[obloquy]

The article I referred to here was presented over at GreenBooks at TheOneRing.net. I'll reproduce it here to keep the thread self-contained, but the site is here.

VII. Wingspan: "If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgment of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgment now." Marcus Aurelius

Let us return to the pro-wing side of debate and try to ascertain a rough estimate of the size of Balrog wings. The only reference that is available is the Durin’s Bane passage that is written above. Because the wings were spread from wall to wall, if we knew the width of the walls, we would know a Balrog’s wingspan. So let’s dig through what Tolkien wrote and see if we can obtain a rough estimate. In The Fellowship of the Rings, we find these words:

So now you see why I wanted to get a founded definition of chasm because it will aid us here. Fifty feet cannot be the length of the chasm because its width would have to be orders of magnitude smaller in order for it to be narrow, and that scenario does not fit Tolkien’s description. He states:

So the room is so wide that it needs two gargantuan rows of columns to support the roof. Therefore, the room’s width must correspond to the chasm’s length, meaning that the chasm is 50 feet wide. Tolkien provides no numerical data about the chasm’s length, so we must return to the definition of "chasm." Because a chasm is narrow, meaning it is much longer than it is wide, we know the room must have been more than 50 feet wide. If the room were exactly 50 feet wide that would not correspond to the definition either because the chasm’s cross section would be a square, and a square isn’t narrow. Minimally, for something to be called narrow its length must be at least twice its width, else the two sides are comparable in magnitude. So we may assume that the room was at least100 feet wide though it was probably much wider.

Because we are assuming that Balrogs have wings, we are reading the wings-from-wall-to-wall passage literally. Thus, if Balrogs do indeed have wings, they must be at least 100 feet in span. We also know that Balrogs were able to deftly use their whips, so the wings must have been able to fold behind them. Otherwise, it would not have been able to enter the chamber at all. The average body length to wingspan ratio for animals with wings that fold on their backs is 20/7, which tells us that the Balrog was at least 35 feet tall. However, many readers and many artists envision a gigantic Balrog anyway, so why is such a picture not feasible in the context of the passage? Again, it’s not an exact science, but there are some key points to be made.

1. It’s not feasible for a 35-foot creature to live for millennia in a city that was built for dwarves.
2. In the Chamber of Mazarbul when the Fellowship had barred the door to Balin’s tomb and was watching it slowly opened, Tolkien tells us that the
   We are also told that they

This terminology seems to suggest that the door was not extremely large, and thus the orcs had to cluster to get through it. But it may be that Tolkien was saying that the gap in the door was just wide enough for the orcs to pass through one at a time. Can we learn anything about how wide the gap was? Before the orcs came through, Tolkien said that the door was open wide enough for an arm, shoulder, and foot to be thrust through. Remember Boromir notching his sword as he hewed at the greenish arm and Frodo stabbing at the foot. After the foot was withdrawn, the orcs and trolls regrouped and rammed the door, about which Tolkien wrote:

So the opening grew wide compared to what it had been. It could be that it swung nearly open, but just as likely, it could be that it opened the width of one or two orcs. So this is not conclusive that the door was small, but one more piece of evidence that lends itself to the small door theory is that it could be wedged with broken blades and wood.

Such a tactic would be much less effective on a massive door, and one does not usually speak of slamming a very large door. Still, this evidence is not absolutely conclusive but tends to favor a smaller door scenario, one that is, say, 10 feet in height that would be massive enough to weather the ramming and hammering of the orcs yet small enough to be slammed and wedged. Let us continue for a moment with this assumption in mind. It is very unlikely that something 35 feet tall with a wingspan of 100 feet could fit through a door 10 feet in height or be able to lay hold of the iron ring on the door.

But the Balrog did come through the door after it countered Gandalf’s shutting spell, and the fact that it was able to able to grab the door’s iron ring suggests that the Balrog had hands that were appropriate for a much smaller creature. (If you happen to be six feet tall, imagine trying to go through a door about 1.7 feet high with 17-foot wings on your back. Sounds more like Through the Looking Glass to me.) There are two other facts that help suggest that a smaller Balrog, one of about 14 feet in height, is more consistent with Tolkien’s writings.

One is Glorfindel’s battle with the Balrog during the Fall of Gondolin. Tolkien writes in The Book of Lost Tales:

So the Balrog was twice the height of Glorfindel. Estimating Glorfindel’s height takes a little bit of digging, but Tolkien does give a discussion of ‘Númenórean Linear Measures’ in The Unfinished Tales. In it Tolkien said that Galadriel was

and was said to be of man-height

For the Dúnedain, man-height was a specific length equaling two rangar, units of measurement that equaled 38 inches. So Galadriel was 6 feet 4 inches tall, and from The Lord of the Rings, we also know that Celeborn was this tall as well. Elendil, of the race of men, was counted as being one of the tallest of the Númenóreans with a height of nearly 7 feet 11 inches. Glorfindel, though an elf-lord, was not a king, so the range for his height is probably between 6 and 8 feet. For the sake of continuing this argument, let’s place him as an even 7 feet in height, which is probably a generous assumption. A 7-foot Glorfindel gives us a 14-foot Balrog, which is much easier to digest when considering the confines of Moria. A 14-foot Balrog would be able to maneuver through dwarf-made cities, though doubtless he would still have some difficulties, and still adhere to lines like the following:

Tolkien wrote an earlier draft of the previous passage that is found in The History of Middle-earth, which provides further instruction.

This draft was rejected, but it shows that the Balrog was originally going to be man-high, which is, as previous discussed, six feet four inches tall. In is unlikely that Tolkien rejected this draft to make the Balrog fives times higher than he originally intended, and the fact that Tolkien wrote that the Balrog

suggests that the Balrog was large but not a mammoth 35-feet tall. In fact, there are numerous example of leaping Balrogs, especially in the passages on the duel with Glorfindel, which would be awkward for a giant Balrog to do. Also remember that in The Unfinished Tales, when Echthelion slew Gothmog in the battle by the fountain, that Ecthelion, who was wounded, leaped on Gothmog and drove his spiked helmet into the Balrog’s chest, a feat that would be impossible with a 35-foot monster.

So we have a 14-foot Balrog with 100-foot wings. To illustrate the enormity of these proportions, let’s go back to our 6-foot human example. If you were the Balrog, you’d now have to go through a 4.3-foot door, which you could do, except that you’d have wings 42.9 feet in span on your back! So stand up and put your arms out like wings. Now imagine that each of your arms is longer than two basketball goals put together. If someone were to describe you at this point, how likely is it that they’d leave off a description of your wings? It would be the most noticeable thing about you and probably the first thing they would mention. Yet Tolkien, a master of description, never gives us an explicit one: not in the Durin’s Bane, Dagor Bragollach, Glorfindel, or Echthelion passages. You could call this an oversight. You could call it added mystery, or you could call it reason to read that wings-from-wall-to-wall passage figuratively so that the meaning of all the other passages becomes clear. I choose to let the gist of 16 passages guide my interpretation of two rather than letting two guide my interpretation of 16.

I realize that, though there is supporting evidence for 10 to 14 foot Balrogs, there is no conclusive evidence, and so if I’ve done little to persuade you, I can offer no concrete evidence to back my claim. It is the plethora of implicit evidence that eventually convinced me to change my mind, and let me reiterate that "implicit" leaves room for an argument. As I stated in the introduction, I have put forth a guess because, in the end, all arguments in this debate involve assumption. Mine is no exception. Yet the argument that Balrogs are approximately 14 feet tall is compelling, and because I accept it, it is difficult for me to believe that Tolkien, a master of narrative, would not highlight the most salient feature of the Balrog: its disproportionate, airliner-sized wings.

Child of the 7th Age referred to this same argument several pages back in the thread. I believe her source was the somewhat summarized version at The Encyclopedia of Arda.