Then he cast aside his shield, and wielded an axe two-handed; and it is sung that the axe smoked in the black blood of the troll-guard of Gothmog until it withered, and each time he slew Húrin cried: Aurë entuluva! Day shall come again! Seventy times he uttered that cry; but they took him at last alive for the Orcs grappled him with their hands, which clung to him still though he hewed off their arms; and ever their numbers were renewed, until at last he fell buried beneath them. [*The Silmarillion, p. 195]
Likewise, in The Lord of the Rings, Book V, Chapter 6, Éomer lets blow the horns to rally all men to his banner that could come thither; for he thought to make a great shield-wall at the last, and stand, and fight there on foot till all fell, and do deeds of song on the fields of Pelennor, though no man should be left in the West to remember the last King of the Mark. On a differfent level, the same spirit is expressed by Frodo, and especially Sam, as they struggle across the desolation of Mordor to Mount Doom, and Frodo realizes that
at best their provision would take them to their goal; and when the task was done, there they would come to an end, alone, houseless, foodless in the midst of a terrible desert. There could be no return.
So that was the job I felt I had to do when I started, thought Sam: to help Mr. Frodo to the last step and then die with him? Well, if that is the job then I must do it .
But even as hope died in Sam, or seemed to die, it was turned to a new strength. Sams plain hobbit-face grew stern, almost grim, as the will hardened in him . [bk. VI, ch. 3]
*Priscilla Tolkien once said of her father and his works of fiction:
When thinking of his imagination I feel that like his scholarship it was overwhelmingly Northern European in every detail of his deepest loves and fears. The ideas aroused by the sufferings of long, hard, cruel winters, the dazzling beauty of the short flowering of Spring and Summer, and the sadness of seeing this once more pass back into the darkness; the symbolism of darkness and light is continual in [*The Silmarillion] for good and evil, despair and hope. Such a climate also nourished the virtues which he held in such high regard: heroism and endurance, loyalty, and fidelity, both in love and in war. [Talk Given at Church House, Westminster on 16.9.77 by Priscilla Tolkien, Amon Hen 29 [?November 1977], p. 4]
See also Norse Mythological Elements in The Hobbit by Mitzi M. Brunsdale, Mythlore 9, no. 4, whole no. 34 (Winter 1983); Fredrik J. Heinemann, Tolkien and Old Icelandic Literature, Scholarship and Fantasy (1993); Gloria St. Clair, An Overview of the Northern Influences on Tolkiens Works and Volsunga Saga and Narn: Some Analogies, both in Proceedings of the J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference 1992, ed. Patricia Reynolds and Glen H. GoodKnight (1995); Tom Shippey, Tolkien and Iceland: The Philology of Envy (2002), revised in Roots and Branches: Selected Papers on Tolkien (2007); Marjorie Burns, Perilous Realms: Celtic and Norse in Tolkiens Middle-earth (2005) and Old Norse Literature in J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, ed. Michael D.C. Drout (2006); Dimitra Fimi, Tolkien and Old Norse Antiquity in Old Norse Made New: Essays on the Post Medieval Reception of Old Norse Literature and Culture, ed. David Clark and Carl Phelpstead (2007); J.S. Ryan, Trolls and Other Themes: William Craigies Significant Folkloric Influence on the Style of J.R.R. Tolkiens The Hobbit in Tolkiens View: Windows into his World (2009); and Mary R. Bowman, Refining the Gold: Tolkien, The Battle of Maldon, and the Northern Theory of Courage, Tolkien Studies 7 (2010).
The Northmen and the Wainriders
see Cirion and Eorl and the Friendship of Gondor and Rohan
Note on the Landing of the Five Wizards and Their Functions
and OperationsseeThe Five Wizards
Note on Final Consonants see Primitive Quendian Structure
Notes for Qenya Declensions. Description of the Common Eldarin and Old Qenya elements and features that underlie the Qenya declensions (p. xvii), published in Parma Eldalamberon 21 (2013), pp. 669, edited with commentary and notes by Christopher Gilson, Patrick H. Wynne, and Arden R. Smith.
Written on six pages, with revisions, Notes for Qenya Declensions is dated by the editors to the early 1950s. It is closely based on, and probably composed not very long after, an earlier document, *Nouns.
Notes on Motives in the Silmarillion. Essay, published with notes and commentary as text VII in the section Myths Transformed of *Morgoths Ring (1993), pp. 394408.
The work, probably from the late 1950s, exists in two versions. The earlier is a four-page manuscript inscribed Some notes on the philosophy of the Silmarillion, described by *Christopher Tolkien as rapidly expressed and without a clear ending (Morgoths Ring, p. 394). The later version, greatly expanded and more carefully expressed, was left unfinished in mid-sentence after twelve manuscript pages.
The notes compare Sauron and Morgoth in *The Silmarillion, their characters and motives, their relative power at various times, and the way they used it. Morgoth had no plan: unless destruction and reduction to nil of a world in which he had only a share can be called a plan (p. 397). But Sauron had never reached this stage of nihilistic madness. He did not object to the existence of the world, so long as he could do what he liked with it (p. 396). Then follows a discussion of the reasons why the Valar were reluctant to come into open battle with Morgoth, concluding that Morgoths power and being were disseminated throughout the world the whole of middle-earth was Morgoths Ring and to try to destroy him might well end in reducing Middle-earth to chaos, possibly even all Arda; whereas the final eradication of Sauron was achievable by the destruction of the Ring into which his power had been concentrated (p. 400).
In a section developed fully only in the second text, Tolkien suggests reasons for the apparent inaction of the Valar against Morgoth during the First Age, and that their eventual intervention was precisely timed. Manwë with his knowledge of the Music and power of direct recourse to and communication with Eru must have grasped with great clarity that it was the essential mode of the process of history in Arda that evil should constantly arise, and that out of it new good should constantly come (p. 402). The second version ends soon after turning its attention to the later resistance to Sauron, but the published text continues with the first version, from the point where the two texts diverge, with a brief philosophical consideration of the future of Arda.
Finally Tolkien turns to the question of the origin of Orcs: Part of the Elf-Man idea gone wrong. Though as for Orcs, the Eldar believed Morgoth had actually bred them by capturing Men (and Elves) early [i.e. in the early days of their existence] and increasing to the utmost any corrupt tendencies they possessed (p. 406). (See also *Orcs.)
Christopher Tolkien comments that despite its incomplete state this is the most comprehensive account that my father wrote of how, in his later years, he had come to interpret the nature of Evil in his mythology (p. 406). See also *Good and Evil.
Notes on Óre. A single typescript sheet, apparently the beginning of a substantial essay on the common Eldarin root ȜOR and its descendants, edited with notes by Carl F. Hostetter, was published in Vinyar Tengwar 41 (July 2000), pp. 1119.
In *The Lord of the Rings Appendix E Quenya óre is glossed heart (inner mind), as used in a phrase such as my heart tells me, but heart is not suitable, except in brevity, since óre does not correspond in sense to any of the English confused uses of heart . The essay was to have discussed what the óre was for Elvish thought and speech, and the nature of its counsels (p. 11) but does not proceed very far. The sheet was found between the typescript of the finished part of *The Shibboleth of Fëanor and the manuscript draft for an unwritten excursus on the names of the sons of Fëanor. It seems unconnected with that work, though probably contemporary with it, 1968 or later.
Pages of manuscript draft material give some indications of how the essay might have continued. Among these is an interesting note, more concerned with the *Athrabeth than etymology. The writer is not identified, but seems to be a Man of a later period. After summarizing the Athrabeth it continues: For (as far as we can now judge [from]) the legends (mainly of Elvish origin probably, though coming down to us through Men) it would seem clear that Men were not intended to have Elvish longevity, limited only by the life of the Earth, but were intended to enjoy a much greater life-span before passing from the circles of the world. The Elves believed that the life-span of Men had been shortened as a result of some rebellion against Eru in the form of accepting Melkor as God, after which only the wisest of Men could distinguish between [?his] evil promptings and true óre (p. 14).
On Eldarin and Quenya, see *Languages, Invented.
The Notion Club Papers. Story, published with commentary and notes in *Sauron Defeated (1992), pp. 145327.
SYNOPSIS
The heart of The Notion Club Papers is presented as the surviving part of a record of meetings of an *Oxford society during 1986 and 1987 (some forty years in the future when Tolkien wrote the work). Following some preliminaries, the first of its two parts (as originally conceived) begins with a brief report of a meeting in November 1986, notes the omission of one or two minor entries, and continues with an account of the meeting of 20 February 1987. Michael Ramer, one of the members of the club, has finished reading a space-travel story he has written. This leads to discussion of the credibility of the machine or other device used by writers of space stories to take characters to their destination. Another member, Rupert Dolbear, says that the problem with Ramers work is that it is out of keeping with its frame-machinery, and challenges Ramer to say how he got to the place described in the story.
At the next meeting, Ramer explains that he has considered methods of space-travel both for a story and for himself, and that he has tried to train his mind to travel in his dreams. He describes various dream experiences, some inspired by stories he had written long ago, some fragmentary, such as a Green Wave towering over fields, and visions of the planets of our solar system as well as unknown worlds. When he mentions the names of his worlds, the members discuss language and the weak methods of communication common in space-travel stories. Ramer says he has more dreams about *Atlantis than about space, and mentions the Wave towering over the land, a Great Door, and the Elvish En-keladim (all aspects of Tolkiens mythology, in which *Númenor is associated with Atlantis and his own dreams of a great wave). Ramer ends his account by describing a vision of a disorderly planet, then of an area in which the inhabitants and their buildings spread like ringworm; but as he came closer, he realized that he had been watching a speeded-up history of the Thames Valley and Oxford.