Do Balrogs Have Wings?

[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.

[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by obloquy

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.

A chasm does not necessarily have to be narrow. The dictionary definition that I have simply refers to a chasm as a "deep fissure". But, even accepting that the chasm was narrow, it does not follow that the length of the chasm was delineated by the width of the chamber. The chasm might well (and probably did) continue beyond the bounds of the chamber. It is entirely feasible, therefore, that the width of the chamber was equal to or less than the width of the chasm.

Say the chamber was 40 foot wide (and the double line of towering pillars is not incompatible with this, particularly if its height was greater than its width) and the Balrog therefore had a 40 foot wingspan, that would, according to the ratio you have given, make the Balrog 14 foot tall, which is the assumption of the remainder of the argument.

Although I cannot resist making one further point:

Originally Posted by obloquy

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.

Not if it had wings ...

Originally Posted by obloquy

I can't deny that Tolkien most probably envisioned the Balrog scene with literal wings. It's definitely how I imagined it when I first read LotR.

This is all that is required. If one imagines it with wings then, in the absence of any firm evidence to the contrary, one is quite entitled to continue imagining it as such.

[Mister Underhill]

There are so many unfounded assumptions in that article that it would take a post of a similar length to rebut them all -- "narrow" as an essential part of the definition of chasm? And even so, who says the bridge spans the chasm's width, and not its length? "Minimally, for something to be called narrow its length must be at least twice its width." Huh? According to who? His deductions about the door of the Chamber of Mazarbul are pure invention. One can wedge a door that's thirty feet wide and thirty feet tall as easily as one that's five by five. Tolkien's talking about wedging, not barring, as occurs in the movie.

Fortunately, SPM has already rebutted the only faulty assumptions that really need to be addressed.

[obloquy]

Originally Posted by Mister Underhill

There are so many unfounded assumptions in that article that it would take a post of a similar length to rebut them all -- "narrow" as an essential part of the definition of chasm? And even so, who says the bridge spans the chasm's width, and not its length? "Minimally, for something to be called narrow its length must be at least twice its width." Huh? According to who? His deductions about the door of the Chamber of Mazarbul are pure invention. One can wedge a door that's thirty feet wide and thirty feet tall as easily as one that's five by five. Tolkien's talking about wedging, not barring, as occurs in the movie.

Fortunately, SPM has already rebutted the only faulty assumptions that really need to be addressed.

Dear Mister Underhill, I think you're missing the most important and convincing point in the article: he quoted Marcus Aurelius.

I do think he envisions a much larger room than I ever did. Still, we can make reasonable assumptions about how wide the room is based on the fact that there were two rows of mighty columns upholding the roof. It seems very unlikely that the room was a mere 30 feet wide, and that these columns were only a couple feet in diameter and stood only 5 feet or so from each wall and each other.

[Folwren]

I can't grasp the difficulty in this. What part of the books are you people who think there are wings taking off of? Where are wings mentioned when Balrogs are mentioned other than in the LotR? Tell me where to look them up, look them up yourself, consider the way Tolkien writes about the Balrogs and study the way he mentions his wings. Obviously there have to be other places than in The Bridge of Khazad-dum where wings on Balrogs are mentioned or else this wouldn't be such a difficult problem.

My lack of knowledge of his other books bother me greatly.

- Folwren

[the guy who be short]

I've always imagined the (non-existant) Balrog wings to be leathery. Certainly they are portrayed so.

Now, Balrogs are creatures of fire and shadow. Leather wings would simply burn off. Ergo, Balrogs don't have wings. Well, not leathery ones.

Either that or they're fireproof, and Balrogs don't have nerves.

[Mister Underhill]

oblo -- fair point. The bottom line is that we can't draw any definitive conclusions about the sizes of various rooms, doorways, chambers, or wingspans, so arguments which claim that "the Balrog couldn't fit in there if it had wings" just don't hold water.

P.S. -- I was a little shaken up by that Marcus Aurelius quote. I was going to counter with a Moe Howard quotation, "You moron!" -- but since the author of the article doesn't post here, I didn't bother checking my sources.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Folwren

I can't grasp the difficulty in this. What part of the books are you people who think there are wings taking off of? Where are wings mentioned when Balrogs are mentioned other than in the LotR? Tell me where to look them up, look them up yourself, consider the way Tolkien writes about the Balrogs and study the way he mentions his wings. Obviously there have to be other places than in The Bridge of Khazad-dum where wings on Balrogs are mentioned or else this wouldn't be such a difficult problem.

My lack of knowledge of his other books bother me greatly.

- Folwren

There isn't a single mention of Balrogs having wings in the whole of the Legendarium (not even in LotR, if you read what Tolkien actually said). On the other hand, he clearly states that The Prancing Pony had wings, so I was wondering if anyone could work out how that flew......

[Mister Underhill]

(not even in LotR, if you read what Tolkien actually said)

Of course you have to take this with a grain of salt coming from the man who doesn't consider The Hobbit to be a Middle-earth book.

[obloquy]

Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man

A chasm does not necessarily have to be narrow. The dictionary definition that I have simply refers to a chasm as a "deep fissure". But, even accepting that the chasm was narrow, it does not follow that the length of the chasm was delineated by the width of the chamber. The chasm might well (and probably did) continue beyond the bounds of the chamber. It is entirely feasible, therefore, that the width of the chamber was equal to or less than the width of the chasm.

Valid points. I'm not sure which dictionary the author of the article is working with.

This is all that is required. If one imagines it with wings then, in the absence of any firm evidence to the contrary, one is quite entitled to continue imagining it as such.

Yeah, but I also imagined the hall much wider than 40 feet. :P

[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by obloquy

Yeah, but I also imagined the hall much wider than 40 feet.

So did I as it happens, but then imagination and enchantment are rarely fettered by such mundane matters as cold logic.