Glorfindel

• 1. Introduction

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  Glorfindel is one of J. R. R. Tolkien's oldest characters, his name first set down in drafts written around 1916 to 1917. The name means "blond" or "golden-haired." Among the Noldor, one of the three groups of High Elves, this was unusual. The Noldor were generally dark-haired, and golden hair marked Glorfindel as singular among his own people.

  The story that introduced him, The Fall of Gondolin, was the first part of The Book of Lost Tales that Tolkien completed. He read it aloud to the Exeter College Essay Club in the spring of 1920. In that story, Glorfindel dies in battle while defending survivors of a fallen city.

  Decades later, a character named Glorfindel appeared in The Fellowship of the Ring, alive and formidably powerful. He assisted Frodo Baggins in escaping from the Nazgûl, the wraith-like servants of Sauron, and participated in the Council of Elrond. The question this created has fascinated readers ever since. Was this the same Elf who had died in the First Age, or just a borrowed name? And if they were the same person, how did Glorfindel get back?

• 2. The Fall of Gondolin

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  King Turgon's hidden city of Gondolin was the setting for Glorfindel's defining moment in Middle-earth's First Age. He served as one of Turgon's chief lieutenants, and at the Battle of Unnumbered Tears he oversaw the king's retreat. When the Dark Lord Morgoth eventually conquered the city, Glorfindel fought in its defence. He then escaped with a group of survivors, among them Tuor, Idril, and the young Eärendil. They made their way through the Encircling Mountains above the fallen city.

  Among the attackers who ambushed them in the passes was a Balrog. Glorfindel fought it and succeeded in killing the creature, but was mortally wounded in the process. The great eagle Thorondor recovered his body and brought it to rest under a stone cairn. Yellow flowers grew over the grave afterward. "Glorfindel and the Balrog" passed into Elven culture as a proverb for extraordinary skill and courage in battle.

• 3. One Name, Two Characters?

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  Christopher Tolkien stated plainly that his father had not conceived the Glorfindel of The Lord of the Rings as the same person as the Elf of Gondolin. The name had been reused. The scholars Alexander Lewis and Elizabeth Currie described this as "a chance reuse of no significance." They argued that Tolkien tied himself and his readers in knots over the question of whether one or two characters shared the name.

  Don Anger offered a possible reason why Tolkien never made an explicit connection in print. The death in The Fall of Gondolin was unambiguous. Bridging it to the later character required serious explanation. Anger concluded that Glorfindel's story was only "possibly realized" with the complete twelve-volume publication of The History of Middle-earth. That series was finished in 1996.

  The Silmarillion was published posthumously in 1977, but much of the relevant background material remained unpublished at that point. Tolkien compendiums were forced into speculation to answer what the published texts left open. The Complete Guide to Middle-earth: from The Hobbit to The Silmarillion was among those that ventured into the gap.

• 4. Reincarnation and Return

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  In 1972, Tolkien wrote an essay setting out how Glorfindel could return to Middle-earth after his death in the First Age. The answer was reincarnation. Dead Elves passed to the Halls of Mandos in Valinor, where after a Purgatory-like period their spirits could be restored to physical form. Restored Elves were ordinarily required to remain in Valinor permanently. Glorfindel's case was different.

  The Valar judged his sacrifice in defeating the Balrog to be "of vital importance to their designs." He had taken no part in the Kinslaying at Alqualondë and had left Valinor reluctantly. The Valar exempted him from the Exiles' ban entirely. His time restored in Valinor enhanced his spiritual power until he was nearly the equal of the Maiar.

  Tolkien proposed that the Valar sent Glorfindel back to Middle-earth around the year 1600 of the Second Age. That was when Sauron completed Barad-dûr and forged the One Ring. At that time, Númenor was still friendly with the Elves under Tar-Minastir. In one version of his late writings, Glorfindel arrived in Middle-earth as a predecessor to the Istari. In another version, he came alongside the Blue Wizards. Tolkien briefly considered having Glorfindel accompany Gandalf on his journey. He set the idea aside, reasoning that crossing back would make Glorfindel "of greater power and importance than seems fitting." At one point Tolkien even entertained the possibility that Glorfindel might be one of the Wizards himself. He rejected the idea, concluding that the Istari were exclusively Maiar and that Elves had never been conceived as candidates.

  The scholar Verlyn Flieger noted that the concept of Elven reincarnation had been considered before The Lord of the Rings was published. As a devout Catholic, Tolkien initially found the idea theologically problematic and biologically difficult. He eventually concluded that in his invented world, reincarnation was "a biological dictum" whose purpose was "largely literary." Elizabeth Whittingham observed that correspondence from readers, including Catholics such as Father Murray and Peter Hastings, prompted revisions to the mythology. From the 1950s onward, Tolkien worked to bring his secondary world into closer alignment with his faith. Glorfindel remains, in Whittingham's analysis, his first attempt at portraying a reincarnated Elf.

• 5. Rescue and Counsel

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  The earliest notes for the Council of Elrond state that Glorfindel "tells of his ancestry in Gondolin." In Tolkien's first draft of that scene, he was listed as a member of the Fellowship itself. Boromir and Legolas were not part of the early lineup; they came in much later in the drafting process. In the published version, Legolas took the representative role for the Elven people.

  Elrond sent Glorfindel in the direction from which the Nazgûl were most likely to approach, to help Frodo reach Rivendell. At the Bridge of Mitheithel, Glorfindel confronted some of the pursuing Nazgûl. He set Frodo on his horse, Asfaloth, and sent the hobbit riding ahead to the Ford of Bruinen. Frodo saw his host transform at the Bridge into what the text describes as a shining figure, terrible in his wrath. With the help of Strider and Frodo's hobbit companions, Glorfindel drove the Nazgûl into the river. They were swept away by a wave resembling charging horses, an enchantment created by Elrond and Gandalf.

  In Rivendell, Frodo was struck by the beauty and stature of Glorfindel and his kinfolk. He sat in honour beside Elrond and Gandalf in the Hall of Fire. At the Council, Glorfindel showed unusual wisdom by urging caution about sending the One Ring to the enigmatic Tom Bombadil. He also proposed that the Three Rings of the Elves be sacrificed to accomplish the Ring's destruction.

  When Elrond considered who might fill the final two spots in the Fellowship, Gandalf named Glorfindel as a possibility. He then argued against it. Even an elf-lord such as Glorfindel, he said, could not storm the Dark Tower by the power that was in him. The final places went to Merry Brandybuck and Pippin Took, chosen for their friendship rather than great wisdom. Gandalf described Glorfindel as "one of the mighty of the Firstborn" and "an Elf-lord of a house of princes," a title Glorfindel had earned long before meeting Frodo.

• 6. A Prophet at Fornost

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  The appendices to The Return of the King record an episode set long before the War of the Ring. Glorfindel led the Elvish forces of Rivendell, the Grey Havens, and Lothlórien against Angmar at the Battle of Fornost. He fought alongside Eärnur, the future king of Gondor, and the remnants of Gondor's sister kingdom Arnor. The enemy's ruler was the Witch-king of Angmar, the Lord of the Nazgûl and Sauron's chief servant.

  When the Witch-king rode out to defend the captured city of Fornost, his presence frightened Eärnur's horse. The prince stumbled backward. The Witch-king mocked him. Glorfindel stepped forward to confront the Witch-king, who then fled into the night.

  Glorfindel bade Eärnur not to pursue, and issued a prophecy: the Witch-king would fall in the far future, but not by "the hand of man." For centuries, many interpreted "man" to mean that no human being could ever slay him. During the Battle of Pelennor Fields, the woman Éowyn struck the killing blow, assisted by the hobbit Meriadoc Brandybuck. Before that moment, the reference to "man" in Glorfindel's prophecy had been read as excluding all humans, not merely male ones.

• 7. Screens and Shelves

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  In Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated version of The Lord of the Rings, Glorfindel's role and his lines were given to Legolas. In Peter Jackson's 2001 live-action film The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, the role passed to Arwen. The film's Arwen carries Frodo to the Ford of Bruinen and summons the floodwaters through an incantation.

  A British musical stage adaptation ran from June 2007 to July 2008 at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London's West End. There, Glorfindel was reimagined as a dark-haired elf-woman, played by Alma Ferović.

  The 2015 film The Martian contains a reference its writer, Drew Goddard, described as his proudest moment in the film. NASA Director Teddy Sanders asks to be called Glorfindel during Project Elrond, a secret meeting about plans to rescue the stranded astronaut Mark Watney.

  In the 2002 video game The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Glorfindel appears as a non-player character voiced by Steve Staley. The 2006 real-time strategy game The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II depicts his hair as silver-blond rather than golden. He appears on the game's box art and is a playable hero of the Elvish faction, riding Asfaloth. The Games Workshop tabletop adaptation offers two versions: one fully armoured, one in robes and mounted. He appears in Lord of the Rings Online as a non-player character. In the Lego Lord of the Rings video game, he is available as downloadable content.

  The scholar Megan Fontenot, writing in Tor.com's bi-weekly series on Middle-earth's peoples, described Glorfindel's function as shaman-like. She argued he acts as a medium with direct access to both the spiritual world of Valinor and the physical world of Middle-earth. His battle with the Balrog in the First Age served, in her reading, as an "initiation" into a shamanic trial. Edmund Wainwright identified him as the clearest example in The Lord of the Rings of a male Elf who embodies his people's semi-divine nature. The theme of Elvish reincarnation, in all its theological complexity, reaches its fullest expression in Tolkien's legendarium through this one character.