From a recent book review by John Houghton
… In “The Noldorization of the Edain: The Roman-Germani Paradigm for the Noldor and Edain in Tolkien’s Migration Era” (305-327), Richard Z. Gallant sets out extensive parallels between the encounters of Rome and the Germanic tribes and the relationships of the three houses of the Edain to the Fingolfian Noldor. The histories—written in each case by the more developed civilization—show the barbarians passing through three similar stages on their way from being tribes to becoming a kingdom: incorporation into the higher culture’s army, entrance into a state of association with that culture, and adoption of the other culture’s legal framework (in the secondary world, the “social norms and values” of the Noldor, 321).
Houghton, John (2020) "Tolkien and the Classical World (2021), edited by Hamish Williams," Journal of Tolkien Research: Vol. 11 : Iss. 2 , Article 4.
Review available for free at: https://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/vol11/iss2/4
Tolkien and the Classical World, edited by Hamish Williams, available at Powell's Books.
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Note: This essay was inspired by Kossack IM in 2017, when they commented:
I am a bit surprised. I thought: Writing about the nothern heroic values — we surely will discuss Turin!
Out of of the three heroes of the Silmarillion — Tuor, Beren, Turin — Turin is the most tragic. And there isn’t even an oath or several to excuse him: Mostly his pride does him in. Including kinslaying (Brandir).
So, I’ve dedicated this essay to IM: thank you IM for pointing me in the direction of the Edain when I was at the time only focused on the Noldor and equally thank you for the inspiration!
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Introduction
The Elder Days of J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendarium are reminiscent of our own history’s Migration Era, a period approximately from 376 to 568 CE, in which confederations of barbarians were acculturated and assimilated into the dominant hegemony of Rome. These acculturation processes were often violent and conflict-laden and subsequently recorded in Germanic heroic epics and Roman histories, which often emphasized the “deeds of brave men” (Jordanes Get. 315; Mierow (trans.)). Similar to our own Migration Era, Tolkien’s Elder Days also chronicle the “deeds of brave men” and events that generate heroic epics such as the Great Tales. These Great Tales tell the stories of heroes from the tribes of Men1 who migrated and settled in Elvish-dominated Beleriand and of their (often tragic but always heroic) relationship with the Eldar.
This relationship between the “threatened kingdoms” (Wolfram 1997: 21)2 of the Eldar and the confederation of the Edain is indicative of the relationship between the Late Western Roman Empire and the Germanic confederations that settled within its borders. The structure of the relationship between Elves and Men is contingent upon questions of certain power relations, norms, and values (particularly, the Germanic warrior ethos of Northern courage as Tolkien called it); important too, is the status of the migrants as ‘barbarians’, who settle in a hegemonic ‘superior’ culture and its territory.3
The Edain undergo a process of acculturation much like Romanization – or in the case of Tolkien’s story, perhaps we may call it Noldorization. This Noldorization consists of vassal relationships, military support and buffer zones, the education of aristocratic youth in Noldorin royal courts, the language acquisition of Sindar (the language of the Grey Elves), and the adoption of new Elvish-influenced traditions and material culture. In effect, the Edain, like the Germanic confederations of the fourth and fifth centuries in the Roman Empire, progress through a three-stage process which transform their political units from gentes (the three houses) to regna (ultimately, Númenor).
Most importantly, however, while this process of assimilation and accompanying power relationships liken the Noldor to the Romans on a structural level, the actual warrior ethos of these Elves resembles the Germanic Northern courage, and it is this heroic way of life that the Edain subsequently adopt. The adopted heroic culture begins to define these Men as a political-cultural unit through their own heroic deeds and ethos. Furthermore, assimilation of the political-cultural units generate and maintain material and cultural symbols; that is, Elvish artifacts such as the Ring of Barahir. These symbols are carried by the Edain aristocratic elite as core-traditions of their pedigree and authority as ‘Elf-friends’ within the Eldar’s hegemony. The process of Noldorization during Tolkien’s ‘Migration Era’ of the First Age provides similar conditions as the process of Romanization and our own ‘Migration Era’, including conflict-situations that form the Stoff of the heroic epics of that time: heroic epics that greatly influenced the creativity of J.R.R. Tolkien.
1. The Ideological Framework of Noldorization
The process of both Roman and Noldorin cultural assimilation lies within a framework of ideology. Roman imperial ideology was by no means monolithic, and its process of Romanization was one of dialectical cultural change (Millett 1990: 1). Additionally, Roman imperial ideology shifted in focus from expansion to stabilization. Starting with the reign of Hadrian (117 CE), Clifford Ando notes that Roman ideology was one of unification:
This ideology constructed the empire as an all-embracing collective by minimizing differences in culture and class and emphasizing the similarity of each individual’s relationship with the emperor and especially the all-inclusive benefits of Roman rule. (2000: 40-41)
Nonetheless, whether expansionist or unifying, Roman ideology formed the framework in which the empire executed the process of Romanization. Michael Kulikowski refers to this ideological framework as an interpretatio romana:4
This debate stems from a need to come to grips with the defects of our sources, all of which show us the barbarians through the prism of an interpretatio romana. That is, regardless of the origins and even self-perceptions of the authors, their writings belong to a classical, Graeco-Roman literary tradition. (2002: 70-71)
Following Kulikowski, we could possibly refer to the Noldor perspective, which informs the entire Silmarillion (1977), as interpretatio noldoraria; that is, the narrative of the events that we read is filtered through the ideological ‘prism’ of the Noldorin chroniclers of Elvish history. In the Roman context, this imperial ideology was “highly powerful” and flexibly incorporative “to emphasize the universalizing value system of Rome” (Hingley 2005: 55). For the Noldor, an ideological system is in place and serves not only their hegemony by universalizing Fingolfin values5 but also to assimilate the Edain into its value system and power structure. Cooperation rather than conquest is its mechanism which, like the Roman context, “was encouraged by the fact that there was a common self-interest” (Hingley 2005: 70).
This ideological framework legitimizes the hegemonic order based on a system of beliefs (morals, norms, and values), and in Tolkien’s legendarium it is represented within the illustrative, historical narrative of the Elves (Gallant 2020). This narrative along with its sapientia is written by secondary-world (Elvish) narrators for a secondary-world audience. It functions as an illustrative system of beliefs which “channels rather than stifles creativity” (Ando 2000: 23) and is therefore generative; that is, the illustrative narrative does not simply confirm its moral authority, but it reproduces it (Scanlon 1994: 5). Elvish moral authority emphasizes behavior (particularly heroic behavior) to be emulated and the tragic consequences of behavior to be shunned through narrating the history of the Elves and the Great Tales. Therefore, the lens through which we view the events in the history of the Elves is through the eyes of the Fingolfians, their sapientia, and moral authority (Gallant 2020). That is, our narrative(s) is filtered through the prism of interpretatio noldoraria.
In the published narrative works, we have two accounts of Finrod Felagund’s first encounter with the Atani: in The Silmarillion, ‘Of The Coming of Men into the West’ (162-173, Chapter 17), and Sador’s story in The Children of Húrin (42-44). These accounts are, as noted, written in the secondary world by Elvish chroniclers for a secondary world audience. The Elvish chroniclers are presenting an illustrative, historical narrative of Middle-earth in the First Age, which, like all historical narratives, are “verbal fictions. The contents of which are as much invented as found and the forms of which have more in common with their counterparts in literature than they have with those in the sciences” (White 1985: 82). Essentially, the narrator has to ‘fill in the blanks’ between chronicled events to place them into context.
This exemplary narrative illustrates a sort of acculturation process, or Noldorization, within the framework of Fingolfin ideology. It is not an aggressive conquering policy as Rome sometimes engaged in but, rather, a voluntary, symbiotic endeavor on the parts of both the Edain and Noldor, at least according to the narrators. In the case of the first half of the first millennium,
“Romanization is understood to be at least as much a conscious activity of the inhabitants of the conquered provinces as of the conquering Empire (itself no uniform entity). Yet Roman-isation it was nevertheless” (Halsall 2014: 71; italics added).
Halsall further adds a few sentences later that “[t]he provincials bought into Roman culture for their own purposes but this facilitated the political unification and coherence of early Roman western Europe” (71). These aspects of assimilation are also observed in the process of settlement of the Edain. While there is no “conquering” of the barbarian Edain by the culturally superior Noldor, there is an immediate and consensual establishment of a lord-and-vassal relationship. We have, essentially, a civilization versus barbarian or noble-savage relationship until, we could postulate, the Akallabêth.
Romanization was the Roman “emphasis moved towards the integration and Romanization of barbarian leaders, setting their actions and motives firmly within Roman ideology and politics” (MacGeorge 2002: 264).
This Romanization traditionally included integration into the Roman economic system, local kings maintaining their power through Roman titles and artifacts, local elites adopting Roman administrative systems, auxiliary cohorts formed to support Roman legions, and the building of constructions with Roman-style architecture (Halsall 2014: 69-71). The Edain, similarly, form military cohorts (e.g. CH 53) and integrate into the courts and retinues of the Noldor,6 whose culture and traditions align their actions and motives firmly within Fingolfin ideology and politics. This process of cultural integration resulted in, for example, the ‘great deeds’ that Barahir performed at the Battle of Sudden Flame.
Usually interpretatio noldoraria becomes clearer with the rhetoric the narrators use, such as statements of judgement which are disguised as fact: for example, Felagund’s impressions of a “strange people” (the Other) with “rude harps” (primitive craftsmanship), or his assertion that “they loved him, and took him for their lord, and were ever after loyal to the house of Finarfin” (Sil 162-163). These statements rhetorically portray Bëor’s people as the good, idyllic ‘noble savages’ who are loyal to the superior hegemony. The discursive narrative reveals the deeper meanings and views held by the chroniclers, which privilege a hegemonic noble-savage dichotomy in their accounts of the Edain.
2. Conflicting Ideologies of the Eldar
Within the narrative history of Tolkien’s legendarium, there are two Elvish ideologies in conflict with one another. One is the ideology of the Fëanorians, and the second is the ideology of the Fingolfians. The ideology of the Fëanorians is rather clear. Their purpose is to regain the Silmarils at any and all costs.7 The Fingolfians, on the other hand, have a quite different ideology. Finrod explains the Fingolfian ideology to the wise Edain woman Andreth:
“To overthrow the Shadow, or if that may not be, to keep it from spreading once more over all Middle-earth – to defend the Children of Eru, Andreth, all the Children and not the proud Eldar only!” (MR 310-311).
The Fingolfian ideology is ‘benevolent’, if not somewhat patronizing in its moral purpose. The ancient historian Francis Haverfield interpreted this altruistic purpose as a “moral purpose of Romanization” (Hingley 2005: 33-34). Haverfield’s “traditional” approach saw the Romanization process “wrought for the betterment of the world” (1923: 10). Furthermore, such a traditional view considers the Roman Empire as the “civilized world,” and, therefore, “the safety of Rome was the safety of all civilization” (11).
The moral purpose of Fingolfin ideology, it would seem, is to keep the Shadow from engulfing Middle-earth “for the betterment of the world.” This would also suggest that Elvendom is civilization and that the safety of Elvendom is the safety of all civilizations that make up the Children of Eru. ‘Noldorization’ shares both a moral and political ideology since the patronistic world-view of the Fingolfians shapes their relationship with the Edain. For the Romans, “this reflects a tradition whereby the conqueror became the patron and protector of the conquered” (Millett 1990: 3). The Fingolfians, who are not conquering the Edain, are still acting as patrons and protectors to defend the Children of Eru – all the Children and not the proud Eldar only. Their ideology sharply contrasts with Fëanorian ideology and highlights the Fëanorian shortcomings of pride and possession.
The wise among the Eldar, nevertheless, see the shortcomings among themselves and regard Men to have a higher purpose (within the Fingolfian ideology), and the chroniclers provide such hints in the text (e.g. MR 318-319). Tacitus wrote his Germania in a similar manner: “for moral purposes, to highlight Roman shortcomings” (Halsall 2014: 50; see also Woolf 2013: 137). The narrators of Tolkien’s legendarium make reference to such an awareness and, like Tacitus, highlight their shortcomings, for example, in the conversation between Finrod Felagund and the Edain wise-woman Andreth, in Tolkien’s Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth:
“This then, I propound, was the errand of Men, not the followers, but the heirs and fulfillers of all: to heal the Marring of Arda, already foreshadowed before their devising; and to do more, as agents of the magnificence of Eru: to enlarge the Music and surpass the Vision of the World!” (MR 318).
Within this ideology of “the betterment of the world,” Finrod sees the “Children of Men” as the “deliverers” (319) of the Eldar, and in surpassing the ‘lordly’ Eldar, they will become ‘lordly’ themselves in the end. Not all of the Eldar adopt such a perspective, however. In that same conversation, Andreth explains the power dynamics of the Noldor and Edain when she says:
“We may be “Children of Eru”, as ye say in your lore; but we are children to you also: to be loved a little maybe, and yet creatures of less worth, upon whom ye may look down from the height of your power and your knowledge, with a smile, or with pity, or with a shaking of heads” (MR 308).
[To this, Finrod admits:] “Alas, you speak near the truth. At least of many of my people; but not all and certainly not of me” (308).
The conversation shows that the power relations and the morals that govern those relations are twofold. On the one hand, it is clear that “many” of the Eldar view themselves with a “chauvinistic superiority” (Mathisen 2011: 18),8 whose duty it is to, sometimes, patronizingly protect the newcomers; on the other hand, we see pure and simple nobility in Men that highlights the shortcomings of the Eldar and their deeds: noble savages who will one day deliver them.
3. Edain-Noldorin Power Structures
The general Roman view of the barbarian was one in which barbarians were “slaves by nature,” “irrational,” and “incapable of living according to written laws. Their customs were alien, unpredictable, and dangerous in the worst of them, little more than splendid vices in the best” (Wolfram 1997: 6). It was a view in which the ‘bad barbarian’ was faithless and unpredictable, whereas the ‘noble barbarian’ was still a quaint oddity. Ammianus Marcellinus clearly categorizes the worst barbarians as the Huns and blames them all for the “various calamities inflicted by the wrath of Mars, which raged everywhere with unusual fury” (Amm. Marc. 31.2; Hamilton (trans.) 2004).
In a Classical sense, we may consider Tolkien’s Edain as noble barbarians. To paraphrase Edith Hall,10 several Edain characters are vested with ‘Elvish’ virtues such as courage and self-control, in which they equal or surpass their Elvish counterparts (for example, Beren and Thingol); yet they still exhibit “splendid vices,” (Wolfram 1997: 6) particularly in their idyllic simplicity. James Obertino credits Tacitus as “among the first to imply the category of the noble savage” (2006: 117-118) and suggests that Tolkien draws upon Tacitus’ depictions of both “admirable and debased peoples” – of both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ barbarians.
In Tolkien, Ammianus’ description of the Huns’ behavior would undoubtably describe his orcs; yet Ammianus’ description of the Huns also applies to Tolkien’s “bad barbarians.” The Easterlings provide a stark contrast with the noble Edain. These would be, very early on in Tolkien’s legendarium, the sons of Ulfang the Black, “Swarthy Men” who “followed [Fëanor’s son] Caranthir and swore allegiance to him, and proved faithless” (Sil 183). After the War of Wrath, they fled back to the east, where they wandered “wild and lawless” (Sil 310).
In their physical description, Tolkien almost paraphrases Ammianus. Ammianus writes of the Huns: “they have squat bodies, strong limbs, and thick necks, and are so prodigiously ugly and bent that they might be two-legged animals…” (Amm. Marc. 31.2). Tolkien writes that “these Men were short and broad, long and strong in the arm; their skins were swart or sallow, and their hair was dark as were their eyes” (Sil 183). Likewise, both are defined by their treachery and their cruelty. “You cannot make a truce with them, because they are quite unreliable and easily swayed by any breath of rumour which promises advantage; like unreasoning beasts they are entirely at the mercy of the maddest impulses. They are totally ignorant of the distinction between right and wrong” (Amm. Marc. 31.2). And so too are Tolkien’s Easterlings under Ulfang, who were already under the secret dominion of Morgoth and had betrayed the Sons of Fëanor. While Tolkien’s “bad barbarians” are not the focus of the Elvish history, the Easterlings do serve as a contrast with the Edain as noble Men, who share “small love” between them (Sil 183).
Tolkien’s characterization of the Edain as noble barbarians is particularly expressed in their behaviors. Daily life is not often expounded upon except with a certain idyllic innocence and simplicity. Tacitus finds this idyllic innocence oddly12 complimentary in the Germania: “in every household the children, naked and filthy, grow up with those stout frames and limbs which we so admire” (20; Church and Brodribb (trans.) 1942), while also noting that “to pass an entire day and night in drinking disgraces no one”(22). These behaviors of daily life emphasize primeval, idyllic Germanic virtues, and like Tacitus, Tolkien presents similar barbaric attributes. The Edain are presented as idyllic and simple (yet also noble) barbarians, or what Straubhaar calls “primeval, Garden-of-Eden types” (2004: 107).
These idyllic Germanic ‘virtues’ endure until the Third Age in The Lord of the Rings. For instance, Saruman exploits these traits and twists them into slurs through his enchanting rhetoric with an almost Roman-like air of “chauvinistic superiority.” He turns idyllic virtues into vices while also using the negative barbarian stereotype of brigandage11 in his verbal attack on Théoden:12
“Dotard! What is the house of Eorl but a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor among the dogs?” (TT 186).
Such behaviors of daily life, or the observation and exploitation of these behaviors, connect the Edain and their descendants with a Germanic culture as presented by Classical ethnographers.
And here we should stop until next week…
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Notes
1 Men are called the Atani (‘Second-comers’). The first group of Men to migrate over the Blue Mountains form a sort of confederation and are subsequently called the Edain, a group which constitutes those first three kindreds to be named Elf-friend (House of Bëor, House of Haleth, and House of Hador). These three groups of men are reminiscent of the tribes founded by the three sons of Mannus: Ingævones, Herminones, and Istævones (Tac. Germ.2).
2 Herwig Wolfram wrote that “only the interplay of kings and the power of fate allows creation of the heroic saga. The heroic saga derives its theme from the heroic pathos of a threatened or dying kingdom” (1997: 21). In Tolkien’s First Age, the threatened kingdom(s) is Elvendom, the pathos is Northern courage, and the heroes are the great kings of Elves and the chieftains of Men. These are the conditions that allow for the heroic epics recorded in The Silmarillion and the Great Tales.
3 Barbarian is an unfortunate word that carries connotations of moral judgements. Peter Heather notes that “for Greeks first and then imperial Romans, ‘barbarian’ carried huge connotations of inferiority, in everything from morals to table manners. It meant the opposite, the ‘other’, the mirror image of the civilized imperial Mediterranean which the Roman Empire united” (2006: xiv). Heather uses the word barbarian denuded of its moral connotations in his study, meaning simply the ‘non-Roman, non-imperial world’. In this discussion we simply extend this definition to Tolkien’s non-Eldar dominated Middle-earth.
4 The term interpretatio romana appears once in Classical literature (Tac. Germ. 43.4) (Ando 2005: 41) and refers to “the Roman habit of replacing the name of a foreign deity with that of a Roman deity considered somehow comparable” (s.v. interpretatio romana, The Oxford Classical Dictionary (2012)). Kulikowski here expands the denotations of the term to include the interpretive views of barbarian cultures in the Graeco-Roman literary tradition.
5 Hingley writes about “the creation of a ‘Roman’ culture that spread and, effectively, came to define a ‘constellation’ of cultures across the Mediterranean and parts of northern Europe. This new culture was first fully ‘articulated’ under Augustus, during the late first century AD, as Greek models were in effect re-projected in the context of the developing empire, to emphasize the universalizing value system of Rome” (2005: 55). In the case of the Noldor and the Edain, it may not be warranted to call them a ‘constellation’, but the two groups somewhat merge in their values to become ‘universal’ among both the Eldar and Edain.
6 Specifically that of Felagund since the Fëanorians “paid little heed to them [sc. men]” (Sil 165). Túrin, moreover, even becomes a sort of magister militum of Nargothrond (CH 163); see also Tuor in Gondolin (Sil 288-289).
7 See, e.g., HoME, Morgoth’s Ring 112 ( 134).
8 A “chauvinistic superiority” which is attributed to the Greeks by Mathisen (ibid.).
9 “[O]ne corollary of the ‘barbaric Greek’ which must briefly be assessed is that of the ‘noble barbarian’. Several characters of barbarian ethnicity in extant tragedy are invested with ‘Hellenic’ virtues such as courage and self-control, in which they equal or surpass their Greek counterparts. The integrity of the Trojan Cassandra in Agamemnon stands in stark contrast to the corruption of the Argive characters; Polyxena in Hecuba, the heroine of Andromache, and the long-suffering captive of Troades all cast the Greek characters with whom they interact into unflattering light. Moreover, in several passages of Euripides the superiority of the Hellenic characters is explicitly called into question. No study of the barbarian in this genre can lay claim to completeness without at least an attempt to define the reasons behind the poet’s inversion of the moral hierarchy” (Hall 1989: 211).
10 “Sometimes he praises their freedom and nobility and sometimes he despises them for their cruelty and filth” (Obertino 2006: 118). However, Tacitus also seems to tacitly acknowledge that out of ‘the filth’ grows the physical strength of their bodies, which he says is admirable.
11 “One definitive characteristic of the barbarian (at least in the wild) was his inability to live according to the law. Thus other people who refused to live by the (Roman) law, like bandits and brigands, were, regardless of their origins, assimilated with barbarians. The elision [sic] of barbarians with all other enemies of the public order, or wielders of illegitimate or illegal force, was common in Roman thinking” (Halsall 2014: 55).
12 “These Northmen were descendants of the same race of Men who in the First Age passed into the West of Middle-earth and became allies of the Eldar in their wars with Morgoth” (UT 373-374), who “appear to have been most nearly akin to the third and greatest of the peoples of the Elf-friends, ruled by the House of Hador” (402n4) [author’s note].
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About the Author
Jeff Dem holds a BA in Russian and Eastern European Studies and Creative Writing from the University of Michigan, a MA in Germanic Languages and Literatures from the University of Virginia, and a Dr. phil. (magna cum laude) from the Philosophische Fakultät of the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena in Anglistische Mediävistik. His dissertation 'The Germanic Narrative of the Eldar in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Legendarium: Northern Courage, Wyrd and Redemption' is soon to be submitted as a book.