BOLDOG, “ORC CAPTAIN OF ANGBAND”

Tolkien’s Orcs have their origin during the earliest years of the First Age when Melkor captured many of the newly risen race of Elves and took them down into his fortress dungeons of Utumno and, later, Angband – where they were tortured and transformed into a goblin race of slaves and soldiers who were as loathsome as the Elves were fair. These Orcs were bred in a multitude of shapes, twisted by pain and hate. They were hideous, stunted and muscular with yellow fangs, blackened faces and red slits for eyes.

Tolkien’s Orcs appear to have been derived from the evil demons known in Anglo-Saxon texts (especially in Beowulf) as the “Ornaceas”, meaning “walking corpses”, the zombie-like living dead motivated by evil forces. The word “orc” is derived from the Latin word orcus found occasionally in sixteenth-century English as “orc”, meaning a devouring monster. In Tolkien’s First Age of the Years of the Sun, the Orcs of Angband provide Morgoth with the greater part of his vast legions of fierce warriors. They are a cannibal race, ruthless and terrible, spawned as thralls to the Master of Darkness.

Boldog the Orc High Captain of Angband

Orcs have about as much independence as domestic dogs or horses from their human masters. However, those whose business it is to direct them often appear to take on Orkish shapes, although they are greater and more terrible. Certainly, this is likely the case with the great Boldog, the Orc captain who leads the Host of Angband against King Thingol, as told in The Lays of Beleriand. This formidable Boldog is sent out by Morgoth himself, and might very well be a Maia in Orkish form. Tolkien himself once hinted this by suggesting that “Boldog” might actually be a title given to Maiar spirits who chose to assume an Orkish hroa, or body. This may also be true of the terrible Orc chieftain Gorgol the Butcher, who is slain by the Edain warrior Beren in retaliation for the murder of his father. The only other Orcs named in any of Tolkien’s histories of the First Age are Lug, Orcobal and Othrod, all slain in battle in The Fall of Gondolin.

Tolkien once revealed something of the nature of his Orcs in a letter to a fan: “[…] since in my myth at any rate I do not conceive of the making of souls or spirits, things of an equal order if not an equal power to the Valar, as a possible ‘delegation’, I have represented at least the Orcs as preexisting real beings on whom the Dark Lord has exerted the fullness of his power in remodelling and corrupting them, not making them […]”

This is an important point because Tolkien’s system of thought did not countenance the possibility of evil being able to truly create some form of life. Therefore Melkor/Morgoth has to corrupt other spirits and creatures. Some spirits he corrupts, such as the Balrogs, are great and powerful; others, such as Orcs, prove to be lesser demons. Most Orcs were plainly (and biologically) a corruption of Elves – and probably later also of Men.

Orcs in Tolkien’s tales provide a counterbalance to the Elves in every way. Elves are fair; Orcs are hideous. Their function within the wider creative scheme of Tolkien’s tales is to show what the effects of Morgoth’s fatal pride have in establishing a pattern of evildoing with ever-widening and ever more disastrous repercussions. On a more straightforward narrative level, though Orcs provide the necessary, innumerable and terrifying soldiery for the armies of the Enemy in the many battles with the far less numerous forces of Good.

All of Tolkien’s descriptions of Orcs create a sense of vast anonymous numbers: they are likened to innumerable swarms or devastating black waves. They come pouring out of caverns and caves with impersonal, insect-like inexorability, and are often compared by the author to flies or ants. In battle, they have a mindless strength and commitment but also a dangerous weakness. If something shakes that ferocious concentration, then the whole cohort stops in their tracks, suddenly uncertain, directionless and vulnerable. Elves, Men and Dwarves are capable of thinking on their feet, but the Orcs for the most part can only follow directives or commands.

The concept and nature of Orcs, as demonic underlings programmed to do the bidding of their evil masters, has resonance with numerous myths and tales from around the world – most especially in the Old and New Testaments, where demons are depicted as innumerable and often invisible. This comparison between Orcs and demons is most evident in Revelation 12, where the dragon (the Devil or Satan) fights the archangel Michael, each with their horde of angels/fallen angels. Visible demons prefer to live in isolated, unclean places such as deserts and ruins, and they are to be greatly feared, especially at night. They attack animals as well as humans, and are the cause of physical ailments and mental illnesses. They also provoke wild passions and rage, and are the cause of jealousy, lust and greed.

Morgoth’s dark sorcery in the Orc-breeding pits brings forth a constant flow of soldiery in each of his campaigns, until at last his victory in the Battle of Sudden Flame breaks the long Siege of Angband. Then the Orkish hordes, combined with a vast army of Dragons, Balrogs, Trolls, Wolves and Werewolves, overrun Beleriand. In battle after battle and siege after siege, all the Elven kingdoms are destroyed. No great city remains in the West and the greater part of Elves and Edain are slain.

Yet the terror of that age finally comes to an end when the Valar and Maiar, with the High Elves of the Undying Lands, come to Middle-earth in the War of Wrath. Angband is destroyed and all the mountains of the north are broken. Melkor is cast out into the Void for ever more, and the Orcs of Angband exterminated as the ruined lands of Beleriand sinks into the boiling sea.

Again, this is comparable to Revelation 12, where Satan and his “angels” are said to have “lost their place in heaven [… and were] hurled to the earth”.

Orc Legions and Trolls of Angband gather for the Battle of Sudden Flame