Tolkien and Norse Mythology

I somehow agree with Rune upon the matter of the Fire-giants and the Balrogs. The actions of the former during the Ragnarök when marching upon Bifröst and it breaks and falls simply remind me of the events in Moria, on the Bridge of Khazad-Dûm.
Adding another point to the matter of the relationship between the two entities: the first stronghold of Melkor, Utumno, resembles the realm of the Fire-giants, Muspellheim. With all its forges, subterranean fires and chambers of poisonous vapours, Utumno (along with Angband) manifests as the mythological and the philological counterpart of Muspellheim, which is 'Land of Flame' (not unlike a chasm of molten iron and eternal streams of flame), hence Utumno and Angband being 'Great Deep' and 'Hells of Iron'.

Moreover, there seem to be no restrictions to Surt being the inspiration for (I believe) both Melkor and Gothmog. As stated in The First Book of Lost Tales, Gothmog the Lord of the Balrogs, was originally described by Tolkien as being the son of Melkor. So the Valaraukar were intended to be the progeny of the Dark Lord. Furthermore, there is no denying that the Fire-giants may at the least bear the blood of Surt. And as Surt rules over Muspellheim, Melkor rules over his strongholds.
In Dagor Bragollach, the intensity of 'Fire' as a dominant element in the characteristics of Melkor is present, along with some points on the similarity between the Dark Lord and the Muspell-lord. The scorching of Ard-galen by the flame rivers may reflect the deeds of Surt as he sets the worlds, and Yggdrasil ablaze. Though the World Tree never succumbs to the Fire-giant's menacing actions (unlike Ard-galen), it is 'burning' nonetheless. And last but not least, the Dark Lord's colossal figure when confronting Fingolfin the High King at the twilight of the battle resembles Surt's being as a Giant - a Giant of Sable Fire.

I may have missed many more counterparts, but I will leave the matter for someone else to state them.

[littlemanpoet]

White Tree for the Tree of Tales

Is the Heimskringla part of this discussion?

I once read an English translation of the Younger (Prose) and Elder (Poetic) Edda. Quite fun! But there was one poem in the Elder Edda that cast its spell on me; it's the only way I can describe it. It's sort of vague right now, and some time I'll have to go back and find it: it was about lovers, one of whom has died and is buried; the ghost of the one visits the still living one, and they remain lovers in spirit. Sort of reminds me of Tristan and Isolde, and of Beren and Luthien. I need to find it again!

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

Since the Edda is one of the main sources to Norse Mythology, it would be odd if we limitid this discoution to very few parts of it.

I am quite confident that people them self can feel when they have moved away frome the topic, If not I will hunt them down.

Please do return with this tale of "Beren and Luthien". I am looking foreward to it.

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

Is Carcharoth Tolkien's Fenris ?

Both of them was The greatest Wolf ever to exist. . . Carcharoth was fed by Morgoths own hand and even gives him some of his own power!
Fenris is the Spawn of Loke/Loki (wich has been mentioned earlier on this thread) and he is raised amongst the gods.

So they both has powers within them genrated from the gods and are both raised by them. (I am considering Morgoth a god)

Then Carcharoth bites of the hand of Beren and Fenris bites of the hand of Tyr. Now Beren is no god, but "only" a man with a extrodinary destiny. I still see some of Tyr reflected in Beren. Tyr was the bravest amongst gods and the only one who dared put his hand in the wolves mouth. Beren I think, posseses the same kind of currage. First he lives as a refugie in Dorthornien with his father and his men, later by him self. He defies all the evils that Morgoth sends after him, even Sauron. Then to come to Doriath he has to go by paths that not even the elven kindred dare set feet on. If this has not convinsed one of how brave he is, surely his jurney to Morgoths throne in Angband must do it.

Tyr puts his hand in the mouth of Fenris. Beren puts his hand, holding a silmaril right in front of Carcharoth.

Carcharoth bites of his hand, still holding the silmaril. If my memorie does not decive me, it is Fenris destiny to swallow the sun! and again I seem to remember that it will burn him quite batly inside. Is it not the same thing that happens to Carcharoth? I think so.

There is a few points that seperates the two, but it has never been Tolkiens style to copy complete tales to his books.

So do you agree with me, that Carcharoth is Tolkiens Fenris?

I am sorry if this has been debated before, but I did not have time to make search.

[Lalaith]

LMP, I think this is the poem you mean:
http://www.cybersamurai.net/Mytholog...ingsbanaII.htm

Thanks for reminding me of it, I'd forgotten how beautiful the story was...

[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by Lalaith

LMP, I think this is the poem you mean:
http://www.cybersamurai.net/Mytholog...ingsbanaII.htm

Thanks for reminding me of it, I'd forgotten how beautiful the story was...

Ack! So sorry, I saw this at work (where they don't let you link up) and then forgot about it! I'll read it through and see.....

[davem]

Originally Posted by Rune Son of Bjarne

Is Carcharoth Tolkien's Fenris ?

I'm sure we could find Cerberus in the mix too. Yet Tolkien is very clear about Carcharoth's 'upbringing by Morgoth:

Swiftly the wolf grew, until he could creep into no den, but lay huge and hungry before the feet of Morgoth. There the fire and anguish of hell entered into him, and he became filled with a devouring spirit, tormented, terrible, and strong. Car-charoth, the Red Maw, he is named in the tales of those days, and Anfauglir, the Jaws of Thirst. And Morgoth set him to lie unsleeping before the doors of Angband, lest Huan come.

What's interesting to me though in this context is that Tolkien's 'Hell' (as he calls it - Angband is repeatedly translated 'The Hells of Iron') is significantly different to both the Pagan & the Christian one. The main one is that Middle-earth's 'Hell' is a place for the living, not for the dead - a physical location for incarnate beings.

In Pagan myth we have number of figures (Odin, Orpheus, Aeneas, Innana to name a few - in fact the similarities between Luthien & Innana could be pointed up - both enter the Underworld of their own will & both dance there:

Then Luthien catching up her winged robe sprang into the air, and her voice came dropping down like rain into pools, profound and dark. She cast her cloak before his eyes, and set upon him a dream, dark as the Outer Void where once he walked alone. Suddenly he fell, as a hill sliding in avalanche, and hurled like thunder from his throne lay prone upon the floors of hell. The iron crown rolled echoing from his head. All things were still.

)

who enter into the Underworld of their own will & return out again under their own steam, & we find the same thing in Tolkien, whereas in Christianity one is 'sentenced' to Hell for ever & cannot return.

This is another difference - Morgoth's captives are just that - captives - not sinners who have been sent there for punishment, but innocents made to suffer not for offending against Eru, but for offending against Morgoth.

The major Christian journey into & return from Hell is, I suppose, Dante's, though I vaguely remember accounts of various mystics & others who were shown visions of both Heaven & Hell. Yet it is clear that Dante's experience is a dream, not an actual descent into Hell.

Tolkien's 'Hell' is a physical place, where the living may enter or pass through, but the dead are not actuallly present. Physical things are manufactured there - Maedhros iron bond for example is called 'Hell-wrought':

But Fingon could not release the hell-wrought bond upon his wrist, nor sever it, nor draw it from the stone. Again therefore in his pain, Maedhros begged that he would slay him; but Fingon cut off his hand above the wrist, and Thorondor bore them back to Mithrim.

Again, it has a physical location in the world, & can be besieged:

Angband was besieged and its gates shut there were green things even among the pits and broken rocks before the doors of hell...(Of Beleriand and its Realms)

So, once again, we can speculate on sources, but the differences seem far more significant than the similarities.

[littlemanpoet]

Looks like an interesting discussion is brewing that I want to go back and read, but I want to just follow up on this first:

Originally Posted by Lalaith

LMP, I think this is the poem you mean:
http://www.cybersamurai.net/Mytholog...ingsbanaII.htm

Thanks for reminding me of it, I'd forgotten how beautiful the story was...

I've read it through, and I'm not sure. I don't think so. I really need to pull that old volume back out of the local college library and see if I can find it again in that book. You see, the poem from which I read was a much shorter passage than the one you link to, which I quite enjoyed reading! There are certainly similarities. I wish I could say with more certainty, but it doesn't seem quite the same.

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

The interesting thing about Hel for me is that it is both. Some people go there after death, if they have broken oaths ect. But you can also enter as a living, granted with some major dificulies. I think Davem points this out earlier, atleast that Odin passes throught the gates of hel.

As such hel is a mix for me, but I still wiev it more as Angband than Mandos, althought Wiki seems to disagree.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hel_%28realm%29

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

I think that sometimes it detracts from the subtlety of Tolkien's use of the old myths to make direct x=y comparisons between them. Clearly there is a correlation between Fenris and Carcharoth, but I don't think it's one of equivalence. For example, Tyr is only required to put his hand into the wolf's mouth to prove the non-existent good faith of the Æsir. Without that guarantee the wolf will never allow himself to be bound with the great chain Gelgja, which is clearly parallelled by Angainor elsewhere in the Silmarillion. The loss of Beren's hand, by virtue of the Silmaril it holds, doesn't so much bind the wolf as loose it on a destructive rampage. Fenris is, according to Gylfaginning, fated to die at Ragnarok, when his jaws will be wrenched apart by Víðarr. Interestingly, the same source records that Tyr is destined to be killed by the great dog Garmr, and not by Fenris, who will have his jaws full swallowing Oðinn. In other words, Fenrisúlfr is killed in a battle by a character other than he whose hand he took; Carcharoth is killed by Beren during a hunt, although there is a possibility that this is taken from the fight between Tyr and Garmr. The use of the lost hand motif in the story of Maedhros seems to me to suggest that it had a particular hold on Tolkien's imagination, regardless of the particular myth in which he found it. A particularly amusing parallel, which Tolkien may have included on purpose because of the irony, is that the Silmarils contain the light that was before the sun, whereas Fenris is destined to swallow the sun itself. It could well be that he wondered how an animal might feel were it to consume a star, and developed his myth accordingly.

The significance of the whole story has, of course, changed entirely. Carcharoth lacks Fenris' important and apocalyptic role in the Norse myths, being rather one of a series of characters encountered by Beren and Lúthien in their own central and significant quest. For me this is typical of Tolkien's mythologising technique. We can trace this compression and recontextualising in the tragedy of Túrin and Glaurung, which borrows elements from at least two separate legends. The story of Turambar and Glaurung was inspired at least in part by Sigurð's slaying of Fafnir in Volsunga Saga and that of Túrin and Nienor echoes a theme from the story of Kullervo in the Kalevala, but his story takes elements of these and applies them to a new narrative context, using them as building blocks for new legends and tales. One could develop literature as diverse as Beowulf and Hrolfs Saga Kraka from these plot elements (as, in fact, two medieval writers did from the legends of the Scyldings/Skjoldungs), but Tolkien goes further in that he builds them into entirely new stories, related to the originals only by a complicated reverse engineering that suggested to him legends that might have developed into those which history has recorded. Such is the case with Ælfwine, who in HoME V extemporises a poem very closely related to the text of the Anglo-Saxon elegy The Seafarer, but which provides a potential 'pure' form of that somewhat corrupt poem. Since this theme was never fully expressed or realised, it's difficult to see how far Tolkien would have taken it in a published Silmarillion, or even whether he would have made it explicit at all. It may even have been a passing phase, eventually forgotten as the philosophy of his own myths became his primary preoccupation.

Essentially, then, Tolkien's use of Germanic mythology is more one of inspiration. A name, an event, a plot device would grasp his attention and then be worked into his insatiably acquisitive legendarium. Doubtless Fenrisúlfr has been included, as have the Old English word Earendel, Sigurð/Siegfried, the mysterious Sheaf and Alexander's Letter to Aristotle (in which is contained a description of the trees of sun and moon, the parallels of which need no elaboration). How far Tolkien intended to make his characters the imaginary prototypes for known mythological beings is still not completely clear to me. In places the process seems almost unconscious, in others it is developed to such a sophisticated degree that it must have been carefully thought out. Even so, I don't think that we can call the Carcharoth of the Silmarillion 'Tolkien's Fenris' solely on narrative grounds, since he plays a far less apocalyptic role, not to mention not actually being the son of Morgoth. Rather he is a character inspired by and similar to Fenris, yet with a significantly different part to play. Of course the similarities and direct borrowings are many and varied, but Tolkien reached a highly developed version of Beren's story very early in the history of his mythology, before he really achieved his full stature as a writer; I suspect that he would have handled the real-world mythological elements with more subtlety in his later years, and I would have liked to see a Silmarillion complete with Ælfwine as a real-world arbiter.

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

Garr I forgot to reply.

I agree with you, that these things worked as an inspiration and that he did not just take and copy. Then I would find the whole thing way less interesting, but I do like to compare the inspiration to the characters where I see their traits. . . I know they are not the same, but I do enjoy comparing them.

In the hobbit we have the Ravens like Roäc that can talk with men and are their allies, they help them by delivering news and such. Odin has two talking ravens as well Huggin and Munnin that brings him news from around the world.

I am now wondering, is this something we find in other mythologies, talking and message bringing ravens ?

I would very much like to know.

[Raynor]

Unless my knowledge is getting rusty, a raven brought to Apollo some evil news concerning his beloved one; in anger, Apollo turns him black. - After searching for this, I found this interesting site: http://www.ravenfamily.org/nascakiyetl/obs/rav1.html