possession of Sigmund’s son, Siegfried.

Gram and its history are comparable to Narsil, the dynastic sword of the kings of Arnor and Gondor, and its history. Meaning “red and white flame,” Narsil is originally forged by the Dwarf-smith Telchar in Nogrod in the First Age. Passing into the possession of the Númenórean kings, it is eventually wielded by King Elendil until the blade is broken in his duel with Sauron the Dark Lord at the end of the Second Age. The shards of Narsil are saved, and three millennia later the sword is reforged by the Elves of Rivendell for Aragorn, the rightful heir to the kings of Arnor and Gondor. Renamed Andúril, meaning “flame of the west,” its blade flickers with a living red flame in sunlight and a white flame in moonlight.

Similarly, the Völsung sword Gram is reforged by the dwarf-smith Regin for Sigurd, the rightful heir to the kings of the Völsungs. Its blade is distinguished by the blue flames that play along its razor edges. In the Norse Völsunga Saga, Sigurd uses Gram to slay the monstrous dragon Fáfnir.

In the Nibelungenlied, Sigurd is transformed into the German hero Siegfried and the Dwarf-reforged sword used in the slaying of the dragon is called Balmung. In Richard Wagner’s Siegfried (1876), the third opera (or “music-drama”) of Der Ring des Nibelungen, the dwarf-reforged sword in Siegfried’s hands is known as Nothung. However, in the second opera of the Ring Cycle, The Valkyrie, Act One, near the end of Scene Three, in Siegmund’s hands it is also referred to as “Nothung,” when Siegmund hauls the sword out of the tree.

GREAT BATTLE In the War of Wrath the great final battle between the forces of Morgoth the Dark Enemy and the Valarian Host of the West that brings an end to the First Age. While the Valar and Elves are ultimately victorious, the near-cosmic violence of the battle results in the shattering of the Iron Mountains and the sinking of almost all of the land of Beleriand.

Tolkien freely acknowledged that the Great Battle “owes, I suppose, more to the Norse vision of Ragnarök than to anything else.” Certainly, there are a great number of similarities in these doomsday battles. Just as the final battle of Ragnarök will begin with the sounding of the Horn of Heimdall the Watchman of the Gods, Tolkien’s Great Battle of the War of Wrath begins with the blast of the Horn of Eönwë, the Herald of the Valar. Gothmog, Lord of Balrogs, bears a flaming sword into the Great Battle, as does Surt, Lord of the Fire Giants, in the Norse legend. And in both battles, all the legions of good and evil—all creatures, spirits, demons, and dragons—meet in one final terrible conflict.

Another likely source of inspiration, though less widely acknowledged, is to be found in the biblical Armageddon, a prophetic vision of the great battle fought between the forces of good and evil at the “end of time,” as revealed in the Book of Revelation. There, in the duel between the Archangel Michael and the “Red Dragon,” we find one possible source for the climatic duel between Eärendil the Mariner and Ancalagon the Black Dragon: “Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.”

Just as the Red Dragon’s downfall marks Satan’s defeat, so Ancalagon the Black Dragon’s downfall marks the defeat of Morgoth in Middle-earth. The Host of the West, like the Host of Heaven, prevails, and Morgoth the Dark Enemy is cast forever after into the darkness of the Eternal Void.

GRECO-ROMAN MYTHOLOGY The collected body of myths originally told by the ancient Greeks but which were also taken over and elaborated on by the ancient Romans; also known as classical mythology. It was a staple element of the humanist education of Europeans starting from the Renaissance and onward, mostly transmitted through the great works of Greek and Roman literature, including Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and, above all, Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

Greco-Roman mythology inevitably had a considerable influence on Tolkien’s imagination in the creation of Middle-earth: “I was brought up in the Classics,” he wrote in a letter to his friend Father Robert Murray, “and first discovered the sensation of literary pleasure in Homer.” From a young age, Tolkien learned to read both classical and Homeric Greek as well as Latin, and his grounding in Greco-Roman literature remained strong and helped in the shaping of his imaginary world.

This was particularly true in Tolkien’s creation of the Valar and Maiar, the “gods” and “demigods” of Tolkien’s world, many of whom have counterparts (or close counterparts) in the classical gods, demigods, and heroes. As with the classical gods, Tolkien had a hierarchy of “angelic powers,” with a pantheon of supreme beings, the Valar (like the Olympians) and then a host of lesser beings, the Maiar (the various lesser gods, demigods, and divine heroes). It is noteworthy that while there were twelve Olympian gods and goddesses, the Valar number fourteen.

GRENDEL The hulking monster of the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf may be discovered in a scaled-down version in Tolkien’s The Hobbit. For as Tolkien acknowledged, the plot of The Hobbit was largely inspired by Beowulf, and quite clearly Gollum was a miniature version of the monster Grendel. By some evil power, the ogre Grendel was granted supernatural strength and protection from attack by the weapons of his enemies. The monster came by night and murdered scores of warriors as they slept. It then broke their bones and consumed their flesh “like a wolf might eat a rabbit.” Grendel was even feared by the walking corpses and blood-sucking man-beasts that haunted the foul serpent-infested mire that he had made his home.

Although a diminished version of Grendel, Gollum was no less a terror to his less celebrated victims, such as the Goblins (the fairy-tale name for Tolkien’s demonic Orcs) and the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins. For, just as some unknown power gave Grendel enormous physical strength and long life, so the evil power of the Ring lengthened Gollum’s miserable life for centuries and seemingly enhanced the power of his wraithlike hands, giving them murderous power to strangle his prey.

Both monsters are subhuman grotesques in appearance and habit. Gollum lived in the dank pools of dark caverns, where he became thin and hairless, a murderer and a cannibal. His eyes became bulbous, his feet webbed, and his teeth grew long and sharp through living off raw, unclean meat.

The monster Grendel had a similar damned existence. He seems to have had little or no human speech and his nocturnal life was largely occupied with stalking prey, murder, and cannibalism. Daylight hours seem to have been spent sleeping in a murky cave at the bottom of a filthy pool in the middle of a haunted wetland, not unlike the Dead Marshes of Middle-earth. Surrounded by his treasure and trophy weapons stolen from murdered men, the creature lived only to feed on human flesh. He was finally put out of his miserable existence when, in hand-to-hand combat with Beowulf, the hero rips the monster’s arm from his torso. Mortally wounded Grendel crawls off to die in the grotto at the bottom of his haunted pool.

In the Gollum’s final struggle with Frodo the Hobbit, we have a version of Beowulf locked in mortal combat with the monster Grendel, albeit with slightly more diminutive—though equally determined—combatants. In Tolkien’s Middle-earth, the fate of the world is determined by the least of its champions, and the struggle for the fate of the World is more a personal struggle over the fate of one’s soul. Even so, everything seems to have gone wrong. The Hobbit is doubly defeated: morally by the power of the Ring and physically by the power of Gollum. As the power of Beowulf’s superhuman grip allows the hero to tear Grendel’s arm from his shoulder socket, so the power of Gollum’s supernatural grip (and his Orkish fangs) enables the antihero to sever the Hobbit’s finger and claim the One Ring that encircles it. Yet upon Middle-earth, the victory of evil often leads to its own defeat. So it proved with Gollum’s victory as he falls into the volcano fissure of the Cracks of Doom. Gollum ends up a reluctant martyr whose evil intent resulted in the greatest good.

GREY ELVES In Tolkien’s legendarium, a twilight Elvish people who, in the First Age, dwell in Beleriand, principally in the forest kingdom of Doriath, where they are ruled by king Thingol and his wife, the Maia Melian. They are of Telerin descent and are usually known by their Quenya name, the Sindar (“Grey People”). In his creation of races and realms of the Elves, Tolkien was to some degree guided by the Norse cosmology of the light elves of Alfheim and the dark elves of Swartalfheim. Similarly, in Tolkien’s world, we have the Caliquendi, or Light-elves, of Eldamar and the Moriquendi, or Dark-elves, of Middle-earth. In the Grey Elves, however, he created a category between the Light-elves of the west and Dark-elves of the east: the “Elves of the Twilight” of Beleriand. While the Grey Elves had embarked on the Great Journey to Valinor with the rest of the Teleri, under the leadership of Elwë, they abandoned the trek in Beleriand after the disappearance of Elwë in the forest of Doriath, where he had fallen under the spell of Melian. Later, with Elwë’s reemergence as Thingol, he gathered together those of the Teleri who had tarried and founded the forest kingdom of Doriath, protected by the enchantments of Melian.

In European folklore the association of elves with forests and woodlands, as well as with the mysterious, gray hours around twilight, is an old one. In Germanic folklore there are the Moosleute (“moss people”), an elven folk associated with the great forests that once covered much of Europe and considered by humans as both dangerous and potentially beneficial (the Men of Beleriand have similar beliefs about the Grey Elves and the enchantments of Doriath). The sylvan association continued into early modern times, as we see in the fairies of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595–6). There, in Oberon and Titania (the king and queen of the fairies), we may see a buried inspiration for King Thingol and Queen Melian.

GURTHANG (“IRON DEATH”) In Tolkien’s legendarium the sword wielded by Túrin Turambar in the slaying of Glaurung the Father of Dragons. Also known as the Black Sword of Brethil, the blade is originally forged by Eöl the Dark Elf and given the name Anglachel, meaning “flaming iron.” The black blade glows with a “pale fire” and is so hard that it can slice through iron. Reforged by Túrin Turambar and the Elven-smiths of Nargothrond, the sword is renamed Gurthang.

The sword has a direct counterpart in Norse mythology in Gram (“wrath”), the blade reforged by the dwarf Regin for the Norse hero Sigurd, who wields it in the slaying of Fáfnir, “Prince of All Dragons.” However, there is also a darker comparison to be made with the sword of the Finnish hero Kullervo the hapless. Kullervo and Túrin Turambar each discover that they have unwittingly committed incest with a long-lost sister and commit suicide by falling on their own sword. In the Kalevala, Kullervo requests of his sentient sword that it drink his blood and take his life. This is duplicated in Tolkien’s The Children of Hurin when the doomed Túrin Turambar talks to Gurthang before throwing himself on its black blade.

GUNGNIR (“SWAYING ONE”) The dwarf-forged spear of the Norse god Odin. This appears to have inspired Tolkien’s Aeglos (“icicle”), the name of the Elf-forged spear of Gil-galad, the high king of the Noldor in the Second Age.

Like Aeglos, Gungnir is a weapon that, when wielded, “none could withstand,” and, when thrown, always strikes its mark. Aeglos is broken when Gil-galad falls in his duel with Sauron the Dark Lord in the last battle of the War of the Last Alliance. Gungnir will be broken when Odin carries it into the last battle of Ragnarök in the war of the gods and giants.

GWAITH-I-MIRDAIN
See: CELEBRIMBOR; RINGS OF POWER

GYGES’ RING In ancient Greek legend a magical ring possessed by the king of Lydia, Gyges, in fact a historical figure (reigned c. 687–c. 652 BC) and founder of the Mermnad dynasty of Lydia. The legend of his rise to power from shepherd to king was recorded by both Plato in The Republic and Herodotus in The Histories.

According to these accounts, after an earthquake opened a hidden cave, the young shepherd entered it and discovered a tomb and a magic ring that could make the wearer invisible. Armed with this ring of invisibility, Gyges managed to enter the Lydian royal palace, seduce the queen and, with her aid, slay the king, and become king in his place. Plato used the legend of Gyges’ Ring in a debate about the nature of humanity. One of the debaters argues that possession of such a ring would turn every human into a monster, unfettered by the laws of society: “No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market or go into houses and lie with anyone at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a god among men.” Socrates, however, counters this by arguing that a truly just man would not be tempted to give way to his baser instincts.

As Tolkien once explained, in The Hobbit, Bilbo’s discovery of his own ring of invisibility serves essentially as a device quite commonly found in the plots of many legends and fairy tales, useful—as in the case of Gyges—in transforming the everyday individual into an extraordinary hero (or villain). We can also find many echoes of Plato’s dialogue in The Lord of the Rings, where many of characters are tested by the corruption offered by the Ring. Sauron has long ago given in to the desire to be a “god among men,” while the truly just, like Bilbo and Frodo, are able to stay true to their principles, showing their innate goodness.

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