J. R. R. Tolkien, a fantasy author and professional philologist, drew on the Old English poem Beowulf for multiple aspects of his Middle-earth legendarium, alongside other influences. He used elements such as names, monsters, and the structure of society in a heroic age. He emulated its style, creating an impression of depth and adopting an elegiac tone. Tolkien admired the way that Beowulf, written by a Christian looking back at a pagan past, just as he was, embodied a "large symbolism" without ever becoming allegorical. He worked to echo the symbolism of life's road and individual heroism in The Lord of the Rings.
The names of races, including ents, orcs, and elves, and place names such as Orthanc and Meduseld, derive from Beowulf. The werebear Beorn in The Hobbit has been likened to the hero Beowulf himself; both names mean "bear" and both characters have enormous strength. Scholars have compared some of Tolkien's monsters to those in Beowulf. Both his trolls and Gollum share attributes with Grendel, while Smaug's characteristics closely match those of the Beowulf dragon. Tolkien's Riders of Rohan are distinctively Old English, and he has made use of multiple elements of Beowulf in creating them, including their language, culture, and poetry. The godlike Valar, their earthly paradise of Valinor, and the Old Straight Road that allowed the elves to sail to it, may all derive from the Scyld Scefing passage at the start of the poem.
Context
Beowulf is an epic poem in Old English, telling the story of its eponymous pagan hero. He becomes King of the Geats after ridding Heorot, the hall of the Danish king Hrothgar, of the monster Grendel, who was ravaging the land; he dies saving his people from a dragon. The tale is told in a roundabout way with many digressions into history and legend, and with a constant elegiac tone, ending in a dirge. It was written by a Christian poet, looking back reflectively on a time already in his people's distant past.
J. R. R. Tolkien was an English author and philologist of ancient Germanic languages, specialising in Old English; he spent much of his career as a professor at the University of Oxford. He is best known for his novels about his invented Middle-earth, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. A devout Roman Catholic, he described The Lord of the Rings as "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work", rich in Christian symbolism.
The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey, like Tolkien a philologist, called Beowulf the single work that most strongly influenced Tolkien, out of the many other sources that he used. He made use of it in his Middle-earth legendarium in multiple ways: in specific story-elements such as monsters; in Old English culture, as seen in the kingdom of Rohan; in the aesthetic style of The Lord of the Rings, with its impression of depth and its elegiac tone; and in its "large symbolism".
People
A philologist's races
Tolkien made use of his philological expertise on Beowulf to create some of the races of Middle-earth. The list of supernatural creatures in Beowulf, , "ettens and elves and demon-corpses", contributed to his Orcs, and Elves, and to an allusion to Ettens in his "Ettenmoors" placename. His tree-giants or Ents (etymologically close to Ettens) may derive from a phrase in another Old English poem, Maxims II, , "skilful work of giants". Shippey suggests that Tolkien took the name of the tower of Orthanc (orþanc) from the same phrase, reinterpreted as "Orthanc, the Ents' fortress".
Characters
The word orþanc occurs again in Beowulf, alongside the term searo in the phrase , "a cunning-net sewn, by a smith's skill", meaning a mail-shirt or byrnie. Tolkien used searo in its Mercian form *saru for the name of Orthanc's ruler, the wizard Saruman, whose name could thus be translated "cunning man", incorporating the ideas of subtle knowledge and technology into Saruman's character.
An especially Beowulfian character appears in The Hobbit as Beorn; his name originally meant "bear" but came to mean "man, warrior", giving Tolkien the chance to make the character a were-bear, able to shift his shape. A bear-man Bödvar Bjarki exists in Norse myth, while it is Beowulf himself whom Beorn echoes in the Old English poem. The name "Beowulf" can indeed be read as "the Bees' Wolf", that is, "the Honey-Eater". In other words, he is "the Bear", the man who is so strong that he snaps swords and tears off the arms of monsters with his enormous bear-like strength. Shippey notes that Beorn is ferocious, rude, and cheerful, characteristics that reflect his huge inner self-confidence—itself an aspect of northern heroic courage.
Monsters
Scholars have compared several of Tolkien's monsters, including his Trolls, Gollum, and Smaug, to those in Beowulf.
Trolls
Beowulf's first fight is with the monster Grendel, who is often taken by scholars as a kind of troll from Norse mythology. Tolkien's trolls share some of Grendel's attributes, such as great size and strength, being impervious to ordinary swords, and favouring the night. The scholar Christina Fawcett suggests that Tolkien's "roaring Troll" in The Return of the King reflects Grendel's "firey eye and terrible screaming". Noting that Tolkien compares them to beasts as they "came striding up, roaring like beasts ... bellowing", she observes that they "remain wordless warriors, like Grendel".
Gollum
Gollum, a far smaller monster in Middle-earth, has also been likened to Grendel, with his preference for hunting with his bare hands and his liking for desolate, marshy places. The many parallels between these monsters include their affinity for water, their isolation from society, and their bestial description. The Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger suggests that he is Tolkien's central monster-figure, likening him to both Grendel and the dragon; she describes him as "the twisted, broken, outcast hobbit whose manlike shape and dragonlike greed combine both the Beowulf kinds of monster in one figure".
+ Flieger's comparison of Gollum with Grendel and the Beowulf dragon Grendel Gollum the Beowulf dragon Man-eating Cannibalistic, eats goblins, hobbits if no fish to eat — "Outcast, a wanderer in the waste, of the race of Cain" Murderer, outcast — Unable to bear the sound of human pleasure with harp music A small corner of his mind could still enjoy "a kindly voice ... but that ... would only make the evil part of him angrier in the end", "book I, ch. 2" — — Greed for the Ring Greed for treasure — Transformed by greed for ring into a creeping thing, his OE name Smeagol meaning "creeping" (Fafnir changed himself into a dragon to guard his gold and his ring) — His name for the ring, "Precious", is OE māþum māþum is dragon's hoard
Smaug
Tolkien made use of the Beowulf dragon to create one of his most distinctive monsters, the dragon in The Hobbit, Smaug. The Beowulf dragon is aroused and enraged by the theft of a golden cup from his pile of treasure; he flies out in the night and destroys Beowulf's hall; he is killed, but the treasure is cursed, and Beowulf too dies. In The Hobbit, the eponymous Hobbit protagonist Bilbo accordingly steals a golden cup from the dragon's huge mound of treasure, awakening Smaug, who flies out and burns Lake-town; the allure of gold is too much of a temptation for the Dwarf Thorin Oakenshield, who is killed soon afterwards. On the other hand, the Beowulf dragon does not speak; Tolkien has made Smaug conversational, and wily with it. Scholars have analysed the parallels between Smaug and the unnamed Beowulf dragon:
+ Lee and Solopova's comparison of Smaug and the Beowulf dragon Plot element Beowulf The Hobbit Aggressivedragon eald uhtsceaða ... hat ond hreohmod ... Wæs þæs wyrmes wig / wide gesyne
"old twilight-ravager ... hot and fierce-minded ... that worm's war was / widely seen" Smaug fiercely attacks Dwarves, Laketown Gold-greedydragon hordweard
"treasure-guardian" Smaug watchfully sleeps on a pile of treasure Provokingthe dragon wæs ða gebolgen / beorges hyrde, wolde se laða / lige forgyldan drincfæt dyre.
"was then furious / the barrow's keeper wanted the enemy / with fire to revenge precious drinking-cup." Smaug is enraged when Bilbo steals a golden cup Night-flyingdragon nacod niðdraca, nihtes fleogeð fyre befangen
"naked hate-dragon, flying by night, wreathed in fire" Smaug attacks Laketown with fire, by night Well-protecteddragon's lair se ðe on heaum hofe / hord beweotode, stanbeorh steapne; stig under læg, eldum uncuð.
"the one who on high heath / hoard watched steep stone-barrow / the path up to it unknown to any." Secret passage to Smaug's lair and a mound of treasure in the stone palace under Mount Erebor Accurseddragon-gold hæðnum horde
"a heathen hoard" The treasure provokes the Battle of Five Armies
Culture of Rohan
Names, language, and heroism
Tolkien made use of Beowulf, along with other Old English sources, for many aspects of the Riders of Rohan. Their land was the Mark, its name a version of the Mercia where he lived, in Mercian dialect *Marc. Their names are straightforwardly Old English: Éomer and Háma (characters in Beowulf), Éowyn ("Horse-joy"), Théoden ("King"). So too is their language, with words like Éothéod ("Horse-people"), Éored ("Troop of cavalry"), and Eorlingas ("people of Eorl", whose name means "[Horse-]lord", cf. Earl), where many words and names begin with the word for "horse", eo[h].
There are even spoken phrases that follow this form. As Alaric Hall notes, "'Westu Théoden hál!' cried Éomer" is a scholarly joke: a dialectal form of Beowulf's ("Be thou well, Hrothgar!") i.e. Éomer shouts "Long Live King Théoden!" in a Mercian accent. Tolkien used this West Midlands dialect of Old English because he had been brought up in that region.
Théoden's hall, Meduseld, is modelled on Beowulf's Heorot, as is the way it is guarded, with visitors challenged repeatedly but courteously. Heorot's golden thatched roof is described in line 311 of Beowulf which Tolkien directly translates as a description of Meduseld: "The light of it shines far over the land", representing líxte se léoma ofer landa fela.
The war horns of the Riders of Rohan exemplify, in Shippey's view, the "heroic Northern world", as in what he calls the nearest Beowulf has to a moment of Tolkien-like eucatastrophe, when Ongentheow's Geats, trapped all night, hear the horns of Hygelac's men coming to rescue them; the Riders blow their horns wildly as they finally arrive, turning the tide of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields at a climactic moment in The Lord of the Rings.
Alliterative verse
Among the many poems in The Lord of the Rings are examples of Tolkien's skill in imitating Old English alliterative verse, keeping strictly to the metrical structure, which he described in his essay "On Translating Beowulf. The Tolkien scholar Mark Hall compares Aragorn's lament for Boromir to Scyld Scefing's ship-burial in Beowulf:
+ Mark Hall's comparison of the "Lament for Boromir" with the ship-burial in Beowulf Beowulf 2:36b–42Scyld Scefing's funeral Hall's translation "Lament for Boromir" book III, ch. 1(floated in a boat down the Anduinto the Falls of Rauros) þær wæs madma felaof feorwegum frætwa gelæded;ne hyrde ic cymlicor ceol gegyrwanhildewæpnum ond heaðowædum,billum ond byrnum; him on bearme lægmadma mænigo, þa him mid scoldonon flodes æht feor gewitan. There was much treasurefrom faraway ornaments broughtnot heard I of more nobly a ship preparedwar-weapons and war-armoursword and mail; on his lap laytreasures many those with him shouldon floods' possession far departed.'Beneath Amon Hen I heard his cry. There many foes he fought.His cloven shield, his broken sword, they to the water brought.His head so proud, his face so fair, his limbs they laid to rest;And Rauros, golden Rauros-falls, bore him upon its breast.'
Style