An Encyclopedia of Tolkien by David Day

Author:David Day
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canterbury Classics

NORSE MYTHOLOGY The myths and legends of the Norse people found in a rich body of medieval texts, principally such Old Norse poems as the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda, and such Icelandic sagas as the Völsunga Saga.

These myths and legends provided a deep and enduring source of inspiration for Tolkien in all of his creative works. The influence can be traced not only in specific motifs (e.g., the multiple “worlds” as in Midgard/Middle-earth, Agard/Valinor), characters (e.g., Sigurd/Túrin Turambar), races (e.g., dwarfs/Dwarves), monsters (e.g., dragons), and artifacts (e.g., swords, rings, hunting horns) but in the ethic of stoic fatalism and stubborn code of personal honor shared by most of Tolkien’s heroes and, in The Silmarillion especially, a wild and dark sense of doom.

The influence is at its clearest, as with Greco-Roman mythology, in Tolkien’s pantheon of “gods” and “goddesses,” as can be seen in the chart on page 450. There are important differences between figures that superficially appear to be “counterparts,” and, in some cases, the differences are very wide indeed as in the respective rulers of the underworld. Hel, a frightening goddess whose subjects are those who died of sickness and disease, is a very different figure to Mandos the Doomsman, the stern but benign Lord of the Halls of Awaiting, who is rather more closely aligned with the Greek Hades. Likewise, there is no counterpart in Tolkien for the important goddess Freya, as goddess of love, sexuality, and fertility; Frey, fertility god; Thor, the thunder god; or Týr, god of war.

Odin is the most complex of the Norse gods and as such had an especially wide-ranging influence on Tolkien. Aspects of his ambivalent character can be found in figures as diverse as Manwë, Morgoth, Gandalf, and Saruman.

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