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The Nordic Roots Of Tolkien's Middle Earth
The recent release of the first of three maior films based on the British writer's medieval fantasy novels has prompted curiosity about where Tolkien sought the inspiration for his highly imaginative yarns. The answer, in large part, is in the Old Icelandic sagas and the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala.
By Tom DuBois and Scott Mellor
JOHN RONALD REUEL TOLKIEN (1892-1973), perhaps the most successful and most influential fantasy author of the 20th century, is known for his lively and varied chronicles of Middle-earth: the endearing children's book The Hobbit (1937), the sprawling trilogy The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) and his posthumously published Silmarillion (1977). These, along with a handful of shorter works, comprise an opus which animates and sustains a richly alluring, yet wistfully remote world, one which has captured the imaginations of millions of readers in print, and is reaching even larger audiences through the recent film Fellowship of the Ring.
Where did Tolkien come up with his fantastic beings and their strange, multisyllabic names? The answer lies in Tolkien's day job, that of an Oxford medievalist who specialized in Old and Middle English literature but who was endlessly fascinated by the cultures of the Nordic region. Particularly important to Tolkien's writings, in fact, are products of Nordic imagination: the Old Icelandic sagas, medieval Old Norse, Elias Lönnrot's Finnish national epic Kalevala, and the Finnish language. It is the influence of these Nordic sources that we explore here.
Tolkien's creative genius cannot be underestimated. Yet his creations also show influence from the medieval materials and colleagues he knew at Oxford. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis were friends and belonged to a group of Oxfordians called the Inklings, who met regularly to read from their works in progress. Lewis's creation was the Chronicles of Narnia series, which he based on biblical stories. As a number of scholars have shown, Tolkien based his works in large measure on the myth and sagas of Scandinavians; indeed, even the name of his fantasy world, Middle Earth, derives directly from the ancient Scandinavian name for the human realm between the heavens and the underworlds, Midgard.
Each of Tolkien's major works shows a slightly different set of Nordic influences. His children's tale The Hobbit draws its form in part from folk-tales--we know from the start that everyone will live happily ever after, even if frightening things may happen before then. Yet even in this work, Tolkien drew liberally from medieval literature. The names of Bilbo's 13 dwarf companions and his wizard friend Gandalf are taken from the Old Norse poem Völuspá, which was written down during the 13th century.
On the other hand, the tale's dragon, and Bilbo's awakening him when stealing a cup from his hoard, derive from the Old English epic Beowulf. In his The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien drew on Old Norse saga literature, particularly The Saga of the Volsungs. At the center of this multigenerational tale of fearless heroes, we find a cursed ring, created by the dwarf Andvari. Andvari curses the ring when it is stolen by the gods, Loki, Odin, and Hoenir to pay compensation for Otter, a giant's son whom they have killed. When the Volsung warrior Sigurd kills Fafnir, Otter's dragon-shaped brother, Andvari's
gold (and the cursed ring) pass into the Volsung family. Often in folklore rings represent fertility. Yet, in this case, the fertility has been cursed, and therefore, rather than becoming a source of life, it becomes associated with death, drawing everyone who comes into contact with it to a treacherous and untimely demise. In The Niebelungenlied, the Middle High German version of this ancient tale, the ring and all the gold from Otter's blood price are eventually thrown into the Rhine to end the curse. While The Saga of the Volsungs clearly served as a primary inspiration for Tolkien, many of the trilogy's battle scenes resemble accounts in other Icelandic sagas.
Power of a Viking Age saga
Tolkien was not the first to use The Saga of the Volsungs as the basis for a modern artistic creation. In the 19th century, Richard Wagner wrote his operatic Ring cycle, influenced by both versions of this tale. However, Tolkien made his adaptation relevant to his own time. As Tolkien explained later in life, for him, the ring in The Lord of the Rings represents warfare and the industrialization of England and the wider world. At the outset of the 20th century, industrialization seemed to offer unbelievable good fortune, yet in short time it led to war and the destruction of the natural beauty of England. The great battles described in Tolkien's work recall the events of World War I and II, through which Tolkien lived. Tolkien fought briefly in WWI until suffering an injury. Toward the end of WWII, in 1944, Tolkien wrote: "For we are attempting to conquer Sauron with the Ring. And we shall (it seems) succeed. But the penalty is as you know, to breed new Saurons, and slowly turn Men and Elves into Orcs." So, Tolkien's literary saga adapts the timeless power of a Viking Age saga to comment profoundly on the excesses and violence of his own day.
Tolkien also drew on the Finnish epic Kalevala, and this shows up most clearly in his last work, Silmarillion. In the beginning of the Silmarillion, Ilúvatar (whose name recalls the Kalevala's primordial Ilmatar) creates the world by conducting the Ainur, the greatest of the Valar spirits, in song. Melkor, the most beautiful of the Valar (reminiscent of Lucifer, the most beautiful of the Angels), tries to insert his own melody into the chorus. Three times Melkor interrupts the chorus and three times Ilúvatar must regain control of the song; those three interruptions will represent the three wars of Middle Earth. The mystical power of song in Tolkien's creation myth is reminiscent of the role song plays in the Kalevala. The conflict between Ilúvatar and Melkor may have its origins in the singing match between Väinämöinen and Joukahainen. In the Finnish epic, Joukahainen, a young upstart, challenges the old and venerable Väinämöinen, who has existed since before the world. In their resulting singing match, Väinämöinen is able to sing Joukahainen down with ease, his singing magically subduing and immobilizing his opponent.
Just as the core of The Lord of the Rings lies in the jealous desire for a ring, so the core in Silmarillion lies in the lust for a set of three magic jewels, the Silmarils, which resemble the Kalevala's magic Sampo. Forged by Fëanor, a handsome but broody smith character reminiscent of Kalevala's Ilmarinen, Tolkien's Silmarils lead to a protracted feud. The Silmarillion has its accidental incest scene also, and a character (Túrin Turambar) who takes his own life when he discovers his misdeed. As Vesa Sisättö has shown, the character of Túrin closely parallels that of the Kalevala's Kullervo: even Túrin's final words to his sword echo those which Kullervo speaks to his own sword when asking it to take his life. Such parallels reflect Tolkien's fascination with the Finnish epic.
Tolkien and language
As his career attests, Tolkien loved languages: the more mellifluous and grammatically complex the better. As a young man, Tolkien learned a variety of medieval Germanic languages, including Old English, Old Norse, and Gothic. He also discovered to his delight the Celtic language Welsh, which was to eventually become the inspiration for his "younger" Elvish language Sindarin. Another turning point, however, came when he obtained a copy of a Finnish grammar. "It was like discovering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me" he wrote years later. This interest in Finnish would lead not only to his use of the Kalevala, as detailed above, but also to the form and details of his "high" Elvish language, Quenya.
One of the most obvious signs of Finnish influence on Quenya lies in its words. Tolkien borrowed some Quenya words directly from Finnish: for example, tul- "to come," derives from the Finnish verb of the same meaning, tulla. Similarly, the Quenya word for "path," tië, finds an exact counterpart in the Finnish word tie, "road." Other loans are evident, but less direct: for example, the Quenya word for "gift," anna, probably derives from the Finnish verb root anta-/anna-, meaning "to give." Helge Kåre Fauskangor, a Norwegian Tolkien enthusiast and a prodigious scholar of Tolkien's Elvish languages, has suggested that even the name Quenya (derived from the Quenya verb quen, "to speak") may owe its origin to the medieval Scandinavian word for Finns, cwenas, kven. Still other Quenya words look tantalizingly Finnish, albeit with a shift in meaning: for example, Quenya cirja is phonologically identical to the Finnish word for "book," kirja. But the Quenya word means not "book" but "high-prowed ship." Perhaps for Tolkien, as for his millions of readers afterward, books are truly "ships" of the imagination.
Tolkien's real indebtedness to Finnish, however, becomes apparent when we look at the grammar with which he endowed his high Elvish language. Like Finnish, Quenya is rich in suffixes that alter the meaning of the noun or verb to which they are attached. Many Quenya suffixes are drawn directly from Finnish. Finnish is also an agglutinative language, which means that it may add multiple suffixes to its words to further augment or refine their meanings. Noun suffixes can be used to convey location, number (singular or plural), and even ownership. Thus, for instance, the Finnish word kirjoissani is made up of the following parts: kirja (the noun "book"), -i- (a plural marker), -ssa (a case ending meaning "in"), and -ni (a possessive marker meaning "my"). Together, these syllables express the same meaning as the English phrase "in my books." Tolkien's Quenya follows its source closely, although it requires that the suffixes be added in a different order. Thus the Quenya parmanyassen can be broken down into the components parma ("book"),nya- ("my"), -sse- ("in"), and -n (plural marker).
Quenya is no slavish copy of Finnish, however. Other grammatical features are drawn from sources like Latin, Old English, and Old Norse. For instance, Quenya has a dual form for nouns; i.e., an ending can designate a pair of things rather than merely one or more-than-one, as in modern English and Finnish. Dual forms for nouns occur in medieval languages like Old English and Old Norse, and Tolkien probably drew the feature from these. In his system of verb endings, Tolkien also altered the Finnish -mme ("we") to have two different forms: where Finnish lensimme means "we flew," a Quenya speaker can distinguish between lendemmë "we went, but without you" and the possible lendelmë "we went, and you came along." This distinction between "exclusive" and "inclusive" we is found in various languages around the world, but not in Finnish. Picking and choosing from among the diverse languages and linguistic features of the world, Tolkien was able to craft a language full of the nuances and eccentricities he found most appealing. Quenya, indeed language in general, plays a key role in the cornplex history and mythology of Tolkien's Middle Earth. Like the sagas, Tolkien's texts are peppered with poetry, sometimes written in Tolkien's invented languages. Tolkien even goes so far as to create two writing systems, one for the dwarves and one for the elves. The writing system for the dwarves is based on the English, German, and Scandinavian system of writing known as runes. The origins of the Elvish writing system are harder to ascertain. It may have been based on the old roman cursive writing found from the later half of the Roman Empire, or possibly an old Celtic writing system. Given Tolkien's primary influences, the latter is more likely.
Pronunciation guide
Of the poems found in the The Lord of the Rings arguably the most influential in Quenya is found at the end of the first book, in the chapter "Farewell to Lórien." "Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen!" writes the bard, quickly followed by the translation for those of us whose Quenya may be a bit rusty, "Ah! like gold fall the leaves in the wind, long years numberless as the wings of trees!" In 1967, Tolkien was recorded reading a number of the poems from his trilogy, among them poems written in Elvish. By recording these, Tolkien gives voice and a pronunciation guide as to how he envisioned his languages sounding. He read two of his Elvish poems, one written in Quenya and another in Sindarin. While the Sindarin text sounds like Welsh, the Quenya texts echo the vowel harmony, stress pattern and syllable quantity of Finnish.
In 1978, the first attempt was made to produce a film version of Tolkien's complex trilogy. In it, the filmmakers included only one of the Elvish songs, using it as indistinct background music. In 2001, a new version of The Lord of the Rings was produced in three parts, with part 1 already released, and parts 2 and 3 scheduled to come out in December 2002 and in 2003. The filming of The Fellowship of the Ring involved a host of difficult tasks, including the creation of dialogues in Elvish: conversations not found in Tolkien's text. In keeping with contemporary tastes in the world of fantasy literature, the filmmakers used Celtic languages as their modem language model. Interestingly, Tolkien's wistful Finnish-sounding Quenya is conspicuously absent: all the Elvish language seems to be in Sindarin.
Tolkien has captured the imagination of readers and film audiences the world over. Generations to come will enjoy and interpret his works of literature and his linguistic inventions. Perhaps, at least for some, these will lead them back to the Nordic influences and languages that excited and inspired Tolkien in the first place.
Tom Dubois is a professor of Finnish at the University of Wisconsin in Madison who has written books on pre-Christian Scandinavia and the Kalevala.
Scott Mellor is a lecturer in Swedish at the same institution and a linguist who has written on folklore and Scandinavian languages.
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