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Richard Hollenbach

Dr. Elizabeth Wylie-Ernst

GER 1500

Spring 2015

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Two Towers of Inspiration: Beowulf and The Volsung Saga

So you know the story: a young Hobbit joins a group of dwarves on a quest to win back their kingdom, with the help of an old sorcerer. Along the way he finds a magic ring in a cave that allows this hobbit to become invisible. Many, many, years later he bequeaths this ring to his grandson, who then embarks upon his own journey with the ring, until he drops it into a volcano.

Everybody should know that there was the plot line for The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings

Trilogy, written by the one and only J.R.R. Tolkien. Well, did you know that there were many old European poems and stories that inspired the writing of his novels? In fact, Tolkien was a knowledgeable scholar on poems such as Beowulf; in 1936 he gave a lecture on the poem, focusing on monsters and critics (is there a difference?). This Old English poem, however, was not the only story that may have influenced his writing; Norse sagas and myths also affected the creation of his novels. Many aspects of the poem Beowulf as well as the Saga of the Volsungs such as characters, objects, plotlines, and themes find themselves incorporated into Tolkien’s novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

First let us look at the poem Beowulf, written in the 8th century by an anonymous

Christian Monk. The story, set in Northern England, begins with the kingdom of Heorot, ruled by Hrothgar. At first the kingdom was all well, until a descendant of Cain (who killed his brother

Able in the Bible) discovers Heorot. He goes into the big hall and kills thirty men the first night, then continues to take the lives of the knights and nobles for many years. Suddenly a Geatish Hollenbach 2

hero named Beowulf arrives, and in one night kills Grendel the monster with his bare hands. For his great feat, Hrothgar rewards him greatly. Sometime later Grendel’s mother appears and wreaks havoc on Heorot; Beowulf responds by venturing to her underwater lair and disposing of her as well. He utilizes an ancient giant’s sword laying there since no other sword would harm her, and he kills the mother. Now a national hero, Beowulf becomes King, and establishes a good relationship between the Geats and the Danes; he also becomes an honorary part of Hrothgar’s family. Decades later, Beowulf decides to reclaim treasure that has been guarded by a dragon in a mountain. Taking many of his best men with him, he travels to the dragon to fight him. Right before they fight, however, all the men but Wielaf run away in fear. Beowulf kills the dragon, but not before it poisons him; as a result, they both die. Wielaf alone survives to tell Beowulf’s heroic tale (Hieatt).

Now let us look at some surface level comparisons. Both (for the sake of ease, we will consider the combination of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as one story) stories contain monsters, people, treasure, and a dragon. People are terrorized by many evil monster, and they need a hero or many heroes to come to their aid and protect them. These same heroes travel to hidden treasure guarded by a dragon. In the end the dragon faces defeat and treasure becomes a reward. There exist other connections between the two books. For example, many consider

Middle-Earth to be shaped after Heorot, the kingdom in Beowulf (Wainwright). Tolkien most likely took inspiration from the poem’s landscape while creating his world. Another superficial comparison deals with a melting sword; Beowulf’s sword dissolves following the slaying of

Grendel’s mother, while Merry’s sword melts after a blow from a Nazgûl (Wainwright, Tolkien).

One more example comes when the Fellowship honors Boromir’s death by setting him adrift with treasures and weapons in his boat (Tolkien). This act resembles Norse acts of burial as well Hollenbach 3

as Anglo-Saxon; the ritual also appears in the beginning of Beowulf when Scyld Scefing’s body is placed on his ship and set adrift in the sea (Wainwright). Not a modern ritual in any way,

Tolkien must have read about it in one of these sources, and decided to include it into his tale.

There already exist some great evidence that Tolkien fashioned his books using Beowulf as a source.

However these petty comparisons are not good enough, let us go deeper. The hero

Beowulf can be directly compared to the character Aragorn; both are considered very skilled warriors, containing strength of many men. Each man takes a crown, not due to desire of power or thirst of wealth, but from earned right and reward for courage. Each character even exhibits a sense of sadness around them, making both characters serious, focuses, and pensive for the survival of others (Morin). Another direct connection comes in the beginning of Beowulf and in the third book of The Lord of the Rings. In the poem, a guard states “What kind of men are you who arrive / rigged out for combat in coats of mail, / sailing here over the sea-lanes / in your steep-hulled boat? I have / been stationed / as lookout on this coast for a long time” (Hieatt). A similar guard states a very similar thing in the finale of the trilogy, “Who are you that come heedless over the plain thus strangely clad, riding horses like to our own horses? Long have we kept guard here, and we have watched you from afar” (Tolkien). Clearly there was some type of connection between the two guards’ statements, maybe a nostalgic act or a statement of remembrance for the older poem. Now one common theme between the two stories is the next generation of heroes; after a main character dies or gets older, a new hero takes over. In Beowulf, the generational transition is from Beowulf to Wielaf; similarly, Bilbo Baggins is replaced by his grandson Frodo as a new hero. Another common theme proves to be blood revenge. For example, Grendel’s mother comes to avenge her son’s death by attacking Heorot, taking her Hollenbach 4

son’s hand back, and fighting Beowulf in her lair. Thorin Oakenshield, in The Hobbit, also displays similar motives for reclaiming his kingdom under the mountain after the dragon takes it away from his ancestors (fun fact: Oakenshield is a name found in the Prose Edda). Another example would be that Beowulf fights the dragon in vengeance for his kingdom’s devastation and to protect it from total destruction (Rauer). Comparatively in The Hobbit, Bard the Bowman slays Smaug the dragon to prevent him from destroying the rest of Lake Town, most of which already faced annihilation (Tolkien). The theme of blood revenge and vengeance finds its way in both stories, keeping up the ancient themes of honor and glory by slaying a dangerous beast and protecting the kingdom. One more theme proves to be courage or a hero confronting fears. Bilbo

Baggins faces many of his fears along his journey, from the darkness of a cave, to fighting dangerous creatures, to facing a dragon all by himself. Frodo and his friends also face fearful situations from the Mines of Moria to Shelob’s Lair and much more. Beowulf travels underwater to the lair of Grendel’s Mother, much different than fighting her son in Heorot’s main hall. All of the characters face their fears at one time or another, most of the time alone, but every time confronting the danger and surviving it (Wainwright). By all the evidence above, clearly Tolkien had at least a little bit of inspiration from Beowulf in terms of details, themes, and characters, many to a much deeper level than just surface comparisons.

In his lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” Tolkien makes a very interesting statement; he describes Beowulf as not “the hero of a heroic lay,” putting him down by saying that “[h]e has no enmeshed loyalties, nor hapless love” (Tolkien). The author clearly degrades

Beowulf’s level of grandeur in those statements, making him seem like an ordinary human.

There exists a connection to Tolkien’s choice of main characters when looking at Beowulf in this light. Both Bilbo and Frodo are ordinary hobbits, neither skilled fighters nor magical beings; Hollenbach 5

neither character came from a royal bloodline, or developed any special talent. With Tolkien’s mindset of Beowulf being an ordinary character, he must have used that to fashion his characters in his novels.

More than just the poem, Tolkien most likely had some influence on his novels from Old

English itself, in which Beowulf was first written. One connection would be the choice of names in the trilogy and Old English names. The prefix Éo-, the Old English word for horse, appears often in reference to tribes of skilled horse riders, or in names of horse riding heroes (Morin).

Another example is Frodo, which in Old English translates to Froda; that name is found in

Beowulf (Wainwright). Since this language reaches few ears of people today, Tolkien clearly did his research when picking names for characters. Another careful choice of character naming is

Saruman, also known as the White Wizard; he plays the role of an antagonist, although he originally may have been a good character inside. His name might come from the Old English word for cunning, which is “Searu;” thus his name translates to “Searuman”, turned into

“Saruman” to keep with the Mercian form of words (Morin). Including many references to Old

English in his novels, Tolkien proves to his readers that he not only drew upon Beowulf for inspiration, but the language in which it was first written.

Why might Tolkien draw upon this old work so much in writing his fantasy novels? Well, it was definitely not because he had writer’s block and could not come up with an engaging story line. In fact, the question can be answered by knowing his profession. Since he was a professor at

Oxford in addition to being a writer, Tolkien probably fashioned his novels with specific connections to Beowulf in order to pass on the knowledge of the poem, instead of letting it be forgotten. In one of his famous lectures on the monsters and the critics of Beowulf, he states that

“Beowulf is an important document,” clearly displaying his views on the poems (Tolkien). Later Hollenbach 6

he uses an allegory about a stone tower (only one, not Two Towers?). In it, a man inherits a field which contained an old stone; he took some of it and built a tower out of it. Friends of the man chided him for not building a house with it, calling the tower nonsensical (Tolkien). Many years later, after hearing the story, some scholars interpreted the pieces of the allegory to represent the following: the man is the author of Beowulf, the friends are the Beowulf experts, and the tower is

Beowulf. Tolkien, in the end, represents the only one who truly understands the Old English poem, mostly because he studied it at great lengths. One of the scholars Michael Drout states that

“the single best way to understand and appreciate Tolkien’s fiction is to become literate in medieval literature” (Drout). Thus, to get the full understanding and enjoyment out of Tolkien’s novels, one must study up on stories and poems such as Beowulf. Tolkien would not advise these extra readings if his novels did not draw upon them; as a result, the author laces his stories with aspects of Beowulf in order to rebirth the story a bit, and pass on certain aspects of the poem.

Wainwright also brings up an interesting point about nostalgia. He states that “[s]uch themes inform a lot of great literature, and they stand behind the author of Beowulf’s attempt to marry up the lost world of Germanic Legend with the reality of Christian England”

(Wainwright). This fact also connects to his personal life experiences living in Europe during

World War I. The longing of quietness right after a hurricane of change impacted England after the change to Christianity as much as it affected Tolkien when WWI hit home as much as it affected the hobbit when he left the calm Shire for a dangerous journey. There exists a clear theme of nostalgia and a sense of great loss that affected the writers of both the poem and the trilogy.

Although Beowulf proved to have a huge influence on Tolkien when he wrote his novels, there are other stories and sagas that may have influenced him. Another tale of a hero facing Hollenbach 7

grave danger was written anonymously centuries after Beowulf in 1250 A.D named the Saga of the Volsungs. Commonly referred to as “The Dragon Slayer Epic,” it depicts the life of Sigurd, his battle with a dragon, and the death of his people. In fact, this dragon slaying tradition may have even predated Beowulf, and may have been one of the sources for that part of the poem

(Rauer). The saga begins with the stories about Sigurd’s ancestors, starting with Odin the Norse god, then Sigi, and Rerir. Then the birth of Volsung, who was much stronger than most men after staying in the womb much longer than usual. His wife Hjold bore him a son, Sigmund; the son pulls a special sword out from a trunk that was put there by Odin. When he grows up, he and his sister Signy bear a son named Sinfjotli, who don animals’ skins together, and transform into wolves until they could take them off and burn them. Sigmund, now king, marries Hjordis and has a son named Sigurd with her. Sigmund loses favor with Odin, and dies in battle; his son then becomes the main focus for the rest of the novel. Sigurd is raised by Regin, who teaches the boy chess and other strategies for battle, instead of leisure activities. When Sigurd grows up, he kills the dragon Fafnir; however, right before he does so, the hero reveals his family name to the dragon. Sigurd eats Fafnir’s heart and gains knowledge and becomes able to communicate with birds; they tell him to take the dragon’s treasure after it dies. Since Sigurd reveals his family name, the whole line receives a curse. Sigurd goes to marry Brynhild, but a forgetfulness ale given to him by Grimhild causes him to forget her. Instead he marries Gudrun; however, after a battle between the queens, Sigurd sleeps with Brynhild. Guttorm, not a blood brother of Sigurd, kills him for Gunnar and Hogni; Brynhild then kills herself when she wakes up. Gudrun remarries two times, however she ends up dying, along with her sons, at the hands of Odin

(Byock). Hollenbach 8

Although this story proceeds quite differently than Tolkien’s story, there are still a plethora of surface level similarities. Like Beowulf, there exists a dragon guarding treasure that faces defeat at the hands of a hero. Fafnir greatly resembles Smaug in his attempt to “hoard the treasure” for himself, hiding and patiently waiting for a hero to “challenge” him (Rauer). Since

Beowulf predates this saga, the Old English poem may have even been the inspiration for it, giving Tolkien two places to look for inspiration (Rauer). Another example comes when

Sigmund and Sinfjotli don the wolf skins, they turn into wolves for ten days until they can shed the skins and burn them (Byock). This resembles Beorn in The Hobbit who shape-shifts into a bear; he does not have to don a skin, however he does take the form of the animal like Sigmund and Sinfjotli (Tolkien). (Another fun fact: the men in the house where Sigmund and his son find the skins are wearing gold rings, adding to the list of ring appearances). Like Beowulf, there already appears to be a collection of superficial similarities.

Playing on the surface of our literature sandbox proves not to be enough, time to grab shovels and start to dig further. While at Rivendell, Aragorn has his family heirloom, Narsil the sword, re-forged from its two broken pieces into one new stronger sword; Sigurd similarly has his family sword Gram re-forged (Tolkien, Byock). Although forging a sword proves to be nothing new, re-forging a family heirloom proves to be a little less common. However Tolkien incorporated that fact into his story, drawing upon the older saga for inspiration.

In addition to using aspects of the Volsung saga, Tolkien actually wrote a version of the saga titled The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún. Roberts, in writing a review on the book tells us

“that Sigurd and Gudrún has been thus presented for our reading pleasure, in 2009, has everything to do with Middle Earth and nothing with Snorri Sturlson” (Roberts). He means that this story contributed a lot to Tolkien’s artificial world where his novels take place, and the two Hollenbach 9

Edda’s have less than so. Well, maybe not a lot; Tolkien actually stated that the poems did not have much to do with The Lord of the Rings. What it does mean, however, is that the author did lots of research into Norse mythology and stories in order to write this book. That means some things he learned may have found their way into his novels, such as the similarities between the novels and the saga stated before. Thus, in researching and writing this newer version of the

Saga of the Volsungs influenced his writing of his trilogy a least a tiny bit. Roberts writes in his review of the saga that “[i]n other words, what makes The Lord of the Rings particularly valuable as fantasy is the way it bridges old Anglo-Saxon fascinations with heroism, doom and catastrophe with modern fascinations with guilt, desire, power, compromise, and the hidden springs of psychological life. There's nothing so nuanced, or complex in Sigurd and Gudrún. No bridge, but an embalmed limb of the dead past” (Roberts). He compares the bridge that Tolkien’s novels create to a much less quality but none-the-less a bridge between worlds. The Lord of the

Rings might be the Golden Gate Bridge while Sigurd and Gudrûn might be a rope bridge missing a couple planks, but both stories make that unique connection between old heroism with modern desire, ancient doom with new power. Although the dragon slayer epic might not remind one of the plotline of the story of the rings, different aspects of it find themselves hidden in the novels.

Although Tolkien heavily drew up Beowulf and the Saga of the Volsungs, there are many aspects of Norse Mythology and other stories that he may have drawn upon for inspiration. One example is the correlation between Midgard and Middle Earth; according to Norse Mythology,

Midgard is one of the many worlds in the Universe. Living in Midgard are humans, dwarves, giants, and more. The Lay of Eärendel even translates Midgard to Middle Earth (Wettstein).

Tolkien probable stumbled upon that translation in his studies, and he named his fictional world after it. Elves also appeared in Midgard, and thus appeared in Tolkien’s work; he even created a Hollenbach 10

language for them in his early adulthood (Wettstein). Gandalf’s horse Shadowfax is claimed to be the fastest horse on Earth: Odin’s horse Sleipnir also claims the same thing (although there is a six leg count difference). Another object appearing often in Norse Mythology is a ring, which obviously appears in the lord of the RINGS; examples include Draupnir (the ring of Odin), and the Ring of the Niflungs (Wettstein). Other similarities include the importance of swords, the use of runes (many of the runes created by Tolkien resemble the Futhark), and the presence of magic.

Just because these things appear in both the novels and the mythology does not mean that

Tolkien took everything from the past; it means that the author, who studied these myths very closely, took some inspiration from these stories and subtly incorporated them into his books. To prove this, take this one deeper comparison. In the Poetic Edda, specifically the Lay of

Vafthrundnir, Odin engages in a riddle contest with a giant to find out who has greater knowledge (Wettstein). In The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins engages in a very similar contest with

Gollum deep underground in a cave, to find out who was more cunning. Clearly there may have been some connection between the two stories, even though the situations in which the riddle battle takes place are vastly different. The list goes on and on, but the point remains; not only did

Tolkien use his English sources, he greatly studied and used his Norse sources in his writings.

A knowledgeable scholar of Old English literature as well as Norse mythology, J. R. R.

Tolkien clearly drew inspiration for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings from sources such as

Beowulf and The Saga of the Volsungs. Tolkien taught about Beowulf in his lectures, proving that he studied the poem in great detail. It makes sense that many aspects of the work appear in his works, such as characters, plots, and themes. In fact, Beowulf finds itself very incorporated into

The Lord of the Rings, almost like he wants to pass on pieces of the poem to future readers, so that they will go back and read it. In addition to the Old English poem, literature from Norse Hollenbach 11

mythology finds itself in Tolkien’s work; one important example, The Dragon Slayer epic, or the

Volsung Saga, proves to be one often cited example. Like Beowulf, many characters and objects similarly appear in both works; however, Tolkien seems to draw upon other myths of Norse origin as well, like Gods and other mystical beings. Again, it might seem on the surface that the author takes these aspects of older works because they were popular in their time. The truth exists that Tolkien most likely incorporates parts of these ancient tales in order to pass on the knowledge of them, so that they are not forgotten. His ultimate goal is for all of his readers to finish reading his books, and then pick up any of these above works in order to enjoy them as well. J. R. R. Tolkien seems to be the man who inherited the field, in which he found pieces of stone from older buildings and walls; instead of casting them aside, he put them together into one very beautiful and coherent tower, with an inscription in the inside describing what pieces came from where, encouraging visitors to look from more pieces of history.

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