Tolkien's Fantasy World of Monsters & Myth | Clash of the Gods (S1, E9) | Full Episode | History

it is the greatest myth of modern times an evil  ring of power and an unlikely hero on a mission   to destroy it the lord of the rings is a world  filled with warriors wizards and monsters all   created in the mind of one man but there is  more to it than imagination the story has   a series of intriguing connections to reality  from the trenches of world war one to the bible   now discover the facts behind the fiction this  is the real story of the lord of the rings a lone figure teeters on the edge of an abyss gazing into the fiery pool of lava below   here the long arduous journey of  proto-bagons has come to an end a mission to destroy an evil ring by casting  it into the same fires from which it was forged   this is the quest at the  heart of the lord of the rings it is a classic story of good versus evil  unfolding in a world called middle earth   there's something about the lord of the  rings that is able to speak to people   and i think that that has a lot to  do with its connection to mythology behind the lord of the rings there are a  number of ancient and modern influences   that combine to create the most  ambitious mythological journey   since the odyssey all of them  are channeled through one man author j.r.r tolkien tolkien famously wrote a letter saying that  he wanted to create a mythology for my country   he was trying to produce a mythology that  was truly english that was centered around   the north and west rather than around the  mediterranean sea like the greek and roman   had been and since it didn't exist  he figured he would have to write it   to create his mythology tolkien drew from  his own experiences in the modern world   as well as his favorite stories from the  ancient world he broke down many different   mythologies and medieval traditions then  refashioned them to create his own mythos   tolkien was really using a lot of the   mythological elements from old english  and from the old norse material beowulf king arthur the viking sagas all  are sources behind the lord of the rings the ancient connections begin  with the setting of the story in norse mythology the world  is made up of three levels   the highest is asgard dwelling place of the  gods the lowest is hell underworld of the dead between the two lies the world  inhabited by elves dwarves and men   it is called midgard which translates as  middle earth middle earth is the mid guard   that we've encountered in old norse or midanier  in anglo-saxon and it's simply in those contexts   means the earth in the middle between  the sky and hell surrounded by the ocean in the lord of the rings  it is through middle earth   that frodo must travel to destroy the evil ring this ring is the central focus of the story  and it too is inspired by earlier legends the lord of the rings centers on 20 magical rings  found in middle earth some of them offer healing   others can extend life but one is more powerful  than all the others it is called the one ring it has the ability to make the new wearer  invisible when they put the ring on a ring that can make someone invisible it  is a concept that plays a key role in the   lord of the rings but it didn't  begin there it can also be found   in the most legendary tale of the middle ages  another story of courage in a time of peril king arthur and the knights of the round table in  the arthurian legend there are magical objects and   there is actually a case of a ring of invisibility  that the maiden lunard gives to the knight or wine   it's an intriguing parallel between two myths  created more than a thousand years apart but frodo's ring does more  than make its wearers invisible it also corrupts them   the one ring is a creation of an evil lord who  imbued it with his own destructive power sauron   when sauron forged the ring he put part of himself  in it it's intrinsically evil if if you wear it   and claim it you cannot use it for any good cause  it is going to twist everything you do for evil the one ring actually has a malevolent spirit part  of sour on spirit living inside of it and so this   malevolent spirit works on people to change them  to manipulate them to do evil things and the ring   acts as an addiction the longer you have it the  more you desire it it's like a bottomless pit   this idea of an evil ring  also has a mythical precedent in an old norse epic called the volsunga saga many  of the north sagas are based on family histories   and we find this very engaging combination of  historical material and mythological traditions   the saga of the volsungs is a an icelandic saga  written sometime probably in the 1300s based on   old germanic tradition it treats a set of  germanic cultural heroes based loosely on   historical figures that existed in pre-medieval  times the end of the west roman empire   these heroes and the epic poems about them were  very important in the germanic warrior courts   when the scandinavians settled iceland  they took this tradition with them   there are some intriguing parallels between  the volsunga saga and the lord of the rings   in one scene of the saga a king possesses a  golden ring that gives him unimaginable wealth   and riches but the king's son wants it for himself  and the temptation drives him over the edge he kills his father to claim the ring  then takes it and hides in a cavern   there the evil ring transforms the prince into  a hideous serpent it's a harsh lesson in the   danger of greed one that echoes in the lord of the  rings this is in some ways quite similar to gollum   in the lord of the rings gollum was a hobbit  originally one day he and his friend dagol   went fishing and deagaal sees something glinting  in the bottom of the river he pulls it out it's   the ring and it's so beautiful but gollum whose  name was smegol at that time wants the ring he's so greedy about the gold  that he murders his best friend gollum takes the ring and hides in a cavern  just like the prince in the volsunga saga he transforms into this hideous long-lived uh  but very pathetic creature gollum's entire life   is spent dwelling on the fact that he possesses  this ring and obsessing with it it's completely   taken over his mind after possessing the  ring for nearly 500 years gollum loses it sometime later it ends up in the hands of  an innocent hobbit named frodo baggins frodo   was an interesting name because it  means wise in old norse and anglo-saxon   and frodo is the one who gets stuck with the ring frodo's journey begins in a land of rolling  hills and green fields called the shire this is the home of his race the hobbits hobbits are little people probably four feet  or shorter they don't wear shoes because they   have very thick soles on the bottom of their  feet and lots of fur on the top of their feet   they're sort of home bodies they  don't ever really go in for adventures the slow pace of life in the shire mirrors author  j.r.r tolkien's own childhood in the countryside   of western england in some ways tolkien must have  put himself into the hobbit many of his ideals are   embodied in the hobbits they're sort of embracing  the rural ideal embracing the simple pastoral life   common good old-fashioned virtues in  the face of grandeur and pretension   a hobbit is the last creature one might  expect to save the world from evil but frodo baggins is different frodo is  not a typical hobbit because he's learned   he's interested in elves and dwarves and outsiders  and he knows a little bit about the world   and he cares about the outside world enough  to sacrifice everything he actually loves if you go back to these original myths  you're looking at the heroes themselves   the warriors if you will tolkien then takes  this story and he tells it from the point   of view of a not likely hero the reluctant  warrior and that i think is rather unique frodo inherits the one ring from his  uncle bilbo who found it in gollum's cave when he discovers the ring's destructive power he  sets out to destroy it but he soon finds himself   being drawn in by its evil in the beginning  of the book he already starts feeling the   temptation of maybe putting the ring on  and escaping leaving his friends behind   he passes the test at that stage but later  on the temptation becomes worse and worse   frodo's quest to destroy evil is  the heart of the lord of the rings   but the myth of middle earth doesn't  begin there this is only its final chapter in 1977 more than 20 years after the lord of the  rings was first published its forgotten blueprint   emerged revealing for the first time how the most  ambitious myth of the modern era really begins it's a creation story with intriguing  ties to the christian bible the lord of the rings is a modern myth with direct  connections to history's most legendary tales j.r.r tolkien's mythological world is so  detailed he even created a word to describe it   mythopia by this he meant a whole  mythic place that was a whole world   very populated with a whole geography and  a whole ability to map it if you wanted an   example in the modern period you would look at  the world created it with star wars for example tolkien's mythopia even had a creation  story to explain how middle-earth   came into existence before the lord of the rings   but it wasn't published until after his  death in a book called the silmarillion this was the blueprint for middle earth  all the ancient backstory to the lord of   the rings all the things that had  happened thousands of years before   more than two feet thick huge pile of papers poems  written in elvish and english and histories and   the publishers like we have no idea what to  do with this tolkien drew from many sources   as he set out to create his own mythical world but  there was one that influenced it above all others the bible tolkien was an extremely devout roman  catholic for reasons of personal faith and   also for family history his mother converted to  catholicism and when she did her family sort of   disowned her she raised her two children catholic  and then she died of diabetes when tolkie was   very young he was adopted by a roman catholic  priest who took care of him and his brother   so the whole work is informed by catholic  thought and that shows through in his stories   in some interesting ways especially in creation  stories and the role that the creator plays there in tolkien's story there is  one supreme god called iluvatar   he creates angelic beings called the anjer who  sings songs so beautiful that the world springs   forth from them the world is created in a kind of  giant symphony or music of the anya as it's called   and in singing their song before the throne of god   they map out the whole history of the world  that's to come which god then makes real   this is the beginning of middle earth the  future setting of the lord of the rings by 1928 tolkien had quietly sketched  out the framework of his mythology   he didn't expect it to be seen beyond his close  circle of friends but then a spark of inspiration   hit that would transform him from a 36 year old  college professor into the modern master of myths   the famous stories he was grading exams a student  had left a page blank and tolkien wrote on it   in a hole in the ground or lived a hobbit  from this one sentence a whole new world   would open up he had no idea what it meant  and started to develop this story from that there may not be any very clear linguistic  precedence for the word hobbit nevertheless   if you think about it it sounds quite like the  word habit or in the earlier latin habitus a   creature of habit a creature that's set in  its ways living a very ordinary existence   word play was nothing new for token he  began inventing his own phrases as a child they became the foundation for the many languages  spoken in the lord of the rings especially   the language of the elves the elves  are not to be confused with hobbits   they are a race of near-perfect immortal  beings who represent a vision of what   humans would be like had they not been  tainted by the original sin of adam and eve the elves speak in several distinct dialects   and have the most fully developed  of middle earth's languages some parts of the elvish  language are based on a real one finnish tolkien learned it while studying the  national myth of finland called the kalavala   the calavala is the epic of the finnish people  it includes dwarves and elves and so in that way   it has characters that resonate and perhaps  inspired some of tolkien's later writings   languages of other creatures also though play an  important role in the story even the language of   the black speech spoken by sauron gives you a  sense of his ethos of the nature of his being   so the languages of each of these different  races tells you something about their nature in the lord of the rings another  language belongs to the dwarves   a short stout group of  characters who live underground their alphabet is inspired by norse inscriptions  that can still be found in scandinavia   on ancient memorials called runestones runes were  often used to mark objects of great significance   for example swords that would be passed down as  heirlooms sometimes burial sites sometimes we have   in runic writing short riddles that provide an  extra problem for their interpreters first you   have to read the runic alphabet then you  have to figure out what the riddle means tolkien added a runic riddle  to his first published novel   the epic precursor to the lord of the rings   the hobbit it centers on bilbo baggins frodo's  uncle a hobbit in search of stolen treasure   the clue to finding it is on an ancient map   it is a hidden runic text that  can only be seen in moonlight tolkien actually wanted to make the runes be  representative of a real language it was an   idea of secret writing of magic writing but also  it was connected with his invented languages the magic writing on the map  leads bilbo to the lair of smaug the most dreaded dragon in middle earth  this is the monster who holds the treasure   smaug is the last of the great golden dragons and  he gathered up all the wealth from the dwarfish   kingdom and piled it up into a huge mound dragons  represent human greed but really amplified because   this is this monstrous creature whose only  interest is in gathering gold and keeping it bilbo bravely enters the dragon's lair  and steals a golden cup from its horde in retaliation smaug angrily  attacks a nearby village this is the myth but what inspired it if the story of a dragon who guards  a horde of gold sounds familiar   there's a good reason the plot of this incident  is almost identical with the incident in beowulf beowulf one of the most famous myths in human  history and one that was a favorite of j.r.r   tolkien it is the story of a scandinavian  hero who becomes king of his homeland   and faces the ultimate test a fire-breathing  dragon the dragon is guarding a treasure from   kings of a previous age a slave discovers a  secret passageway down into the dragon's lair   finds this fabulous treasure sees the sleeping  dragon and creeps in and steals a gold cup it's a tale with obvious similarities to the story  in the hobbit both are allegories about the danger   of greed in each case a desire for treasure sets  off a chain reaction of horrific consequences   tolkien has taken that from beowulf and   made it into one of the crucial  centerpieces of his entire story beowulf is one of many written sources that  had a major impact on the lord of the rings   but there was a real life  experience that shaped the story   more than anything pulled from the pages of a book   a terrifying trauma laden with ghosts blood and  death the battle scarred trenches of world war one france 1916 a barrage of enemy  fire rattles an allied trench   a group of british soldiers scramble for  safety crawling like worms inch by inch among them is 24 year old second lieutenant j.r.r  tolkien future author of the lord of the rings his experiences in war will have a profound  influence on the mythical battle for middle   when we read lord of the rings and we read about  the battles and we read about the bloodiness   and and we read about the destruction  of nature it is a statement about war   world war one was a scene of death  on a scale that defies belief   the history books call it the great war a  time when men slaughtered each other over   mere yards of mud tolkien and the people of  his generation that experienced world war one   experienced a brutality in warfare that  was unique not to say that warfare itself   isn't bloody or violent just the trench warfare  in northern france was particularly gruesome it was waiting around to see if you were  going to be hit by an artillery shell it   was having your feet in so much trench water  that you developed a condition called trench   foot in which the flesh just slid off your  bones it was being attacked by mustard gas   and all this tolkien would have seen tolkien  sees action in the battle of the song   a brutal stalemate that results in carnage  on a scale never seen in human history   the battle of the psalm raged for four months  each side losing one and a half million men   nobody gained or lost an inch at the end of  that battle it was just a tragic waste of lives   after serving for approximately years  so tolkien developed trench fever in   the form of this interior dives and was  hospitalized and taken home and it took   him a very long time to recover and  he actually never returned to the war   he was damaged wounded internally by the war and  traumatized the trauma that he had suffered had to   have influenced the way he wrote about the trauma  that frodo experiences in his quest to destroy the   ring much of tolkien made its way into the hobbits  without them being a thinly disguised tolkien   in the lord of the rings the  hobbit frodo travels through a bog   called the dead marshes where a great battle  had taken place thousands of years earlier   there ghosts are still lurking beneath  the waterline they lie in all the pools pale faces deep deep under the dark  water i saw them grim faces and evil   unnoble faces and sad but  all foul all rotting all dead in the dead marshes where you have this kind  of rotting landscape with bodies of an older   war you definitely get these memories of  the summer of the trenches of these rotting   bodies of soldiers this is not  anymore the idea of a heroic   war this is the death and devastation  what is left really is just dead men the horrors of war were first exposed in the  precursor to the lord of the rings the hobbit   the story culminates in a battle of five different  armies all vying for the dragon's treasure   the main character bilbo baggins sees many  of his companions killed on the battlefield   and comes to understand the futility of war like bilbo tolkien himself watched  his companions die in battle in france   he fought alongside three of his oldest and  closest friends but by november of 1916 two   of them were dead it seems obvious when one reads  the story where you have comrades in arms facing   a seemingly insurmountable foe and the fear that  they feel and the sounds of the battle approaching   they know they're going to be tested and  probably die that night and so on and yet   the way they find a way to express both humor  and courage and to keep each other's spirits up   in a time like that seems to be drawn  directly from his battle experience the misery and terror of world war one are  reflected not only in the suffering of middle   earth's heroes but in the ruthlessness of  its villains perhaps nowhere is tolkien's   war experience more powerfully revealed  than in the horrific evil of the orcs   the lord of the rings is the  work of a vivid imagination rooted in ancient myth and modern life  the firsthand war experience of its author   j.r.r tolkien framed its central  conflict between good and evil forces   the final battlefield in that  conflict is an infernal hell mordor at the heart of mordor lies mount doom the  volcano where the one ring was forged this   is where the hobbit frodo must come to destroy  the ring before its evil power overcomes him it is a setting drawn from one of the world's  most well-known ancient sources the bible if we look at the bible hell has been  described as this place of fire and   brimstone and eternal torment and when we  see mordor we see this place of this black   wasteland it's got very close connections with  dante's description of hell in that there's the   burning plane in hell the dry desert with  the flakes of fire falling from the sky even mordor's name has a sinister ring to it   this is no accident mordor actually sounds similar  to more than in anglo-saxon mixed marth or means   a murder we also have the connection to the old  norse moth literally same thing meaning murder in the story those who enter mordor are as good  as dead it is patrolled by a race of ruthless foot   soldiers known as orcs works are very horrible  they are bent they are crooked they are ugly   we are told that they are actually elves gone  wrong the dark forces have taken and twisted   into this horrible race they are described  as creatures fascinated with machines   fascinated with making clever things fascinated  with profit who try to get other people to work   for them this has been read as sort  of a thinly disguised uh capitalist   or capitalism the orcs is capitalists orcs are  completely corrupted uh they are they are ruined   they they were good creatures originally  but their wills are set entirely on evil mordor's evil race like so many components of the  lord of the rings may derive from an ancient myth   in line 512 of beowulf there's a description of  all the evil creatures that have been descended   from cain after cain killed his brother abel and  those are eotonas and ulfa and orkneyas and that   is atons and elves and orkneyas the orkneys  are demon-like beings in beowulf they have   a spirit-like quality but they're considered  like an evil spirit being historical sources   inspired not only middle earth's most despised  fiends but also one of its principal heroes the wizard gandalf   in the lord of the rings gandalf guides  frodo in his quest to destroy the one ring gandalf has become an archetype for wizards after  the writing of lord of the rings prior to that   magic was considered bad anti-christian was  a little bit evil gandalf i think is a solely   good figure he really tries to do what's  best for all the creatures of middle earth   clues about gandalf's origins  can be found in norse mythology   the old norse gandalf means magical elf or magic  using elf of course gandalf is not an elf but he   is certainly a magical figure of great power but  gandalf draws more than his name from norse myth   his appearance is modeled  after its most powerful deity odin to the ancient scandinavians  odin represented many things   he was a god of wisdom war battle and death  but it is his role as the wanderer that echoes   most clearly in gandalf it's clear that  odin inspired gandalf one of his aspects   is the god of masks and many identities and  so he has many names hundreds of names and   disguises and when he travels on earth he often  travels as the gray wanderer he wears a gray   robe he has a wide brimmed hat he has a long beard  and all of these things fit very well with gandalf   like odin gandalf roams middle earth for years  quietly working to destroy its evil forces but the wizard may also be influenced  by another more prominent ancient figure gandalf has also been compared  by some people to jesus   he sacrifices himself is dead  and comes back clothed in white   as gandalf battles to save frodo he metaphorically  dies and is resurrected as gandalf the white and this is one of the instances where  we can see uh tolkien's catholic groups   a pagan god of many disguises and a  christian savior who was resurrected   two powerful figures from the ancient world  both seen in one main character this is what   is so unique about tolkien he is very good at  bringing together christian and pagan motif the religious influences behind the lord of the  rings are fully revealed in the climax of the epic   as the story concludes it is not gandalf but  frodo who was in a position to save the world   the myth's defining moment will draw from  a pivotal chapter in the life of christ   as frodo faces the last temptation of the ring mordor a fiery hell home to the orcs and the evil lord sauron this is where the hobbit frodo finds himself at  the end of a painful journey across middle earth his quest to reach mount doom is over but his  real test is about to begin to destroy the one   ring frodo must scale the mountain and drop it  into the volcanic fires from which it was forged but the ring won't go quietly   it's no accident that the symbol is a circle it  sucks in everything good about you and about your   personality just like any other kind of addiction  until all you can think about is the ring as frodo climbs mount doom the ring draws him in   challenging him to abandon his  mission and give in to its power it is the ultimate battle with temptation an  internal struggle between darkness and light   inspired by author j.r.r tolkien's christian view  the whole work is informed by catholic thoughts   the very end tolkien said was illustrating  the last two petitions of the lord's prayer   he says lead us not into  temptation but deliver us from evil   frodo's final moments with the ring parallel one  of the most famous passages in the new testament satan comes to earth to tempt christ in the  desert while christ is fasting for 40 days   he tends him with power he tempts him with  food he tempts him with dominion over earth   in the bible jesus resists satan's offer but frodo's will proves weaker frodo  has made it to the very crack of doom   the edge of the chasm in the volcano where the  ring was forged and he has the ring on its chain   but he can't destroy it it's  become too much of his personality   and he says i do not choose to do what i came  here to do the ring is mine and he puts it on the ring instantly makes frodo  invisible but he is not alone gollum the evil creature who once held the  ring for hundreds of years has followed   frodo all the way to mount doom he desperately  wants the ring back and now he sees his chance gollum bites his finger off gullum grabs the ring he in turn falls  into the fiery flames of the volcano this destroys the ring it obviously destroys  gollum but then in a sense it liberates frodo   as evil as gollum is it's gollum who  saves middle-earth by doing something evil if gollum hadn't done that the world wouldn't  have been saved so it's a nice little   twist about how this all works together a flawed hero who doesn't save the day it's an  ending that strays from tolkien's christian roots   and mythological tradition usually  a tragic hero no matter what happens   to him at least he can feel good because  he's done the right thing frodo could not despite frodo's failure the final  outcome echoes the christian belief   that good will triumph over evil  but that triumph comes at a cost after the ring is destroyed frodo  and the hobbits return to the shire they are horrified by what awaits them there i  find the shire in ruins it's become an industrial   nightmare there are big steel machines everywhere  the people are oppressed and it's a very dirty   polluted place it is a vision of technology  run amok this was one of tolkien's worst fears in england he saw the same transformation  happening to the countryside he called   home tolkien was deeply concerned from his early  childhood about the process of industrialization   in large part because he saw it as a reflection of  human corruption that is the urge to industrialize   is in his mind inextricably connected with this  impulse to dominate and to talking it's the same   will to dominate whether you're dominating people  or whether you're dominating trees and plants when frodo returns home from  his quest to destroy the ring   he is restless he has terrible dreams and  he can't readjust to life in the shire   frodo like the author who created him is a soul  forever changed by traumatic memories frodo   is wounded he is devastated by his experience and  he can never live a normal life again he bears the   physical wound but he also bears the spiritual  wound in his soul and this has to be a metaphor   for what tolkien is going through himself  with his suffering from the first world war i think what's really curious about the character  frodo and the author tolkien is that after the end   of the the drama so to speak after the end of  world war one after the end of the war of the ring   the kind of joy that we might imagine was missing  so we see this lingering malaise in frodo you   might say uh as a result of being the ring bear  and we might say that with tolkien he also had   this lingering post-traumatic stress from seeing  countless people butchered in the muddy fields   of northern france at the end of the lord of the  rings frodo remains deeply wounded by his battle   with evil he leaves the shire once and for all to  seek a new beginning in middle earth's holy lands and so ends the most ambitious mythology  of the modern age this is really what   started you might say the whole genre  of fantasy literature as we now know it   the idea of creating a world that really stands  as a world of its own that has its own history   is really fairly new quite original it's  remarkable how popular the lord of the rings   is so dense in so many ways and so complicated but  it has always had this really vibrant life among   the common readers and that's the  thing that is so remarkable about it you

Channel: HISTORY

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Id: NmshZNHT9NE

Length: 45min 22sec (2722 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 22 2021