The Lord of the Rings Expert Answers More Tolkien Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED

i've heard some people attempt to argue that balrogs could have vestigial wings this i find a very comical uh suggestion in the end as why would an immortal being who would manifest themselves in a body have a vestigial anything right like would seriously would balrogs be like what i really need for my form is decorative non-functional wings that just doesn't really make any sense to me hi this is corey olson the tolkien professor and this is part two of tolkien support [Music] loren asks do orcs just think all elven weapons glow blue only the really scary ones it's not just an automatic property of elvish weapons but one of the things that we see in tolkien is that great craftsmen great and powerful craftsmen are able to invest the things that we make with some thing of their own spirit something of their own desires to infuse some of their own spirit or will into what they do now obviously the biggest example of this is sauron and the ring but i don't even mean on that kind of level the elves and their passionate cold hatred of the orcs and their opposition against everything the orcs stand for is what is infused into those old swords from gondolin the old smiths from gondolin filled their weapons uh with their own anger against the goblins and that's why those swords glow blue it's an expression of that spirit so it's not an automatic thing so the orcs won't think that all elf weapons glow blue but they know what it means they are very aware they can feel the anger of the ancient elves the potent anger of the ancient elves when they see those blue weapons that's why they freaked them out so much dan roberts asks the classic question if gandalf can summon eagles why didn't frodo just hop a ride to mount doom and drop the ring into the fire answer because that would be an incredibly boring story i would add gandalf can't summon eagles he doesn't have an eagle summoning ring or an eagle summoning moth eagles are free agents and indeed there are some implications in the text that they are free agents who operate under the command of the lords of the west of the valar themselves so no they don't intervene in the world at all times and under they are not a ferry service they are not a taxi service it's almost just like saying why doesn't god just reach down and smite all the bad guys right away well sure he could do that but there are reasons that he doesn't and those same reasons apply to why the eagles don't take them into mordor i would add as a final note it probably wouldn't work sauron is an air force too sauron could see the eagles coming and he could personally get to mount doom before the eagles that he sees coming in from a distance could and uh that would probably not go well when they got there in that case as there's no open caldera at the top to drop the ring in from the top so it wouldn't work but most importantly it would be a pretty bad story alexander asks why does the ring not turn sauron invisible is that explained somewhere the reason it doesn't turn sour and invisible is that he doesn't have a body in the normal way when bilbo finds the ring in the hobbit and finds that it turns him invisible that's kind of the way that he understands it right he he has this ring and so he's like oh it's a magic invisibility ring that's cool and of course when tolkien wrote the story that's kind of what it was right when he decides that the ring of pat that the ring is a ring of power and in fact it's it has more and different powers than merely the turning invisible he kind of retcons uh the uh the invisibility thing and he decides that the invisibility is actually gonna be kind of a side effect essentially of the larger power of the ring the ring wraiths exist and so there's this like there's this there's the physical world and there's the spiritual world a spirit in tolkien's world can go around the world invisibly right they don't necessarily interact with the physical world some spirits can take on a body sauron is one of these he can give himself a body and interact uh with the physical world the ringwraiths are men who were drawn into the wraith world basically they are remember uh bilbo is uh says that he feels like butter scraped over too much bread right the ring wraiths have been scraped over so much bread that there's nothing at all left of them they're almost completely immaterial not completely immaterial in the sense that they can hold objects right they can interact with the physical world but they no longer really have physical bodies anymore they dwell it once in the wraith world in the physical world and more and more as they are dominated as they you know they get drawn into the wraith world so when you put on the ring you're not just magically it's not like you're affecting people's vision or the way light reflects off you or something like that you are actually like going with your whole self into the wraith world it doesn't affect sauron this way because he doesn't have a body he's not immortal the invisibility thing is a consequence of when mortals have because mortals are being drawn into sauron's world but he lives there right uh and he's chosen from that world in which he lives to manifest a body so that manifest body doesn't become invisible because he doesn't want it to be that's the way that tolkien kind of constructed the whole or reconstructed the invisibility thing after he decided that the ring was a ring of power jenna j asks is the ring like a sisterhood of the traveling pants situation does it fit everyone what do you do if it doesn't fit you if not are sauron's hands the same size as gollum and frodo please help me okay uh the answer is yes the ring of power is almost exactly like the traveling pants there are some differences i admit but tolkien does explicitly say that the ring does change size it change sizes to adjust uh to its owner um and this is important this represents the ring has a kind of bond you have to claim the ring like you have to know what you're doing you have to take the ring and intend to keep it you don't have to know that it's a ring of power before you start but if you claim ownership of the ring then it forms a kind of bond with you it can magically change its size so that it can fit any hand that takes it up it is willing to take any master who claims it but it won't necessarily stay with him it can reject its master as it seems to have done with gollum and as it seems to have done with a sildore okay carrie frye asks lord of the rings question i'm too lazy to research could sam have carried the ring yes in fact sam did carry the ring in both directly and indirectly when he thought frodo was dead he took it from frodo's body thinking that he was gonna have to carry it into mordor himself uh he only bore it for a short time uh before of course he found frodo again and returned it to frodo so he does carry it and therefore clearly could have carried it he also carries it indirectly in that in the last stages of the journey of course he carries frodo who is carrying the ring on his back so sam does of course himself convey the ring you know still around frodo's neck uh to mount doom could sam have been the ring bearer could he have been the one well i mean no he couldn't without taking it away from frodo and that would have destroyed frodo frodo would clearly have assaulted him so sam does what he has to do sam can't carry the ring but he can carry uh frodo uh and the ring with it okay julie decaro asks why is the entrance to moria in elvish isn't the elvish word for friend mithrandir no it might seem a synonym the elvish word for friend is in fact melon the entrance to moria is in elvish because this was the door that faced the kingdom of the elves so in the old days before moria fell back in the second age of the world maurya was the greatest of the kingdoms of the dwarves their next door neighbors in aragian right there kelebrimbor and the elves of aragian were friends with the dwarves of moria and they worked together a lot they traded with each other a lot so that gate was built there basically in order to be the liaison between the the dwarves of moria and the elves of oregon so that's why the inscription is in elvish and that's why the command word was in elvish because it was designed to be the elves private entrance basically uh into the kingdom of the dwarves kind of computer jawa has asked no living man may hinder the witch king but does bayern in bear form count surely not as he is a bear not a man and thus free to maul the boss ring wraith that is an interesting exploit uh kind of computer jawa i think it wouldn't work because there's a question of course there's an open question in the hobbit about what bjorn is is he a man who can turn into a bear or is he a bear who can turn into a man right ultimately what is he in the text it's not really clear gandalf gives his opinion that bayern is a man who has the power to turn into a bear and tolkien seems to basically think that gandalf is probably right about that so i don't think that the shape that he takes ultimately changes like his identity he is a man in bear form he may be a bear but he's really a man in bear's shape it's a change of shape not a change of essence so i think he would not be able to get off on that technicality and they couldn't just call it of course apart from the fact that bjorn is dead at that point but i don't think they could have sent bjorn to hunt down the witch king but it's an excellent suggestion haley parr asks if the ring is constantly being sought out by sauron and the eye of mordor how did it end up in a lake for two thousand years what river technically not lake but great question a lot of people assume that sauron has a kind of like ring detector or at least like ring proximity detector i think there's plenty of evidence in the text that sauron cannot detect the presence of the ring from a distance if you look at the maps of middle earth the spot where the ring was in the river for thousands of years more than two thousand years is actually pretty close to the place where sauron set up his headquarters um doguldur in southern merkwood he was quite close to where the ring was for quite some period of time if sauron had a ring proximity detector it would certainly have been going off at some point and even of course the evidence of the lord of the rings itself he can't tell when it's there in mordor it's just miles away from him at that point far closer than it's been for a really really long time i think it's pretty clear from the text that sauron cannot sense the ring's presence and the ring approaching tony mcdonough asks if it hadn't rained at helm's deep would the battle have gone differently that's a fascinating question i think it's probably to the advantage of the defenders that it was raining especially since they would be on firmer ground we know that there's a river that's emerging through there and so the whole area would probably have become muddy and a great deal of running water through there it's actually an element that peter jackson didn't really include which i'm not saying it would have washed them away like the flood of isengard or the deluge at the fort of bruinin but it certainly would have made the movement of armies a little bit inconvenient so i think if it inconvenienced anyone it certainly would have inconvenienced the orcs more than it inconvenienced the defenders so if anything probably the rain was definitely a net gain there if it would have gone differently i think it would have been harder for the defenders but it is possible to see the inclement weather there as being a kind of mercy on the part of the defenders okay matt daniels asks in the 1937 version of the hobbit how did bilbo come into possession of his ring answer actually in exactly the same way that's not one of the things that tolkien changed so bilbo putting his hand accidentally on the ring in the dark while he's crawling around is how he finds it in the original as well as later the changes that tolkien made to the 1937 version are primarily to the end of the um the terms of the middle game and the end of the riddle game and actually one of the other interesting trends that you can notice he makes gollum creepier and a little bit scarier by adding more sounds like the hissing sibilant sounds that gollum makes are much more pronounced in the later version like he's going out of his way to make gollum a little creepier in the second version than he was in the first but the actual the original story of the finding of the ring is the same in the 37 version jeremy simmons uh asks one of the all-time classic questions what is tom bombadil he says it's his first question for talking in the afterlife hopefully by then he'll have an answer of course jeremy referring to the fact that uh tolkien was well not shy on this point but doesn't answer it straight out one thing we know for certain is tom bombadil is not an elf he's not a man he's not a mortal creature that's perfectly clear we know this because in his speech that he gives to the hobbits when he talks about how long he's been here he says he saw the little people arriving he saw the men come he saw the elves come through he's been there since before the elves awoke in quebec and he predates elves the existence of elves right so he's not one of the valar they're in valinor they have other jobs tom has established himself in his little domain and this is where he lives with his wife goldberry goldberry is also a spirit she is a spirit of the river actually so tom bombadil is that kind of thing he is a spiritual being he's a kind of nature spirit but he's different he's not like quite like goldberry he clearly did descend into arda from outside he says he was there from the beginning before melkor arrived in middle earth i know that there are some people who really like this sort of semi-conspiracy theory that tom bombadil is actually god himself is actually a louvitar in physical form that's a charming idea and there's a lot of things that i love about that reading but it's clearly not true the proponents of this theory point to goldberry's response when frodo asks her who is tom bombadil and she answers he is and a lot of people are like hey it's like the name of god in exodus right i am that i am tolkien actually explicitly addressed this like he knew of this theory and he responded to it very clearly and he said actually first of all there's a big difference between he is and i am that i am and he points to the context right goldberry says he is and then she pauses and then says he is as you have seen him what she's talking about is labels names what does it mean right as tom addresses exactly the same thing himself later when frodo asks him the question who are you master and tom bombadil says eh what don't you know my name yet and he says defrodo who are you alone yourself and nameless right you are your name your name is a label like how do you capture who you are and what it means to be you so what are you asking of me exactly and tom goes on and that's when he gives that speech i was just talking about about how long he's been there and how much he's seen he gives even a kind of answer to that question i'm not a hobbit i'm not a human i'm not an elf i have been here since essentially the creation of the world so draw your own conclusions therefore frodo about what and who you think i am but he's definitely not identifying himself as god that's pretty clear greg maletik asks how much time passes between the start of fellowship and the end of the return of the king answers a little more than a year so when well okay the start of the fellowship of course is bilbo's party right and that's 17 years earlier so you got bilbo's party and then he goes away and then 17 years pass until gandalf shows up to frodo uh for chapter two right and has the conversation about the ring of power so there's a 17 year gap there in the very beginning but after that 17-year gap it's in the late spring when gandalf shows up to frodo and he delays for some time he doesn't leave until bilbo's birthday right is when he moves out of bag end and september when he moves when he leaves the shire but remember when they're coming home in the return of the king after the whole adventure has happened and they're on the homeward road he's inside of weathertop when the one-year anniversary of his being stabbed at weathertop comes in so the whole story takes a little bit less than a year essentially oh i should say a little bit more than a year actually until they get back and then some more time passes when they get back home so the last chapter uh has a few years uh passing before frodo and bilbo then depart on the ship um but the primary action from the shadow of the past when gandalf comes and has the conversation with frodo until the scouring of the shire is maybe 16 17 months something like that and mog asks dare we do the balrog wings thing okay yes so do balrogs have wings this is probably the most classic internet talking question of all time and the answer is no balrogs definitely clearly authoritatively do not have wings there are no wings on balrogs this is extremely clear in the text the balrogs are like the great bad guys um they are the primary lieutenants of melkor they're basically on a par with sauron essentially sauron is the brains of the operation the balrogs are kind of thugs but still they are the heavy infantry the really heavy infantry infantry i stress not air force of melchor in the first stage they are always described as running and they are on the ground in fact tolkien makes a big deal about the fact that melchor does not have an air force he does not have any winged support at all until the winged dragons are revealed at the very end in every battle that the balrogs are described as participating they are running in front of the armies they are climbing walls they cannot possibly fly also the fact that more than one balrog meets its end by plummeting off a cliff is also highly suggestive that the balrogs do not in fact have wings there are only two reasons why anybody thinks that balrogs might or should have wings and the primary one is the description that tolkien gives of it at the the bridge of kaza doom he says that as the balrog steps out shadow spreads around it like two vast wings right so he uses a simile comparing it's just it's just darkness the balrog is so powerful it's so intimidating that darkness itself spreads around it and so in order to try to convey visually what that looks like he compares the darkness to like two wings there's one other line people who are really kind of grasping at straws to try to prove that balrogs have wings will point to a sentence in appendix a which says that the balrogs flew from thangarodrim in the old days that means ran away very fast like they fled from thangarodram so and and you'll notice of course in the very bridge of kaza doom scene gandalf uses the word in exactly that he says fly you fools and i don't think that he is under any illusion that frodo and aragorn and boromir have wings he's telling them to run away very fast and that's what the balrogs did from thangaroadrim at the end of the first stage visual artists universally find that balrogs look much cooler with wings and you know what they're totally right there's no question that a balrog with like huge demon wings is totally scarier looking than a balrog without huge demon wings like i get it they look super cool with wings but in the text no balrogs do not have wings i'm corey olson the tolkien professor and this has been tolkien support thanks for your awesome questions i imagine sort of tolkien's mind back in the 30s when he was first getting the hobbit published and what he would have thought to imagine us having these kinds of discussions by twitter and youtube as we're still thinking about and engaging with his world all these years later uh thanks for your time and interest in energy and i hope you learned something about tolkien today

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Keywords: cory olsen interview, cory olsen lord of the rings, cory olsen wired, j.r.r. tolkien, jrr tolkien, lord of the rings, lord of the rings history, lotr, lotr expert, lotr expert wired, lotr history, signum university, tech support, tech support cory olsen, tech support wired, the lord of the rings tolkien, tolkien questions, tolkien wired, wired, wired cory olsen, wired tech support, wired tolkien, wired twitter tech support

Id: bC7ckGiCd3I

Length: 20min 49sec (1249 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 10 2021