Doriath

“This is a Strange Friendship.” Treebeard Ponders The Friendship of Legolas and Gimli. An Elf And a Dwarf.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 763-766

Treebeard’s memory is very long indeed. In the very first making of Arda, the earth, Yavanna, the Vala who most loves things that grow, feared for the welfare of trees, seeing how vulnerable they were, how easily cut down. And the creatures that she most feared were Dwarves, the wielders of axes. She desired some kind of protection for her trees and so certain spirits entered some of the trees and Ents were born.

And the oldest of Ents was Treebeard.

After Gandalf has completed his business with Saruman and cast him from the order of wizards he returns with the young hobbits and Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli to find Treebeard who has remained hidden during the debate. Treebeard welcomes Legolas warmly and looks forward to welcoming him as a guest to Fangorn. But then comes a moment of doubt and uncertainty. Legolas asks leave of Treebeard that he might bring Gimli with him.

“Hoom, hm! Ah now,” said Treebeard, looking dark-eyed at him. “A dwarf and an axe-bearer! Hoom! I have good will to Elves; but you ask much. This is a strange friendship!”

It was no mere coincidence in Tolkien’s mind that as Gimli bowed low, in Dwarf fashion, to greet Treebeard, his axe fell from his belt. It is almost as if the axe were speaking for itself, reminding Treebeard of Aulë’s words to Yavanna that the dwarves, his children, would have need of wood.

Although it was largely the Númenorians that destroyed the forests of Eriador there is only one recorded battle in Tolkien’s work in which it is known for certain that Ents took part and that is the Battle of Sarn Athrad in Beleriand during the First Age of Arda. A Dwarf army was returning from the destruction of the hidden Elven kingdom of Doriath and the killing of Thingol, its king, when they were assailed by a force commanded by Beren who had married Lúthien, Thingol’s daughter. Thingol was avenged by Beren and the trees of Doriath, a forest kingdom, were avenged by Ents. It is almost certain that Treebeard took part in that battle and he has not forgotten.

The friendship between Legolas and Gimli is very strange for they too have memories of a time when things were very different. For Gimli remembers how Glóin, his father, was once a prisoner in Mirkwood of Thranduil, king of that land and Legolas’s father. If Treebeard’s memory is long so is the memory of Dwarves, and in their case that memory is held within families. There may have been a kind of reconciliation between Thranduil’s people and the Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain due to their sharing in the Battle of the Five Armies as allies against the orcs of the Misty Mountains but suspicion and dislike remained.

The strange friendship of old foes.

It was Galadriel who created the conditions in which the strange friendship between Legolas and Gimli could be forged. Although Galadriel was of the Noldor, the people of Fëanor who first came to Middle-earth to avenge the theft of the Silmarillion by Morgoth, she came to have a deep love for Melian, the wife of Thingol, who was a healer in the deepest sense of that word, a healer of the earth and of its peoples. And while the Noldor were the makers of fortress cities like Gondolin and Nargothrond, the kingdom that Galadriel was to make was a forest land in Lothlórien, a kingdom like Doriath of old, and the king with whom she ruled it was Celeborn who was himself a son of Doriath. Galadriel too remembered the destruction by the Dwarves of that hidden kingdom and how Melian had departed, broken-hearted, from Middle-earth after Thingol’s death.

Perhaps it is a grace that works in the world during that part of its history that is recorded in The Lord of the Rings that love is awakened in so many hearts and strange friendships are forged. Galadriel’s heart goes out to Gimli when he stands before her grief-stricken by the death of Balin and the fall of Gandalf in Moria and love is awakened in Gimli because of this. Legolas becomes aware both of the compassion shown by Galadriel and by Gimli’s response to it and he enters into what is taking place. If Boromir brought his peril into Lothlórien Gimli brought his capacity to love and to be loved there. So was forged this strange friendship before which even the oldest of all the Ents now stands in wonder.

Galadriel awakens love in the heart of an angry dwarf.

“Now, Lord… Look Out Upon Your Land. Breathe the Free Air Again.” Théoden Begins to Emerge From Dark Thoughts into Free Action.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 671-673

The first thing that Gandalf does after freeing Théoden from the malign influence of Wormtongue is to bring him out from his hall into the chill morning air as winter begins to give way to spring in the world about Edoras, and Théoden gives careful attention to the weather that they encounter.

“From the porch upon the top of the high terrace they could see beyond the stream the green fields of Rohan fading into distant grey. Curtains of wind-blown rain were slanting down. The sky above and to the west was still dark with thunder, and the lightning far away flickered among the tops of hidden hills. But the wind had shifted to the north, and already the storm that had come out of the East was receding, rolling away southward to the sea. Suddenly through a rent in the clouds behind them a shaft of sun stabbed down. The falling showers gleamed like silver, and far away the river glittered like a shimmering glass.”

This is a passage full of symbolic meaning. The storm coming out of the east being blown away by a wind from the north and light breaking through dark clouds turning everything into silver. So it was that Eorl the Young rode out of the North to deliver Gondor long ago and now deliverance is coming out of the North in the form of the entirely unexpected returning King and the entirely unlikely form of a hobbit going step by step toward Orodruin and the Cracks of Doom.

Like all great writers, Tolkien is capable of offering his readers layers of meaning within his use of imagery, just as his characters, and his readers too, have the capacity to read the same layers of meaning both in the text and in daily experience, if we should choose to do so. We might choose to limit our reading of text and experience to the random elements that make them up but we would be impoverished if we were to to do this. Théoden’s comment as he breathes the air outside his hall is to remark, with austere simplicity that it is not so dark there, but we know from what we have learned about Théoden’s recent experience how much is contained within these words. It is clear that he is choosing to read his experience of weather in a meaningful way and this deliberate giving of meaning will both continue his healing and enable him to enter into the realm of free action once again following his imprisonment within the darkness of his hall.

Gandalf deliberately chooses to bring Théoden into an unprotected experience of weather precisely to bring him into freedom once again. While Wormtongue has sought to persuade him that everything outside the protected realm of Meduseld is a threat of danger that is to be feared, Gandalf does nothing to diminish this sense of threat. Indeed he tells Théoden that he is “come into a peril greater than the wit of Wormtongue” could weave into his dreams. But even as he admits the reality of the peril, Gandalf also shows Théoden the joy of simply being alive and fully alive. Théoden is no longer crippled by fear. If he is to die then he will embrace this reality too and will not fear it.

The contrast between the protected space of a dwelling place and the unprotected reality of the world outside is one that Tolkien often returns to in The Lord of the Rings. Later, in The Return of the King we will learn that Sauron constantly weaves “veils of Shadow” about himself in Barad-dûr. In many ways he is the master-hider from reality, both hating and fearing the real. But if he is the biggest example of the way in which a dwelling place is created primarily by fear of what lies outside it, many others copy him. Even Rivendell and Lothlórien are hidden and protected realms, descendents, in their way, of Nargothrond, Gondolin and Doriath. And although we thought about how in Treebeard’s dwelling in Wellinghall there was little distinction between the world outside it and the world inside nevertheless the Ents sought to make the forest a protected space for the thriving of trees. Maybe only Gandalf lives a pilgrim life that is undefended but he too needs homes in which to rest and be restored. Perhaps at best we need a rhythm of free air and weather, but homes to live in too, and Théoden has lived too long at home and needs to breathe again if he is to find wholeness once more.