Morgoth

• 1. The Dark Enemy

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  Morgoth Bauglir began as Melkor, the mightiest of the godlike Valar, and ended as the Dark Enemy of Tolkien's legendarium. That mythic epic reached readers in parts, as The Silmarillion, The Children of Húrin, Beren and Lúthien, and The Fall of Gondolin. All evil in Middle-earth ultimately flows from him.

  Yet The Lord of the Rings mentions him only briefly. In the chapter "A Knife in the Dark", Aragorn sings the tale of Tinúviel and calls Morgoth "the Great Enemy".

  Far more lies behind that passing mention. One of the Maiar of Aulë betrays his own kind and becomes Morgoth's chief lieutenant and successor, Sauron. So the dark lord most readers know is the servant of a far greater one.

  How does the strongest of the Valar turn to darkness? Why does he carry so many names? And which older stories did Tolkien draw on to shape him?

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• 2. A Ruler of Many Names

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  Morgoth is a Sindarin name, from one of Tolkien's invented languages, and it means Dark Enemy or Black Foe. Bauglir, also Sindarin, means Tyrant or Oppressor, so Morgoth Bauglir is a pair of epithets rather than a true name. His name in the Ainulindalë, the creation myth that opens The Silmarillion, is Melkor, which means He Who Arises in Might in Quenya. That too is an epithet. Like every Vala, he has a true name in Valarin, the tongue of the Valar before Time began, but it goes unrecorded.

  The Sindarin equivalent of Melkor would be Belegûr, yet Tolkien never uses it. He employs the deliberately similar Belegurth instead, meaning Great Death. A shorter form, Melko, simply means Mighty One.

  Lord of the Dark, the Dark Power of the North and the Black Hand are three of his many titles, and Sauron collects titles in much the same way. The Edain, the Men of Númenor, speak of the Dark King and the Dark Power. The Númenóreans corrupted by Sauron say instead the Lord of All and the Giver of Freedom.

  The name Morgoth is present in Tolkien's earliest stories, and for a long while he was also called Melko. Over the years the Sindarin equivalent of Melko shifted between Belcha, Melegor and Moeleg. The meaning wandered too, linked at different times to milka, meaning greedy, or velka, meaning flame. Tolkien's Old English renderings differ in sense as well. Melko becomes Orgel, meaning Pride, and Morgoth becomes Sweart-ós, meaning Black God.

  In the early Tale of Turambar, Tinwelint, the forerunner of Thingol, calls him "the Vala of Iron". It is the only time he is handed a single sphere of interest.

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• 3. Discord in the Music

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  Melkor was the most powerful of the Ainur, the angelic beings that Eru Ilúvatar made before Eä and Arda, the Universe and the World, existed. He was troubled that Eru had left the Void empty. He wanted to imitate his creator and fill that emptiness with sentient beings. That required the Flame Imperishable, the Secret Fire, which belongs to Eru alone, and Melkor could never find it.

  So he turned to the Music of the Ainur and contended with Eru by weaving in themes of his own. Many weaker-willed Ainur were drawn to his side.

  The outcome was an irony that runs through the whole legendarium. His discord did not overthrow the Music. Instead, the strife and sadness he introduced gave Eru's original design greater depth and beauty.

  Aulë, another of the Valar, shows the contrast. Melkor, unlike Aulë, is too proud to admit that his creations are possible only because of Eru. He aims to rival Eru instead. Eru's own verdict, as The Silmarillion gives it, is: "Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor."

  The Valaquenta adds one more detail. Melkor seduced many of the minor Ainur, the Maiar, into his service.

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• 4. The First Ruin

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  Once the Ainur enter Eä, the most powerful become the Valar, the Powers of the World, while the lesser Maiar act as their followers and assistants. Melkor and his followers enter as well. He is frustrated that nobody acknowledges him as leader of the new realm, despite his great knowledge. In anger and shame, he sets about ruining whatever the others build.

  Bitter cold, scorching heat, earthquakes, darkness and burning light all draw Melkor, because he is attracted to extremes and violence. Each of the other Valar loves some different aspect of the world. His strength is so great that at first the Valar cannot restrain him. Arda stays unstable until the Vala Tulkas enters Eä and tips the balance.

  Tulkas drives Melkor out, and Melkor broods in darkness. When Tulkas is distracted, he strikes. He destroys the Two Lamps and the Valar's land of Almaren, and Arda is plunged into darkness and fire. Melkor withdraws to Middle-earth. In later versions he also scatters agents across Arda, who dig deep pits and build great fortresses while rivers of fire mar the world.

  The Valar retreat to Aman in the far West. Their country there, Valinor, they fortify heavily. Melkor rules Middle-earth from Utumno, his fortress in the North.

  At the shores of Cuiviénen, the Elves awake. They are the eldest of the Children of Ilúvatar, and the Valar resolve to rescue them from Melkor's malice. Before the Valar attack, he captures some Elves, tortures and corrupts them, and breeds the first Orcs. Other versions describe Orcs as corrupted Men, or as soulless beings animated solely by the will of their evil lord.

  Utumno spreads deathly cold and an endless winter across the North. For the sake of the Elves, the Valar wage a seven-year war and defeat Melkor after laying siege to the fortress. These battles further mar Arda. Tulkas binds him with Angainor, a specially forged chain, and brings him to Valinor. He is imprisoned in the Halls of Mandos for three ages.

  When those three ages run out, Melkor walks free into Valinor itself.

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• 5. The Iron Crown

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  Parole in Valinor suits Melkor well. He pretends humility and virtue while secretly plotting harm to the Elves, whose awakening he blames for his defeat. The Noldor, the most skilled of the three kindreds of Elves who came to Valinor, are the most vulnerable, since they are eager for his knowledge. As he instructs them, he stirs unrest and discontent among them. When the Valar notice, they send Tulkas to arrest him, but Melkor has already fled.

  His partner in the crime is Ungoliant, a dark spirit in the form of a monstrous spider. With her help he destroys the Two Trees of Valinor and kills Finwë, King of the Noldor. He also steals the three Silmarils, jewels filled with the light of the Trees. Fëanor, Finwë's son, had made them. Fëanor names the thief Morgoth, Black Foe, and afterwards the Elves know him by that name alone.

  Angband, a half-ruined fortress in the North, becomes his new seat. He rebuilds it and raises above it the volcanic triple peak of Thangorodrim. The Silmarils he sets into a crown of iron, and he wears it at all times.

  Fëanor and most of the Noldor give chase. On the way they slay their kin the Teleri, and so incur the Doom of Mandos. Once in Beleriand, they establish kingdoms and make war on Morgoth. Soon the Sun and the Moon rise for the first time, and Men awake.

  Before the battle of Nírnaeth Arnoediad, the Man Beren and the Elf Lúthien enter Angband itself. Lúthien's singing sends Morgoth to sleep, and they recover a Silmaril from his crown. It passes to their granddaughter Elwing, who joins the Elves dwelling at the Mouths of Sirion. Her husband Eärendil wears the Silmaril on his brow and sails across the sea to Valinor. There he pleads with the Valar to free Middle-earth from Morgoth.

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• 6. Battles of Beleriand

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  The Dagor-nuin-Giliath, the Battle Under the Stars, was fought before the Moon first rose. Later came the Dagor Aglareb, the Glorious Battle, and the Dagor Bragollach, the Battle of Sudden Flame, which broke the Siege of Angband. Then came the Nírnaeth Arnoediad, the Unnumbered Tears. The armies of the Noldor and their allies among Men were routed, and the men of the East joined Morgoth.

  Húrin and his younger brother Huor led the House of Hador, one of the three kindreds of elf-friends. At the Nírnaeth Arnoediad they covered the escape of Turgon to Gondolin by sacrificing their army and themselves. Huor was slain, but Húrin was brought alive before Morgoth. As revenge for the aid to Turgon and for his defiance, Morgoth cursed Húrin and his children. He bound Húrin to a seat upon Thangorodrim and forced him to witness, through Morgoth's long sight, all that befell his family in the years ahead.

  The Children of Húrin tells this encounter in more detail than The Silmarillion, and in a more connected narrative than Unfinished Tales. It gives the first hint that Morgoth corrupted Men soon after they awoke. It also has him claim power over the entire Earth through "the shadow of my purpose".

  Over the next several decades, Morgoth destroyed the remaining Elven kingdoms. Their domain shrank to an island of refugees in the Bay of Balar and a small settlement at the Mouths of Sirion, under the protection of Ulmo.

  The War of Wrath lasted fifty years, the longest and bloodiest conflict in Arda's history, and it destroyed Beleriand. Morgoth summoned many Men to his side. Eärendil killed the greatest of dragons, Ancalagon the Black, who crashed upon Thangorodrim as he fell and shattered it. The few remaining dragons scattered, and the few surviving Balrogs hid deep within the earth.

  Utterly defeated, Morgoth fled into the deepest pit and begged for pardon. His feet were cut from under him, his crown was made into a collar, and he was chained once again with Angainor. The Valar exiled him permanently, thrusting him through the Door of Night into the void until the prophesied Dagor Dagorath, when he will meet his final destruction.

  Yet his evil remains, and his will still influences all living creatures.

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• 7. Morgoth's Ring

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  In a 1955 essay, Tolkien wrote that "Melkor must be made far more powerful in original nature. The greatest power under Eru." He added that Melkor must never be controllable, or "chained", by all the Valar combined. In the early age of Arda, Tolkien noted, Melkor alone was able to drive the Valar out of Middle-earth into retreat.

  Tolkien had not always imagined him that way. In early versions, Melkor equalled Manwë, chief of the Valar in Arda, in power. Later revisions raised him until he outranked every other Vala, and a late essay made him stronger than all of them combined. He grew from a standout among equals into a being the other created beings could never utterly defeat. Even an early draft has the elf Finrod declare that "there is nothing more powerful that is conceivable than Melkor, save Eru only".

  The Great Music stands as the template for all of material creation. So the chaos in Melkor's disharmonies accounts for all evil, and everything in Middle-earth bears his taint.

  In Morgoth's Ring, Tolkien draws an analogy with the One Ring. Sauron put much of his power into that Ring, to gain power over the other Great Rings and over the physical world. His power was therefore concentrated in one object, and it was utterly eradicated when the Ring was destroyed.

  Melkor took the opposite course. He "incarnated" himself permanently as Morgoth, and transmuted "the greater part of his original 'angelic' powers, of mind and spirit" into a "terrible grip upon the physical world". He gained the ability "to control the hroa, the 'flesh' or physical matter, of Arda." His power was disseminated through the whole of Middle-earth. Eradicating it was not possible, and fighting Morgoth risked the "irretrievable ruin of Arda".

  All of Arda is thus "Morgoth's Ring", containing his power and corrupted by it, until the Remaking of the World.

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• 8. Satan, Odin, and Possession

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  Lucifer was once the greatest of God's angels and fell through pride to rebel against his creator. Melkor has been interpreted as his analogue. Tolkien himself wrote that of all the deeds of the Ainur, by far the worst was "the absolute Satanic rebellion and evil of Morgoth and his satellite Sauron". John R. Holmes, writing in The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, hears a resonance with the fallen angel of John Milton's Paradise Lost. Melkor builds an "iron hell" for his Elven slave labourers, and his greed for ever more power makes him a symbol of the despotism of modern machinery.

  Brian Rosebury sees a clear mapping onto the Christian myth, with Eru as God, the Ainur as angels and Melkor as Satan. He finds the differences equally striking, since the Ainur take part in creation. Melkor's rebellion is creative at first, because he is impatient for the void of the world to be filled. Pride then taints that creativity until it turns destructive. His "desire to create other beings for his glory" becomes a hunger for servants and slaves who follow his own will. Tolkien echoes this "temptation of creativity" in Fëanor, who is prepared to fight a hopeless war to regain his prized Silmarils.

  Tom Shippey calls The Silmarillion most obviously a calque on the Book of Genesis, much as Tolkien's Shire is a calque on England. He quotes Tolkien's friend C. S. Lewis, who held that even Satan was created good. In The Lord of the Rings, Elrond says: "For nothing is evil in the beginning. Even the Dark Lord Sauron was not so." Shippey suggests the reader may assume that the exploit of Morgoth which the Elves never learnt of was the traditional seduction of Adam and Eve by the serpent. The Men of the story then become Adam's descendants, "flying from Eden and subject to the curse of Babel".

  Marjorie Burns, in Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth, describes Morgoth as built from a complex "literary soup". One ingredient is the Norse god Odin. Gandalf takes the wandering Odin's hat, beard and staff, along with a supernaturally fast horse that recalls the steed Sleipnir. Sauron takes the single eye. Saruman is cloaked and hatted like Gandalf but commands far-flying birds like Odin's eagles and ravens. In The Silmarillion, the farseeing Manwë lives on the tallest of the mountains and loves "all swift birds, strong of wing", which makes him Odinesque.

  The enemy Morgoth receives Odin's dark side: "his ruthlessness, his destructiveness, his malevolence, his all-pervading deceit". Burns compares this split to the way Norse myth hands some of Odin's traits to the troublemaker god Loki. Odin has names such as "Shifty-eyed" and "Swift in Deceit", and he rules the Norse underworld as "Father of the Slain". Morgoth is likewise called "Master of Lies" by the Edain Amlach, and also "Demon of Dark". He functions as a fierce god of battle.

  Verlyn Flieger, discussing the splintering of Middle-earth's original created light, finds the central temptation in the desire to possess. She calls possessiveness itself the "great transgression" of Tolkien's created world. The commandment "Love not too well the work of thy hands and the devices of thy heart" is stated outright in The Silmarillion. Flieger sets two lines side by side. First: "the heart of Fëanor was fast bound to these things that he himself had made". Then, at once: "Melkor lusted for the Silmarils, and the very memory of their radiance was a gnawing fire in his heart". She finds it appropriately ironic that one of the greatest of the Ainur and the most subtle and skilful of the Noldor should together "usher in the darkness".

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