Dragons in Middle-earth

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"Glaurung" redirects here. For the genus of fossil reptiles, see Glaurung (reptile).

Dragons
In-universe information
Created by
Withered Heath, Lonely Mountain
Sub-racesFire-drakes
Cold-drakes

the Beowulf dragon
.

Dragons appear in the early stories of The Book of Lost Tales, including the mechanical war-dragons of The Fall of Gondolin. Tolkien went on to create Smaug, a powerful and terrifying adversary, in The Hobbit; dragons are only mentioned in passing in The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien's conception of the dragon has been adopted both in games loosely based on his Middle-earth writings, and by other

taxa
, including girdled lizards, shield bugs, and ants, carry the name Smaug.

Development

Fafnir. Wood-carving in Hylestad Stave Church, 12th–13th century. Smaug resembles Fafnir in several respects.[1]

Dragons are already present in

Third Age, the dragons bred in the Northern Waste and Withered Heath north of the Grey Mountains.[T 3]

Characteristics

In Tolkien's works, dragons are

Melkor's first attempts to use them against his enemies failed, as they were not yet powerful enough to be useful in battle.[T 4]

Named dragons

Tolkien named only four dragons in his Middle-earth writings. Another,

Chrysophylax Dives, appears in Farmer Giles of Ham, a story separate from the Middle-earth corpus. Chrysophylax is a fire-breathing dragon, described as "cunning, inquisitive, greedy, well-armoured, but not over bold".[T 8]

Glaurung

Glaurung, first introduced in The Silmarillion, is described as the Father of Dragons in Tolkien's legendarium, and the first of the Urulóki, the Fire-drakes of

Angband. He is a main antagonist in The Children of Húrin, in which he sets in motion events that bring about the protagonist Túrin Turambar's eventual suicide before being slain by him.[T 9] Glaurung is shown to use his ability to control and enslave Men using his mind to wipe the memory of Túrin's sister Nienor, though it was restored after Glaurung had perished. He is described as having four legs and the ability to breathe fire, but no wings.[T 10]

Ancalagon the Black

A painting of Ancalagon the Black

Ancalagon the Black (

Thangorodrim, destroying both Ancalagon and the towers. With his last and mightiest defender slain, Morgoth was defeated and made captive, thus ending the War of Wrath.[T 4]

Scatha

Scatha was a mighty "long-worm" of the

War of the Ring, crucial in The Scouring of the Shire, came from this hoard.[3]

Smaug

Smaug in fan art
Main article: Smaug
Further information: Beowulf and Middle-earth § Smaug

Smaug was the last named dragon of Middle-earth. He was slain by

Erebor (the Lonely Mountain). The Arkenstone was buried right in the pile he slept on, but Smaug never noticed it. Smaug had only a single weakness: there was a hole in his jewel encrusted underbelly on his left breast area. The hobbit Bilbo Baggins discovered this weakness, and the information led to Smaug's death above Esgaroth.[T 14]

Analysis

Further information: Smaug and Beowulf and Middle-earth § Smaug

Tolkien's dragons were inspired by medieval stories, including those about

Fafnir of the Völsunga saga.[4]

The scholar of Icelandic literature Ármann Jakobsson writes that with the encounter with Smaug, the story in The Hobbit becomes "more unexpected, entangled, ambiguous, and political". He argues that Tolkien was effectively translating the subtext of his Old Norse sources, creating in his dragon a far more subtle, uncanny, and frightening monster than those in the earlier, more or less unconnected, travel narrative episodes.[5]

The use of dragons as an

avarice)."[7] In Honegger's view, Tolkien's innovation, seen best in Smaug, is his creation of "a distinct 'dragon personality'". Whereas Glaurung is a mythical element, and Ancalagon is merely ferocious, Smaug and Chrysophylax Dives "go beyond both the 'primitive' draco ferox ("fierce dragon") of myths and legends as well as the whimsical draco timidus ("timid dragon") of contemporary children's literature."[7] Thus, Honegger concludes, Tolkien's "good dragons" admit their mythical ancestry but are at the same time recognisably modern characters.[7]

Legacy

In games and novels

When

real-time strategy game The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II, based on Peter Jackson's film trilogy, there is a dragon named Drogoth.[10] In The Lord of the Rings: War in the North, players encounter the dragon Úrgost.[11]

Honegger writes that Tolkien's conception of dragons "as intelligent beings with a distinct personality" has been adopted by fantasy authors with a wide range of styles, including Barbara Hambly, Ursula K. Le Guin, Anne McCaffrey, Christopher Paolini, and Jane Yolen.[7]

In science

Further information: List of things named after J. R. R. Tolkien and his works § Named after animals

Several taxa have been named after Tolkien's dragons. Two extinct genera have been named after Ancalagon:

Free State, South Africa.[16] Among the various species named after Smaug is the shield bug Planois smaug, so called because of its size and its status "sleeping" in the researcher's collections for about 60 years until it was discovered in 2015.[17][18] An ant species has been named Tetramorium smaug.[19]

References

Primary

  1. ISBN 0 04 820015 8
  2. ^ a b Tolkien 1984b, ch. 2 "Turambar and the Foalókë"
  3. ^ Tolkien 1955, Appendix B, "The Third Age"
  4. ^ a b c Tolkien 1977, ch. 24 "Of the Voyage of Eärendil and the War of Wrath"
  5. ^ Tolkien 1977, ch. 13 "Of the Return of the Noldor"
  6. ^ Tolkien 1955, Appendix A, "Durin's Folk"
  7. ^ Tolkien 1954a, book 1, ch. 2 "The Shadow of the Past"
  8. George Allen & Unwin
    . p. 25.
  9. ^ Tolkien 2007, ch. 17 "The Death of Glaurung"
  10. ^ Tolkien 2007, ch. 14 "The Journey of Morwen and Niënor to Nargothrond"
  11. The Etymologies
    , pp. 348, 362
  12. ^ Tolkien 1955, Appendix A, "The House of Eorl"
  13. ISBN 0 00 720308 X
  14. ^ Tolkien 1937, ch. 14 "Fire and Water" and throughout

Secondary

  1. ^
    ISBN 978-0261-10401-3
    .
  2. ^
    ISBN 978-1-4039-4671-3
    .
  3. S2CID 170851865
    .
  4. S2CID 216644043
    .
  5. S2CID 170310560
    .
  6. Clarendon Press
    .
  7. ^
    ISBN 978-3-631-58219-0
    .
  8. ISBN 978-1-5580-6216-0
    .
  9. ISBN 0-87349-623-X
    .
  10. ^ Radcliffe, Doug (20 March 2006). "The Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle-earth II Walkthrough". GameSpot. Retrieved 28 March 2016.
  11. ^ Miller, Greg (18 January 2012). "Lord of the Rings: War in the North Blowout". IGN. Retrieved 24 January 2021.
  12. ^ "Ancalagon minor". The Burgess Shale. Retrieved 26 December 2022.
  13. JSTOR 1304185
    .
  14. S2CID 87461613
    .
  15. ^ "Protect and Prosper". American Museum of Natural History. Retrieved 30 August 2015.
  16. PMID 20816817
    .
  17. Entomology Today. Annapolis, Maryland: Entomological Society of America
    . Retrieved 20 March 2016.
  18. doi:10.4067/s0718-686x2015000100013
    .
  19. ISBN 978-1-77557-073-8
    .

Sources
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