Month: April 2026

“Here is a Thing Unheard of! An Elf Will Go Underground and a Dwarf Dare Not!” Gimli’s Secret and Very Personal Dark Journey.

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The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 768-771

As Aragorn and his company arrive at the “evil door” to the Paths of the Dead, I am taking a little time to reflect on some of the Dark Journeys of The Lord of the Rings, journeys that as I wrote last time, have a rich literary and cultural history.

This week I want to write about the dark journey of Gimli, son of Glóin, of the Dwarf kingdom of Erebor. Of all the company that pass through the evil door with Aragorn, it is through Gimli that Tolkien chooses to tell this part of the story. He rarely makes this choice usually choosing one of the hobbits if possible. Indeed, the only other occasion that comes to mind in which Gimli is the chosen vehicle for the telling of the story is in his first interaction with Galadriel when he expected enmity but encountered love. That moment changed his life. Does this one?

We read of how Aragorn led the way through the door and of how both his men and their horses followed him. We read of how Arod, the horse from the plains of Rohan who has carried both Legolas and Gimli on their journeys through that land, is afraid to follow, but how Legolas, the elf from the Woodland Realm, is able to calm his fear and lead him into the dark; and then we read this.

“And there stood Gimli the Dwarf left all alone.”

Gimli is not left alone because no-one cared about him, but because everyone assumed that Gimli, the son of a people for whom caves and mines were his natural milieu, was all right, that Gimli would be following on behind. But Gimli is not all right.

“His knees shook, and he was wroth with himself. ‘Here is a thing unheard of!’ he said. ‘An Elf will go underground and a Dwarf dare not!’ With that he plunged in. But it seemed to him that he dragged his feet like lead over the threshold; and at once a blindness came upon him, even upon Gimli Glóin’s son who had walked unafraid in many deep places of the world.”

And indeed, we remember how it was Gimli, of all the members of the Fellowship, who welcomed and embraced the journey through Moria and whose enthusiasm comforted even Gandalf in that dark place. There he was a strength to his companions. Here he is the straggler in the rear.

And soon we learn what it is he fears. It is the company of the Dead who soon fall in behind him, and because he is at the rear it is Gimli who is most aware of them.

“Nothing assailed the company nor withstood their passage, and yet steadily fear grew on the Dwarf as he went on: most of all because he knew there could be no turning back; all the paths behind were thronged by an unseen host that followed in the dark.”

Tolkien tells us of Gimli’s fear but he never tells us why he was afraid. This is largely, I think, because he knows of his own experience that when we are gripped by fear our experience is exactly that. Something comes and takes hold of us, something for a while at least that is too great for us to resist. At such a time we are unable to engage in any kind of reflection. We are rendered incapable of asking ourself a question like:

“I wonder why I feel this way?”

Indeed, for all who have known the effect upon us of an overpowering feeling such as fear, the thought that we might be able to engage in reflection at such a time is almost laughable. And for Gimli this feeling is so overpowering precisely because it is so unexpected. He is used to going underground, even living there.

Of course, it is Gimli’s encounter with the Dead that is knew to him, and I wonder if we learn something of his character, and his fundamental response to both life and death that we learn later in the story at the wedding feast of Aragorn and Arwen in Minas Tirith. There, Gimli and Éomer engage in a little chivalrous disagreement about which of the ladies at the feast is the most beautiful. For Éomer the choice is Arwen, but for Gimli it is Galadriel. And Gimli ends the dispute with these words.

“You have chosen the Evening; but my love is given to the Morning. And my heart forebodes that soon it will pass away for ever.” (Return p.953)

Here we learn a fundamental disposition of Gimli’s heart. And here we learn why he might fear, perhaps in a manner of which he is largely unaware, of anything that speaks of the night, as does the army of the Dead. And before we judge him for such a fear, we might examine our own hearts to see the fears that lie within. Both those fears of which we are aware and which we might fight with all our strength; but also those fears of which we may be unaware, that might take us unawares as they do here with Gimli. Of course, we do not know what fears they might be but if we know that they lurk within us, we might be more gentle with ourselves when they appear, and more gentle with others who are overcome by their own fear.

“This is An Evil Door”. Some Thoughts on The Dark Journeys of The Lord of the Rings as Aragorn and his Company Enter The Paths of the Dead.

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The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 768-773

“This is an evil door,” said Halbarad, “and my death lies beyond it. I will dare to pass it nonetheless; but no horse will enter.”

Aragorn and his company have arrived at the door to the Paths of the Dead and every heart, unless it be the heart of Aragorn himself, and Legolas perhaps, falls under a dread at this haunted place. Such is the strength of Aragorn’s will, something that we might call fey if it were not that he has been called to his destiny by a power that is both deeper and higher than the spirits of the earth, that at the last all the horses of the Dúnedain and even Arod of the Rohirrim are willing to follow their masters into the dark. For a time, Gimli stands rooted to the spot by his fear of the dead, but eventually he too is willing to follow.

The journeys into dark places, into tunnels, form a major theme in The Lord of the Rings. Gandalf is warned by Aragorn not to enter Moria, but when he does so he is confronted by the Balrog and in the deep places of the earth and then in a high place he fights the battle of his life, passing even into the place of the dead. Frodo and Sam go through Shelob’s Lair where the darkness has a tangible presence that can be touched, and there Frodo passes into a death-like state after suffering the sting of Shelob’s bite. Now Aragorn’s company follow their lord into the paths of the dead through a door that Halbarad, close kinsman and companion to Aragorn, knows that heralds his death. He will fall in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields a few days later.

I could go on to speak of other dark journeys that do not necessarily involve physical tunnels but share aspects of those. I could speak of the dark journey of Merry and Pippin across the plains of Rohan as captives of the orcs of Isengard; the dark journey that Faramir goes through in his relationship to his father that leads almost to his death; the journey that Frodo and Sam take across Mordor to the Cracks of Doom; Sam’s horror in seeing the destruction of the Shire by Saruman and his gang of thugs; and I could also speak of the dark journey that Éowyn takes that leads to her encounter with the Lord of the Nazgûl at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields and the darkness that she enters and within she remains after the battle. In fact, we could say that every major character in the story has to take a dark journey.

Of course this is not original to Tolkien, nor did he intend it to be. The theme of the hero’s dark journey is an old one in the European mythology from which Tolkien drew so much of his inspiration, weaving those stories with his own dark journey, his experience of the trenches of the First World War and the Battle of the Somme of 1916, and the death of all but one of his closest friends in that terrible conflict. We could mention the journey of Lemminkäinen into the underworld in the Kalevala of Finland that Tolkien loved and read in its original language. And although Tolkien did not appreciate it so much, I do not think that we can leave out the journey of Odysseus into Hades on his journey home from Troy to his home in Ithaca.

That none of us can find life, can come at last to Paradise, without passing through death, is at the heart of all of these stories, and Tolkien’s story invites us to consider this for ourselves. Indeed, we could say that it is the refusal of characters to embrace loss and diminishment in The Lord of the Rings, characters like Sauron and Saruman and Denethor, that is their greatest tragedy. And at the heart of all this, the story to which all the stories ultimately point, is what Tolkien called the True Myth, the death and resurrection of Christ as recounted in the gospels.

“Then She Fell on Her Knees, Saying: ‘I Beg Thee!” Éowyn is So Desperate That She is Prepared to Humiliate Herself.

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The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 767-768

It is a grievous thing to witness the humiliation of a proud woman as Legolas and Gimli do the humiliation of Éowyn before Aragorn. I do not know whether Tolkien deliberately draws our attention to this contrast, but shortly after the scene in which Éowyn falls to her knees before the man who has, to her mind at least, rejected her, we read of Arod, the horse who has borne both Legolas and Gimli, standing before the door that leads to the Paths of the Dead, “sweating and trembling in a fear that was grievous to see”. In both cases it is the witnesses that grieve. Legolas and Gimli, proud sons of lords of their people, grieve to see a daughter of the king’s brother, casting aside her dignity in a last and utterly desperate attempt to persuade Aragorn to take her with him to Gondor and the battle. It is a grievous thing for those who hold honour dear to see such a thing. And we see the Dúnedain of the North, for whom the bond between themselves and their horses is a precious thing, grieved to see a horse bereft of its dignity.

Dignity and honour are things precious to us. As we leave the innocence of our childhood behind and begin to enter our adulthood, we do the work of creating a persona. I still remember my first night in a dormitory in an English boarding school, a boy who was fourteen years old, lying in bed with the sleeping forms of four other boys in the beds round about me, making conscious choices about the person I felt I needed to be if I were to be accepted by my fellows. I was no longer going to be the child that had slept in my parents’ home among my younger brothers and sisters just the night before, I had begun the process, quite literally, of re-inventing myself, and presenting a person of dignity to the world, worthy of the world’s respect, was central to that project.

Wise people have said that no-one should give their Self away until they have a Self, strong enough, secure enough, to be able to give. Until that moment comes then it is right and proper that the primary task of each person is to build a strong Self. This is the task in which Éowyn is now engaged and until now she has undertaken this task in acts of service as has been expected of a woman of her status among her people. While for other women among the Rohirrim this has meant serving a household, for her it has meant serving a king. And while others may have regarded such a position as being worthy of honour, for her it has become merely another form of servitude. Later, when she lay near to death in the Houses of Healing in Minas Tirith, Gandalf spoke truly of her in these words:

“Who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?”

So, as she kneels in desperation before the man she thinks of as her last hope of freedom from her shrinking existence, as she casts aside her dignity and merely asks for pity, we see a woman for whom the creation of a strong Self amidst the choices that seem to lie before her is an impossibility. She will make one more attempt to recover something of that dignity when she asks Théoden to allow her to ride to Minas Tirith among the Rohirrim, but when he refuses her request, she takes the matter into her own hands, going in the disguise of a man, knowing that her abilities as a horsewoman are such that she can match any one of them. And she will reach a place in the battle where she will perform a deed that no man could have done, a deed that will be one of the turning points of the battle.

All of this will be a part of her journey towards Selfhood. The words that she speaks in desperation into the darkness as her life shrinks about her, the words that she cries out to Aragorn in desperation before he takes the Paths of the Dead, her appeal to Théoden to let her ride with the Rohirrim to Minas Tirith, her action in going with the riders in the disguise of a man, her battle with the Witch-king of Angmar on the Pelennor Fields, her meeting with Faramir in the Houses of Healing, all of these are stages on her road to Freedom, her road to Selfhood. Such a road can never be a transition from one success after another. The authentic road will always be a road downwards before it can be an upward path.

“They Go Only Because They Would Not Be Parted From Thee- Because They Love Thee.” Some Thoughts on Éowyn’s Unrequited Love For Aragorn

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The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 765-767

Éowyn has tried in every way that she can think to persuade Aragorn to take her with him on what she is convinced is little more than a suicide mission through the Paths of the Dead into Gondor, laying bare her soul to him, of her fear of remaining within a cage for the whole of her life, whether long or short. And at the last all she hears are these words:

“Stay! For you have no errand to the South.”

Aragorn has given up any attempt to be gentle. He knows that he is risking everything on this venture and that everything may well be lost. All his hopes and even his life itself and the lives of all who go with him. Nothing must stand between him and his effort to come to Minas Tirith in time before it falls to the forces of Mordor and this includes the desperate young woman who stands before him. She too must be swept aside and it must be done swiftly.

And so Éowyn is left with but one thing remaining that she can offer of herself. Her heart. She longs to be claimed by this hero and all she can hear and feel is his rejection. She heard him say that were his heart to be where it most desires to be it would “be wandering in the fair valley of Rivendell”. She did not hear Aragorn speak of Arwen but she fears that there might be someone else in his life. But she has come to believe that the only hope of the freedom for which she longs lies in his hands and that if he casts her aside then she is left with nothing. And at this moment it is this nothing that she fears above all.

So when Aragorn brutally commands her to stay in Rohan, that she has no errand to the South she speaks the words that she has kept hidden from him until now.

“Neither have those others who go with thee. They go only because they would not be parted from thee- because they love thee.”

Then, having given everything that she can give she turns away and vanishes from sight.

Does Éowyn really love Aragorn? Or does she only love what he represents for her? The possibility of achieving the freedom from captivity and degradation that she has come to hate and to fear? How many of us truly know our own hearts? Does this mean that none can really know whether they love another person or not? To fall in love is a glorious thing. Perhaps the most exalted state that any human being can ever achieve. But to go beyond this state that can become a thing desired in itself because it is so all consuming, so intoxicating, takes something greater than the action of falling into it. It requires a commitment to remain with another person through everything.

As a priest in the Church of England I have presided at many weddings over the years and time and time again I have felt a thrill run through my body when I have heard a couple promise to one another that they will love and cherish each other:

For better, for worse; for richer for poorer; in sickness and in health.

These are words of commitment that I know will be tested to the limit in the lives of everyone who speaks them aloud before many witnesses, and, I believe, before God. But perhaps one of the greatest gifts that someone can give to the world is a life that has been true to those promises, through all its tests and even through failure. Such a life, such a gift, can be a source of great strength to others who struggle through their own trials, that it is worth not giving up, that there remains something to hope for.

Later in the story Éowyn will respond to the declaration of love made by another man and we will read that “the heart of Éowyn changed, or else at last she understood it”. I would add to these words that she understood her heart as it appeared to her at that moment, but she would come to understand it even better after years together with the man that she chose. This is true for all of us and as with Éowyn, though not by the path that she will walk that is unique to her, we will go through many trials and through many joys to the day when we can truly understand our hearts.