Thingol

“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.

“We Are Tree-herds, We Old Ents.” Treebeard Teaches Merry and Pippin About His People.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 607-611

Ents are shepherds of trees, tree-herds as Treebeard puts it, and it is in the nature of shepherds to live so closely to the creatures they care for that they can anticipate any action that those creatures might perform. Of course, sometimes a sheep, or perhaps a tree, might do something that takes the shepherd by surprise and if that happens then they will do all that they can to put things right. As that ancient source of wisdom, the Bible, puts it, “the shepherd lays down his life for the sheep”. This does not just mean that the shepherd will die for the sheep although they are always prepared to do so if required but that they give their lives for their welfare from day to day and Treebeard has been doing this for a very long time indeed.

His long life of service to the trees began with a prayer of Yavanna, the member of the Valar for whom the care of things that live and grow upon the earth was most dear. She prayed to Eru to provide for the care of trees. Her main concern then was with Dwarves and their axes, which rather puts into context the advice that Aragorn gave to Gimli about being careful how he used his. Indeed the only other recorded occasion apart from these events at the end of the Third Age in which Ents became involved in the affairs of the wider world was when the Dwarves of Nogrod went to war with the Elves of Doriath and sacked their stronghold of Menegroth.

Menegroth lay at the heart of Doriath, a forest kingdom ruled over for long years by Thingol and by his wife, Melian the Maiar. It was Melian who through her magic arts made Doriath a secret place and it was in that land that Luthien was born and nurtured and where Galadriel learned much from Melian so that the land of Lothlórien in many ways resembled Doriath. It was through the tragic greed of Thingol that led to his death and war with the Dwarves of Nogrod and led to so much destruction of that which had been so beautiful. The Ents fought alongside the Elves in this war and it is quite possible that Treebeard was one of those who fought. His motto of “Do not be hasty” may have been made in those unhappy days and he has kept it. He has not gone to war for thousands of years until the arrival of two young hobbits who come among the Ents as they seek to escape from orcs.

Like trees themselves Ents are patient creatures. Treebeard is able to look back to a time when “there was all one wood… from here to the Mountains of Lune, and this was just the East End.” He ponders the sense of spaciousness that he enjoyed in former days. “Broad days,” he calls them when there was room and time just for breathing. “The woods were like the woods of Lothlórien, only thicker, stronger, younger. And the smell of the air! I used to spend a week just breathing.”

Although he regards the decline of the forests of Middle-earth with sadness we do not get the sense that he does so with resentment or bitterness. As Gandalf will say to him later on he has not plotted to cover the lands with his trees. But at the last he will become angry at the wanton destruction of trees by Saruman who does so simply for the sake of his own self-aggrandizement. His choice not to act hastily has guided him for many long years. He has not been passive in the face of evil but has devoted himself to the care of his Forest of Dark Night, his tauremornalómë, protecting unwary travellers from the worst of that dark and teaching those parts of the forest that have embraced darkness in hatred of the light to rest in darkness as a part of the natural rhythm of things, a time in which the forest can breathe in before exhaling once more in glad welcome of every dawn.

There are almost too many examples of the wanton destruction of trees in the world to name just one.

“What Gift Would a Dwarf Ask of The Elves?” Galadriel Gives Three of Her Golden Hairs to Gimli.

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The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 365-367

Galadriel has prepared gifts for every member of the Company except for one and that member is Gimli the dwarf. Readers of my blog will remember that when the Fellowship first came to Caras Galadhon after the terrible events at the bridge of Khazad-dûm Celeborn was at first angered that a Balrog, Durin’s Bane, had been disturbed in Moria and that he was angry with Gimli, blaming him for this and even for the fall of Gandalf. Long years of division, suspicion and even hatred between Dwarves and Elves were recalled. Celeborn was a child of Doriath, a secret kingdom of the Elves of the First Age in Beleriand and did not forget the killing of Thingol, its king, by Dwarves after the making of the Nauglamir, a wonderful necklace that contained a Silmaril, the one taken by Lúthien from the crown of Morgoth.

It was Galadriel who persuaded Celeborn to put aside his anger and to welcome Gimli into Lothlórien but surely the very fact that she has no gift prepared for him shows that she too is undecided about what kind of relationship she has with this dwarf. “What gift would a Dwarf ask of the Elves?” she asks him. There is no doubt that she wishes to heal a long hurt, not least because she knows that unless all the foes of Sauron stand together they will fall before him, but she does not know how this will be achieved.

“It is enough for me to have seen the Lady of the Galadhrim, and to have heard her gentle words.”

The gentle words were, of course, Galadriel’s words to Celeborn that he should not repent of his welcome to Gimli but also her speaking of sacred names in his own language. He had “looked suddenly into the heart of an enemy” and seen there “love and understanding”. It was a moment that changed him for ever which does not mean that the change is the creation within himself of a quality that had never existed within him but that something has been awakened that hitherto lay dormant.

Galadriel is delighted by Gimli’s answer, her heart goes out towards him and she bids him make a request of her. She wishes to be generous and to heal the ancient enmity but she is entirely unprepared for the request that Gimli will make. Just as Frodo, when in complete innocence, offered the Ring to Galadriel and so exposed desires within her that she had, perhaps, hidden even from herself, so Gimli too, with the same innocence, touches something that has long lain hidden within her.

Gimli asks for nothing but he names a single strand of Galadriel’s hair “which surpasses the gold of the earth as the stars surpass the gems of the mine.” Gimli cannot know that he is not the first to have made such a request of her, and that ages long before, Fëanor himself asked three times for a tress of her hair. Fëanor’s request was bold but not courteous. His desire was not just for her hair but for herself and she had refused him. Fëanor was one who wished to possess and Galadriel had perceived this darkness within his heart. Gimli, on the other hand, wishes only to love in pure devotion and so she gives him not only one strand but three, recalling the three times that Fëanor had made his request and the three times that she had refused him.

Galadriel unbraids a tress of her golden hair that holds the light of Laurelin and Telperion, the ancient trees of Valinor that Morgoth destroyed, and places three hairs in Gimli’s hands. “I say to you, Gimli son of Glóin, that your hands shall flow with gold, and yet over you gold shall have no dominion.”

Galadriel has been shaken to the very core of her being by the coming of the Fellowship to her land. She had expected that it would mean the end of Lothlórien just as she said to Frodo and she was prepared for this. What she had not expected was that in receiving them her Self would be revealed to herself. She is forced to become vulnerable in a way that she could never have anticipated. We will think about this when we look at her last song in a few weeks time. My belief is that her vulnerability will lead her, not to despair, but to hope. And so it does in all of us.

“Do Not Repent of Your Welcome To The Dwarf.” The Fellowship Tell the Story of Gandalf’s Fall to Galadriel and Celeborn.

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The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 344-347

With the arrival of the Fellowship to the halls of Galadriel and Celeborn in Caras Galadhon at the heart of the realm of Lothlórien the tale of Gandalf’s fall into the abyss at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm must at last be told. So too has the manner of his fall at the hands of the Balrog of Moria, “of all elf-banes the most deadly, save the One who sits in the Dark Tower.”

If news of the fall of Gandalf has been the cause of great grief in the Elves of Lothlórien so news of the Balrog of Moria is the cause of great anger and most especially in Celeborn.

“Had I known that the Dwarves had stirred up this evil in Moria again, I would have forbidden you to pass the northern borders, you and all that went with you. And if it were possible, one would say that at the last Gandalf fell from wisdom into folly, going needlessly into the net of Moria.”

Readers will note that even though Celeborn is angry with the whole company, even with Gandalf himself, it is Gimli who he singles out for his particular wrath. It is Dwarves who have stirred up the evil that has lain hidden long years in the depths of Moria.

Celeborn’s anger against the Dwarves has a long history. It began in the First Age of Arda when his kinsman, the Lord Thingol of Doriath gained possession of a Silmaril through the mighty deeds of Luthien and Beren who took it from the very crown of Morgoth himself. The Silmaril was the price that Thingol had demanded of Beren so that he could have the hand of Luthien in marriage. Thingol asked Dwarf craftsmen to put the Silmaril into the Nauglamir, greatest and most beautiful of the works of the Dwarves in that age. The Dwarves were overcome by desire for the Silmaril and demanded that Thingol give it to them in payment for their labour. When Thingol refused this they killed him and a war broke out between Dwarves and Elves with terrible slaughter upon both sides. Although Celeborn’s role in that war is never mentioned there can be no doubt that he played his part in it and that he carried both anger and distrust towards Dwarves in his heart thereafter.

That the telling of the tale of the events at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm does not end with a swift expulsion of the Fellowship from Lothlórien and disaster for their mission is thanks to the intervention of Galadriel. If Celeborn is the keeper of the memory of a perception of treachery upon the part of dwarves and of a bitter war in which his homeland was destroyed by them then Galadriel is the keeper of a very different one. In her heart she cherishes the memory of Melian, the wife of Thingol, who became like a mother to her. Melian was known for her great wisdom and through all the story of Thingol and his avaricious heart she tried to warn him that such a spirit could lead to no good. Thingol became a grasper after things, even treating his own daughter, Luthien, as if she were a possession and not a free person. Galadriel, after the spirit of Melian, is a giver of hospitality, even though, like Melian too, she has put a girdle around Lothlórien to keep all evil at bay. She made Aragorn and Arwen welcome, both separately and in giving space for their love for each other to grow. And now she extends a loving welcome to Gimli the Dwarf.

“She looked upon Gimli, who sat glowering and sad, and she smiled. And the Dwarf… looked up and met her eyes; and it seemed to him that he looked suddenly into the heart of an enemy and saw there love and understanding.”

For Gimli this moment is a turning point in his story. His looking up, away from his anger and sadness and into the face of Galadriel turns him into a lover of beauty. He offers her his heart in worship and this is no idolatry because idolatry is in essence the worship of things for the sake of a small, mean self, the kind of worship that led to the fall and mutual destruction of Thingol, his realm, and the Dwarves, long ago. Gimli becomes a servant of all that is beautiful for its own sake. He “kisses the joy as it flies”, as William Blake puts it and so comes to live in “eternity’s sunrise”.