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Beorn is a character created by J. R. R. Tolkien, and part of his Middle-earth legendarium. He appears in The Hobbit as a "skin-changer", a man who could assume the form of a great black bear. His descendants or kinsmen, a group of Men known as the Beornings, dwell in the upper Vales of Anduin, between Mirkwood and the Misty Mountains, and are counted among the Free Peoples of Middle-earth who oppose Sauron's forces during the War of the Ring. Like the powerful medieval heroes Beowulf and Bödvar Bjarki, whose names both mean "bear", he exemplifies the Northern courage that Tolkien made a central virtue in The Lord of the Rings.
In the philologist and fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fiction, a warg is a particularly large and evil kind of wolf that could be ridden by orcs. He derived the name and characteristics of his wargs by combining meanings and myths from Old Norse and Old English. In Norse mythology, a vargr is a wolf, especially the wolf Fenrir that destroyed the god Odin in the battle of Ragnarök, and the wolves Sköll and Hati, Fenrir's children, who perpetually chase the Sun and Moon. In Old English, a wearh is an outcast who may be strangled to death.
Rivendell is a valley in J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional world of Middle-earth, representing both a homely place of sanctuary and a magical Elvish otherworld. It is an important location in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, being the place where the quest to destroy the One Ring began.
Valinor or the Blessed Realm is a fictional location in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, the home of the immortal Valar on the continent of Aman, far to the west of Middle-earth; he used the name Aman mainly to mean Valinor. It includes Eldamar, the land of the Elves, who as immortals are permitted to live in Valinor.
Elu Thingol or Elwë Singollo is a fictional character in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. He appears in The Silmarillion, The Lays of Beleriand and The Children of Húrin and in numerous stories in The History of Middle-earth. The King of Doriath, King of the Sindar Elves, High-king and Lord of Beleriand, he is a major character in the First Age of Middle-earth and an essential part of the ancestral backgrounding of the romance between Aragorn and Arwen in The Lord of the Rings. Alone among the Elves, he married an angelic Maia, Melian.
Trolls are fictional characters in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, and feature in films and games adapted from his novels. They are portrayed as monstrously large humanoids of great strength and poor intellect. In The Hobbit, like the dwarf Alviss of Norse mythology, they must be below ground before dawn or turn to stone, whereas in The Lord of the Rings they are able to face daylight.
The Watcher in the Water is a fictional creature in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth; it appears in The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume of The Lord of the Rings. Lurking in a lake beneath the western walls of the dwarf-realm Moria, it is said to have appeared after the damming of the river Sirannon, and its presence was first recorded by Balin's dwarf company 30 or so years before the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring.
Tolkien: A Look Behind The Lord of the Rings, alternatively subtitled A joyous exploration of Tolkien's classic trilogy and of the glorious tradition from which it grew is a 1969 non-scholarly study of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien by the science fiction author Lin Carter. The original version of the book was among the earliest full-length critical works devoted to Tolkien's fantasies, and the first to attempt to set his writings in the context of the history of fantasy.
J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy books on Middle-earth, especially The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, drew on a wide array of influences including language, Christianity, mythology, archaeology, ancient and modern literature, and personal experience. He was inspired primarily by his profession, philology; his work centred on the study of Old English literature, especially Beowulf, and he acknowledged its importance to his writings.
In J. R. R. Tolkien's writings, Elves are the first fictional race to appear in Middle-earth. Unlike Men and Dwarves, Elves are immortal, though they can be killed in battle. If so, their souls go to the Halls of Mandos in Aman. After a long life in Middle-earth, Elves yearn for the Earthly Paradise of Valinor, and can sail there from the Grey Havens. They feature in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Their history is described in detail in The Silmarillion.
Galadriel is a character created by J. R. R. Tolkien in his Middle-earth writings. She appears in The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and Unfinished Tales.
The Wizards or Istari in J. R. R. Tolkien's fiction were powerful angelic beings, Maiar, who took the form of Men to intervene in the affairs of Middle-earth in the Third Age, after catastrophically violent direct interventions by the Valar, and indeed by the one god Eru Ilúvatar, in the earlier ages.
Character pairing in The Lord of the Rings is a literary device used by J. R. R. Tolkien, a Roman Catholic, to express some of the moral complexity of his major characters in his heroic romance, The Lord of the Rings. Commentators have noted that the format of a fantasy does not lend itself to subtlety of characterisation, but that pairing allows inner tensions to be expressed as linked opposites, including, in a psychoanalytic interpretation, those of Jungian archetypes.
England and Englishness are represented in multiple forms within J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth writings; it appears, more or less thinly disguised, in the form of the Shire and the lands close to it; in kindly characters such as Treebeard, Faramir, and Théoden; in its industrialised state as Isengard and Mordor; and as Anglo-Saxon England in Rohan. Lastly, and most pervasively, Englishness appears in the words and behaviour of the hobbits, both in The Hobbit and in The Lord of the Rings.
Sandra Ballif Straubhaar is a Germanic studies scholar known for her work on women's poetry in Old Norse, and for her contributions to scholarship on J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium, in particular his use of Scandinavian medieval literature and lore.
Scholars have identified numerous themes in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth writings, among them paganism. Despite Tolkien's assertion that The Lord of the Rings was a fundamentally Christian work, paganism appears in that book and elsewhere in his fictional world of Middle-earth in multiple ways. These include a pantheon of god-like beings, the Valar, who function like the Norse gods, the Æsir; the person of the wizard Gandalf, who Tolkien stated in a letter is an "Odinic wanderer"; Elbereth, the Elves' "Queen of the Stars", associated with Venus; animism, the way that the natural world seems to be alive; and a Beowulf-like "northern courage" which is determined to press on, no matter how bleak the outlook.
The medievalist and fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkien derived the characters, stories, places, and languages of Middle-earth from many sources. Among these are Norse mythology, which depicts a reckless bravery that Tolkien named Northern courage. For Tolkien, this was exemplified by the way the gods of Norse mythology knew they would die in the last battle, Ragnarök, but they went to fight anyway. He was influenced, too, by the Old English poems Beowulf and The Battle of Maldon, which both praise heroic courage. He hoped to construct a mythology for England, as little had survived from its pre-Christian mythology. Arguing that there had been a "fundamentally similar heroic temper" in England and Scandinavia, he fused elements from other northern European regions, both Norse and Celtic, with what he could find from England itself.
Perilous Realms: Celtic and Norse in Tolkien's Middle-earth is a 2005 scholarly book about the origins of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, and the nature of his characterisation, by the scholar of literature Marjorie Burns. Some of the chapters discuss "Celtic" and "Norse" influence on Tolkien's writing, while others explore literary themes. The book won a Mythopoeic Award for Inklings' Studies in 2008.
J. R. R. Tolkien derived the characters, stories, places, and languages of Middle-earth from many sources. Among these are the Celtic legends and languages, which for Tolkien were principally Irish and Welsh. He gave multiple conflicting reasons for his liking for Welsh. Tolkien stated directly that he had made use of Welsh phonology and grammar for his constructed Elvish language Sindarin. Scholars have identified multiple legends, both Irish and Welsh, as likely sources of some of Tolkien's stories and characters; thus for example the Noldorin Elves resemble the Irish Tuatha Dé Danann, while the tale of Beren and Lúthien parallels that of the Welsh Culhwch and Olwen. Tolkien chose Celtic names for the isolated settlement of Bree-land, to distinguish it from the Shire with its English names.
Tolkien derived the characters, stories, places, and languages of Middle-earth from many sources. Among these are Norse mythology, seen in his Dwarves, Wargs, Trolls, Beorn and the barrow-wight, places such as Mirkwood, characters including the Wizards Gandalf and Saruman and the Dark Lords Morgoth and Sauron derived from the Norse god Odin, magical artefacts like the One Ring and Aragorn's sword Andúril, and the quality that Tolkien called "Northern courage". The powerful Valar, too, somewhat resemble the pantheon of Norse gods, the Æsir.
References
- 1 2 "Marjorie J. Burns". Tolkien Gateway. Retrieved 11 February 2021.
- ↑ "Emeriti Faculty". Portland State University . Retrieved 11 February 2021.
- 1 2 "Marjorie and Scott Burns". Ooligan Press. Retrieved 11 February 2021.
Marjorie Burns is an author, traveler, and lover of adventure, as well as a professor of English at Portland State University. Currently on leave from teaching to write, she lives with her husband in Washington State, near the base of a dormant volcano. She is an avid kayaker, cyclist, and rock climber.
- 1 2 Burns, Marjorie J. "Marjorie J. Burns". Archived from the original on 16 November 2020. Retrieved 11 February 2021.
- ↑ Burns, Marjorie in Michael D. C. Drout (ed.) The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (2007)
- ↑ Wickham-Crowley, Kelley M. (2007). "J.R R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment (review)". Tolkien Studies . 4 (1): 266–278. doi:10.1353/tks.2007.0033. ISSN 1547-3163. S2CID 146657926.
- ↑ Sullivan, C. W. III (5 September 2007). "[Review] Perilous Realms: Celtic and Norse in Tolkien's Middle-earth". Journal of Folklore Research . Retrieved 11 February 2021.
- ↑ Stelmach, Kathryn (2006). "Perilous Realms: Celtic and Norse in Tolkien's Middle-earth by Marjorie Burns". Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies. 37 (1). Project Muse: 223–225. doi:10.1353/cjm.2006.0013. ISSN 1557-0290. S2CID 161950688.
