In the Grey Annals (c. 1951, see *Annals of Beleriand), moving from annal to narrative form, Tolkien added much new material, including the various conversations between Galadriel, Melian, Thingol, and Inglor (= Felagund, Finrod); Thingol’s ban on the language of the Noldor; and Turgon remaining at Nevrast while Gondolin is being built. He moves to Gondolin in 116, and as instructed, leaves armour at Nevrast to be found by Ulmo’s messenger. At about the same time or a little later, while revising the Quenta Silmarillion, Tolkien added a short chapter (three pages of manuscript), ‘Of Turgon and the Building of Gondolin’, partly new and partly copied almost word for word from the Grey Annals, replacing the original text there with a ‘short notice’ (*The War of the Jewels, p. 199).

The first part of ‘Of the Noldor in Beleriand’ in The Silmarillion, concerning Gondolin, was taken from this new chapter, incorporating a few emendations made by Tolkien. The second part, concerning Galadriel, her brothers, Melian, and Thingol, was taken from the Grey Annals.

Noldorin see Languages, Invented

‘Noldorin Dictionary’. Brief dictionary of the early Elvish language Noldorin (see *Languages, Invented), published as part of ‘Early Noldorin Fragments’ in Parma Eldalamberon 13 (2001), pp. 157–65, edited with commentary by Christopher Gilson, Bill Welden, Carl F. Hostetter, and Patrick Wynne.

Tolkien based this unfinished work on his *‘Noldorin Word-Lists’ and organized it on principles similar to those underlying the *Gnomish Lexicon, with etymologically related words grouped together, ‘with derivatives listed under the more basic Noldorin word from which they derive, with the Old Noldorin form of words indicated (where different from the “modern” form) as well as prehistoric reconstructions, and with listings of cognates in Qenya, Telerin, and Ilkorin’ (p. 157). This complex scheme seems to have been devised as Tolkien proceeded, working on slips of paper in manuscript and typescript, probably c. summer 1923. Most of the paper (from the University of *Leeds) bears a printed date, 16 April 1923.

‘Noldorin Word-Lists’. Lists of words, names, and components of words in the early Elvish language Noldorin (see *Languages, Invented), published as part of ‘Early Noldorin Fragments’ in Parma Eldalamberon 13 (2001), pp. 133–56, edited with commentary by Christopher Gilson, Bill Welden, Carl F. Hostetter, and Patrick Wynne.

Tolkien compiled these typewritten lists, with additions and revisions in manuscript, c. 1921–3, reflecting his work on *The Book of Lost Tales and *The Lay of the Children of Húrin and closely associated with the *‘Early Noldorin Grammar’ and slips added to the *Gnomish Lexicon.

Nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings. A guide to names in *The Lord of the Rings, prepared by Tolkien for the use of translators. It grew out of his objections to the alteration of names in the first translations of The Lord of the Rings, in Dutch (In de ban van de ring) and Swedish (Sagan om ringen), published in 1956–7 and 1959–61 respectively. On 3 July 1956 he wrote to his publisher *Rayner Unwin concerning the version in Dutch:

In principle I object as strongly as is possible to the ‘translation’ of the nomenclature at all (even by a competent person). I wonder why a translator should think himself called on or entitled to do any such thing. That this is an ‘imaginary’ world does not give him any right to remodel it according to his fancy, even if he could in a few months create a new coherent structure which it took me years to work out.

The correct way to translate The Lord of the Rings, he felt, ‘is to leave the maps and nomenclature alone as far as possible, but to substitute for some of the least-wanted Appendices a glossary of names (with meanings but no ref[erence]s.). I could supply one for translation. May I say at once that I will not tolerate any similar tinkering with the personal nomenclature. Nor with the name/word Hobbit’ (Letters, pp. 249–51).

But he was only partly successful in having his way with the Dutch edition, despite lengthy correspondence (see further, *Translations). Later he had a similar experience with the Swedish Lord of the Rings, all the more distressing because the translator of the first Swedish *Hobbit (Hompen, 1947) had also taken liberties with the text. On 7 December 1957 Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin: ‘I do hope that it can be arranged, if and when any further translations are negotiated [after the Dutch and Swedish], that I should be consulted at an early stage …. After all, I charge nothing, and can save a translator a good deal of time and puzzling; and if consulted at an early stage my remarks will appear far less in the light of peevish criticisms’ (Letters, p. 263).

At last Tolkien himself took the initiative. He continued to prefer that The Lord of the Rings in translation preserve the essential Englishness of many of its personal and place-names; but he came to accept that other translators were likely to take a line similar to those of the Dutch and Swedish editions, who had sometimes misunderstood their source, and instead of insisting on no translation of nomenclature, he attempted to influence the translator through an explanatory document. On 7 December 1957 he had also written to Rayner Unwin:

I see now that the lack of an ‘index of names’ [in The Lord of the Rings] is a serious handicap in dealing with [questions of translation]. If I had an index of names (even one with only reference to Vol. and chapter, not page) it would be a comparatively easy matter to indicate at once all names suitable for translation (as being themselves according to the fiction ‘translated’ into English), and to add a few notes on points where (I know now) translators are likely to trip. So far, though both eager to translate the toponymy into other terms, and deliberately to efface the references to England (which I regard as integral and essential) neither appear to be at all conversant with English toponymy, or even to be aware that there is anything to know. Nor do they consult large dictionaries when faced by anything that is not current. [Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins, partly printed in Letters, pp. 263–4]

Such an index was compiled for him, through the offices of George Allen & Unwin (*Publishers), by May 1958. On 11 September 1959, after considering difficulties facing the translator of the Polish Lord of the Rings, Tolkien asked his publisher for a spare copy of the index of names, so that he could mark on it all of those that are not English and therefore, in his view, should not be translated. He seems to have done nothing more with this, however, until around the beginning of December 1966: on 12 December he wrote to Alina Dadlez, of the Allen & Unwin foreign rights department:

When I was reading the specimens of the proposed German translation, I began to prepare an annotated name list based on the index: indicating those names that were to be left unchanged and giving information of the meaning and origin of those that it was desirable to render into the language of translation, together with some tentative advice on how to proceed. I hope soon to complete this and be able to send you a copy or copies for the use of translators …. [Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins]

On 2 January 1967 he wrote to Otto B. Lindhardt, of the Danish publisher Gyldendals Bibliotek, who were planning to publish The Lord of the Rings in Danish, that ‘experience in attempting to help translators or in reading their versions has made me realize that the nomenclature of persons and places offers particular difficulty’, but is important ‘since it was constructed with considerable care, to fit with the supposed history of the period described. I have therefore recently been engaged in making, and have nearly completed, a commentary on the names in this story, with explanations and suggestions for the use of a translator, having especially in mind Danish and German’ (Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). On 16 January he wrote to *Joy Hill at Allen & Unwin:

I have completed and Miss Jenkinson [his secretary] has typed out a commentary on the names in The Lord of the Rings, especially devised to be (I hope) useful to anyone translating the book into German or Danish …. I think it would save me a considerable amount of time when the German and Dutch projects go forward, and also enable the translators to avoid a lot of the mistakes, and in some cases nonsense, that I now discover in the extant translations. [Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins]

Tolkien’s ‘commentary’ for many years was photocopied by Allen & Unwin and sent to translators of The Lord of the Rings as an aid to their work. After Tolkien’s death it was edited by his son *Christopher and published in A Tolkien Compass, ed. Jared Lobdell (1975), pp. 153–201, as Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings. In 2005 Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull made a fresh transcription of the Nomenclature from the professional typescript as corrected by Tolkien, with reference also to an earlier version in manuscript and typescript; this was published in The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion (2005), pp. 750–82. (In the first edition of the Reader’s Companion entries for Mathom and Smials were inadvertently omitted from the Nomenclature. These were absent in the editors’ copy-text, but present in A Tolkien Compass.)

A Northern Venture. Collection of ‘verses by members of the *Leeds University English School Association’, published by the Swan Press, Leeds, in June 1923. See further, Descriptive Bibliography B4. The volume includes three poems by Tolkien, *Enigmata Saxonica Nuper Inventa Duo, *The Happy Mariners, and *The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon. Among other contributors are *Wilfred R. Childe, *E.V. Gordon, and *A.H. Smith.

Northernness. Tolkien considered himself a man of north-western Europe, and in his professional life was concerned with the languages, literature, and culture of that region. As he wrote to his son *Michael on 9 June 1941:

I have spent most of my life, since I was your age, studying Germanic matters (in the general sense that includes England and Scandinavia). There is a great deal more force (and truth) than ignorant people imagine in the ‘Germanic’ ideal. I was much attracted by it as an undergraduate … in reaction against the ‘Classics’ …. I have in this [Second World] War a burning private grudge … against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler …. Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light. Nowhere, incidentally, was it nobler than in England, nor more early sanctified and Christianized. [Letters, pp. 55–6]

During the nineteenth century scholars in Northern Europe began to discover and take pride in a common ‘Northern’ heritage, recognizing a culture and literature which they could place beside, and contrast with, the long-established classical traditions of Greece and Rome. Comparative Philology showed the roots and interrelationship of Germanic and Scandinavian languages. The literature of Iceland, previously little known, was seen as a major contribution to the ‘Northern’ heritage, and there was also an interest in that country’s early form of democracy. An article in the Oxford Magazine applauding the establishment of the Vigfússon Readership in Ancient Icelandic Literature and Antiquities at *Oxford in 1941 hailed ‘this new link … forged between Iceland and England: the lands of thousand-year-old Althing and venerable Parliament; the lands of two ancient European vernacular literatures, through the splendid fragments of whose combined traditions we can look beyond the Middle Age[s] and glimpse the far past of the North’ (‘The Vigfússon Readership’, Oxford Magazine, 13 November 1941, p. 65).

But this interest in the North was not confined to scholars. Marjorie J. Burns notes in ‘J.R.R. Tolkien and the Journey North’, Mythlore 15, no. 4, whole no. 58 (Summer 1989), that

by 1892, when Tolkien was born, English popular thought had for some time been turning from the classical world. Southern tastes and southern considerations, particularly from mid-century onward, had been increasingly replaced by Northern ideals. Britain’s Nordic ancestry was taken up like a banner and pointed to as indicative of all that the nation should hold in highest esteem ….

The English, who had previously played down their Northern ties, now chose to deny their Southern past, to see the South as un-English, as decadent, feeble, and lacking in vigor or will …. Neither position is just, of course. Culturally, linguistically, racially, England’s heritage is mixed; but Northern Romanticism, and that human knack of ignoring what doesn’t appeal, now allowed the English to see themselves basically as Norsemen only slightly diluted in race, as Vikings only slightly tempered by time. [p. 5]

For a study in depth of this fascination with the North, see Andrew Wawm, The Vikings and the Victorians: Inventing the Old North in 19th-Century Britain (2000).

Tolkien says in *On Fairy-Stories that of all his childhood reading he most enjoyed ‘the nameless North of Sigurd of the Völsungs, and the prince of all dragons. Such lands were pre-eminently desirable’ (*Tree and Leaf, p. 40). The ‘Story of Sigurd’ he read, in *Andrew Lang’s Red Fairy Book (1890), was written for children, based on the translation by *William Morris of the Old Norse (or Icelandic) Völsunga Saga. The legend of Sigurd provides a good example of the common heritage of Northern Europe: it appears in medieval works written in different languages and places, including the Elder (or Poetic) Edda, the Völsunga Saga (founded on the Elder Edda), and Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda (Old Norse); Þidreks Saga (a Norwegian translation of northern German heroic tales); and the Nibelungenlied (a southern German or Austrian heroic epic). A version was also known to the Anglo-Saxons, shown by a reference in *Beowulf to Sigemund slaying a dragon guarding a hoard (in most other versions Sigemund is the father of Sigfrid, and not a dragon-slayer).

While still at school, as part of a general interest in German *languages, including Old English and Gothic, Tolkien also began to learn Old Norse so that he could read the story of Sigurd in the original. He shared his appreciation of Icelandic literature with his fellow pupils at *King Edward’s School, Birmingham in a paper on Norse sagas he read to the school Literary Society (*Societies and clubs) on 17 February 1911. According to a report in the King Edward’s School Chronicle, Tolkien described a saga as a

story of things which happened indeed but so long ago that marvels and miracles of the strange old Northern brand have crept into the tale. The best sagas are those of Iceland, and for pictures of human life and character they can hardly be bettered in any literature …. They tell how brave men – of our own blood, perhaps – lived and loved, and fought, and voyaged, and died.

One of the best … is the Völsunga Saga – a strange and glorious tale. It tells of the oldest of treasure hunts: the quest of the red gold of Andvari, the dwarf. It tells of the brave Sigurd Fafnirsbane, who was cursed by the possession of this gold, who, in spite of his greatness, had no happiness from his love for Brynhild. The Saga tells of this and many another strange and thrilling thing. It shows us the highest epic genius struggling out of savagery into complete and conscious humanity. [‘Literary Society’, n.s. 26, no. 186 (March 1911), pp. 19–20]

Tolkien also praised the story of Burnt Njal, and thought Howard the Halt the best among shorter works. He concluded with a sketch of the Norse religion and quotations from various sagas. The Chronicle reporter thought that the passages Tolkien read aloud constituted one of the charms of the paper.

In later years Tolkien continued to find the Völsunga Saga of interest, but did not hold its author in high regard, for it was solely from the Eddaic lays that the saga ‘derives its power and the attraction that it has for all those who come to it’ (quoted in *The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, p. 39). He spoke of a similar attraction in his *‘Introduction to the “Elder Edda”’, saying that few who first read an Eddaic poem after a ‘preliminary struggle with Old Norse’ ‘can have missed the sudden recognition that they had unawares met something of tremendous force, something that in parts … is still endowed with an almost demonic energy, in spite of the ruin of its form …. If not felt early in the process it is unlikely to be captured by years of scholarly thraldom; once felt it can never be buried by mountains or molehills of research, and sustains long and wary labour’ (The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, p. 17).

NORTHERN STUDIES AT OXFORD AND LEEDS

When Tolkien transferred from Classics to the English School at Oxford in Trinity Term 1913 he chose for his Special Subject ‘Scandinavian Philology’, which included a study of the literature. In that same term he read a paper on the Norse sagas to the Exeter College Essay Club (*Societies and clubs), perhaps the same as or similar to the paper he gave in Birmingham two years earlier; the brief report in the Stapeldon Magazine (June 1913) gives no details apart from noting that the audience again enjoyed the quotations with which Tolkien ended his talk. Reports in the Stapeldon Magazine and the Essay Club minutes note a similar response to a paper on the Elder Edda which Tolkien, now Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, read to the Club on 17 November 1926: ‘The reader, after sketching the character and historical background of the Edda, described certain of the poems. He also gave a number of translations and readings from the Icelandic which demonstrated the peculiar poetic and musical qualities of the language’ (‘Essay Club’, Stapeldon Magazine 7, no. 39 (December 1926), p. 96).

At the University of *Leeds he was concerned with the teaching of Old Icelandic, which was studied in much the same detail as Old English; and as an adjunct, he helped to form a ‘Viking Club’ (*Societies and clubs) which comprised past and present students of Old Icelandic. On his return to Oxford Tolkien established the Kolbítar (*Societies and clubs), dons who met to read in the original and translate all of the major Icelandic Sagas and both Eddas.

During most of his time as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford (1925–45) Icelandic studies were part of Tolkien’s responsibilities. He lectured on all aspects of Old Icelandic language and literature, and often acted as a supervisor or examiner for any B.Litt. or D.Phil. thesis on the subject. This was recognized in Iceland, when in 1933 Tolkien was made a honorary member of Hið íslenska bókmenntafélag (the Icelandic Literary Society; *Societies and clubs). In 1931 he served on an English Faculty Board committee which proposed, among the main needs of the faculty, ‘the endowment of a Readership or Lecturership in (medieval) Scandinavian languages’. Their justification was that ‘Norse literature and philology are of central importance in the medieval curriculum of the English School. Adequate provision for the teaching of these subjects, and for the direction of advanced studies is urgently required. No provision for Scandinavian studies has been made by the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages since 1916’ (Oxford University Archives FA 4/5/2/3). The request was rejected by the General Board, but made again in 1939. A bequest ultimately enabled the founding of the Vigfússon Readership in Ancient Icelandic Literature and Antiquities, first held by Tolkien’s former B.Litt. student *E.O.G. Turville-Petre.

With the Vigfússon Readership established Tolkien was no longer responsible for Icelandic studies, and although Turville-Petre was called to war work almost as soon as he became Reader on 1 October 1941, Tolkien was not scheduled to give any lectures or classes on Icelandic studies after Michaelmas Term 1941 for the rest of his time in the Rawlinson and Bosworth chair. See also J.S. Ryan, ‘The Work and Preferences of the Professor of Old Norse at the University of Oxford from 1925 to 1945’, Angerthas 27 (May 1990).

NORTHERN INFLUENCES ON TOLKIEN’S FICTION

Among many influences from Northern literature on Tolkien’s works, Beowulf not only provides the cup stolen from Smaug in *The Hobbit, but also contributes to the Anglo-Saxon culture of the Rohirrim in *The Lord of the Rings, in particular the reception of Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli at Edoras (Book III, Chapter 6), which is based on that of Beowulf at Heorot. It also seems likely that Unferþ in Beowulf provided a prototype which Tolkien reworked as Gríma Wormtongue (see Clive Tolley, ‘And the Word Was Made Flesh’, Mallorn 32 (September 1995)). Most of the Dwarf-names in The Hobbit, and the name Gandalf (originally that of the dwarf later called Thorin), are taken from the Völuspá in the Elder Edda. Even Middle-earth and Mirkwood are derived from early Germanic languages where they appear in various forms (see Letters, pp. 220, 369–70). The figure of Gandalf, as Tolkien himself recognized (Letters, p. 119), embodies some aspects of the god Odin in Norse mythology (see further, Marjorie Burns, Perilous Realms: Celtic and Norse in Tolkien’s Middle-earth (2005), pp. 95–106). Verlyn Flieger comments that although ‘ljösalfar (light elves) and döckalfar (dark elves) are part of the world of the Icelandic Prose Edda and its source, the Elder or Poetic Edda, Tolkien carries the concept [of Light Elves and Dark Elves] beyond mere naming to create a context in which the differences that underlie the distinction can be explained and justified’ (Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World (2nd edn. 2002), p. 83).

A dragon guarding a hoard, as in The Hobbit and Tolkien’s poem *The Hoard, appears in both Beowulf and the story of Sigurd. Tolkien also drew upon the latter for the story of Túrin Turambar in The Silmarillion (*‘Of Túrin Turambar’), who kills the dragon Glaurung as Sigurd kills Fáfnir, by striking the beast’s soft belly from below. Also in The Silmarillion, the deaths of the companions of Finrod and Beren at intervals by a werewolf echo the account in the Völsunga Saga of the slaying of nine of the ten fettered sons of King Volsung, one by one, on consecutive nights by a she-wolf, and Beren suffers the loss of a hand to the wolf Carcharoth as the Norse God Týr did to enable the binding of Fenris Wolf. Beorn in The Hobbit, who shape-changes into a great bear in the Battle of Five Armies, appears to owe much to the berserk warriors of Northern tradition who fought with frenzied fury and whose name, according to the most accepted interpretation, described them as wearing bearskins. And in The Lord of the Rings, Aragorn’s broken sword recalls that of Sigurd in the Volsungasaga; the seat of Amon Hen is akin to Hliðskjf, the all-seeing seat of Odin; and the meeting of the forces of Sauron and the Army of the West on Dagorlad, the Battle Plain, at the feet of the Ered Lithui or Ash Mountains, recalls the battle between the Goths and the Huns on the Danube-heath below the Hills of Ash.

After discussing the fragmentary remains of early Germanic writings, especially in Old English and Gothic, Paul Bibire observes in ‘Sægde se þe cuþe: Tolkien as Anglo-Saxonist’, Scholarship and Fantasy (1993), that

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