This diary was originally published in 2017 and is a summary of my 2014 article Original Sin in Heorot and Valinor. I was hesitant to republish but firstly, although the Covid has passed, I still have a bit of a malaise. Secondly, since the published article in Tolkien Studies is the first chapter of my dissertation, perhaps it would be good to go over this again because Fëanor is so important and the yin to Galadriel’s yang (ok, that sounds perverse!) and the poll was split 50/50. So, I’ll republish and just to recap some of the important points from the introduction relevant to this diary to keep in mind, I would point out:
1. [George] Clark believes that “Tolkien sought a true hero motivated by a heroic ideal consistent with his own religious and moral ideals, but he could not rid himself of his desire for the glorious heroes of old” (Clark Hero, 39), and [Tom] Shippey adds that Tolkien’s fiction does indeed “oscillate” between the self-control of the Alboins and Beorhtwolds and cruelty of the Egils and Gunnars and that Tolkien had to come to terms with this heroic style when he set out:
2. … [Tolkien set out] to re-introduce this heroic style into a literature and a language which had forgotten it entirely. Yet there were evident problems in making such a re-introduction: this style — Alboin, Egil, Gunnar — is extremely cruel
3 … all the characters concerned were heathens, though their stories were written down and copied by admiring Christians [I disagree with Shippey here, in the first diary I showed that the Germanic tribes of these characters were already Christianised when the events that triggered the stories happened unless we are speaking of much later Norse characters].
4. Tolkien, I think, was extremely concerned about both points, though perhaps especially about the latter. (Shippey Heroes and Heroism, 274)
1. Tolkien’s First Germanic Hero: Fëanor
I believe Tolkien’s elves (the Eldar) are Germanic in nature and not Celtic as many scholars have argued and casual readers may think. Or, more precisely, they may exhibit Celtic traits but they do so aesthetically and superficially. Their deeds and function in the narrative, however, are clearly Germanic. Let us examine Tolkien’s elvish Hero Fëanor.
Firstly, Fëanor exhibits traits much like the Germanic Hero-smith Weland/Völundr. While his pride and avarice is ground already covered by Shippey et al., I suggest that we can also look to the Old Norse Völundarkviða in the Poetic Edda and find Fëanor’s, perhaps closest, parallel in Völundr, who, as Ursula Dronke notes, “is álfa lióði, ‘prince of elves’” (Dronke Mythological Poems, 256). So, too, is Fëanor: son of King Finwë and crown-prince of the Noldor, whose idiosyncrasies and vices mirror Völundr:
“Ironically, the great smiths of legend who so prodigally produce great treasures have also a great vice, that of avarice: an intense possessiveness, an identification of the works of their art as part of themselves. A dwarf will curse with eleven deaths the thieving users of his gold – who have taken his last ring – mun míns fiár / mangi nióta, ‘from my wealth not one man shall profit’ (Reginsmál 5). […] Twice the king calls Völundr vísi álfa, ‘ruler of elves’.” (Dronke Mythological Poems, 256-57)
However, instead of gems made from the eyes of children (Tolkien does not allow his Heroes to become too gruesome), Fëanor creates gems with living light, and he begins to “love the Silmarils with a greedy love” and “grudging the sight of them to all save his father and his seven sons, he seldom remembered now the light within them was not his own” (Tolkien S, 70). Where “Völundr sees with hatred the precious things he has made in the hands of his captors – severed forever from himself […] He will murder to avenge them […]” (Dronke Mythological Poems, 257), so too does Fëanor, driving him and his kin to swear the blasphemous oath and rebel against the Valar in wrath and rage to avenge his father and the rape of the Silmarils. (Fëanor, by the way, created the palantíri, the seeing-stones you may remember from the Lord of the Rings)
Furthermore, Fëanor also exhibits traits shared with Beowulf’s Grendel in both imagery and function. However, the two are not by any means consistently similar. To speak of the similarity of traits and function is not the same as speaking of good and evil. While Grendel is in fact an evil monster from the mere, Fëanor is not evil; no more so than other Germanic Heroes e.g. Ingeld or Finn, or Gunnar, or Högni, or Siegfried even, who implicitly rapes Brunhild to “tame” her on Gunther’s behalf since Gunther was too weak to do so himself (Das Nibelungenlied.) Nevertheless, Fëanor belongs in the Heroic world. Grendel, the monster, functions as a personification of the concrete “monstrous” deeds that these Heroes perform in that world (cf. Isaacs Personification, 215-18).
Thus, when we are first introduced to Fëanor we are told that “his spirit burned as a flame” (Tolkien S, 60), that his given name was Curufinwë “but by his mother called Fëanor, Spirit of Fire” (Tolkien S, 63) in which Eru/God Himself set a fire (Tolkien S, 91); that he “grew swiftly as if a secret fire were kindled within him” and that he had “eyes piercingly bright” (Tolkien S, 64) and he was “driven by the fire of his heart only” (Tolkien S, 67). Fëanor is associated with “spirit” and “fire” and a “fey” or irrational hate. Analogous to that, Dronke writes of the smith Völundr: “He has a demon in him.” The imagery is woven throughout the narrative, subtly ensuring that the reader associates these traits with the character.
Secondly, there’s his blasphemous oath (it is the second oath in the tale, the first is touched upon below). Oaths are extremely important in Germanic Heroic poetry as they often set up the conflict between loyalty to kin and loyalty to lord. Tolkien takes it even further. Fëanor’s oath is what drives Tolkien’s narrative and the entire history of Middle-earth right up into the Lord of the Rings.
“Be he foe or friend, be he foul or clean
Brood of Morgoth or bright Vala,
Elda or Maia or Aftercomer,
Man yet unborn upon Middle-earth,
Neither law, nor love, nor league of swords,
Dread nor danger, not Doom itself
Shall defend him from Fëanáro, and Fëanáro’s kin,
Whoso hideth or hoardeth, or in hand taketh,
Finding keepeth or afar casteth
A Silmaril. This swear we all…
Death we will deal him ere Day’s ending,
Woe unto world’s end! Our word hear thou,
Eru Allfather! To the everlasting
Darkness doom us if our deed faileth…
On the holy mountain hear in witness
and our vow remember,
Manwë and Varda!" — the Oath of Fëanor
This blasphemous oath concerning the recovery of the Silmarils is not sworn by all the Noldor. It is sworn only by the Fëanorians and sets the stage for further strife between two familial factions (the other being the House of Fingolfin, which includes Fëanor’s niece and “unfriend”, Galadriel, in its faction). It is an oath, Tolkien tells us, that should never have been uttered; “for so sworn, good or evil, an oath may not be broken, and it shall pursue oath-keeper and oath-breaker to the world’s end” (Tolkien S, 89).
Thirdly, Tolkien gives us clues of Fëanor’s much discussed pride. He portrays Fëanor’s pride, like Beorhtnoth’s above, as an excessive and overmastering pride, as the ofermōd he is so critical of in Homecoming. When the Herald of Manwë comes to exile Fëanor and his sons for their unholy oath and to discourage the rest of the Noldor from rebellion and departure from Valinor (i.e. Tolkien’s Paradise or Faerie), we see a glimpse of Fëanor’s ofermōd,
Say this to Manwë Súlimo, High King of Arda: if Fëanor cannot overthrow Morgoth, at least he delays not to assail him, and sits not idle in grief. And it may be that Eru has set in me a fire greater than thou knowest. Such hurt will I do to the Foe of the Valar that even the mighty in the Ring of Doom shall wonder to hear it. Yea, in the end they shall follow me. Farewell! (Tolkien S, 91)
This Germanic Hero not only challenges the ‘gods’ but he also, in essence, calls the ‘gods’ cowards to their faces for not waging war upon their mutual foe: something that Fëanor, as a lesser-being than they, is prepared to do. We also see the fire imagery (“...Eru has set in me a fire...”) again associated with an all consuming pride and wrath and we see a hint of lof ond dom (Old English: fame and fortune) in that “even the mighty” will wonder to hear it.
For how this oath dogs the elves even into the Lord of the Rings, consider Elrond’s advice to the Fellowship as they set out from Rivendell. Elrond firmly states: ‘The others may go with him as free companions, to help him on his way. You may tarry, or come back, or turn aside onto other paths, as chance allows. The further you go, the less easy it will be to withdraw; yet no oath or bond is laid on you to go further than you will. For you do not yet know the strength of your hearts, and you cannot foresee what each may meet upon the road.’ [...]
‘Yet sworn word may strengthen quaking heart,’ said Gimli.
‘Or break it,’ said Elrond […] (Tolkien FR, II, iii, 294, emphasis mine).
Also note that Elrond says ‘… as chance allows.’ Chance and Authority are words Tolkien uses over and over again to express ‘fate’ or ‘Providence’ or Old English ‘wyrd’ — very Germanic concepts essential to the fatalism of the ancient Germanic world.
The Silmarillion further discusses Elrond and oaths and narrates the relevant backstory:
“And so it came to pass the last and cruellest of the slayings of Elf by Elf; and that was the third of the great wrongs achieved by the accursed oath […] For the sons of Fëanor that yet lived came down suddenly upon the exiles of Gondolin and the remnant of Doriath, and destroyed them. In that battle some of their people stood aside, and some few rebelled and were slain upon the other part aiding Elwing [Elrond’s mother] against their own lords (for such was the sorrow and confusion in the hearts of the Eldar in those days); but Maedros and Maglor [two of Fëanor’s sons] won the day […] Great was the sorrow of Eärendil and Elwing for the ruin of the havens of Sirion, and the captivity of their sons, and they feared that they would be slain; but it was not so. For Maglor took pity upon Elros and Elrond, and he cherished them, and love grew between them, as little as might be thought; but Maglors’ heart was sick and weary with the burden of the dreadful oath” (Tolkien S, 296-97).
Elrond obviously has a reason, and the wisdom, to suspect unexpected consequences of such heavy oaths. He witnessed it first hand and was personally endangered by the sin of kin-slaying as a fruit of such oaths.
2. Germanic Deeds and Original Sin of the Eldar: The King’s Peace and Kin-Slaying
The King’s Peace was another extremely important aspect of the ancient Germanic world. The King’s Peace is what prevented (or rather, attempted to prevent) the chaos and blood-shed of the blood-feud. The King’s Peace has precedence in the Germanic world of late antiquity and into the early Middle Ages and is found in many sources including Ine’s advice to the Anglo-Saxon King Edmund and the Carolingian Lex Salica.
Notably, drawing a sword in the King’s hall had severe penalties.
For Ine and Alfred, it was a potentially capital crime to draw a weapon in the king’s hall. The same penalty now threatened those infringing the royal mund [ Old English: protection] wheresoever, or attacking anyone in his home […] To feud with pursuers of thieves was to be the enemy of the king and of his friends; to be loyal was to love what the king loved, to shun what he shunned. Empowering these principles was a strengthening of ideological current. It had become easier to mortally offend the king. He personified good order. He answered for it to God. The peace is the king’s. (Wormald English Law, 312)
And as the illustration shows, this is exactly what Fëanor did. And he did it to his kin. And he did it in Valinor (a holy or sacred paradise, which acts as a ‘hall’ for these purposes, ruled by the angelic High King of Arda: Manwë.) He found his half-brother Fingolfin speaking privately with their father King Finwë and, believing that Fingolfin was trying to usurp the rightful line of succession, drew his sword. This is the first instance of Melkor/Morgoth’s (the Adversary or Satan figure in Tolkien’s pantheon) malicious whispers materially working their evil and begins to set the pieces in place for the Fall of the Noldor.
Which brings us to the Original Sin of the Eldar. Tolkien hints at an elvish Original Sin using Judeo-Christian imagery and metaphor without actually calling it Original Sin: “The first fruit of their fall was in Paradise, the slaying of Elves by Elves, and this and their evil oath dogs all their later heroism, generating treacheries and undoing all victories” (Tolkien Letters, 148). The “first fruit” metaphor of their Original Sin reminds us of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and “Paradise” is plainly clear as a reference to the Abrahamic tradition. However, the second part of the sentence reminds us of “wyrd” (Old English for Providence, fate) in that the oath “dogs all their later heroism”. This is a Germanic concept but, as commented on above concerning Beorhtnoth, does not necessarily come into conflict with Christianity. (cf. the Old Saxon heroic poem Hêliand about the warrior Christ and his comitatus of Apostles.)
Elvish Original Sin is Germanic Original Sin: that is to say, Kin-slaying. This Germanic Original Sin has precedents all over the ancient Germanic world. Most relevant for this discussion is its use in Beowulf.
When the Beowulf scholar Craig R. Davis writes of the fiery and symbolically aligned imagery in Beowulf, for example between Hnæf’s pyre and Grendel, he could easily have been writing of Fëanor, the Kin-slaying of Alqualondë, and the Great Burning (Tolkien S, 97):
Hnæf’s pyre is thus connected symbolically to the flames which will eventually devour Heorot (lines 83, 781), as well as to the fires of Hell (line 185) and the unholy flicker in Grendel’s eyes (lines 726b-27). […] The greedy spirit of Hnæf’s pyre compacts the pyrous and cannibalistic imagery used to depict the spirits of kin-feud [Davis quotes lines 1122b-24a ]. Strange fire burns on Grendel’s mere (lines 1365-66) and in the hall of his mother (line 1331). She is twice called a “greedy” spirit (gifre, line 1277; grædig, line 1499) and also a wælgæst wæfre “spirit restless for slaughter” (line 1331). Grendel’s pacing and his dam’s impatience dramatize the pressure Hengest felt to avenge Hnæf with Finn’s blood: ne meahte wæfre mod / forhabban in hreþre “his breast could not restrain his restless spirit” (lines 1150b-51a) […] In the troubled legendary history of the of the Danes, Hnæf’s pyre becomes the fatal pre-Scylding prototype of the fire which will destroy Heorot.(Davis Demise, 124-28)
As with Valinor above, the king’s peace is threatened and therefore is the Pax Danica of Heorot as well; the “Camelot of Danish pseudo-history” and “symbol of inter-tribal kingship” as Davis calls it. Furthermore, it is not only the monstrous abstract of Grendel’s personification that threatens the king’s peace but also the concrete premonition of immolation (Klaeber Beowulf, 81b-85). The hall, when it is built, is already haunted by kin-feud. Beowulf is therefore useful to illustrate kin-slaying as an all consuming fire that eats the soul as “fire is conceived as a gæst (1123)” (Tolkien B&C, 35). This conventional personification is a favorite of the Beowulf poet (cf. Isaacs Personification, 215-18). Ingeld is consumed with his right of blood-feud. The spirit of kin-slaying burns with hatred just as the timbers of Heorot burn. Davis notes that:
the forecast of Ingeld’s firing of Heorot is flatly juxtaposed to the introduction of Grendel: (lines 85-86) […] In both these juxtapositions of Ingeld and Grendel [lines 85-86 and 2073b - 74], we are suddenly jerked from the legendary world of ancient heroes, a world of blood-feuds and burning halls, into an oneiric realm of nighttime ogres, a world of heightened moral resonance, in which haunting demons are made to personify, in starker symbolic form, the inspiration of characters like Ingeld […] Ingeld’s laða lig “hostile flame” (line 83), which will one day burn Heorot, burns too in Grendel’s eyes as he penetrates the hall: him of eagum stod / ligge gelicost leoht unfæger “from his eyes flared up, most like a flame, an unlovely gleam” (lines 726-27). (Davis Demise, 102-103)
As the Hero burns the hall and slays his (or her) kin, so too do the mythical and monstrous elements reified in the figure of Grendel and his recurrent attacks on Heorot. Both seem to work with and play off each other and both are represented as some sort of fiery and passionate spirit. Grendel, the descendant of Cain and heir to the curse of God, enters the human home, or hall, of the descendants of Adam and continues the murderous sin of kin-slaying against them. Grendel functions as a Cain-figure: as a personification of Germanic Original Sin in monstrous materiality. Edward B. Irving, Jr. is another Beowulf scholar who finds this pattern prevalent in Beowulf and also points out the nature of the Germanic Original Sin in the Old English poem Genesis A:
Such twisting of good to evil is a pattern in the poem, of course. Hrothgar later (1709b-22a) describes the evil king Heremod as having been set moving firmly in the right direction by God but as then inexplicably choosing to plunge off that high road into the joyless thickets of slaughter and exile. Cain too once lived in a human hall with family, but chose to sever the holy cords of kinship with that first death-stroke that is consistently represented in Beowulf as the true original sin, as it is also in the often cited passage in Genesis A (987-1001). There the blow that killed Abel is represented as a “twig” that produced branches and leaves that afflict all mankind with violence and torment to this day. (Irving Rereading, 138, bold emphasis mine)
It is precisely this severing of the holy cords of kinship with that first death-stroke that Fëanor commits in Valinor. After the kin-slaying of the Teleri elves and the theft of their swan-ships, Fëanor burns them on the shores of Middle-earth in “a great burning, bright and terrible” as though he were torching a great hall. With similar effect, the burning of the ships is a breaking of the (first) oath between the brothers and a betrayal of Fingolfin: “[T]his was the first fruits of the Kinslaying and the Doom of the Noldor” (Tolkien S, 97). The Kinslaying of Alqualondë functions as the “twig” of Genesis A above. That, in turn, produced the branches and leaves of the Germanic narratives that afflict the Elves and Men of Middle-earth.
The Noldor, and not just the Fëanorians, bring judgement, or, to use Tolkien’s word, doom upon themselves. A curse of fate is laid upon the rebels by the gods: the Prophecy of the North and the Doom of the Noldor Tolkien calls it. The chain, or cycle of cause-and-effect, of the Germanic elements from kin-strife to blood-oaths to kin-slaying brings us to a point where the narrative can evolve into one that is familiar in ancient Germanic literature: “The Germanic mind habitually prophesies doom. Doom is unavoidable” (Irving Rereading, 152). The ever-present prophecy of doom, the “sad light of fatalism” (Stanley AS Paganism, 94) that shadows all the events in Tolkien’s Legendarium from this point until the fall of Sauron is Germanic in nature. And the elves know it, they consistently lament “the long defeat.” A long defeat that also brings their Heroism into greater clarity.
Abstract fate or wyrd (or “Authority” as both Dickerson and Tolkien call it) begins to operate with the curse of the Vala (Archangel/god) Mandos:
Tears unnumbered ye shall shed; and the Valar will fence Valinor against you, and shut you out, so that not even the echo of your lamentation shall pass over the mountains. On the House of Fëanor the wrath of the Valar lieth from the West unto the uttermost East, and upon all that will follow them shall be laid also. Their Oath shall drive them, and yet betray them, and ever snatch away the very treasures that they have sworn to pursue. To evil shall all things turn that begin well; and by treason of kin unto kin, and the fear of treason, shall this come to pass. The Dispossessed shall they be forever.
Ye have spilled the blood of your kindred unrighteously and have stained the land of Aman. For blood ye shall render blood, and beyond Aman ye shall dwell in Death’s shadow. (Tolkien S, 95)
The deeds of Fëanor and his vanguard allows the narrative to enter into a Heroic cycle of glorious victories and even more glorious defeats revolving around oaths and their breaking. Fëanor’s response shows his prideful, wilful and defiant Northern courage :
Then many quailed; but Fëanor hardened his heart and said: “We have sworn, and not lightly. This oath we will keep. We are threatened with many evils, and treason not least; but one thing is not said: that we shall suffer from cowardice, from cravens or the fear of cravens. Therefore I say that we will go on, and this doom I add: the deeds that we shall do shall be the matter of song until the last days of Arda.” (Tolkien S, 95)
It is not only ofermōd but also defiant Heroism in the face of fate that Fëanor exhibits and it is significant that he calls another doom upon them: that their deeds “shall be the matter of song until the last days of Arda.” As Jan de Vries notes, “the hero, then, lives in order to win eternal fame” (de Vries Heroic Song, 183). However, the Germanic nature of this Heroic narrative does not mean that it must conflict with Tolkien’s personal views on Christianity, as he gives us the final word on the matter in the Boethian words of Manwë:
So shall it be! Dear bought those songs shall be accounted, and yet shall be well-bought. For the price could be no other. Thus even as Eru spoke to us shall beauty not before conceived be brought into Ëa, and evil yet be good to have been. (Tolkien S, 108)
(Boethius, a 5th-6th century Roman Senator and philosopher who believed that evil, because it is born out of God’s creation and goodness, could not escape His goodness and will always, in the end, have been good to be.)
On the doorstep of Morgoth’s fortress, Fëanor dies a glorious death. He is cut off from his army and surrounded by Balrogs. They slay him and attempt to mutilate him but his corpse combusts in flame as his spirit leaves it for the Halls of Mandos, where the elves go when they are killed or waste away.
3. Conclusion
As we’ve seen, Fëanor is linked through imagery, deeds and description of character to the fiery and consuming nature of the Germanic Original Sin. Even in his death, driven by “fey” rage and overconfidence, his fiery spirit consumes his physical body until all that is left is ashes. He is the Urtyp, the archetypical Germanic Hero in the history of Tolkien’s Middle-earth. He comes the closest to cruelty that Tolkien will allow of any of his characters who are not fallen into darkness such as Morgoth and Sauron. Even in defiant death, Fëanor functions in his Heroic role:
A hero dies young: that is his tragedy. It has been prophesied to him. And even when protected by the horny skin of Siegfried or Fer Diad, even when almost invulnerable like the Greek Achilles, even when safeguarded by impossible conditions against death, like the Welsh hero Llew Llaw Gyffes, his fate will be fulfilled inexorably. That is perhaps what is most moving in the image of the hero: his fragility in spite of his (humanly speaking) unassailable strength. During the whole of his brief life this fate is ever present. Is it to be wondered at that he defies it in the end? (de Vries Heroic Song, 183)
Moreover, due to the Germanic nature of his Original Sin, Fëanor also functions as a Cain-figure: the first Kin-slayer for which he and his people (the Noldorin elves) are exiled and cursed by the Valar themselves.
Although Middle-earth is a world of heightened moral resonance, good and evil and good guys and bad guys are not so clear-cut as they appear to be at first glance — or portrayed in contemporary movies. It’s not spelt out in the Lord of the Ringsbut the hints are there (take, for example, Boromir and Denethor). In fact, Tolkien is using the Heroic (das Heroische) to show us all the negative, as well as the noble, aspects of Northern courage.
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