Gandalf

• 1. Introduction

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  Gandalf the Grey, one of the most recognized figures in twentieth-century fantasy literature, first appeared as a name borrowed from a list of dwarves in an Old Norse poem. J. R. R. Tolkien lifted the name Gandálfr from the Dvergatal, the "Catalogue of Dwarves" found in the Völuspá, where it means "staff-elf." What is stranger still is that, in early drafts of The Hobbit, that name belonged not to the wizard at all but to the dwarf-king who would later be called Thorin Oakenshield. The wizard himself was called Bladorthin. How a name jumped from dwarf to wizard, and how that wizard became one of the most layered characters in modern myth, is a story worth following.

  The questions at the heart of Gandalf's story are not simple ones. Is he a man? A god? An angel? Tolkien himself gave different answers in different decades. And what does it mean that such a powerful being chose, again and again, to nudge and persuade rather than command? Those questions carry through everything from the fires of Valinor to the Grey Havens, where Gandalf finally boards a ship and leaves Middle-earth for good.

• 2. Origins and Names

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  When Tolkien was writing The Hobbit in the early 1930s, he reached for the same source to name nearly all his dwarves: the Völuspá's dwarf-list, also used for the name Gandalf. In Old Norse, the name Gandalfr combines gandr, meaning "wand", "staff", or "magic," with álfr, meaning "elf." The result, roughly, is "elf of the wand" or "staff-elf," and it matched perfectly the image Tolkien was building.

  The name had other lives before Tolkien used it. A legendary Norse king named Gandalf Alfgeirsson appears briefly in the semi-historical Heimskringla, a rival of Halfdan the Black. Gandalf is also the name of a sea-king in Henrik Ibsen's second play, The Burial Mound. And a character named Gandolf appears in William Morris's 1896 fantasy novel The Well at the World's End, alongside a horse called Silverfax that Tolkien later adapted into Shadowfax.

  By 1942, Tolkien had decided that The Lord of the Rings would present itself as a translation from the fictional language of Westron, and the Old Norse name Gandalf was taken to represent the name the Dwarves of Erebor had given to the wizard in the language of Dale. His Khuzdul name, Tharkûn, said to mean "staff-man," remained untranslated. In the Elvish tongue of Sindarin, he was Mithrandir, meaning "Grey Pilgrim" or "Grey Wanderer." Faramir quotes him directly on the subject: "Many are my names in many countries. Mithrandir among the Elves, Tharkûn to the Dwarves, Olórin I was in my youth in the West that is forgotten, in the South Incánus, in the North Gandalf; to the East I go not."

• 3. A Spirit in Human Form

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  Olórin was his name before he came to Middle-earth. In Valinor, he was counted among the Maiar, an order of angelic beings in service to the Creator, Eru Ilúvatar. Tolkien placed him among the people of the Vala Manwë and called him the wisest of the Maiar. He was closely shaped by two Valar: Irmo, in whose gardens he lived, and Nienna, the patron of mercy, who gave him tutelage.

  When the Valar chose to send Wizards across the Great Sea to aid those who opposed Sauron, Manwë proposed Olórin. His response was to beg off, declaring he was too weak and feared Sauron. Manwë replied that this was all the more reason for him to go. He took the form of an old man as a sign of humility, and his role was to advise and encourage, never to attempt to match Sauron's strength directly.

  The elf Círdan, who met the newly arrived Wizards at the Havens of Mithlond, sensed something the others missed. Despite Gandalf appearing the oldest and the least in stature, Círdan judged him "the greatest spirit and the wisest" and gave him the Elven Ring of Power called Narya, the Ring of Fire, with its red stone. Tolkien described his spirit as "warm and eager," enhanced by Narya, so that he opposed the fire that devours and wastes with the fire that kindles. Saruman, who was chosen as the chief Wizard, learned of the gift and resented it. The rift between them began there.

• 4. A Postcard and a Mountain Spirit

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  Tolkien's biographer Humphrey Carpenter identified a postcard that Tolkien had labelled "the origin of Gandalf." It shows a white-bearded man in a large hat and cloak, seated among boulders in a mountain forest, with the title Der Berggeist, German for "the mountain spirit." Tolkien recalled buying it during a holiday in Switzerland in 1911.

  Manfred Zimmerman later discovered that the painting was made by the German artist Josef Madlener and dates from the mid-1920s, meaning Tolkien was probably mistaken about when he acquired it. A separate possible influence was the Finnish demigod Väinämöinen, central character of the national epic Kalevala, compiled by Elias Lönnrot. He was described as an old and wise man with a potent, magical singing voice.

  Scholar Douglas Anderson, writing in The Annotated Hobbit, compared Gandalf to the Rübezahl mountain spirit of German folktale, a figure who can appear as a guide, messenger, or farmer, typically depicted as a bearded man with a staff. By the time Tolkien finished his work, these threads had fused into a character whose visual identity was inseparable from walking, travelling, and appearing unexpectedly among ordinary people.

• 5. Guide, Prophet, and Christ Figure

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  In a 1954 letter, Tolkien described Gandalf as an "angel incarnate," a phrase he returned to in 1965 and again in 1971. In a 1946 letter he had called him an "Odinic wanderer," and scholars have drawn detailed comparisons between Gandalf and the Norse god Odin in his Wanderer guise: an old man with a long white beard, a wide-brimmed hat, a staff, and a cloak.

  The Tolkien scholar Charles W. Nelson placed Gandalf in a long tradition of guide figures who assist a protagonist on a journey to unusual and distant places. He drew a direct line from the Cumaean Sibyl who guided Aeneas through the underworld in Virgil's Aeneid, to the figure of Virgil in Dante's Inferno, to Merlin in Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. After the Council of Elrond, Gandalf himself offers an almost wry rationale for joining the Fellowship: "Someone said that intelligence would be needed in the party. He was right. I think I shall come with you."

  The philosopher Peter Kreeft, writing as a Roman Catholic like Tolkien, observed that there is no single, complete Christ figure in The Lord of the Rings comparable to Aslan in C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. Instead, Kreeft and scholar Jean Chausse identified three protagonists who together reflect the Old Testament threefold Messianic symbolism: Gandalf as prophet, Frodo as priest, and Aragorn as king. The critic Anne C. Petty noted the death-and-resurrection dimension of Gandalf's fall in Moria and his return clothed in white, while other scholars and theologians have likened that return specifically to the transfiguration of Christ.

• 6. Ian McKellen and Tolkien Himself

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  Sean Connery and Patrick Stewart both turned down the role of Gandalf before Ian McKellen was cast for Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film series, which ran from 2001 to 2003. McKellen's preparation was unusually direct: he consulted audio and video recordings of Tolkien himself, and built his performance on Tolkien's own speech patterns and mannerisms. His conclusion, recorded in the production materials, was that "without question Gandalf is like Tolkien but then so, I suspect, are Frodo and Aragorn."

  For his performance in The Fellowship of the Ring, McKellen received a Screen Actors Guild Award and an Academy Award nomination, both for best supporting actor. The magazine Empire ranked Gandalf as portrayed by McKellen the 30th greatest film character of all time. McKellen reprised the role in Jackson's Hobbit film series from 2012 to 2014, and later stated he enjoyed playing Gandalf the Grey more than Gandalf the White.

  In the BBC Radio dramatisations, earlier actors had taken the role: Norman Shelley in 1955-1956, Heron Carvic in 1968, Bernard Mayes in 1979, and Sir Michael Hordern in 1981. John Huston voiced the character in the Rankin/Bass animated films of 1977 and 1980. The role has also been interpreted in Finnish television, Soviet film, Chicago stage, and a Toronto musical production. In Johan de Meij's Symphony No. 1 "The Lord of the Rings," written for concert band and premiered in 1988, Gandalf has his own dedicated movement. Composer Aulis Sallinen named his Symphony No. 7, Op. 71 "The Dreams of Gandalf," building its central theme on the note sequence G-A-D-A-F.