The Mythology that Inspired Tolkien

J.R.R. Tolkien built an incredible fantasy world in his books, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but what inspired him to do so, what stories influenced him? Today we're going to look for the answers to these questions in the mythology of the Bible, Old Norse texts, Anglo-Saxon and Celtic cultures too. And so if you have ever asked yourself, how did Hobbits come to be? Who inspired the evil Sauron? Or where did Elves get their magic? And whether you've just watched the films, or have read the books, or even want to write a book, then today I will take you on a journey to explain Tolkien's universe from a mythological perspective. And if that sounds interesting, then grab yourself a second breakfast, with a second cup of tea, and welcome to Crecganford. Before I get into the myths that influenced the book, it is worth noting that during his life J.R.R.R. Tolkien published much work, but out of all this there were only three fantasy world books, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, the latter an absentee from the films. And even with just three books, Tolkien continued to tweak with them, even after they were first published. And when he died, Tolkien left a huge amount of unpublished work, incomplete and with multiple versions, and this provides a real challenge for those who are trying to unpick what was going on in his mind. In fact, his son, Christopher Tolkien, dedicated the latter half of his life to doing just that, and in doing so published much of this incomplete work in his father's name, from a version of the Anglo-Saxon story of Beowulf, to the Old Norse myth of Sigurðr and Gudrun, to the Germanic influenced stories around Finn and Angist, all of which provide clues as to the influences within his fantasy world. The result of these publications is that there are now many more books attributed to Tolkien, but this also means that some questions can have multiple answers based on the book you take information from, because they were written at different times in Tolkien's life, meaning some answers are ambiguous, and there are some questions that no one really knows the answer to for sure. And so that is my disclaimer here to all the Tolkien fans who are watching this video, because I know some of them are incredibly dedicated and will argue amongst each other, much in the same way as Meriadoc, Brandyback, and Pergin took, because they argued about everything. And so to help me, I had to dive into many books on Tolkien, and I just want to highlight one of now that was particularly useful, and that is a book by Anthony Cummings, an accomplished author, and he has just written this, The Ultimate Unofficial Guide to Tolkien's World. Now this book is particularly aimed at people who want to know more about Tolkien, but perhaps haven't read the books multiple times, it is superbly placed if you want to understand the universe in more detail, and is really an essential reference. And it was essential for this video. And for transparency, the reason I'm saying this is because I know Anthony personally, and I knew him long before he wrote that book. In fact, he didn't even tell me he was writing the book until he gave me an advanced copy for free. So thank you, Anthony, for that. Although he did not put me under any obligations to talk about the book at all, or review it in any way, but I'm just saying, because he is a friend, and because it is a very good book, that thank you very much, and I'll place links below if anyone else wants to get hold of that book, because it is exceptionally good. And so let's now start our journey into Tolkien's universe, by explaining how his cosmogony all began, and that is how did the world where we find Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Goblins, Balrogs, and of course man, come to be. Far less well read than The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings is the Cimmerillion, which serves as a foundational text for the mythos of Middle Earth. You can compare it to the Old Norse Eddas, or the Hindu Mahabharata, in the sense that it is a collection of stories that help you understand how the world and the cosmos it is in came to be. It covers the very earliest stories and myths of that world, as well as etymologies and genealogies that span from the creation all the way up to events leading up to the story of The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. And in fact the Cimmerillion has a synopsis in effect of the Lord of the Rings within it, although it isn't a substitute to actually reading those books. Now the first part of the Cimmerillion is about the music of the Ainur, who are divine spirits of Tolkien's world, unimaginable by mortal minds, and they act as a divine choir producing the Anulindile, the music of creation. This music, along with magic, was used to create the world by Eru Ilúvatar, the divine creator, who could turn this music and magic into a physical form, allowing matter to form and the cosmos to come into being. Now within the divine choir there is one Ainur who is corrupt, and his name is Melkor, and he sows the seeds of evil, and so grows the darkness we see in Tolkien's other work. However, I think it is also important to note that Melkor was not inherently evil at the outset, he just grew that way through impatience, he wanted to build his own creations on the world. And when he couldn't do this, it grew discontentment within him, and this discontentment eventually turned into evil, and I think that in its own way is a message about this world we live in today. And this journey of evil took some time, and so before that actually takes place and affects the world, the next part of the Cimmerillion is named after the account of the Valar, which is translated into a form of Elvish known as Quenya, and is called Valaquenta. Here the Valar and the Maiar are described as demigods and spirits respectively, and they are subordinates to Ilúvatar. And so this represents a divine hierarchy, which is similar to patterns we see in the pantheons of Europe with a chief god and lesser gods, such as we see in the Seer of the North, or the Tuatha Dé Danann of the Celtic. But we also find within this pantheon the evil Melkor, who is a demigod now, and this is a spoiler alert, he will eventually turn into Morgoth as he becomes the primary source of evil, and this all comes to be as he has this desire to come down to the world and become a god in his own right, controlling what happens on the world. And this is a key part of Tolkien's plot, allowing a battle between good and evil, and was perhaps a reflection of Tolkien's own religious thought, as Tolkien was a practising Catholic of the Christian church. Now because of this some people might consider Morgoth a devil figure, but I feel what Tolkien has done here, even if he was unaware of it, is to use what was a Zoroastrian view of world creation. Within Zoroastrianism they say that at the time of creation the world was not just made of good, otherwise it would have been forever good, it must have had some bad in it, and so we see Tolkien in the same way add some bad into this world via Morgoth. And if you aren't familiar with the books, then one particular character which made his way through Morgoth's army and became his chief lieutenant, is a character by the name of Sauron, who if you're familiar with the Lord of the Rings, is the guy who has the big eye looking at everything. And so we find a lineage of evil all the way through Tolkien's books, because his stories require evil, because how can good triumph unless there is an evil to beat. Now this narrative of ending the world, which was the aim of these evil beings, an eschatology of sorts, could be much like what is mentioned in the Book of Revelation of the Bible, but we could equally apply other end of the world motifs, such as that from Norse mythology, as much like Loki, Morgoth eventually seemed as though he wanted to destroy the world, and with Norse myth, Ragnarok, the end of the world, was part of this process, but it was also secular, perhaps better said as a restart of the world, and so slightly different. Although this motif of destroying the world doesn't apply to Sauron's uprising, as whilst there is no doubt he was evil, he didn't set out to destroy the world, but instead he wanted to rule it all. We also see influences from other parts of European culture, Anglo-Saxon and Celtic, and so in effect some core Indo-European themes within Tolkien's books, and one interesting part of his universe is shown in a realm called Aman, a complex realm which was one where men could sail to and visit, but which is later taken out of the physical world and becomes the undying land within Tolkien's universe, which is a realm which is meant to reflect the Celtic Otherworld, a place described as being of utter beauty and tranquillity, yet separate, yet connected to the mortal world. And whilst this isn't an exact representation of what we know of the Indo-European Otherworld, which was a place that was void of all things, because we see an absence of evil, an absence of hunger, an absence of worry, this Otherworld is described as a paradise, but it was absent of good things too. And so whilst knowing the undying land was in some ways meant to reflect this Otherworld, Tolkien could not actually describe it as it really was in Celtic texts, otherwise the reader would be lost, and so he had to lose some of the underlying Celtic mythology associated with the land to make it more recognisable, and I explain this more in this video about the Goddess of the Otherworld if you're interested in seeing that. Now if you have seen the films or read the books, you will also be aware of the key theme in Tolkien's work, one that shows how his world, the world that was created through music and magic at its beginning, gradually fades as it moves closer to the modern era. This is meant to align to how man loses his magical abilities within the stories, and we eventually see elves leave middle earth, and dwarves go back underground. If you look back on the story of the Fellowship of the Ring, and to Return of the King, you can clearly see an underlying message on how humans could be considered to have disenchanted the world. And this is Tolkien's own personal message, and we see this play a significant role within his stories. With the creation of the universe Tolkien looked to weave in cosmology that took this view of the fading of magic and the rise of men, to signify a transition from the mythic age to one that is meant to resemble our own history, encapsulating Tolkien's own view of how the world has lost its magic and enchantment. The centre of Tolkien's cosmology is his Axis Mundi, and is represented by the two trees of the Valinor, which are in the land of the gods, and it feels like Tolkien has taken some influence, at least from the Old Norse mythology, around the Yggdrasil, the Old Norse world tree. Although for completeness there were originally two great lamps representing North and South within Tolkien's world, but these were destroyed by Morgoth. Now the mythology around the Yggdrasil is that it connects various realms together, and it represents as a whole the health of the cosmos. This construction or framework isn't really directly applied to Tolkien's two trees, which primarily serve the Valar in Valinor, but it is the essence of these trees that is important to Tolkien's cosmos, as this essence was stored in three sacred jewels called the Cimmeryls, and it is these jewels that the book The Cimmerillion is named after. And it is these jewels that were stolen by Morgoth, and that starts the adventures and wars that lead to the recovery of these jewels, and this period from the stealing of those jewels through the recovery represents the first stage of Tolkien's world. Now whilst the two trees did not connect realms together, there were multiple realms within this cosmos, and by realms we mean regions of land, not physically different worlds per se. And this is the same idea as with Norse myth, where some consider the realms as different worlds, where they really are just different regions of the earth. Now in Tolkien's cosmos we have Middle-earth, named after the Old Norse word Mithgarda, which is represented in both Old Norse and Tolkien's stories as the place where humans lived. And then we have the previously mentioned Valinor, the land of the gods, much like Asgard in Old Norse. But we also have a realm called Aman, which I mentioned earlier, which is the continent on which the Valinor live, and which was separated from Middle-earth by the Beleriand Ocean. And then there was the island of Númenor, which was given to men, and then which was destroyed when the men rebelled against the Valar, which is seen as an analogue to the mythical land of Atlantis. And speaking of things that were lost, we also have Beleriand, which was a region to the west of Middle-earth, but sunk beneath the ocean at the end of the first age. And then there are some elven realms, such as Lothlorien and Rivendell, which possess an aetheral aura, another worldly quality, reflecting some of the folkloric aspects of the other world from Indo-European mythology. And these regions were separated from the mortal world by a thin veil, which it is possible to pass through, providing you know the way, or have some magical ability to see that. And this concept of a magical barrier also appears in other parts of Tolkien's world, such as something called the Girdle of Melian. And finally there are also three other regions worth knowing, Ea, which is the universe itself, where all material things are in. Then we have the Void, which was where Morgoth was banished to, and this is considered to be outside of Ea, in fact an emptiness outside of creation. And last, but by no means least, there was the afterlife of the Elves, which was called the Hall of Mandos, which is a purgatorial realm where elven spirits go after death, and where they are judged, and some say where they are reborn. However, it is also interesting to note that Tolkien never mentions where men go when they die, perhaps they all went to heaven, but we just don't know for sure. And what is interesting about these physical places within Tolkien's world, is that they are represented by real places, although not necessarily within our time today, but from the past. And so for example we have the Shire, which seems to be represented by rural England in the 19th century, or there is Gondor, which seems to be a combination of Rome and Constantinople. And Tolkien was influenced by many historical places alongside their myths, and so when creating his world he would leverage this, making the world seem more real to the reader. Hobbits are an intriguing race, because they seem to be the least affected by the greater magical events occurring in Middle Earth than others, and they seem to have the attributes that are stereotypically applied to people who have lived in rural England for many generations, gentle and kind, unwary of strangers, and perhaps you could say they have many odd habits for those who are not used to their ways. Their magic is rather underwhelming, small enchantments maybe, as opposed to thunderbolts and lightning, but some are also able to resist the magic, such as the corruption of the One Ring. We find elves in Nordic myth, of particular note is the blacksmith, Vulland, or Waylander Smithy in Anglo-Saxon times, who can be used as a comparison. And so in Tolkien's mythos elves seem influenced by the alfalfa of the Old Norse stories, they are magical, but also symbolise the ancient and the eternal, how the world was, and you could also argue that the imagery used gives them more of a Celtic feel. But as we lack primary source material for Celtic myth, we are really left reflecting on the similarities with Norse myths. The High Elves particularly seem very much like the Light Elves of the Norse, and the Dark Elves of the Norse seem to be the Avari, or Tolkien's Elves of Darkness. However, we do see the term Dark Elves or Black Elves within translations of the Old Norse Eddas, and where we see this they can often be linked to Dwarves, and a good example of this is in a chapter called the Skaldskarpamur, which talks about when Loki steals Thor's wife's hair, and he gets dwarves to replace it. Now the dwarves of Tolkien's world seem to be a middle ground between the natural magic of the elves and the industriousness of men, much like the dwarves of Old Norse myth, and they are also skilled in mining and crafts, and demonstrate that magic can co-exist with the mechanical. And the names of the dwarves in the Hobbit are taken from an Old Norse poem called the Volusbor, which names the first dwarves. And if we look at this list we find names such as Thorin, Baelin, Dwalin, Fili, Gili, Dori, Nori, Ori, Oin, Gloin, Bifor, Bofor, Bombor, and we also find a dwarf named Gandalf in this Old Norse poem, a name that Tolkien then picks up and uses for the wizard of his stories. The humans, or men as Tolkien called them, in Middle Earth are an interesting mix of many heroic archetypes found in Indo-European myth, from Greek heroes to Arthurian legend. The men in Tolkien's stories are agents of change, wanting more power, more land, and all the time they are heading towards this goal, and all the time they are doing that, the more magic and music is lost from the world. Their fate very much reflects on how Tolkien saw the world he lived in, and how humans had an impact on it. Specific characters that are worth noting from his books are Bjorn from The Hobbit, which is a man who could transform himself into a bear, and it seems likely that this influence comes from the Vikings and members of their warriors that were called Berserkers, and Berserker means bearskin, and they were known for being furious within combat. And the Riders of Rohan seem very much influenced by Anglo-Saxon language and culture. Then we see Theoden, a play on the Old English word Theoden, meaning king, who is very much first seen as a man in decline, and then follows a typical Arthurian legend by rising again to victory. And the names of the characters Irma and Elwynn are again very much Old English in their construction. Other creatures found within the stories are influenced from other myths of Anglo-Saxons and the Norse, we see Trolls, Ents, Eagles, and Dragons, all of which appear in these myths. Now the Ents are tree beings, and their leader, although the main one you see within the books, Treebeard, is the most prominent. However, we don't really see a European myth that gives an analogue of this, but there is much folk tale about walking and talking trees. The Dragons, Morg, guards the treasure, and within the Hobbit this seems to be a reflection of the Anglo-Saxon story Beowulf, although similar stories are found across the Germanic landscape. And here we see the Hobbit stealing a particular piece of gold, much like Beowulf. And there is also the Old Norse story of Sigurðr and Gungnird, published in Tolkien's name, which is another classic Dragon story from Nordic culture. And we also see Trolls, sometimes called Giants in Old Norse, and they suffer the same fate in Old Norse mythology as we see in the Hobbit, where Trolls turn to stone in the sunlight. And there is a good example of this in the poem Alvisamul, which says in one stanza, It's dawn now, Imgurðr, and Atli has kept you talking until you laid down your life. As a harbour mark you look hilarious, standing there transformed into stone. And perhaps a final clue of influences into Tolkien are around the weapons, and the Germanic influence in naming swords. We see weapons within Tolkien's world given names such as the Narsil or the Anduril blade, and this gives the weapons personalities, and again shows Tolkien's connections with mythology within Europe from bygone eras. By the end of the Lord of the Rings, the Elves are departing for Valinor, the Hobbits are returning to the Shire, and are forever changed, losing the innocence that was a part of their charm, and the Dwarves have disappeared underground. So is this a reflection of a loss of magic and music, the end of the age of myth? Or is it Tolkien acknowledging that knowledge, power, and industrialisation has now distanced man a long way from his natural beginnings, and this connection with music and magic? Looking at Tolkien's cosmos, his universe, it becomes clear that his works are not just flights of fancy, but really rather carefully crafted narratives woven into a loom of Indo-European mythology. From the intricate melodies of the Annulindale to the rugged landscapes of Middle-earth, Tolkien's world building has drawn upon ancient traditions, translating them into stories that have resonated with people for decades, based on myths that have resonated with people for thousands of years. Yet while the influence of Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon Celtic myths is unmistakable, to me Tolkien's genius lies in his ability to create a really cohesive original world that both celebrates and mourns the fading of magic, the fading of music, the fading of the appreciation of nature, the loss of what you could consider the romantic view of the past, where things seemed more innocent and better. And this is due to the unstoppable march of time, his work has allowed us to embark on a journey, or a quest to connect back with this world. And I just think because of that, these are beautiful stories, well worth reading. I want to thank my patrons before I go for all their support, and their help, and their questions. And I'd also like to ask if you find these kind of videos, looking at fictional work and comparisons to myths useful. I've only done a light touch here on Tolkien, you could go a lot deeper, but I could also cover things like Harry Potter, or Star Wars, or Terry Pratchett's work if you wanted. And so with that I want to say thank you to my friend Anthony Cummings for this book, which made this video possible. I'd like to thank all of you for watching and drinking tea, or any other beverage you've got, thank you for your continued support, and lovely questions and comments that you leave, really appreciated, thank you for liking the video, and with that please stay safe and well. And this was Crecganford.