Ainur in Middle-earth

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Ainur (Middle-earth)
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The Ainur (singular: Ainu) are the immortal spirits existing

such beautiful music that the world was created from it.[T 1]

History

Origins

Before the Creation,

Maiar, the guardians of Creation.[T 2]

Valar

Main article:
Valar in Middle-earth

The

Tulkas, who entered the Creation last—succeeded in exiling Morgoth into the Void, though his maleficent influence remained ingrained in the fabric of the world.[T 1]

Maiar

Main article:
Maiar in Middle-earth

Like the Valar, the Maiar included both good and evil characters. The Maiar were more numerous than the Valar, but less powerful individually. Among the good were the

Istari or Wizards, sent to Middle-earth.[T 3] Among the evil were the Balrogs or fire-demons, who were some of the Dark Lord Morgoth's most powerful servants,[T 4] and Sauron, the Dark Lord of the Third Age, a Maia who had been corrupted by Morgoth.[T 2]

Analysis

Some critics have noted the similarity of the Valar to the Æsir, the strong and combative Norse gods of Asgard.[1][2] Painting by Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, 1817

Norse Æsir

Further information:
J. R. R. Tolkien's influences § Norse

Critics such as John Garth have noted that the Valar resemble the Æsir, the gods of Asgard.[1] Thor, for example, physically the strongest of the gods, can be seen both in Oromë, who fights the monsters of Melkor, and in Tulkas, the strongest of the Valar. Manwë, the head of the Valar, has some similarities to Odin, the "Allfather",[2] while the wizard Gandalf, one of the Maiar, resembles Odin the wanderer.[3]

Christian angels

Other scholars have likened the Valar to Christian angels, intermediaries between the creator and the created world.[4] Painting by Lorenzo Lippi, c. 1645
Further information: Maiar

The theologian

Silmarillion, and the created cosmos. Like angels, they have free will and can therefore rebel against him.[4]

Mary the mother of Jesus. Dickerson states that the key point is that the Valar were "not to be worshipped".[5] He argues that as a result, the Valar's knowledge and power had to be limited, and they could make mistakes and moral errors. Their bringing of the Elves to Valinor meant that the Elves were "gathered at their knee", a moral error as it suggested something close to worship.[5]

Between pagan and Christian

The Tolkien scholar Marjorie Burns notes that Tolkien wrote that to be acceptable to modern readers, mythology had to be brought up to "our grade of assessment". In her view, between his early The Book of Lost Tales and the published book The Silmarillion, the Valar had greatly changed, "civilized and modernized", and this had made the Valar "slowly and slightly" more Christian. For example, the Valar now had "spouses" rather than "wives", and their unions were spiritual, not physical. All the same, she writes, readers still perceive the Valar "as a pantheon", serving as gods.[6]

Judith Kollmann wrote in Mythlore that "the Valar are clearly the gods of Scandinavia, Greece, and Rome, and, as well, the angels and archangels of Judeo-Christianity."[7]

Tolkien's classes of immortal beings and possible Christian and Pagan influences
Middle-earth Christianity
Classical Mythology
Norse Mythology
Eru Ilúvatar
The one God
 — —
Ainur (Valar, Maiar) of Valinor Archangels, Angels of Heaven
Olympian Gods
Vanaheim
Manwë
, a Vala
Michael the Archangel
, an Angel
Olympian Gods
 Odin, one of the Æsir
Morgoth, a fallen Vala
Sauron, a fallen Maia
The Devil
, a fallen Angel		 — Loki, a fallen member of the Æsir
Elves
, etc		 — Fauns, Satyrs, Dryads, Naiads, etc
Scandinavian folklore

Maiar compared to Valar

Grant C. Sterling, writing in Mythlore, states that the Maiar resemble the Valar in being unable to die, but differ in being able to choose to incarnate fully in forms such as men's bodies. This means that, like Gandalf and the Balrogs, they can be killed. He notes that Sauron's inability ever to take bodily form again after his defeat could be the result of having given his power to the One Ring, but that the fate of killed Maiar remains unclear.[8] Jonathan Evans, writing in The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, calls the Maiar semidivine spirits, and notes that each one is linked with one of the Valar. He states that they have "perpetual importance in the cosmic order", noting the statement in the Silmarillion that their joy "is as an air that they breathe in all their days, whose thought flows in a tide untroubled from the heights to the deeps."[9][T 5] Evans notes, too, that Arien and Tilion are central in Tolkien's myth of the Sun and Moon.[9]

Luck or providence

Main article: Luck and fate in Middle-earth

The Tolkien scholar

Eru Ilúvatar, in Bilbo's finding of the One Ring and Frodo's bearing of it; as Gandalf says, they were "meant" to have it, though it remained their choice to co-operate with this purpose.[11]

In culture

In astronomy, the Kuiper belt object 385446 Manwë is named for the king of the Valar.[12]

References

Primary

  1. ^
    Ainulindale
    "
  2. ^
    Valaquenta
    "
  3. ^ Tolkien 1980, "The Istari"
  4. ^ Tolkien 1977, ch. 3 "Of the Coming of the Elves and the Captivity of Melkor"
  5. ^ Tolkien 1977, ""Quenta Silmarillion", 10. "Of the Sindar"

Secondary

  1. ^
    ISBN 0-618-33129-8
    .
  2. ^
    ISBN 978-0-8131-2301-1
    .
  3. ^ Jøn, A. Asbjørn (1997). An investigation of the Teutonic god Óðinn; and a study of his relationship to J. R. R. Tolkien's character, Gandalf. University of New England.
  4. ^
    ISBN 978-0-664-23466-9
    .
  5. ^
    ISBN 978-0-415-86511-1
    .
  6. ISBN 0-8131-2301-1
    .
  7. ^ Kollmann, Judith (1984). "Charles Williams and Second-Hand Paganism". Mythlore. 11 (2). Article 1.
  8. ^ Sterling, Grant C. (1997). "The Gift of Death". Mythlore. 21 (4). article 3: 16–18.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
  9. ^
    ISBN 978-0-415-86511-1
    .
  10. ^
    ISBN 978-0261102750
    .
  11. ISBN 0140038779
    .
  12. ^ "385446 Manwe (2003 QW111)". Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Retrieved 16 May 2020. 385446 Manwë Discovered 2003 Aug. 25 by M. W. Buie at Cerro Tololo. Secondary (385446) I = Thorondor discovered in 2006 by K.S. Noll et al. using the Hubble Space Telescope. In J.~R.~R. Tolkien's mythology, Manwë is foremost among the deities who rule the world.

Sources

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