Tolkien manifestly felt the imaginative pull of these lost literatures, of what must have been. His scholarly caution … warned him against confusing what is with what might have been …. He is also remarkably careful to dissociate his recreative from his scholarly activities, and the legends of the Rohirrim and their ancestors and cousins of Mirkwood are not those of the early English, or of their continental Gothic or Norse cousins: rather, he creates an analogue of such a body of legends, as it might have developed in the different cultural and geographical circumstances of Rohan and Gondor. [pp. 124–5]

Tolkien himself commented on this separation of his re-creative and scholarly activities in an unpublished essay concerning his thoughts on translating poetry:

I must protest that I have never attempted to ‘re-create’ anything. My aim has been the basically more modest, and certainly the more laborious one of trying to make something new. No one would learn anything valid about the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ from any of my lore, not even that concerning the Rohirrim; I never intended that they should. Even the lines beginning ‘Where now the horse and the rider’ [The Lord of the Rings, bk. III, ch. 6], though they echo a line in [the Old English poem] *‘The Wanderer’ … are certainly not a translation, re-creative or other wise. They are integrated (I hope) in something wholly different … they are particular in reference, to a great hero and his renowned horse, and they are supposed to be part of the song of a minstrel of a proud and undefeated people in a hall still populous with men. Even the sentiment is different: it laments the ineluctable ending and passing back into oblivion of the fortunate, the full-lived, the unblemished and beautiful. To me that is more poignant than any particular disaster, from the cruelty of men or the hostility of the world. But if I were to venture to translate ‘The Wanderer’ – the lament of the lonely man withering away in regret, and the poet’s reflexions upon it – I would not dare to intrude any sentiment of my own, nor to disarrange the order of word and thought in the old poem, in an impertinent attempt to make it more pleasing to myself, and perhaps to others. That is not ‘re-creation’ but destruction. At best a foolish misuse of a talent for personal poetic expression; at worst the unwarranted impudence of a parasite. [Tolkien Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford]

Tolkien did, however, give a version of part of the Old English poem *The Seafarer a significant place in *The Lost Road and *The Notion Club Papers, though in an entirely different context: a sea-longing to seek the land of the Elves. He also wrote, probably in the early 1930s, Völsungakviða en nýja (‘The New Lay of the Völsungs’), a poem of 339 eight-line stanzas. On 29 March 1967 he wrote to *W.H. Auden, who had sent him part of the Elder Edda that he and Paul B. Taylor had translated into Modern English: ‘In return again I hope to send you … a thing I did many years ago when trying to learn the art of writing alliterative poetry: an attempt to unify the lays about the Völsungs from the Elder Edda, written in the old eight-line fornyrðislag stanza’ (Letters, p. 379). A companion poem, Guðrúnarkviða en nýja (‘The New Lay of Gudrún’), of 166 eight-line stanzas, dates to the same time. (For the ‘New Lays’ see The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún.)

In the Old English poem *The Battle of Maldon the old retainer Beorhtwold, prepared to die in a last desperate stand, proclaims: ‘Will shall be the sterner, heart the bolder, spirit the greater as our strength lessens’. These words, Tolkien comments, ‘have been held to be the finest expression of the northern heroic spirit, Norse or English; the clearest statement of uttermost endurance in the service of indomitable will’ (*The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son, in Essays and Studies (1953), p. 13). They exemplify as well an ideal which Tolkien applied frequently in *‘The Silmarillion’ and The Lord of the Rings. To name only one instance in the former, in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad the Men of the House of Hador stand firm against the forces of Morgoth until only Húrin remains:

Then he cast aside his shield, and wielded an axe two-handed; and it is sung that the axe smoked in the black blood of the troll-guard of Gothmog until it withered, and each time he slew Húrin cried: ‘Aurë entuluva! Day shall come again!’ Seventy times he uttered that cry; but they took him at last alive … for the Orcs grappled him with their hands, which clung to him still though he hewed off their arms; and ever their numbers were renewed, until at last he fell buried beneath them. [*The Silmarillion, p. 195]

Likewise, in The Lord of the Rings, Book V, Chapter 6, Éomer lets ‘blow the horns to rally all men to his banner that could come thither; for he thought to make a great shield-wall at the last, and stand, and fight there on foot till all fell, and do deeds of song on the fields of Pelennor, though no man should be left in the West to remember the last King of the Mark’. On a differfent level, the same spirit is expressed by Frodo, and especially Sam, as they struggle across the desolation of Mordor to Mount Doom, and Frodo realizes that

at best their provision would take them to their goal; and when the task was done, there they would come to an end, alone, houseless, foodless in the midst of a terrible desert. There could be no return.

‘So that was the job I felt I had to do when I started,’ thought Sam: ‘to help Mr. Frodo to the last step and then die with him? Well, if that is the job then I must do it ….’

But even as hope died in Sam, or seemed to die, it was turned to a new strength. Sam’s plain hobbit-face grew stern, almost grim, as the will hardened in him …. [bk. VI, ch. 3]

*Priscilla Tolkien once said of her father and his works of fiction:

When thinking of his imagination I feel that like his scholarship it was overwhelmingly Northern European in every detail of his deepest loves and fears. The ideas aroused by the sufferings of long, hard, cruel winters, the dazzling beauty of the short flowering of Spring and Summer, and the sadness of seeing this once more pass back into the darkness; the symbolism of darkness and light is continual in [*The Silmarillion] for good and evil, despair and hope. Such a climate also nourished the virtues which he held in such high regard: heroism and endurance, loyalty, and fidelity, both in love and in war. [‘Talk Given at Church House, Westminster on 16.9.77 by Priscilla Tolkien’, Amon Hen 29 [?November 1977], p. 4]

See also ‘Norse Mythological Elements in The Hobbit’ by Mitzi M. Brunsdale, Mythlore 9, no. 4, whole no. 34 (Winter 1983); Fredrik J. Heinemann, ‘Tolkien and Old Icelandic Literature’, Scholarship and Fantasy (1993); Gloria St. Clair, ‘An Overview of the Northern Influences on Tolkien’s Works’ and ‘Volsunga Saga and Narn: Some Analogies’, both in Proceedings of the J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference 1992, ed. Patricia Reynolds and Glen H. GoodKnight (1995); Tom Shippey, ‘Tolkien and Iceland: The Philology of Envy’ (2002), revised in Roots and Branches: Selected Papers on Tolkien (2007); Marjorie Burns, Perilous Realms: Celtic and Norse in Tolkien’s Middle-earth (2005) and ‘Old Norse Literature’ in J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, ed. Michael D.C. Drout (2006); Dimitra Fimi, ‘Tolkien and Old Norse Antiquity’ in Old Norse Made New: Essays on the Post Medieval Reception of Old Norse Literature and Culture, ed. David Clark and Carl Phelpstead (2007); J.S. Ryan, ‘Trolls and Other Themes: William Craigie’s Significant Folkloric Influence on the Style of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit’ in Tolkien’s View: Windows into his World (2009); and Mary R. Bowman, ‘Refining the Gold: Tolkien, The Battle of Maldon, and the Northern Theory of Courage’, Tolkien Studies 7 (2010).

The Northmen and the Wainriders

see Cirion and Eorl and the Friendship of Gondor and Rohan

‘Note on the Landing of the Five Wizards and Their Functions

and Operations’ see The Five Wizards

Note on Final Consonants see Primitive Quendian Structure

Notes for Qenya Declensions. Description of ‘the Common Eldarin and Old Qenya elements and features that underlie the Qenya declensions’ (p. xvii), published in Parma Eldalamberon 21 (2013), pp. 66–9, edited with commentary and notes by Christopher Gilson, Patrick H. Wynne, and Arden R. Smith.

Written on six pages, with revisions, Notes for Qenya Declensions is dated by the editors to the early 1950s. It is closely based on, and probably composed not very long after, an earlier document, *Nouns.

Notes on Motives in the Silmarillion. Essay, published with notes and commentary as text VII in the section ‘Myths Transformed’ of *Morgoth’s Ring (1993), pp. 394–408.

The work, probably from the late 1950s, exists in two versions. The earlier is a four-page manuscript inscribed ‘Some notes on the “philosophy” of the Silmarillion’, described by *Christopher Tolkien as ‘rapidly expressed’ and without ‘a clear ending’ (Morgoth’s Ring, p. 394). The later version, greatly expanded and more carefully expressed, was left unfinished in mid-sentence after twelve manuscript pages.

The ‘notes’ compare Sauron and Morgoth in *‘The Silmarillion’, their characters and motives, their relative power at various times, and the way they used it. ‘Morgoth had no “plan”: unless destruction and reduction to nil of a world in which he had only a share can be called a “plan”’ (p. 397). But ‘Sauron had never reached this stage of nihilistic madness. He did not object to the existence of the world, so long as he could do what he liked with it’ (p. 396). Then follows a discussion of the reasons why the Valar were reluctant ‘to come into open battle with Morgoth’, concluding that Morgoth’s power and being were disseminated throughout the world – ‘the whole of “middle-earth” was Morgoth’s Ring’ – and to try to destroy him ‘might well end in reducing Middle-earth to chaos, possibly even all Arda’; whereas ‘the final eradication of Sauron … was achievable by the destruction of the Ring’ into which his power had been concentrated (p. 400).

In a section developed fully only in the second text, Tolkien suggests reasons for the apparent inaction of the Valar against Morgoth during the First Age, and that their eventual intervention was precisely timed. Manwë with his knowledge of the Music and ‘power of direct recourse to and communication with Eru … must have grasped with great clarity … that it was the essential mode of the process of “history” in Arda that evil should constantly arise, and that out of it new good should constantly come’ (p. 402). The second version ends soon after turning its attention to the later resistance to Sauron, but the published text continues with the first version, from the point where the two texts diverge, with a brief philosophical consideration of the future of Arda.

Finally Tolkien turns to the question of the origin of Orcs: ‘Part of the Elf-Man idea gone wrong. Though as for Orcs, the Eldar believed Morgoth had actually “bred” them by capturing Men (and Elves) early [i.e. in the early days of their existence] and increasing to the utmost any corrupt tendencies they possessed’ (p. 406). (See also *Orcs.)

Christopher Tolkien comments that ‘despite its incomplete state … this is the most comprehensive account that my father wrote of how, in his later years, he had come to “interpret” the nature of Evil in his mythology …’ (p. 406). See also *Good and Evil.

‘Notes on Óre’. A single typescript sheet, apparently the beginning of a substantial essay on the common Eldarin root ȜOR and its descendants, edited with notes by Carl F. Hostetter, was published in Vinyar Tengwar 41 (July 2000), pp. 11–19.

In *The Lord of the Rings Appendix E Quenya óre is glossed ‘heart (inner mind)’, as used in a phrase such as ‘my heart tells me’, but ‘“heart” is not suitable, except in brevity, since óre does not correspond in sense to any of the English confused uses of “heart” ….’ The essay was to have discussed ‘what the óre was for Elvish thought and speech, and the nature of its counsels’ (p. 11) but does not proceed very far. The sheet was found between the typescript of the finished part of *The Shibboleth of Fëanor and the manuscript draft for an unwritten excursus on the names of the sons of Fëanor. It seems unconnected with that work, though probably contemporary with it, 1968 or later.

Pages of manuscript draft material give some indications of how the essay might have continued. Among these is an interesting note, more concerned with the *Athrabeth than etymology. The writer is not identified, but seems to be a Man of a later period. After summarizing the Athrabeth it continues: ‘For (as far as we can now judge [from]) the legends (mainly of Elvish origin probably, though coming down to us through Men) it would seem clear that Men were not intended to have Elvish longevity, limited only by the life of the Earth’, but were intended to enjoy a much greater life-span before passing from the circles of the world. The Elves believed that the life-span of Men had been shortened as a result of some rebellion against Eru in the form of accepting Melkor as God, after which ‘only the wisest of Men could distinguish between [?his] evil promptings and true óre’ (p. 14).

On Eldarin and Quenya, see *Languages, Invented.

The Notion Club Papers. Story, published with commentary and notes in *Sauron Defeated (1992), pp. 145–327.

SYNOPSIS

The heart of The Notion Club Papers is presented as the surviving part of a record of meetings of an *Oxford society during 1986 and 1987 (some forty years in the future when Tolkien wrote the work). Following some preliminaries, the first of its two parts (as originally conceived) begins with a brief report of a meeting in November 1986, notes the omission of ‘one or two minor entries’, and continues with an account of the meeting of 20 February 1987. Michael Ramer, one of the members of the club, has finished reading a space-travel story he has written. This leads to discussion of the credibility of the machine or other device used by writers of space stories to take characters to their destination. Another member, Rupert Dolbear, says that the problem with Ramer’s work is that it is out of keeping with its frame-machinery, and challenges Ramer to say how he got to the place described in the story.

At the next meeting, Ramer explains that he has considered methods of space-travel both for a story and for himself, and that he has tried to train his mind to travel in his dreams. He describes various dream experiences, some inspired by stories he had written long ago, some fragmentary, such as a Green Wave towering over fields, and visions of the planets of our solar system as well as unknown worlds. When he mentions the names of his worlds, the members discuss language and the weak methods of communication common in space-travel stories. Ramer says he has more dreams about *Atlantis than about space, and mentions the Wave towering over the land, a Great Door, and the Elvish En-keladim (all aspects of Tolkien’s mythology, in which *Númenor is associated with Atlantis and his own dreams of a great wave). Ramer ends his account by describing a vision of a disorderly planet, then of an area in which the inhabitants and their buildings spread like ringworm; but as he came closer, he realized that he had been watching a speeded-up history of the Thames Valley and Oxford.

The second part of the work records a series of meetings following directly on the first part, in which the matter of Númenor becomes of prime importance. It seems likely that Tolkien originally intended Part Two to proceed differently, since an outline for it begins: ‘Do the Atlantis story and abandon Eriol-Saga, with Loudham, Jeremy, Guildford and Ramer taking part’ (Sauron Defeated, p. 281). But there is no indication of how the ‘Eriol-Saga’ was to be introduced. Since Arundel Loudham (changed to Lowdham during the writing of the first version of Part Two) was to play an important role in the ‘Atlantis story’, Tolkien made additions to Part One to suggest Lowdham’s interest in the myth. A link is provided by a fragmentary entry reporting the end of a meeting on 13 March, when Lowdham tells Ramer and Guildford that he has been having strange experiences. As the story proceeds, it becomes clear that he is haunted subconsciously by Númenor, and is reminded of the temple Sauron built there when he sees what appears to be smoke coming from the lantern of the Radcliffe Camera.

At the first meeting of the Club in Trinity Term 1987, on 8 May, the members discuss neologisms (the use of new words or expressions), the misuse of established words, and the way that language changes and evolves. They also talk about legends of origin and cultural myths, and whether, if one could go back in time, one would find that myth dissolves into history, or real history becomes more mythical. At some point Lowdham becomes upset, curses ‘Zigûr’, and cries out: ‘Behold the Eagles of the Lords of the West! They are coming over Nūmenōr!’ Ramer says that Nūmenōr is his name for Atlantis, and fellow member Wilfrid Trewin Jeremy says that he also has some recollection of hearing the name. At the meeting on 22 May Lowdham comments on his strange names Alwin Arundel, chosen when his mother objected to the Ælfwine Éarendel his father, Edwin, had wanted to give him. He tells how his father set out in his ship The Éarendel (in the first text Éarendel Star) one day in 1947 and was never seen again. Lowdham remembers his father keeping a diary in a strange script, and that after his disappearance Lowdham had found a sheet in the same script but could not decipher it. The members discuss the meanings of the names Ælfwine and Éadwine, and historical figures with those and related names. (See also *Eriol and Ælfwine.)

This in turn leads to a discussion of the name Éarendel in the lines from the Old English Crist: Éalá Éarendel engla beorhtost / ofer middangeard monnum sended. Lowdham says that he has heard the similar ëarendil in another language, ‘where it actually means Great Mariner, or literally Friend of the Sea; though it also has, I think, some connexion with the stars’ (p. 237). When he is asked ‘what language?’ he tells the members that since he was about ten he has had ‘words, even occasional phrases’, ringing in his ears; ‘both in dream and waking abstraction. They come into my mind unbidden, or I wake to hear myself repeating them. Sometimes they seem to be quite isolated, just words or names …. It was a long time before I began to piece the fragments together’ (pp. 237–8). He recorded these, and after removing Anglo-Saxon or related elements, most of the remainder seem to belong to two languages which he had never come across. He associates both languages with a place called Nūmenōr in the first language (which he calls Avallonian, in fact Quenya; see *Languages, Invented), and Anadūnē in the second (which he calls Adunaic).

He discusses other words, and notes that even those in Old English came to him before he began to learn that language. Among the longer passages of Old English are a line which means ‘a straight way lay westward, now it is bent’, and some verses, one of which includes lines Lowdham translates as: ‘There is many a thing in the west of the world unknown to men; marvels and strange beings, [a land lovely to look on,] the dwelling place of the Elves and the bliss of the Gods’ (pp. 243, 244).

By the next meeting, in Ramer’s rooms on 12 June 1987, Lowdham has heard a much longer passage in his two unidentified languages. His incomplete translation shows that it is an account of the Fall of Númenor – the coming of Sauron, the attempt to invade the land of the Lords of the West, the drowning of Númenor, and the changing of the shape of the world so that there is no longer a straight path to the West. He mentions the name Sauron, and its Adunaic equivalent Zigūr, at which Wilfrid Trewin Jeremy reacts strangely. Both he and Lowdham seem to relive the destruction of Númenor, as dark clouds roll over the sky from the West and a violent thunderstorm breaks. Lowdham addresses Jeremy as ‘Voronwë’, and Jeremy addresses Lowdham as ‘Elendil’; both rush out into the freak storm. During the evening, Lowdham mentions again the sheet with the strange script he had found among his father’s papers, intending to say something about it later, but does not. The other members leave when the storm subsides, and Ramer picks up a sheet of paper and puts it in a drawer.

On 26 June a brief letter from Lowdham and Jeremy is read to the Club, saying they ‘were cast up far away when the wind fell’ (p. 254) and are now doing research. Ramer produces the sheet dropped by Lowdham at the last meeting. Since Lowdham had mentioned that some of the words he received were in Old English, on the chance that this was the language of the strange script, Ramer took the sheet to old Professor Rashbold of Pembroke, who deciphered it and positively identified the language as ‘Old English of a strongly Mercian (West Midland) colour, ninth century’ (p. 257). Translated into Modern English, it turns out to be another, longer account of the last days of Númenor.

The next meeting, on 25 September 1987, begins with Philip Frankley, another member affected by the resonances of Númenor, reading a poem, The Death of St Brendan (see *Imram), which includes allusions to Tolkien’s mythology (*‘The Silmarillion’). He woke ‘four days ago with the thing largely fixed’ in his mind (p. 265). The members discuss possible influences from real accounts of St Brendan, but note there seems no source for the lines describing ‘the round world’ plunging ‘steeply down’ while ‘the old road’ goes on ‘as an unseen bridge … on arches’ (p. 264).

Lowdham and Jeremy then describe their travels around the western coasts of Britain and Ireland, and the rumours they heard of huge phantom waves. They recount that while staying in Porlock (in Somerset on the coast of the Bristol Channel) they both dreamed themselves back to tenth century England in a hall crowded with warriors who had come to join Edward the Elder’s fight against the invading Danes. In that dream Lowdham, now the minstrel Ælfwine, was called upon to entertain those in the hall, and recited a verse about his sea-longing, while Jeremy, now Tréowine from the Marches, told the story of King Sheave. They finish their account for that evening as these Anglo-Saxon personas leave the hall and promise to tell the members more at the next meeting.

At this point, however, Tolkien abandoned The Notion Club Papers. Only a few notes and fragments indicate how the story might have continued. One note suggests that Tréowine and Ælfwine were to sail west, find the Straight Path, and see the round world below, then be driven back. Another has ‘sojourn in Númenor before and during the fall ends with Elendil and Voronwë fleeing on a hill of water into the dark with the Eagles and lightning pursuing them’, and ‘At the end … Lowdham and Jeremy have a vivid dream of the Fall of Númenor’ (p. 279).

ASSOCIATED ‘PAPERS’

In addition to this inner core of the minutes of the Notion Club, as part of their fictional ‘frame’, Tolkien also produced associated ‘papers’. The layer nearest the core is the framework of the (fictional) book Leaves from the Notion Club Papers, subdivided into Part One and Part Two, supposedly edited by one Howard Green and published in 2014, for which Tolkien produced a facsimile title-page (Sauron Defeated, p. 154). According to the ‘editor’s’ foreword, Green found the Club’s papers ‘after the Summer Examinations of 2012 on the top of one of a number of sacks of waste paper in the basement of the Examination Schools in Oxford …’ (p. 155), but was unable to discover how they had got there. They appear to be the incomplete reports of the meetings of an Oxford club from approximately 1980 to 1990, with references to an event as late as 1987, apparently prepared for publication with notes; but ‘Brown’ could find no trace of the existence of a Notion Club. He describes the surviving papers, including a list of members.

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