Do Balrogs Have Wings?

[obloquy]

Originally Posted by Mister Underhill

With all due respect, I've never been much impressed by these arguments. They rely on conjecture about so many things.

For starters, how can you draw anatomical conclusions regarding lift and mass about a creature that exudes flame and shadow, even if we did have anything more than the barest of hints as to its proportions (how tall is a "great height"?)?

But it's fairly clear that Balrogs were incarnated and thus bound to physical laws. Is there suspicion that the physics of flight in Middle-earth may differ from those in the modern world?

The Chamber of Mazarbul is a "large" square chamber, with a "high" door opening off of a "wide" corridor. Clearly there's some room to work here. What do these adjectives mean? Any dimensions you produce are pure guesswork.

The Second Hall is "cavernous", but "loftier and far longer" than the one they slept in (which again is given no certain dimensions). Is it as wide as the original chamber? Less so? How wide is that? All guesswork.

The rebuttal to this line of reasoning that I have seen points to the definition of "chasm" which is described as "narrow." To be considered "narrow" it would need to be longer than it is wide, and we do have a figure for the span of the bridge, although I can't recall exactly what it is. 50 feet?

Bottom line, this whole wing mass argument doesn't make me hum and haw, it makes me say: all pure speculation.

You're right, but I think it's logical speculation.

Edit: Yeah, I'm not sure which dictionary qualifies chasms as narrow. Maybe it's a myth.