Wyrd is what happens to the hero, Northern courage is how the hero faces his or her wyrd
This essay is grew out of a conference paper, titled The Dance of Authority in Arda: Wyrd, Fate and Providence in the Elder Days of Middle-earth, that I gave at the 2019 German Tolkien Society Conference held at the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena, Thüringen. It is forthcoming in the Proceedings and was openly peer-reviewed by none other than Tom Shippey.
This is also probably the most heady, abstract, theoretical, and certainly the most theological of all my essays. Nevertheless, the questions of fate and freewill are, as we will see, inextricably tied to the heroic ethos and theory of Northern courage. They are two sides of the same coin.
So… take that as a bit of a warning for what comes below
Note: once again key words that have come up before and that will come up again are in bold in order to give some continuity between diaries.
In the history of the Eldar, I approach the interaction of wyrd, fate and providence – three modes of Ilúvatar’s Authority – metaphorically. In this discussion, these modes of Authority are likened to a sort of a dance of Ilúvatar’s divine will. While the three modes of Authority lead and follow, ebb and flow, in movements across the dancefloor of Arda, the Music of the Ainur figuratively plays the themes of being. This discussion aims to show that Tolkien’s Legendarium employs a three-fold structure of fate, providence and particularly wyrd to frame the ‘Germanic’ heroic narrative of the Eldar through an Alfredian (Alfred the Great, don’t worry, it makes sense below) approach.
Tolkien’s cosmology has been extensively researched and he has shown in his letters the Christian thought identified in his fiction: namely the thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Augustine of Hippo and Boethius. What this discussion aims to bring to the fore, however, is that Tolkien is an Anglo-Saxonist who wrote what, particularly in the First Age of the Legendarium but also through the Third, may be considered an heroic elegy that presents a pattern of loss and consolation (Greenfield 1972, 214). From this perch, we may pay particular attention to the specific ‘fusion’ in Tolkien’s works of Anglo-Saxon Catholic thought and Anglo-Saxon heroism (ibid., 35-36). That is, as Jerold Frake’s (1988, 89) succinctly called it, the “Romano-Christianized Anglo-Saxon tradition.” Gerard Hynes (2012, 133) suggests further, that “[M]ore important, however, than any direct exposure to Boethius’ Latin text may be Tolkien’s familiarity with the Old English version traditionally attributed to King Alfred.” This tradition may more accurately reflect the nature of the Eldar’s illustrative narrative.
Firstly, however, it will be helpful to the discussion to expound upon the terms of the modes as they are used here. Fate, wyrd and providence are the three modes in which Ilúvatar’s will is at work. This is a slightly different construction than both versions of the Consolatio, which uses a dichotomy of either fatum and fortuna in the Latin text or wyrd and foreþonc in the Old English translation.
In Tolkien’s Legendarium, however, the functions are specific enough to warrant three categories instead of two which may account for the Elvish problem. The structure of this discussion will first introduce the three modes of authority, followed by a detailed exploration of wyrd, the second mode of authority within the framework of the Alfredian tradition. And lastly, the discussion turns to the third mode of authority – providence (foreðonc) and how it interacts, dances, with wyrd through the technique of interlace.
1. Ordo and the Modes of Authority
Tolkien, Boethius, and Alfred are all in agreement in that the nature of the universe is divinely ordered (Latin: ordo) (Hynes 2012, 134). But Tolkien and the Alfredian text differ from Boethius in that there is a difference in what God (Ilúvatar) ordains as what must happen and what can happen.
This difference loosens “the rigid causality of Boethius’ thought and addresses providence in terms more in line with Tolkien’s notes” (Hynes 2012, 137). This ‘wiggle-room’ results in a cosmically ordered but materially and temporally loosened order where wyrd is subservient to providence and divine prescience is no check on man’s activity (Stanley 2000, 92).
“Wyrd is subordinated to providence, just as fatum is” (Frakes 1988, 95-96). Both Helen Freeh and Paul Kocher support this hierarchal view that “Middle-earth is not a fated realm, though freely made choices often produce fatalistic consequence. Even so, the apparently fated outcome could have been favourable had people chosen rightly” (Freeh 2015, 62; see also Kocher 1980, 174, bolding mine). This stress on action in Alfred and Tolkien significantly differs from the stress on thought in Boethius:
Boethius is concerned with our freedom to think while Alfred is concerned with our freedom to act. Alfred stresses that God ‘rewards everyone justly according to his deed’, which places a tremendous amount of autonomy and responsibility on human free will and human action. (Hynes 2012, 138-39)
Or, perhaps, Elvish free will and action.
While it is Freeh and Kocher’s view that Arda is not a fated realm, this discussion suggests that Arda is indeed a fated realm that allows for tremendous free will and individual action. That is, Arda is a fated realm in the sense of our first mode of authority that binds the Elves to the constraints of Arda for all time. Simultaneously to the movement of the first mode of authority, the second mode makes it seem to those involved that Arda is a fated realm with fatalistic consequences, but this is in fact mutable depending on the choices made as Freeh and Kocher argue. Which brings us to a closer look at our first mode of authority, fatum.
The first mode, the mode of ‘Fate’ seems to be a more distant and abstract force in the Legendarium. In the dance of divine will, she is a passive dance partner who appears to be benevolent fate in general. The Elves perceive this mode as their destiny to remain in Arda until the end of days and have embedded the concept into their language. Tolkien created a linguistic root that expressed the Elvish view of this fate as
MBAR ‘settle, establish’ (hence also, settle a place, settle in a place, establish one’s home) also to erect (permanent buildings, dwellings, etc.); extended form ṃbar’tă ‘permanent establishment’ > fate of the world in general as, or as far as, established and pre-ordained from creation; and that part of the ‘fate’ which affected an individual person, and not open to modification by his free will. (Fate, 184, bolding mine)
This mode of authority more or less remains in the background of the narrative, merely swaying to the music, but serves an important purpose for the ontological distinction between Men and Elves. Men do not share this ‘fate’, theirs is the gift of death that releases them from the circles of the world. (But note that the linguistic root is found in the hero Túrin Tura-MBAR, the “Master of Fate.”)
The fate of the Elves that the Music binds to Arda is a benevolent one which simply represents a temporal state of affairs, that is the unfolding of Ilúvatar’s themes within the confines, from the beginning to the end, of Arda. This is much different from the wyrd, the doom (doom = judgement in the old sense) that binds the Elves to a Germanic heroic narrative. As this first mode is rather passive, there is not really much more to say for our purposes other than to acknowledge its existence within the ordered cosmos of the Legendarium.
The second mode of authority is wyrd, the mode that affects the narrative of the Elder Days. In the dance of divine will, Wyrd dances wildly and violently throughout Arda until it is satisfied and it is only occasionally led by providence when her wild dance needs to follow the prescribed steps. Nonetheless, this is the mode that is mutable and open to modification by free will although at first glance it seems contradictory to state that wyrd is mutable.
Afterall, didn’t the poet of The Wanderer claim just the opposite? Didn’t he poignantly tell us on line 5b, Wyrd bið ful aræd? Does this not encapsulate the theory of Northern courage, where the Elves’ valour “can only be proved by their fighting a losing battle, with defeat foreordained and foreknown” (Phillpotts 1991, 5)? Is this not the story of ‘the long defeat’?
Yes to all the questions above, however it is also illusory and veiled for both the Elves in the Legendarium as well as for our ancient Germanic poets. In the fusion of new and old, the Alfredian tradition shows otherwise: Wisdom states,
This mutable fate which we call wyrd acts according to his providence and his design, as he plans that it should be. (ADCP, IV, pr. vi, 6, 349)
Which brings us to the third mode of authority: providence (foreðonc). The early Christians believed that “The providence of God refers to His direction and care over all creation. God’s sovereignty refers to the fact that God is the supreme Ruler and Lawgiver of the universe” . Kathleen Dubs (2004, 135) simply adds
[P]rovidence is the divine reason itself, the unfolding of temporal events as this is present to the vision of the divine mind; fate is the same unfolding of events as it is worked out in time, as we perceive it in the temporal world. We human beings are unable to know providence. All we can know is fate.
Tolkien, however, does not use the word providence (Flieger 2009, 154-55; Hynes 2012, 134-35), rather, Tolkien purposely avoided obvious parallels while retaining the essence of the idea. Here he uses the word Authority as a gloss for providence and sovereignty, as in the “Authority that Ordained the Rules” (Letters, 202). He is very clear that Ilúvatar, his godhead, is the ultimate authority in the universe:
But the One retains all ultimate authority, and (or so it seemed as viewed in serial time) reserves the right to intrude the finger of God into the story: that is to produce realities which could not be deduced even from a complete knowledge of the previous past for all subsequent time (a possible definition of a ‘miracle’).” (Letters, 235)
Paul Kocher (1980, 16-17) noted that these miracles of Authority, these “uncaused supernatural events … new creations out of nothing” are a “necessary and liberating element [which] freed Ilúvatar from his own world, from the chains of causation, which ran through it by means of physical, psychological, and other natural laws.” Authority, then, has built in a deux ex machina within the confines of Arda. Miracles that dance subtly and lightly in and out of the narrative using a mode that is mutable and open to modification by free will.
2. Mode of Wyrd
But the second mode requires a more thorough look as the seemingly immutable wyrd of the Germanic tradition reveals a greater complexity, one which may indeed be mutable. This complexity is what the Alfredian tradition attempted to comes to terms, by subordinating wyrd to God’s will and the divine plan. E. G. Stanley (Stanley 2000, 85-87) found five different aspects of wyrd in Anglo-Saxon literature. Stanley’s third aspect is the function we are most concerned with here, in which “the meaning of the word is something like ‘final event, final fate, doom, death’ that is connected with the elegiac mood inherited from paganism” (ibid., 86, 95). This mode of authority is a judicial and penitentiary one, but it is not one that is arbitrary, wanton, or malicious (ibid., 98). It may seem immutable to those who are ignorant of the divine plan (pretty much everyone except God) but it actually serves a corrective function in the unfolding of divine will, an “executrix of divine justice” (ibid., 100). This corrective aspect of wyrd and its Germanic mood and tenor is most manifest in The Doom of Mandos.
To face his or her wyrd, it takes a hero’s Northern courage. This courage is, in Tolkien’s view, the ‘heroic temper’ of both Scandinavia and England that shares in an “absolute resistance, perfect because without hope” (ibid., 21; Ker 1904, 57). Wyrd, the hero’s doom, is inextricably tied – fused – to this perfect, hopeless heroic resistance.
The late Edward Irving, Jr., (1989, 127; 152) writing in the context of Wiglaf’s heroic temper and the desire for the dragon’s treasure, states “… a hero’s high destiny is a mysterious fusion of his own freely chosen act, his willa, and the fate ineluctably in store for him, the gifeðe, the given. That force field that pulls him onward toward doom and glory is stronger than greed” and further: “[T]he Germanic mind habitually prophesizes doom. Doom is unavoidable.”
As we saw last week, Fëanor seems to embody Irving’s view of the heroic temper when we read his reply to the Herald of Mandos who just spoke the doom. Fëanor himself, with the defiance of the Germanic hero, further prophesizes his own doom: “and this doom I add: the deeds that we shall do shall be the matter of song until the last days of Arda” (S, 95, cf. Chapter I, 17). Irving’s “force field” pulls Fëanor (and the Noldor) toward fulfilling his Oath and seeking glory (lof ond dom) in the form of songs sung until the end of days.
Alfred accepts wyrd in his translation of Boethius as a corrective and punishing force (Frakes 1988, 98) subservient to God (or Eru Ilúvatar in our discussion). The two salient aspects of fortuna that find places in the Alfredian system, however, are:
1) the grantor of worldly goods, by means of whose gifts man’s actions in the world are punished or corrected;
2) the gifts themselves, which causes man’s various states of fortune.
To view an Alfredian concept of wyrd in the Legendarium we may keep in mind that Tolkien expressed his wishes to write a romantic fairy-story (Letters 144) which included the elements of medieval literature that he knew best. However, until we reach the pivotal character of Fëanor, there is nothing particularly “Germanic” or heroic in the narrative history of the Arda. So far the narrative is one of cosmological creation and not one of man’s (or Elves’) titanic struggle against the force of fate. The narrative needs to become ‘storial’, it needs a Fall. Of course, to say that fate and providence plays a role in Tolkien’s Legendarium because he needed a story is unsatisfactory. Fate and providence must operate within the internal logic of his sub-created world.
In Tolkien’s fiction, doom is a word having the older, “triple significance of judgement, decree, and destiny” (Freeh 2015, 67). Alfred uses the metaphor of a great cosmic wheel in which the closer one is to the nave the closer one is to God and the movement of God’s plan does not disturb one as much. However, once one begins to fight against the divine will, one moves along the spokes to the felly where the movement of the wheel affects the individual much more acutely. Frakes (1988, 167-68) explains the metaphor as such
The closer one is to God, the unmoving nave of the wheel, the less one is subject to movement and thus the less one is involved in wyrd, the felly of the wheel. Man’s position is plotted along the spokes of the wheel, according to his acceptance or repudiation of the control of wyrd. Those who renounce þis eorðlice lif (129, 29) are the nearest to God, while those who seek earthly goods are subordinate to wyrd … One must bear in mind, however, that Alfred does not deny all value to þis eorðlice lif and the material goods which it brings. Instead, only those goods are valueless which are used without regard for the divine plan; the primary misuse stems from man’s greed.
That is the basis on which we may view the conjuring of wyrd in The Silmarillion. When Fëanor refuses Yavanna’s request, he moves along the spokes of the wheel, further and further from the nave to the felly as his heart hardens with defiance of the “gods,” his pride and possessiveness grows. The effects cause him to commit more and more horrendous (yet very much heroic) deeds, which have the effect of solidifying his wyrd, his doom, until Fëanor finally reaches the felly. There, he perishes in a fiery and heroic death. The structure of the metaphorical wheel consists of both the heroic code and wyrd, they are both inextricably linked. Doom and glory, in the sense of lof ond dom, has particular resonance. F. Anne Payne (1974, 25) also connects the heroic code with wyrd:
As far as human society is concerned in the poem [Beowulf] the patterns of obligation are determined by the heroic code which is analogous to the ‘wheel of Wyrd.’ As with the wheel, there is with the code a strain of the inexorable demand that its requirements be met. The code, like the wheel, binds men together, provides the standard for determining the directions of good and evil action, of aspiration and failure. Men and monsters are seen in relation to it. The laws of the code, like Wyrd, provide the balances for human inadequacies and failures.
The connection Payne makes illustrates the functioning of the metaphorical wheel as we discuss the Doom of the Noldor, with its own inexorable demands. As in Beowulf and other works of heroic literature, wyrd is the both corrective and balancing nature of the divine plan and the hero’s response to that corrective nature is his Northern courage. The interplay of the two constitutes the mood of the work.
3. Worldly Goods and their Perversion
Finally, the last aspect of Alfred’s translation that is relevant to our discussion is the focus on worldly goods, gift-giving (thereby using the goods wisely in accordance with the divine plan) and the regulating, judicial function of wyrd. Simply put, wyrd’s corrective function, in Alfred’s view, also applies to worldly goods. Alfred finds all worldly goods are gifts from God, the ultimate gift-giver. When we misuse these gifts, it is an affront to God. Indeed, the perversion of the good is a major theme of Tolkien’s view of good and evil as it manifests within Arda – evil as privation boni (Honegger 2004, 252) and this view is in agreement with Alfred, Boethius and other Church Fathers.
As we now turn to Fëanor and his invocation of wyrd, we might keep in mind that Eru Ilúvatar is the grantor of all gifts (woruldsælða) and wyrd is the state of fortune, that is the Doom of the Noldor that results from Fëanor’s perversion of those gifts (in this case the Silmarils) by his own greed and possessiveness. The issues briefly outlined here now make themselves clearer as we return to Fëanor and the heroic narrative of the Elves.
Whew! Let’s stop here… I hope that wasn’t too much and that is about as theoretical as I get, everything that follows is easy-peasy but this is the foundation.
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