Children's Literature in Education, Vol. 30, No.

1, 1999

John Gough is a
lecturer in mathematics
John Gough
and computer
education at Deakin
University (Burwood
Campus), Melbourne,
Australia. Apart from
his unpublished Ph.D. Tolkien's Creation Myth in The
thesis on the fiction of
Penelope Lively, he has SilmarittionNorthern or Not?
written and published
many articles on
children's literature, and
mathematics and
computer education,
and has co-authored
several mathematics
textbooks, a book of
mathematics games,
and several picture This essay is dedicated to the memory of Ralph Norris, former Se-
story books written for
the children of Papua nior Lecturer at Deakin University. Ralph first introduced me to the
New Guinea. academic world of children's literature and to Children's Literature
in Education; he was always a gentleman and an inspiration to
hundreds of students. The "origins" of children's literature, indeed
of world literature, were always close to Ralph's heart. This essay's
focus on the essentially Christian ideas of J. R. R. Tolkien would
have appealed to Ralph's own quiet unshakable faith,

Tolkien's work is commonly supposed to be greatly influenced by

Norse mythology and legend. Elizabeth Cook says, "During the last
two centuries Northern myths and legends have been consciously
present in the imagination of Europe . . . recently [they have] gone
into the making of The Lord of the Rings" (Cook, 1969, p. 24). Rather
than explore this issue through the huge quantity and range of Tolkien's
material now available (edited from early drafts by Tolkien's son,
Christopher), I want to compare Tolkien's account of the creation of
Middle Earth, given in "Ainulindale" and the Norse myth of Yggdrasil,
revealing the fundamental un-Northernness of Tolkien's particularly
satisfying achievement.

Northern material undeniably exists in some of Tolkien's work. Com-

mentators have pointed out, and Tolkien himself admitted, the use of
Norse dwarves' names (such as Thorin, Gimli, and Gandalf) in The
Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (Carpenter, 1981, p. 30, Letter to
The Observer, 20 February 1938). Also there is the use of the dragon
and his treasure, taken from Beowulf along with the confrontation of
Bilbo and the dragon Smaug in The Hobbit (Tolkien, 1937, chapter

0045-6713/99/0300-0001s16.00/0 1999 Human Sciences Press, Inc.

2 Children's Literature in Education

12, p. 198) and the idea of death caused by the one small vulnerable
spot, taken from the Norse hero Siegfried (and also Homer's Achilles),
used in the later death of Smaug, pierced by an arrow in the one scale
of his body which had worn thin from lying on his treasure hoard
(Tolkien, 1937, chapter 14, p. 229). Similarities exist between Gandalf
and Odin: Both were tall and bearded, wore a hat and cloak and car-
ried a staff, could see a little into the future, were returned from the
dead after deliberate self-sacrifice, had remarkable horses (Shadowfax
and Sleipnir), and could send birds on errands (eagles and ravens).
(See Lin Carter's discussion of similarities between Tolkien's work and
earlier Norse material, 1969, chapters 14, 16, and elsewhere.) Also,
Christ-like features in Gandalf have been noted by many commenta-
tors, such as Kocher, 1972, though Odin, too, resembled Christ.

However, Tolkien himself says that he was not conscious at the time
of using Beowulf in writing the part of The Hobbit where Bilbo talks
with Smaug and steals a gold cup from Smaug's treasure. Of course, a
writer's own words about his or her works cannot always be relied
on. However, in his many letters, Tolkien gives such a full and well-
reasoned discussion that in this case the writer's own opinions do
seem to give a reliable guide to the writer's works. As a world author-
ity on Beowulf, Tolkien knew the epic well and says it "is among [his]
most valued sources" (Carpenter, 1981, p. 30, Letter to The Observer,
20 February 1938). In a later letter, Tolkien says of Fafnir [a dragon] in
the late Norse versions of the Sigurd story [a variant of Siegfried],
"Smaug and his conversation obviously is in debt there" (Carpenter,
1981, p. 144, Letter to Naomi Mitchison, 18 December 1949). In this
case, Tolkien admits, retrospectively, to unconscious or subconscious
influence.

Tolkien, as a philologist and professor of literature, was thoroughly

familiar with Norse mythology and acknowledged a deep love for it.
He says he wanted to provide, through his own English works, the
kind of epic, mythic literature that already existed in Greek, Celtic,
Germanic, Scandinavian, Finnish, and Romance languages (Carpenter,
1981, p. 144, Letter to Milton Waldman, late 1951). Was Tolkien then
aiming to imitate the mythologies of any of these languages? Was he
reshaping Northern mythology? The answer must be "No." Tolkien
knew Greek, Celtic, and many other mythologies. But he wanted his
own mythology to be different:

Cool and clear, . . . redolent of our air ... meaning Britain and the
hither [sic] parts of Europe: not Italy or the Aegean, still less the East
. . . [possessing] the fair elusive beauty that some call Celtic . . . it
should be "high," purged of the gross . . . steeped in poetry. (Carpenter,
1981, pp. 144-145, Letter to Milton Waldman, late 1951)
Tolkien's Creation Myth in The Silmarillion 3

Tolkien greatly esteemed the imaginary worlds of E. R. Eddison (such

as The Worm Ourobouros, 1922) charged with a warrior ethos of
valor and honor that closely corresponds to the warrior ethos of
Norse mythology, with its Valhalla afterlife of feasting and fighting for
heroes killed in battle. Yet Tolkien expressly repudiates Eddison's phi-
losophy as "evil and indeed silly," full of arrogance and cruelty, reject-
ing any suggestion that Eddison was an influence on his own work
(Carpenter, 1981, p. 258, Letter to Caroline Everett, 24 June 1957).
Tolkien does not directly discuss acceptance or rejection of Norse
mythology, except where he proclaims his Catholic faith. Yet his com-
ment on Eddison comes close to such discussion.

Tolkien believed that "myth and fairy-story must . . . reflect and con-
tain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but
not explicit, not in the known form of the primary real world" (Car-
penter, 1981, p. 144, Letter to Milton Waldman; also "On Fairy-Sto-
ries" in Tolkien, 1964). For Tolkien, "moral and religious truth" was
essentially Catholic, though he was very tolerant of others' beliefs.
Unsurprisingly he admits (and years later his critics found) that:

The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catho-

lic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision . . . I
have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything
like "religion," to cults or practices . . . the religious element is ab-
sorbed into the story and the symbolism. (Carpenter, 1981, p. 172, Let-
ter to Robert Murray, 2 December 1953)

This also holds for The Silmarillion, the mythological source of the
heroic legend and history of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien's mythol-
ogy is not pagan, that is, non-Christian, however much he may sympa-
thize with other pagan mythologies. Jared Lobdell reaches similar
conclusions about Tolkien as a Christian and Catholic writer, while
considering only The Lord of the Rings (1981).

Tolkien's view of Creation resembles that of Milton's epic of angels

and men, Paradise Lost. But Milton presented the unknowable mysti-
cal aspects of creation as overt Christian poetry (albeit in an age of
vigorous Puritan Protestant reform). Tolkien's mythology is inherently
Catholic, or at least deliberately compatible with Catholicism, but
with no descriptive or surface elements in common with Catholicism.
Nor is this an allegory in which we simplistically equate Tolkien's one
god with the New Testament God the Father, or the Old Testament
Jehovah or Yahweh.

I want now to look more closely at aspects of Tolkien's creation myth.

First, unlike the borrowed dwarf names in The Hobbit, Tolkien's
mythical names and settings are original. Indeed, Tolkien's naming of
4 Children's Literature in Education

fantasy or fictional characters grew out of his invention of the imag-

ined languages of the people about whom he was to write, so the
names he chose meant certain things in these invented languages.
Unlike most fantasy writers who create other worlds, he did not merely
choose inherently meaningless but euphonious combinations of let-
ters. The very act of speaking, or creating a language, was a funda-
mental precursor to world creation for Tolkien. Tolkien anticipates
the naming magic, a feature of many traditional mythologies, which is
used with great power in Ursula Le Guin's "Earthsea" sequence. Yet
the patterns of existing human languages (Finnish, Welsh, Germanic,
and so on) upon which Tolkien based his invented languages also give
subtle cultural coloring to the peoples who speak these languages.

He begins:

There was Era, the One . . . and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones,
that were the offspring of his thought . . . and he spoke to them, pro-
pounding to them themes of music; and they sang before him, and he
was glad. (The Silmarillion, 1977, p. 15)

Eru then declares a mighty theme and invites the Ainur to "make in
harmony together a Great Music . . . adorning this theme, each with
his own thoughts and devices, if he will" (The Silmarillion, p. 15).
Then the places of the dwelling of Eru and the depths and heights
were "filled to overflowing, and the music and the echo of the music
went out into the Void, and it was not void" (p. 15). Yet, even before
the physical universe is made, there is rebellion.

In the music there were no flaws. But as the theme progressed, it came
into the heart of Melkor to interweave matters of his own imagining
that were not in accord with the theme of [Eru]; for he sought therein
to increase the power and glory of the part assigned to himself. To
Melkor among the Ainur had been given the greatest gifts of power and
knowledge . . . desire grew hot within him to bring into Being things of
his own . . . and straightway discord arose about him. (p. 16)

Eru eventually stops the discord, and reasserts his authority, saying:

that [Melkor] may know, and all the Ainur; that I am Iluvatar [or Eru],
those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see
what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shall see that no theme may be
played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the
music in my despite, (p. 16)

Then Eru took the Ainur, from the fair regions he had made for them,
into the Void, and showed them a vision of a new World globed amid
the Void, and Eru said, giving them sight where before was only hear-
ing, "Behold your Music!" (p. 16).
Tolkien's Creation Myth in The Silmarillion 5

Then the Ainur saw a vision of what they had sung, and watched the
history of the new world unfolding, containing things they had la-
bored to make in their own music, as well as things of which only Eru
knew. Into this vision came the Children of Iluvatar, that is, Elves and
Men, as imagined by Iluvatar (or Eru) alone, reflecting the mind of
Iluvatar. Knowing the Ainur loved the beauty of the vision and wished
that it could be real, Eru said "Ea! Let these things be!" And the Ainur
saw the World, set in the Deeps of Time, in the midst of innumerable
stars, among vast halls and spaces and wheeling fires. And it was "as if
naught was yet made . . . but on the point to begin and yet un-
shaped." So began their great labors, but Melkor "meddled in all that
was done" (p. 20).

And so, from the mind of Eru came the music of Eru and the Ainur,
and the unrealized vision of a world that might be. Then, when the
world was made to begin, the Ainur worked, like the creative gods in
pagan myths, to make their vision become real: some to make the
land, some the waters, some the air, and others the things in the new
world; all the while contending against the perverting influence of
Melkor (later known as Morgoth). (The mysterious Necromancer who
lurks in the background of The Hobbit, and later emerges as Sauron
the evil Lord of the Rings, had been in previous ages Morgoth's lieu-
tenant.)

This brief account greatly simplifies the poetry and drama of Tolkien's
"Ainulindale" myth, with its One, the High God, omnipotent, omnis-
cient; its Ainur, the angels or demi-gods, the Music and the Vision, and
the Fall of Melkor, through pride and lust for power. (The very name
"Ainulindale" resonates with the names of the Finnish myth The Ka-
levala, which Tolkien first read as a boy.) However, the quality of
Tolkien's measured language and the clear logic of this Creation myth
are evident. Out of the one initial, awe-full, unknowable mystery of
the existence of Eru arises all the rest like a symphony built from a
single generative theme. We may wonder about the physics entailed in
creating a Universe, what kind of "vision" or "hearing" there could
have been before the Universe was made, in what way "mind" might
exist without "substance." But the metaphysics, the ideas of the mak-
ing, are clear. Singing, in some mythologies, like the making of lan-
guage, or the naming of the animals in the Garden of Eden, has
mythic creative power.

Tolkien extends the orthodox Christian view of creation by allowing

the Ainur to be subcreators and discusses their subcreation at several
points in his letters. Tolkien uses the term subcreation to describe a
form of the artist's creativity when making a particular kind of sec-
ondary or fictional world (in "On Fairy-Stories" in Tree and Leaf,
6 Children's Literature in Education

1964). For Tolkien, a "subcreator" absorbs raw material from his own
life and the world around him in order to "create" a new, separate
"world" of his own imagining, different from our ordinary world, in
which he and his readers may live and travel while their rational dis-
belief in such an imagined world is suspended. The illusion of the
imagined world's completeness, its unquestioned plausibility, and its
evident difference from our ordinary world are hallmarks of subcrea-
tion. But because any writer's imagination inevitably draws on ordi-
nary human experience, such fictive creation cannot be wholly new,
is of a different and lower level of originality, and can only be sub-
creation, working within and from the primal creation of our world.
0 have discussed this and related points elsewhere: 1984, p. 113.)
Tolkien, in his letters, also discusses the "Fall" of Melkor extensively,
the primal sin in The Silmarillion, clearly a large and complex topic,
central to any Christian work.

How Northern is Tolkien's creation myth? We can compare it with the

Norse myth as given in Icelandic by Snorri Sturluson in his Prose
Edda, written about A.D. 1220. (Lin Carter discusses this as a major
source for Tolkien: 1969, chapter 14.) In the Norse myth there is no
beginning from nothing. Instead, everything else proceeds from Ygg-
drasil, the World Tree. And finally, when the Norse worlds end in the
apocalyptic Ragnarok, which is the cataclysmic Last Battle, followed
by the Twilight of the Gods, some versions of the myth say that the
Tree will survive, and from it will spring a new world, in an endless
cycle of Birth, Death, and Rebirth (Ellis Davidson, 1964, p. 202).

When the world began, already there was the Tree, Yggdrasil, and in
the south was the hot fire-realm Muspelheim and in the north was the
icy Land of Mist, Nifelheim. Between them stretched the great empti-
ness of Ginnungagap, pregnant with the potential power of creation.
The heat from the south and the ice from the north met in the middle
of this unformed abyss, and as the ice melted, a giant, Ymir, appeared
alive. From this giant came the first man and woman, and a race of
frost-giants. There was also a magic cow, Audhumla, who licked the
salty ice, and so freed another man, the first of the gods, called Burri.
And Burri had a son, Bor, who married a frost giant, and their children
were the great gods Odin, Vili and Ve. These three began to fight the
giants and killed Ymir. As Ymir's blood filled Ginnungagap, all but one
of the other giants drowned. Ymir's body formed a new world of
men, his blood formed the rivers and lakes and seas, and his skull
formed the dome of the sky. Discussion of this myth can be found in
Ellis Davidson (1964) and Guirand (1968). Interestingly, Roger Lan-
celyn Green's retelling for children begins with Ginnungagap, and
Ymir, leaving the Tree to be planted later by Odin (I960, pp. 18-23).
Perhaps this is Green's own variation, an attempt to offer something
Tolkien's Creation Myth in The Silmarillion 7

with more logical coherence for younger readers. Joseph Campbell's

account of the creation myth in the Icelandic Eddas also starts with
"the yawning gap" Ginnungagap (1949, Part 2, Section 1, chapter 5).
But, if so, a "gap" between what?

It is impossible to hear the Norse story and ask "How?" or "Why?"

with any hope of obtaining a logical answer. Typical of creation myths,
much remains unknowable. Where did the Tree come from before the
world began? Or after it, if that was the sequence? How was Ymir
formed in the ice? How and when were Muspelheim and Nifelheim
made? Where did the cow come from? Who was Bor's mother and
did he have a navel? Why were these first creatures sometimes men,
sometimes giants and sometimes gods, and what are the differences
between god and giant? Why did the giants and gods fight? And so on.
Possibly some of the problems in this Norse account derive from the
fact that Snorri, a comparatively late Christian writer, is trying to rec-
oncile different versions of several original pagan accounts.

The Norse creation myth and Tolkien's clearly share no common

ground. Behind the Norse myth, the only ultimate power or agent,
which might correspond to Eru, the One, is Fate, or in Old English,
Wyrd (Ellis Davidson, 1964, pp. 217-218, and Alexander, 1966, p.
24), similar to the Islamic "Fate" or "Destiny" (Kismet) or Classical
Greek "Necessity" (Ananke). Yet Fate or personal destiny is unreason-
ing and impersonal, surely not a god at all unless we admit any anthro-
pomorphizing of abstract concepts as possible candidates for divinity!
Nor does the Norse myth show any sense of morality, though in later
Norse myths there is the warriors' code of valor, honor, and truthful-
ness, and loathing of oath-breakers. By contrast, Tolkien quickly intro-
duces Melkor and the mythic theme of the lust for power opposed to
obedience. Also the Norse myth, while using concrete terms as poetic
images or archetypes, does not present a convincing account of un-
knowable parts of creation, however vivid the images may be. The
closest we come to explanation is fire, ice, melting, and a magic cow's
tongue. In contrast, Tolkien (perhaps to some tastes using weaker
imagescertainly less savage or primitivethan the Norse images)
presents the unknowable in an august, well-reasoned, far-reaching
ode. It may be significant that true believers of the Norse myths felt
dissatisfied with their gods and were eventually converted to Chris-
tianity (Ellis Davidson, 1964, pp. 50, 219-223).

I have looked at the creation myths of Tolkien's The Silmarillion and

old Norse mythology and found much contrast between them and
very little in common. In the rest of The Silmarillion and The Lord of
the Rings, despite the superficial flavor of Northernness in the heroic
world being presented, eagles, elves, dwarves and battles, all the time
8 Children's Literature in Education

we are conscious of a clear moral purpose within Tolkien's world,

which is largely absent from Norse mythology. Tolkien has taken qual-
ities of language, a code of bravery and honor, and many incidental
Norse detailsincluding dwarf names, the naming of weapons, the
confrontation with dragons, and chillingly, the ghost army of oath-
breakers who march with Aragorn out of the Paths of the Dead to win
victory at the battle of Pelennor Fields before the city of Minas Tirith
in Gondor (The Lord of the Rings Book V, chapters 6 and 2). But he
has absorbed these into a very different world, with its own magic
and poetry.

Tolkien comes as close as anyone can to making the unknowable con-

cretely known. Like the Ainur he created, he has worked as a subcrea-
tor of considerable power, calling up a whole secondary world in
which we can see much of our own world reflected and diffracted,
cast in a clear new lightbut the source of that light does not lie to
the North.

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Campbell, J., The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton Univer-
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Carter, L, Tolkien: A Look Behind "The Lord of the Rings." New York: Ballan-
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Cook, E., The Ordinary and the Fabulous. Cambridge: Cambridge University
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Eddison, E. R., The Worm Ourobouros. London: Jonathan Cape, 1922.
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