Philology, the study of comparative and historical linguistics, especially of the medieval period, had a major influence on J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy world of Middle-earth. He was a professional philologist, and made use of his knowledge of medieval literature and language to create families of Elvish languages and many details of the invented world.
Among the medieval sources for Middle-earth are Crist 1, which led to the tale of Eärendil, the beginning of Tolkien's mythology; Beowulf, which he used in many places; his philological study of the Old English word Sigelwara, which may have inspired the Silmarils, Balrogs, and the Haradrim; and his research on an inscription at the temple of Nodens, which seems to have led to Celebrimbor Silver-hand, maker of the Rings of Power, to Dwarves, and to the One Ring itself.
His use of his philological understanding of language in the construction of his Middle-earth legendarium was pervasive, beginning with his families of Elvish languages. From there, he created elements of story, including the history and geography of Middle-earth, the names of people and places, and eventually a complete mythology.
Context
From his schooldays, J. R. R. Tolkien was in his biographer John Garth's words "effusive about philology"; his schoolfriend Rob Gilson called him "quite a great authority on etymology". Tolkien was a professional philologist, a scholar of comparative and historical linguistics. He was especially familiar with Old English and related languages. He remarked to the poet and The New York Times book reviewer Harvey Breit that "I am a philologist and all my work is philological"; he explained to his American publisher Houghton Mifflin that this was meant to imply that his work was "all of a piece, and fundamentally linguistic in inspiration. ... The invention of languages is the foundation. The 'stories' were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows."
The Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger writes that Tolkien's "profession as philologist and his vocation as writer of fantasy/theology overlapped and mutually supported one another", in other words that he "did not keep his knowledge in compartments; his scholarly expertise informs his creative work." This expertise was founded, in her view, on the belief that one knows a text only by "properly understanding [its] words, their literal meaning and their historical development." She states that he skilfully exploited the language styles of different characters to situate them geographically as well as in their specific culture and their psychological makeup, commenting that, "One can imagine a seventy-page essay centuries hence on 'Tolkien as a Philologist: The Lord of the Rings".
Medieval sources
Crist 1
Tolkien began his mythology with the 1914 poem The Voyage of Earendel the Evening Star, inspired by the Old English poem Crist 1. Around 1915, he had the idea that his constructed language Quenya was to be spoken by Elves whom the character Eärendil meets during his journeys. From there, he wrote the Lay of Earendel, telling of Earendel and his voyages and how his ship turned into the morning star. These lines from Crist 1 also gave Tolkien the term Middle-earth (translating Old English Middangeard). Accordingly, the medievalists Stuart D. Lee and Elizabeth Solopova state that Crist 1 was "the catalyst for Tolkien's mythology".
Beowulf
Tolkien was an expert on Old English literature, especially the epic poem Beowulf, and made many uses of it in The Lord of the Rings. For example, Beowulfs list of creatures, , "Ettens [giants] and Elves and demon-corpses", contributed to his creation of some of the races of beings in Middle-earth.
He derived the Ents from a phrase in another Old English poem, Maxims II, , "skilful work of giants". The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey suggests that Tolkien took the name of the tower of Orthanc (orþanc) from the same phrase, reinterpreted as "Orthanc, the Ents' fortress".
The word orþanc occurs again in Beowulf in the phrase , "[a mail-shirt, a] cunning-net sewn, by a smith's skill": Tolkien used searo in its Mercian form *saru for the name of Orthanc's ruler, the wizard Saruman, "cunning man", incorporating the ideas of skill and technology into Saruman's character. He made use of Beowulf, too, along with other Old English sources, for many aspects of the Riders of Rohan. They called their land the Mark, a version of the Mercia where he lived, in Mercian dialect *Marc.
In the case of Tolkien's description of the floor of Meduseld, the hall of King Théoden of Rohan in The Lord of the Rings, the folklorist and Tolkien scholar Dimitra Fimi suggests that it is possible to trace Tolkien's thought back to an actual medieval floor. In a 1926 review of an article about placenames and archaeology, Tolkien wrote that the phrase on fāgne flōr, "on the bright-patterned floor", occurs in Beowulf, line 725. He commented that it "might be guessed to mean paved or even tessellated floor." Tolkien, describing himself rhetorically as "the philologist", notes that the Oxfordshire village of Fawler was in 1205 named Fauflor; that he would wonder if that meant there was a Roman villa nearby; and that "the archaeologist" would reply that there was indeed one "with a tessellated pavement" near there, the large and luxurious North Leigh Roman Villa. Fimi writes that the Beowulf lines are definitely echoed in Tolkien's description of the hall of King Théoden of Rohan in The Lord of the Rings, and "perhaps even this image of the real floor" too.
+ Dimitra Fimi's analysis of the origins of the King of Rohan's hall floor in The Two TowersBeowulf, lines 723–725 Tolkien's prose translation"The King of the Golden Hall" A "bright-patterned floor" at a village named after it onbraéd þá bealo-hýdig, þá hé gebolgen wæs, recedes múðan. Raðe æfter þon on fágne flór féond treddode, He [Grendel] wrenched then wide, baleful with raging heart, the gaping entrance of the house; then swift on the bright-patterned floor the demon paced. The hall was long and wide and filled with shadows and half lights; mighty pillars upheld its lofty roof… As their eyes changed, the travellers perceived that the floor was paved with stones of many hues; branching runes and strange devices intertwined beneath their feet.
Sigelwara
Several Middle-earth concepts may have come from the Old English word Sigelwara, used in the Codex Junius to mean "Aethiopian". Tolkien wondered why there was a word with this meaning, given that the Anglo-Saxons had had little or no contact with peoples of Africa. Accordingly, he conjectured that it had once had a different meaning, which he explored in detail in his philological essay "Sigelwara Land", published in two parts in 1932 and 1934.; He stated that Sigel meant "both sun and jewel", the former as it was the name of the sun rune *sowilō (ᛋ), the latter from Latin sigillum, a seal.
He decided that the second element was *hearwa, possibly related to Old English heorð, "hearth", and ultimately to Latin carbo, "soot". He suggested, in what he admitted was a philological conjecture, that this implied "rather the sons of Muspell [a fiery realm in Germanic myth] than of Ham [Biblical Africans]". In other words, he supposed, the Sigelwara named a class of demons "with red-hot eyes that emitted sparks and faces black as soot". Shippey states that this "helped to naturalise the Balrog" (a demon of fire) and contributed to the sun-jewel Silmarils. Further, the Anglo-Saxon mention of Aethiopians suggested to Tolkien the Haradrim, a dark southern race of men.
Nodens
In 1928, a 4th-century pagan cult temple was excavated at Lydney Park, Gloucestershire. Tolkien was asked to conduct a philological investigation of a Latin inscription there, translating it as: "For the god Nodens. Silvianus has lost a ring and has donated one-half [its worth] to Nodens. Among those who are called Senicianus do not allow health until he brings it to the temple of Nodens." An old name for the place was "Dwarf's Hill", and in 1932, Tolkien traced Nodens to the Irish hero Nuada Airgetlám, "Nuada of the Silver-Hand".
Shippey thought this "a pivotal influence" on Tolkien's Middle-earth, combining as it did a god-hero, a ring, dwarves, and a silver hand. The J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia notes also the "Hobbit-like appearance of [Dwarf's Hill]'s mine-shaft holes", and that Tolkien was extremely interested in the hill's folklore on his stay there, citing Helen Armstrong's comment that the place may have inspired Tolkien's "Celebrimbor and the fallen realms of Moria and Eregion". The Lydney curator Sylvia Jones said that Tolkien was "surely influenced" by the site. The scholar of English literature John M. Bowers notes that the name of the Elven-smith Celebrimbor is the Sindarin for "Silver Hand", and that, "Because the place was known locally as Dwarf's Hill and honeycombed with abandoned mines, it naturally suggested itself as background for the Lonely Mountain and the Mines of Moria."
A pervasive influence
Tolkien was constantly inspired in his writing of fiction by his professional work in philology. The Tolkien scholar John D. Rateliff gives a few examples among many: his use of the Poetic Edda for the names of Dwarves in The Hobbit; of the Beowulf scene where a cup is stolen from the dragon's hoard, for Bilbo's venture into Smaug's lair; and his construction of the mythic tale of Earendil from the Old English name Earendel. His creation took many forms.
Inventing languages and people to speak them
Tolkien took a special pleasure, described in his 1931 essay "A Secret Vice", in inventing languages. He invested a large amount of time and energy creating philologically-structured language families, especially the Elvish languages of Quenya and Sindarin, both of which appear in The Lord of the Rings. Thus, the word for "Elves" in one language variant, Common Eldarin, was kwendi, its consonants realistically and systematically modified into quendi in Quenya, penni in Silvan, pendi in Telerin, and penidh in Sindarin.
The existence of all these languages motivated his creation of a mythology; the languages needed people to speak them, and they in turn needed history and geography, wars and migrations. In The Silmarillion, these include the sundering of the Elves, their repeated splintering into separate groups neatly mirroring the fragmentation of Quenya into languages and dialects. Tolkien stated as much in his foreword to the Second Edition of The Lord of the Rings: "I wished first to complete and set in order the mythology and legends of the Elder Days ... for my own satisfaction ... it was primarily linguistic in inspiration and was begun in order to provide the necessary background of 'history' for Elvish tongues".
Inventing a mythology