Sigelwara Land

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SilmarilBalrogHaradAethiopiaSól (Germanic mythology)HearthSowilōsealcommons:File:Tolkien's Sigelwara Etymologies.svg
Imagemap with clickable links. Tolkien's Sigelwara etymologies,
Silmarils, Balrogs, and Haradrim[2]

"Sigelwara Land" is an essay by J. R. R. Tolkien that appeared in two parts, in 1932 and 1934.[1] It explores the etymology of the Old English word for the ancient Aethiopians, Sigelhearwan, and attempts to recover what it might originally have meant. Tolkien suggested that its two elements were most likely sun/jewel and coal/hearth, perhaps meaning something like a soot-black fire-demon.

The Tolkien scholar and philologist

Silmarils or forged sun-jewels, the Balrogs or dark fire-demons, and the Haradrim
, men of the hot south.

Essay

Tolkien's essay treats the etymology of the

sigel
"Sun", the meaning of the second element hearwan was not definitely recoverable, but might be guessed at:

a symbol ... of that large part of ancient English language and lore which has now vanished beyond recall, swa hit no wære.[a]

The phrase Sigelwara land appears in

Codex Junius
11):

Codex Junius 11 (Old English
)		 Modern English[3]
.. be suðan Sigelwara land, forbærned burhhleoðu, brune leode, hatum heofoncolum. "... southward lay the Ethiop's land, parched hill-slopes and a race burned brown by the heat of the sun ..."

The main thrust of Tolkien's argument in this two-part paper seems to have been that Sigelwara was a corruption of Sigelhearwa, and had come to mean something different in its later form than it had in its original. He begins by pointing out that Ethiopians in the earliest writings are presented in a very positive light, but by the time they written of as "Sigelwarans", the perception has become the opposite. He does not speculate why, but instead demonstrates a clear relationship between sigelwara and sigelhearwa and shows how discovering the original meaning of the word Sigelhearwa is almost impossible; that trying to do so must be "for the joy of the hunt rather than the hope of a final kill".

The word sigel as a conflation of two words, the inherited word for Sun, the feminine sigel and an Old English neuter sigle or sygle for "jewel, necklace", loaned from Latin sigilla.

Suggesting a connection of hearwa with Gothic 𐌷𐌰𐌿𐍂𐌹 hauri "coal", Old Norse hyr-r "fire", Old English heorþ "to roast", heorð "

Ham", an ancient class of demons "with red-hot eyes that emitted sparks and faces black as soot", English equivalent of the Norse fire giants ruled by Surtr
, that had been forgotten even before the composition of this version of Exodus.

Influence on Tolkien's fiction

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

Balrogs.[2]

One of the many peoples encountered in The Lord of the Rings are "black men like half-

Haradrim generally and their land; Christopher Tolkien notes these names are derived from the Old English Sigelwara, and refers to Tolkien's essay Sigelwara Land.[5]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "As if it had never been", a quotation from the Old English poem The Wanderer

References

  1. ^ a b J. R. R. Tolkien, "Sigelwara Land" Medium Aevum Vol. 1, No. 3. December 1932 and Medium Aevum Vol. 3, No. 2. June 1934.
  2. ^
    ISBN 978-0261102750
  3. ^ "Junius 11 "Exodus" ll. 68-88". The Medieval & Classical Literature Library. Retrieved 1 February 2020.
  4. ISBN 0 04 823047 2
  5. The Treason of Isengard
    , Unwin Hyman, ch. XXV p. 435 & p. 439 note 4
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