Tolkien and Norse Mythology

[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.

[Lalwendë]

I think I might have posted on this topic before - maybe in the thread Lush started (can't remember the title, it was something like "Garrr, descent into Hell"). I've always found it striking that in Arda Hell is on Earth, not in another place like Norse, Christian, Judaic and Islamic versions. This is quite Humanist and Modernist, that people create their own Hells; possibly Tolkien saw enough in his own lifetime that would cause him to think it could be a very real place on Earth. That was brought home again to me last Sunday when we listened to the reading at Tolkien's graveside about the horrors he saw in the trenches, of dead men's faces staring up out of the mud, and of having to go on living, surviving in that place. He also lived in a world that rapidly revealed unimaginable horrors such as the Nazi death camps, Stalin's purges, Hiroshima/Nagasaki and the Dresden firestorms.

He does translate Hell into a very real, physical place, not a place to which people go after death. And this continues into the Third Age with the Witch King's chilling words to Eowyn - we get the sense that there is a real place of torture she could be taken to, while alive. The only sense of a 'supernatural' Hell is when Saruman is killed and the Valar turn him away (like Meister Eckhart's ideas of God only being aware of the Good), but for mortals there is no supernatural Hell yet there is a 'Heaven' outside the world.

We don't know what this is like and we can only presume that all go there. I wonder if this bears any resemblance to Purgatory? Either way, there seems to be no concept of any 'sifting' once the souls get there. Perhaps it's like Pullman's Land Of The Dead, a place where all go? Though I'm sure Tolkien wouldn't make such a miserable place as Pullman imagined! We know Elves could end up like this if they 'go bad' as they never get reincarnated once in the Halls of Mandos; they end up in this 'Purgatory/Land of the Dead' like place for ever. There's nothing similar for mortals.

We've no way of telling if this is what Tolkien thought himself (and I would not be surprised looking at what he saw as the world changed from a safe place to a place of unimaginable, unpredictable horror) or if this was a literary choice he made for the world he created where evil was in the very fabric (so in a logical sense Hell would be built in and not outside). Whatever, we will never be able to know that, but this is where Tolkien is resolutely Modern.