Among the Elves and Men of Beleriand, Húrin the Steadfast is celebrated as “the mightiest warrior of mortal men” but, like the Norse hero Sigmund, he became even more renowned as the father of a dragon-slayer. Húrin’s famous son is Túrin Turambar, the slayer of Glaurung, the Father of Dragons, while Sigmund’s son is Sigurd the slayer of Fáfnir, the Prince of All Dragons.

  Both dragon-slayers lay claim to broken dynastic swords that are re-forged: Túrin’s sword is given the name Gurthang, meaning “iron of death”, while Sigurd’s is Gram, meaning “wrath”. But, even so armed, neither of these heroes believe that these great worms could be slain by strength of arms alone. Courage and cunning are also required to defeat this terror. Túrin chooses to hide himself in a deep ravine at a river crossing, and when Glaurung attempts to cross over the gap, he drives his sword upward and into the massive monster’s underbelly. Sigurd hides himself in a covered trench dug into the narrow road the beast takes each day to drink from a forest pool. When Fáfnir’s great body passes over the trench the Völsung hero drives his sword Gram up into the dragon’s exposed belly.

  THE GREAT BATTLE

  In the War of Wrath the great final battle between the forces of Morgoth the Dark Enemy and the Valarian Host of the West that brings an end to the First Age. While the Valar and Elves are ultimately victorious, the near-cosmic violence of the battle results in the shattering of the Iron Mountains and the sinking of almost all of the land of Beleriand.

  Tolkien freely acknowledged that the Great Battle “owes, I suppose, more to the Norse vision of Ragnarök than to anything else.” Certainly, there are a great number of similarities in these doomsday battles. Just as the final battle of Ragnarök will begin with the sounding of the Horn of Heimdall the Watchman of the Gods, Tolkien’s Great Battle of the War of Wrath begins with the blast of the Horn of Eönwë, the Herald of the Valar. Gothmog, Lord of Balrogs, bears a flaming sword into the Great Battle, as does Surt, Lord of the Fire Giants, in the Norse legend. And in both battles, all the legions of good and evil – all creatures, spirits, demons and dragons – meet in one final terrible conflict.

  Another likely source of inspiration, though less widely acknowledged, is to be found in the biblical Armageddon, a prophetic vision of the great battle fought between the forces of good and evil at the “end of time” as revealed in the Book of Revelation. There, in the duel between the Archangel Michael and the “Red Dragon”, we find one possible source for the climatic duel between Eärendil the Mariner and Ancalagon the Black Dragon:

  “Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down – that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.”

  Just as the Red Dragon’s downfall marks Satan’s defeat, so Ancalagon the Black Dragon’s downfall marks the defeat of Morgoth in Middle-earth. The Host of the West, like the Host of Heaven, prevails, and Morgoth the Dark Enemy is cast forever after into the darkness of the Eternal Void.

  DRAGONS AND DRAGON-SLAYERS DAVID DAY

  Kip Rasmussen’s love and dedicated study of the epic legends and tales of The Silmarillion has resulted in some of the most memorable illustrations of the Wars of Beleriand in the First Age. This has proved to be particularly true of those legendary battles and duels wherein Dragons play a dominant role. We certainly see this is in the duel between the dragon-slayer Túrin Turambar and the nightmare that was Glaurung, the Father of Dragons. Perhaps the most breath-taking single work is his magnificent Ancalagon Departing for the War of Wrath – the greatest winged fire drake of any age – commanding his legions of Dragons to enter the fray in the battle that finally results in the cataclysmic downfall of the forces of Morgoth, the Dark Enemy of the World, at the end of the First Age of Sun.

  ANCALAGON DEPARTING FOR THE WAR OF WRATH

  KIP RASMUSSEN

  RIDERS OF ROHAN

  VICTOR AMBRUS

  ILLUSTRIOUS CAVALRYMEN DAVID DAY

  Victor Ambrus created over twenty original and elegant line drawings of a dozen different tribes or races of Tolkien’s Elves for A Tolkien Bestiary in 1979. Then, in 2002, Victor was once again tracked down to create new images: for The World of Tolkien, and this time in colour.

  Once again, drawing on his immense and detailed knowledge of historical periods – particularly those related to military history – Victor was commissioned to portray the Riders of Rohan. It was believed that no one was more capable of portraying cavalrymen at full gallop than Victor Ambrus. Based on ancient Roman accounts of Gothic and Lombard cavalry charges, Victor conceived his first illustration of Eorl the Young, the First King of Rohan with his Éothéod Cavalry charging into the Battle of Celebrant. Then, shortly after, illustrated a second cavalry charge that in Tolkien’s chronology occurred centuries later by Eorl’s direct descendant: the 17th King of Rohan, Theoden in the famous Ride of the Rohirim that in The Lord of the Rings triggered the heroic and decisive Battle of the Pelennor Fields.

  BALCHOTH

  A barbarian horde of Easterlings from Rhovanion which, in 2510 TA, invade Gondor and engage with the Gondorian forces in the critical Battle of the Field of Celebrant. The tide of battle turns against the Balchoth when, unexpectedly, the cavalry of the Éothéod (ancestors of the Horsemen of Rohan) join forces with the Men of Gondor.

  This has an historic precedent in the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields in AD 451 when the Roman army formed an alliance with the Visigoths (West Goths) and Lombard cavalry and defeated the barbarian horde of Attila the Hun. This is considered one of the most critical battles in the history of Europe as it turned back what seemed an unstoppable wave of Asiatic conquest of the West. In Middle-earth, in the wake of the Battle of the Field of Celebrant, the Balchoth confederacies rapidly disintegrated, as did the Hunnish confederacies after the Battle of Catalaunian Fields.

  CIRION IN BATTLE WITH THE BALCHOTH

  ANDREA PIPARO

  THE FANTASY GENRE ANDREA PIPARO

  I consider myself a fantasy artist, although as an illustrator I am open to any theme. However my passion, and the majority of the projects which I have had the opportunity to work on, are mainly oriented towards the fantasy genre.

  My creative process, and the desire to create illustrations that have a certain realism, often leads me in the preliminary stages of the work, to search for photographic material which can help me achieve greater closeness to reality in my representations. So in some ways I can say that I draw inspiration from life; the world and the wonder that surrounds us – something that isn’t always considered.

  The fantasy genre is, for me, a means to express the freedom of creativity and imagination. When I design or paint for personal projects – without the constraint of someone else’s description – I have the opportunity to express myself with full creative freedom by drawing on my varied inner world. This is one of the aspects that I love most about my work: the freedom that fantasy, by definition, grants and the challenge to my personal interpretation.

  BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES

  MAURO MAZZARA

  BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES

  This climactic battle in J R R Tolkien’s The Hobbit was fought over the treasure of the Lonely Mountain after the slaying of its guardian, Smaug the Golden Dragon. As Tolkien readily acknowledged, the basic plot of The Hobbit – complete with Dragon and treasure horde – was largely informed and inspired by his life-long study of the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf.

  The huge Northman Beorn, Chieftain of the Beornings, Tolkien’s fairy-tale version of the bear-cult hero of the real-life berserker warrior cult of the Germanic and Norse peoples, and Tolkien’s Dwarves, resembling the warriors of Norse myth in their fighting style, would have been overrun had it not been for the sudden arrival of an unexpected ally.

  The Eagles of Middle-earth are generally not prominent players in Tolkien’s narratives, but their intervention is nearly always crucial – as in the Battle of the Five Armies – and they arrive at times of desperate need, frequently when rescue can be achieved only by the power of flight. They are part of a tradition of eagle-emissaries in myth, leading from the birds of the Greek god Zeus (the Roman Jupiter) to the vassals of Manwë, the Lord of the Winds of Arda.

  BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES

  JOHN BLANCHE

  SVINFYLKING

  Also “swine array”, Svinfylking was a wedge-shaped shield-wall formation employed by the Vikings as a shock troop tactic by infantry carrying heavy armaments. This was the formation and tactic Tolkien had Thorin Oakenshield employ at a pivotal moment in the Battle of the Five Armies in The Hobbit.

  Here Tolkien was borrowing from real-world military history, as shield walls were an effective infantry strategy in warfare for thousands of years. The Svinfylking was a high-risk tactic used by Norsemen to break though enemy lines and create panic among the closed ranks of an army with superior numbers. It could be extremely effective, but it entirely depended on the initial monumental shock. If this flying wedge did not immediately break through enemy lines, the formation would soon collapse. Like many shield-wall tactics, it could often be outflanked and entirely encircled. And, indeed, this would likely have been the fate of Thorin Oakenshield and his warriors had it not been for the sudden unexpected appearance of Beorn the berserker skin-changer in the form of a gigantic black bear.

  BEORNINGS AND HAVING FUN MAURO MAZZARA

  Animals are the subject I enjoy drawing the most. Imagine the fun I had drawing the Beornings, with that huge raging bear, or the Oliphaunts that are basically elephants as they could have been drawn in the Middle Ages. I felt a bit like the artist Dürer with his illustration of the rhino! Artists, in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, drew animals that were often based only on other artists’ previous drawings, or simply oral descriptions of them. Just as with the game “broken telephone”, the initial word often gets terribly distorted. With Oliphaunts, giant spiders, werewolves, I just “played” with animals; mixing and shaking them up, trying to get a tasty cocktail.

  BEORNINGS

  MAURO MAZZARA

  BERSERKERS

  In their “holy battle rage”, the historical berserkers felt themselves to be possessed by the spirits of enraged bears. As Odin’s holy warriors, wearing only bearskins, they sometimes charged into battle unarmed, but in such a rage that they tore the enemy limb from limb with their bare hands and teeth. Such states, however, were essentially in imitation of what was the core miracle of the bear cult: the incarnate transformation of man into bear.

  Once again, Tolkien uses a name to inspire his imagination. Beorn’s name in Norse means “bear”, and in The Hobbit we soon discover that Beorn is a “skin-changer” with the power of transformation from man to beast and beast to man. It is a supernatural power that eventually makes Beorn a critical factor in the outcome of the Battle of the Five Armies.

  DWARF ARMY

  IAN MILLER

  THANGAIL

  Sindarin word for “shield fence” and a defensive military formation consisting of a double rank of heavily armed knights used in situations when soldiers are heavily outnumbered in close-up hand-to-hand combat.

  Here Tolkien was drawing on real-world military history, as shield walls have been used as an infantry strategy in warfare for thousands of years. However, the major weakness of the conventional shield wall is that it can be outflanked. This is the case in the wedge-shaped shield wall tactic used by Thorin Oakenshield at the Battle of the Five Armies (a tactic known to Norse warriors as the Svinfylking, or “swine array”). Tolkien’s thangail attempts to address this problem in that it is flexible enough to curve around on itself and form an unbroken circle of shields and spears, thus countering any attempt by the enemy to outflank the defenders. Roman legions had a somewhat similar closed-rank defensive formation known as the testudo (or “tortoise”) formation, akin to a turtle shell of shields on all sides and above.

  THORIN

  Thorin Oakenshield, son of Thráin, son of Thrór, was Dwarf King in the Blue Mountains in exile. Tolkien chose his name, Thorin, from the list of Dwarf names found in the twelfth-century Dvergatal or “Dwarf’s Roll”, in the Prose Edda. Appropriately enough for this daring and enterprising Dwarf it means “bold”. However, Tolkien also gave him yet another Dwarf name drawn from the Dwarf’s Roll, Eikinskjaldi, meaning “he of the Oakenshield”. This was a name Tolkien viewed as a kind of riddle, and provoked the author into inventing a complex piece of background history for his Dwarf hero of The Hobbit. Tolkien explains that, during a battle in the Goblin Wars, Thorin broke his sword but fought on by picking up an oak bough, which he used as both a club and a shield.

  THORIN OAKENSHIELD

  IAN MILLER

  A WOOD MARCHING ON A HILL

  Beyond Ent being an Anglo-Saxon name for “giant”, the inspiration for Tolkien’s March of the Ents on Isengard came about in a rather negative way: through his dislike and, indeed, disapproval of William Shakespeare’s treatment of myths and legends. His greatest abuse was heaped on one of the playwright’s most popular plays, Macbeth.

  The creation of the Ents, Tolkien explained, “is due, I think, to my bitter disappointment and disgust from schooldays with the shabby use made in Shakespeare of the coming of ‘Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill’: I longed to devise a setting in which the trees might really march to war.” Tolkien felt Shakespeare had trivialized and misinterpreted an authentic myth, providing a cheap, simplistic interpretation of the prophecy of this march of the wood upon the hill.

  So in The Lord of the Rings Tolkien did indeed devise such a setting. And certainly, in his own March of the Ents, the fundamental opposition between the spirits of the forest and of the mountain was revealed and portrayed in a way that lends power and dignity to the archetypal miracle of a wood marching on a hill.

  ENTS IAN MILLER

  When considering how best to portray the attacking Ents, I recalled a day I once spent in the Redwoods and chanced upon a fallen redwood tree. What impressed me the most I think – bulk notwithstanding – was the steel hawser tension of the exposed parts of the broken innards of the tree.

  With this in mind – and the idea of Ents having the power in their hands to rip down stone walls – my assault on Isengard illustration gave the attacking Ents arms that looked very similar to interwoven steel cables.

  On reflection, I think this was more than appropriate.

  FANGORN

  ŠÁRKA ŠKORPÍKOVÁ

  ENT ATTACK ON ISENGARD

  IAN MILLER

  HELM’S DEEP IAN MILLER

  The spread depicting the gathering of the dark forces before the wall in Helm’s Deep was one of the most engaging images I created for A Tolkien Bestiary in my opinion, or at least one I really enjoyed creating. Whilst fortress cities and the mountain strongholds of the Dwarves feature in abundance, I think the drama that unfolded around Helm’s Deep was one of the most engaging and visual sections of the book for me. Whenever I chance to watch a storm-driven sea crashing against a local breakwater I always think of the assault on the walls of Helm’s Deep, silly perhaps, but there you are.

  That said, when I saw castles in the sky at the National Gallery, red castles as I recall, with angels hanging out of them, I knew I was safe.

  As to Ents, the sheer wonder of trees uprooting themselves en masse and then assaulting the fortified walls of Isengard, only to tear them down stone by stone is by any measure startling.

  Add the Orcs, Uruk-hai, Dunlendings and Half-Orcs, not discounting Saruman himself to the pot, and you have an even more heady mix. Superb visuals and story line to boot. David’s erudite narrative mapped the way, every time.

  HELM’S DEEP

  IAN MILLER

  STEEL ENGRAVING DAVID DAY

  From the beginning, Ian Miller’s distinctive, brooding drawings of Dragons, Dwarves and Orcs captured the popular imagination and resulted in them becoming firm fixtures and essential elements in the library of my books on Tolkien.

  The magnificent, evil intelligence of his Dragons, the stubborn fierceness of his Dwarves and the twisted malignancy of his Orcs somehow conveyed – in a graphic style – a surface to his figures akin to that achieved through the technique of a fine steel-engraving. It is a unique and distinctive style that manages to visually link and bind all of these books together. All these elements and qualities found in his black and white line drawings came together – and were enhanced – in three magnificent full-colour spreads portraying the most vividly described battles in The Lord of the Rings: the Battle of Helm’s Deep, the Ents March on Isengard and the Battle of Pelennor Fields. Ian’s Helm’s Deep in particular proved to be highly popular the week A Tolkien Bestiary was published. This was in good part because it appeared as an impressive full-colour spread in the Sunday Observer when – due to a national paper strike – it was the only broadsheet newspaper to appear in Britain on that weekend.