On Balrogs, Caradhras, and Moria

[Mojo]

So this came up in the Tom Bombadil thread, but rather than spamming up that thread with unrelated discussion, I decided to start a new thread on this.

We are told that the Balrog lived in Khazad-dum for a long time (even though it had been "sleeping" before Durin's folk woke it). This raises two questions:

1. Was the presence of the Balrog the reason for Caradhras' "ill spirit?" We know that Maiar have the ability to put some of their spiritual power into other objects (See: Sauron and the Ring). Is it possible that some of the power of the Balrog was imbued into the Mountain itself?

2. Was the Balrog the reason that Mithril only existed in Khazad-dum? Was there something special about either the heat or powers of the Balrog living there that enabled "pure silver" to develop in Khazad-dum but not in any other places in Middle-Earth? As far as we know, other than in the pits of Utumno and Angband, the only other Balrog to dwell in Middle-Earth was in Khazad-dum. Is this just coincidence with the Mithril or are the two connected?

[Reikon Suchi-ru]

The relationship between Durin's Bane and Mithril certainly is interesting, as Mithril occurs in its greatest abundance there. I've not seen anything Lore-wise that discusses the origin of mithril with regards to the timeline of Durin's Bane being interred in the mountain, but some crude timeline could probably be constructed to draw some circumstantial links between the two. Fascinating theory, I'm interested to hear if anyone else knows more about it!

[Oro]

I do not think there is any way to prove either of those questions, positive or negative.

I will state however that in the Legendarium that Tolkien states that there should have been no more than 3 or 7 Balrogs that ever existed, increasing their power from the Silmarillion that got published.

Because Christopher Tolkien assembled the Silmarillion from older manuscripts, the numbers of Balrog were high, but over time Tolkien lower and lowered that number. I think that in Tolkien’s estimation, the Balrogs needed to be strong and more like Wizards, few but very influential.

That makes me think that while the books never state that Balrogs cause the Ill Spirit or Mithril, I think it is possible. Just common sense but I’d say the ill Spirit of Caradhras is much more likely than the Mithril, due to Mithril being a thing found other places too, just less commonly than Khazad-Dum.

[Mojo]

All good points!

The only evidence I could dig up quickly on Mithril was that in addition to Khazad-dum, the other locations were likely in Aman and possibly Numenor. The location in Aman would make sense given it was the home of the Valar where all things good and beautiful were taken after the downfall of the Lamps. Additionally, this doesn't necessarily discount the Balrog theory because the Valar had certain spiritual powers they were able to permeate into the earth. The thread in Numenor would counter the Balrog theory, though if I recall correctly, the Valar did bless the Isle before Men inhabited it.

[Eldy Dunami]

This is an interesting thought--and thread in general; thank you for making it! For my part, when I think about the possible sentience of Caradhras, I'm reminded more of the hints at (for lack of a better term) animism in the Elvish worldview than the influence of the Balrog. Not long before the Fellowship's attempt at crossing Caradhras, Legolas says of Eregion:

...the Elves of this land were of a race strange to us of the silvan folk, and the trees and the grass do not now remember them. Only I hear the stones lament them: deep they delved us, fair they wrought us, high they builded us; but they are gone. They are gone. They sought the Havens long ago.

I imagine Caradhras as being a twisted version of this; a landform that for whatever reason developed malice towards Elves and Men. Not entirely unlike Old Man Willow.

I've never thought about the potential connection between the Balrog and mithril before. My gut reaction is that I don't think there's a connection. To put it crudely, mithril is generally treated as a "good" substance, as is silver in general. In the "Notes on motives in the Silmarillion" (HoMe X, Myths Transformed, Text VII, ii), Tolkien discusses the "Morgoth-element" that pervades physical matter in Arda (the source of the phrase/concept "Morgoth's Ring"). He mentions:

It is quite possible, of course, that certain 'elements' or conditions of matter had attracted Morgoth's special attention (mainly, unless in the remote past, for reasons of his own plans). For example, all gold (in Middle-earth) seems to have had a specially 'evil' trend -- but not silver. Water is represented as being almost entirely free of Morgoth. (This, of course, does not mean that any particular sea, stream, river, well, or even vessel of water could not be poisoned or defiled -- as all things could.)

My emphasis. For this reason primarily, I think it's unlikely the Balrog, one of Morgoth's servants, is the cause of mithril's existence in Khazad-dûm. Furthermore, while the metal is not known to have occurred elsewhere in Middle-earth, it most likely could be found in Númenor and possibly also Aman; where, of course, Balrogs were not a factor. (Fake edit: and this was addressed in a post made while I was working on this one; handy how the forum software catches these things!)

[Troelsfo]

One of the best discussions of Balrog lore that I know of is still Conrad Dunkerson's masterful series of posts, “The Truth About Balrogs” that were posted to the Tolkien usenet groups <mumble> years ago ...
You can find a fine entry-point to all the posts here (URL to Steuard Jensen's Tolkien pages).

Regarding the number of Balrogs (“Belryg”?), Tolkien doesn't appear to have changed anything in the texts regarding this, so it is debatable whether his note limiting them to about a handful was more than a stray thought that he had dismissed half an hour after putting it there. I would, in any case, be very hesitant to attach much import to such notes to which there appears to be no associated development of the narratives.

As for the evil name of Caradhras, this appears more to have been a matter of things being the other way around. Other evils were found under or near Caradhras (the Watcher in the Water, for instance), and it seems more likely that they were all drawn to Caradhras for some reason. From the discussion of Tom Bombadil, whatever we might think of him in Middle-earth, his origins show that Tolkien was not averse to the idea of place spirits (geni locii), and it would seem to me a reasonable conjecture to think that the spirit of Caradhras, simply, was evil and always had been evil, and that this evil spirit somehow attracted other evil creatures to live and hide in its vicinit.

Mithril was also found in Númenórë.

The concept of mithril was invented while first drafting the Moria chapters of The Lord of the Rings (see The Return of the Shadow, Vol. 6 of The History of Middle-earth, p. 458), and it was never written back into the Silmarillion mythology, presumably because of the note that it was only found in Moria (or at least was only found in any great quantity in Moria). The exception being of course the information that mithril was mined on Anadûnê.

Whether the presence of mithril in Khazad-dum had any impact on the balrog hiding under Caradhras is pure conjecture. Mithril does not appear to have been known or used in Beleriand, so it is unlikely that the balrog would have known about this before the War of Wrath, though of course Melkor's many agents in the East might have provided such information. To me, it seems more likely that the Balrog was attracted to whatever it was that also attracted the Watcher and other evil spirits to Caradhras, and that this was unrelated with the presence of mithril there, but such opinion is no less conjecture than any other opinion on the matter.

[Androthelm]

Bored on the day after Thanksgiving, so I'm going to do a MIGHTY necro and bring back this year and a half old thread.

I think one of the best things we can try to do in examining things within Tolkien's world which we don't have a ton of information on is to compare them the similar things which appear in other, more fleshed out stories. Consider, for instance, the figure of the "Artificer" in Middle-earth who, almost inevitably, is drawn into danger (or even falls) thanks to the love of their own works. Melkor does this, as does Aulë (although he repents), Fëanor, arguably Turgon ("Love not too well the works of thy hands"), certainly the Dwarves of Erebor (whose riches seem to have "brought the dragon), the Dwarves of Moria (whose digging for mithril is a part of this), and the Elves of Eregion (whose ring-smithing and hunger for ring-lore nearly ends the world). The Artificer, if they are not careful, Falls.

I'm not sure what the term for this similarity is -- archetype, maybe? -- but it's certainly something. It comes out strongly in The Hobbit, in part because Tolkien is borrowing from his own mythology and names and images often get mixed around so that The Elvenking sounds a lot like Thingol, and Rivendell is pretty clearly Gondolin 2.0, but it's present in The Lord of the Rings too, and even directly acknowledged in The Silmarillion where we hear that Sauron... "was only less evil than his master in that for long he served another and not himself. But in after years he rose like a shadow of Morgoth and a ghost of his malice, and walked behind him on the same ruinous path down into the Void."

When Sauron is defeated, "it seemed to them that, black against the pall of cloud, there rose a huge shape of shadow, impenetrable, lightning-crowned, filling all the sky. Enormous it reared above the world, and stretched out towards them a vast threatening hand, terrible but impotent: for even as it leaned over them, a great wind took it, and it was all blown away, and passed; and then a hush fell." (Return of the King, The Field of Cormallen) and when Saruman is slain by Wormtongue "To the dismay of those that stood by, about the body of Saruman a grey mist gathered, and rising slowly to a great height like smoke from a fire, as a pale shrouded figure it loomed over the Hill. For a moment it wavered, looking to the West; but out of the West came a cold wind, and it bent away, and with a sigh dissolved into nothing." (Return of the King, The Scouring of the Shire).

Now, there's an argument to be made that what we're seeing here is not a mythic thing but only a metaphysical one -- that this cloud + wind + judgement thing is just what happens when a Maia is slain. But I don't think so, especially when we are told that Sauron walked the same path as Melkor. Rather, I think, we are seeing the archetypical fate of Dark Lords -- to be judged, eventually, by the West, and found wanting, and cast into the Void. Where does Sauron go when he is blown by the wind? We are not given a cardinal direction, but only told that it is "into the Void." Where does Saruman go? Certainly not to Aman.

I say all of this to hopefully show that this kind of archetypical thinking can be helpful in The Lord of the Rings. In short, to modify Muhammad Ali, "Artifice falls, Lords are judged, waves pound the sand -- and mithril..."

Rather than seeking a scientific answer, as some folks here have, where dark spirits output some kind of evil radiation, darkening the mountain and drawing mithril to the earth, I'm tempted to look for an archetypical answer. We've got three main entities we're discussing -- Balrogs, Caradhras, and mithril -- with honorable mentions to both the Watcher in the Water and the city of Moria itself, which have come up a lot. How do these slot, archetypically?

Moria is the "Dwarfhold." This is maybe the easiest one to see -- Dwarves, or at very least the Longbeards, have been a culture in diaspora for literal millenia. This may be in part due to their real world inspiration -- Tolkien himself likened the Dwarves to Jewish folks, perhaps the most famously diasporic culture. My background is in religious studies where, if we follow the "problem and solution" model which argues that all religions suggest a fundamental problem with the world and a solution to that problem (in Christianity -- sin and forgiveness / salvation, in Buddhism -- suffering and release) the "problem" of Judaism is often described to be "exile" with the solution being either "community building in exile" or "return" (for an example of the latter -- Zionism, which begins to develop in its modern form at the end of the nineteenth century). The same can be said for Tolkien's dwarves, who seek a return such as Balin's expedition to Moria or Thorin's quest for Erebor but also build archetypical mirrors to their lost homelands in Exile -- with Erebor standing in as a lesser Moria, and Moria standing in as a lesser Gundabad.

Balrogs might be said in the Silmarillion and the first age broadly to fall into either a "dark lord" or a "dark lieutenant" archetype -- Gothmog's role in The Fall of Gondolin is akin to Sauron's role in Beren and Luthien, so I lean toward the "lieutenant." The latter Gothmog -- of the siege of Minas Tirith -- is another lieutenant, surprising nobody. The Balrog of Moria, Durin's Bane, however, does not seem to be playing this role. It seems monstrous, not seductive, and murderous, not corruptive. It does not tempt one to folly, but rather is a punishment for folly -- the artificer-fall of the dwarves of Moria. The Balrog has no master and has no dialogue where it tempts the powerful into evil. If it were the first, we might call it a Lieutenant and if it were the second we might call it Seducer -- this is the role played by Melkor during his time among the elves in Aman (before he escapes with the Silmarils and becomes the Dark Lord), Sauron among both the elves of Eregion and the men of Numenor (before he loses his body in the sinking and becomes... you guessed it, the Dark Lord), and the Nazgul who comes to Erebor, promising Dwarf-rings for news of Bilbo.

No, the Balrog is neither of these things. What the Balrog is is a good old fashioned Horror, a creature of nightmare who gnaws, like Gandalf says so many gnaw, at the roots of the mountains. This is a role shared, I think, with both Ungoliant and Shelob -- as well, it's worth saying, as with the Watcher in the Water. Archetypically these are shadows which exist just because the bottom of the world, the caves in hidden lands, the Ered Gorgoroth are fundamentally scary places, cursed by Morgoth's marring of the world.

Mithril is a metal, and certain things happen with metals in Middle-earth. Gold -- as @Eldy Dunami noted -- seems particularly susceptible to corruption, as silver is not (and it is the silver tree, despite that being a poetic and not literal description, which persists in the white tree of Minas Tirith, a representation to the persistent elvish strain in the Dunedain which Tolkien said "ennobled" man). But there are two other worthwhile metals we should talk about -- the star-iron out of which Eöl forges two incredibly cursed swords, and -- not metal really but -- Maeglin's love for ores and mining, which leads him out of Gondolin and into Morgoth's clutches. Metal is the stuff of Aulë, and as such is bound up, I think, in the doom of the Artificer -- though it may not be evil of it's own nature, it is nonetheless a dangerous material which may serve as the cause of another's fall -- Maeglin's (although he was already... iffy) or the Gold-desiring Dwarves, or the Dwarves of Moria, who dug too deep. It is not the mithril which is evil -- Mithril is almost silver, after all -- and that which is made with it may be as beautiful as any other craft, but it is the reckless pursuit and consumption of mithril which leads one to fall into the fate of the Artificer.

We come, finally, to Caradhras. Caradhras Caradhras Caradhras, what are we going to do with you? I've saved it for last because determining an archetypical role does mostly depend on figuring out the real question of this thread -- why's that mountain so freakin' haunted?? -- and having a better understanding of those in Caradhras's environment will be helpful in that. Could the Balrog have done it? Corrupted this mountain? Maybe! Certainly, if it was playing the Dark Lord or Lieutenant roles, we might see the mountain corrupted as part of an intentional defilement -- the way the Witch-king corrupts Minas Morgul, or the way the Witch-king corrupts Angmar, or the way the Witc- Sorry, Sauron that is corrupts the original Minas Tirith. But the Balrog isn't playing that kind of intentional, pawn-of-the-Enemy role, and there doesn't seem to be an indication that the Balrog was doing much of anything before the Dwarves woke it. So that seems out. Maybe the mithril did it somehow -- but mithril is, like I said, not a bad thing of itself, and beautiful works are made with mithril. I doubt Bilbo's shirt of mithril links would be nearly as consistent a tool if it were a shirt of Eöl-forged star-iron.

Maybe there's a curse on the Mountain, then -- the movies suggest it is Saruman, and not Caradhras, who summons the storm. I mean, there's no way to disprove this but... Why? The whole theme of Moria is that the dwarves kind of destroyed themselves in their hunger and greed -- the classic Artificer's fall. So a dread will working on the mountain seems to take away from that, especially since Morgoth (who we known went in for that kind of stuff with the Children of Hurin, for instance) is gone, and Sauron's power seems to be in tricking people (as the Seducer) or defeating them physically (as the Dark Lord) rather than just sending bad vibes.

No, here's what I think. I think that what @Troelsfo said last (a year and a half ago) and what Eldy pointed out about the spirits of a land is on the money. After all, in Of Aule and Yavanna Yavanna argues for the ents, saying: "Would that the trees might speak on behalf of all things that have roots, and punish those that wrong them!"

This argument requires a personhood already present in plant life -- a person to be wronged, reaffirming references to the memory of trees and grass. It is, after all, the special ability of the ents to speak on behalf of plant-life, not to be the solitary beings among them -- and the line of whether huorns are uplifted trees or treelike ents is not clear. If there are spirits which can come from trees, why not the earth? Why not the stones of the mountains? And -- as Eldy quoted -- we do see the stones lamenting the departure of the Noldor of Eregion.

Treebeard is described as treeish, and the ents are tree-like in their personalities and culture. What would the personality of a mountain be like? Hard and cold, ancient and old, and it would care little, I think, for the life of little things -- especially if those little things had spent centuries digging around inside you. The trees and grass of Hollin may be too young to remember, but Caradhras must be old and -- Moria was founded at some point in the first age -- long, long, long-suffering. Is it any wonder that he, like Old Man Willow, might have a bone to pick with dwarves and their friends?

That, then, is our last archetype -- the Place, whether that is Treebeard (who gives his name to the forest, after all) or Caradhras the mountain, Places seem concerned mostly with themselves, with the business of being trees or being mountains. They might be kinder -- Treebeard -- or more furious -- Caradhras -- or even strange and uncertainly connected to their Place -- Goldberry is the River-daughter, whatever that may mean. But in the end they will act in the interest of trees or mountains -- in the interest of the nature they represent -- rather than blindly siding one way or another in the conflicts of the world without.

Ah! That was longer than I expected. Sorry again for the colossal necro and PLEASE let me know if you think I'm talking gibberish.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

"Bored on the day after Thanksgiving, so I'm going to do a MIGHTY necro and bring back this year and a half old thread."

every year around this time the internet always goes quiet and only a few days later do i work out that the North Americans were doing this odd early-Christmas Turkey thing.

[Androthelm]

You've got it

I have this whole week off from work because the schools are closed, too, so bonus time for making my crazy tinfoil theory hat (and tinfoil wrapped leftovers too).

[Boromir88]

More bored Thanksgiving Day musings please, @Androthelm. And I wouldn't call your theories entirely tinfoil-y.

Your thoughts about Tolkien and archetypes made me think about another writing device (I think that's the proper term, but I was never an English major ) he uses. Tolkien also uses character foils. For some examples, I think Theoden and Denethor are foils, Gandalf and Saruman, Boromir and Aragorn.

Gimli seems to be a foil to the archetypal dwarf. Most notably his friendship with an elf, but also his encounter with Galadriel as well. When he asks for the gift of a strand of Galadriel's hair, Galadriel asks why:

"Treasure it, Lady,' he answered, 'in memory of your words to me at our first meeting. And if ever I return to the smithies of my home, it shall be set in imperishable crystal to be an heirloom of my house, and a pledge of good will betwen the Mountain and the Wood until the end of days.' (Farewell to Lorien)

This has given me some ideas for your 'Mastery' thread, which hopefully I'll be able to share there, but briefly for this thread: Feanor made the same request, and Feanor loved the works of his hands. He wanted strands of Galadriel's hair to show his mastery of what he could do with it, and a sign of possession over Galadriel. Gimli was quite the opposite, so you could say in this instance he was a foil to Feanor, but he's also not your archetypal dwarf:

Then the Lady unbraided one of her long tresses, and cut off three golden hairs, and laid them in Gimli's hand. 'These words shall go with the gift,' she said. 'I do not foretell, for all foretelling is now vain: on the one hand lies darkness, and on the other only hope. But if hope should not fail, then I say to you, Gimli son of Gloin, that your hands shall flow with gold, and yet over you gold shall have no dominion.' (Farewell to Lorien)

[Androthelm]

@Boromir88 yes! I think those are really good points, and when you start to see the similarities between certain characters -- maybe stock characters is a better term than archetypes -- you are able to see foils and the way small changes are substantial more clearly. Gimli -- like many dwarves -- plays into the Artificer I was talking about before, as does Fëanor and as does Celebrimbor, who longed to equal Fëanor in craft. But where both Celebrimbor and Fëanor's hunger for their own works leads to destruction -- through the Fëanorian oath and the creation of the rings -- Gimli is able to escape this fate. He is an artificer like Aulë is an artificer, open with his gifts and non-possessive. Think about Legolas's comments that the dwarves might ruin the Glittering Caves -- and Gimli's respect for the works of nature, as opposed to hunger. Gold, over him, does have no dominion.