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Tolkien Essays

Thoughtful exploration and exposition of Tolkien's Legendarium

Dragons

From How to Train Your Dragon’s Toothless to the cunning and greedy Fáfnir from Germanic mythology; from the monstrous King Gidorah to the tragic Puff, dragons have fascinated and entranced people for millennia. Perhaps it’s the combination of power and intelligence. Perhaps it’s a particular attribute, such as the flying or the fire-breathing, that caught our fancy. Or perhaps I’m overthinking it and it’s just the “whoa, giant reptile!” aspect.

Whatever the enchantment of dragons is, J.R.R. Tolkien was not immune. From the beginning, he included dragons as a part of his storytelling. In this essay, I’ll examine some of the aspects of Tolkien’s dragons.

Where did the dragons come from?

You may be getting tired of me saying this same refrain, but unfortunately we don’t know the full details regarding the creation of dragons. However, we do get some hints.

In The War of the Jewels, there is the briefest of brief mentions. In it, Morgoth is attempting to ambush Fingolfin early in the First Age. His plans go awry, and his Orcs are defeated.

Thereafter there was peace for many years, and no open assault; for Morgoth perceived now that the Orcs unaided were no match for the Noldor, save in such numbers as he could not yet muster. Therefore he sought in his heart for new counsel, and he bethought him of dragons.

JRR Tolkien, The War of the Jewels (The History of Middle-Earth, Volume 11), “The Grey Annals”

Does it say how he created the dragons? No. As a point of fact, it does not come out and say that he did create the dragons. It’s implied, but…well, it’s not really much to sink our teeth into, now is it?

About 100 years later (to clarify, this means 100 years of Middle-earth time; book-wise it’s literally the next paragraph), we receive another update:

Here Glaurung, the first of the Urulóki, the fire-drakes of the North, came forth from Angband’s gate by night. He was yet young and scarce half-grown (for long and slow is the life of those worms), but the Elves fled before him to Erydwethrin and to Dorthonion in dismay; and he defiled the fields of Ardgalen

JRR Tolkien, The War of the Jewels (The History of Middle-Earth, Volume 11), “The Grey Annals”

Much like the previous quote, this bit implies more than it states. Glaurung was the first fire-drake because…Melkor created him as well as his whole race 100 years ago?

The exact nature of dragons is never specified. It’s likely that their forms were bred from beasts Melkor found or created. As for their minds and fëar…perhaps they are inhabited by Maia or other spirits, in the same way the Ents are? We really don’t know.

Aren’t dragons just Maiar?

Probably not, for two reasons:

  1. They procreate among themselves, something that Maiar are not known to do (it’s never stated that Maiar definitely do not do this, and Ainur had children in earlier versions of the text, but in the current version of The Silmarillion there is no example of Maia - Maia pairings resulting in children).
  2. The above quote (“he bethought him of dragons”) implies that Melkor created the dragons, which differentiates them from actual Maiar such as the Balrogs which were not created by Melkor, merely turned to his will.

There is some small textual evidence we can point to here:

But in that moment Glaurung issued from the gaping doors, and lay behind, between Túrin and the bridge. Then suddenly he spoke, by the evil spirit that was in him, saying: ‘Hail, son of Húrin. Well met!

JRR Tolkien, The Silmarillion, Quenta Silmarillion, “Of Túrin Turambar”

The key phrase “by the evil spirit that was in him” suggests to me that Glaurung was indwelled by some spirit (which enabled him to speak) rather than being a spirit (such as a Maia) with a temporary fana.

Who are the dragons? What did they do?

Surprisingly, when it comes to the named dragons of Middle-earth, we have only four.

Glaurung

The afore-mentioned Glaurung is introduced in the First Age story of Túrin Turambar, which is in The Silmarillion and then retold in The Children of Húrin. He does not have wings but does have legs, and he’s both cunning and seemingly gifted with a terrifying “dragon-spell”…a sort of hypnotic gaze he used to freeze the ill-fated Túrin in his tracks and wage mental warfare while the armies of Morgoth stole goods and captives from Nargothrond.

Túrin eventually kills Glaurung by stabbing him in the soft part of his undercarriage, a classic weakness of Tolkien’s dragons and really one of the only ways to kill them.

Ancalagon the Black

Ancalagon appears in The Silmarillion, in “Of the Voyage of Eärendil and the War of Wrath,” which chronicles the end of the First Age of Elves and Men. He is the mightiest of the winged fire-drakes and released as Morgoth’s last desperate defense. Eärendil (with the aid of Thorondor and his eagles) defeats Ancalagon, whose fall shatters the towers of Thangorodrim, culminating in Morgoth’s downfall. This passage is quite metal and deserves to be quoted:

Then, seeing that his hosts were overthrown and his power dispersed, Morgoth quailed, and he dared not to come forth himself. But he loosed upon his foes the last desperate assault that he had prepared, and out of the pits of Angband there issued the winged dragons, that had not before been seen; and so sudden and ruinous was the onset of that dreadful fleet that the host of the Valar was driven back, for the coming of the dragons was with great thunder, and lightning, and a tempest of fire.

But Eärendil came, shining with white flame, and about Vingilot were gathered all the great birds of heaven and Thorondor was their captain, and there was battle in the air all the day and through a dark night of doubt. Before the rising of the sun Eärendil slew Ancalagon the Black, the mightiest of the dragon-host, and cast him from the sky; and he fell upon the towers of Thangorodrim, and they were broken in his ruin. Then the sun rose, and the host of the Valar prevailed, and well-nigh all the dragons were destroyed; and all the pits of Morgoth were broken and unroofed, and the might of the Valar descended into the deeps of the earth.

JRR Tolkien, The Silmarillion, Quenta Silmarillion, “Of the Voyage of Eärendil and the War of Wrath”

We note of course that this story involves many dragons, most of which are not named in the account.

Scatha the Worm

Scatha, a “long-worm” of the Grey Mountains, is only briefly mentioned in Appendix A of The Lord of the Rings.

Frumgar, they say, was the name of the chieftain who led his people to Éothéod. Of his son, Fram, they tell that he slew Scatha, the great dragon of Ered Mithrin, and the land had peace from the long-worms afterwards. Thus Fram won great wealth, but was at feud with the Dwarves, who claimed the hoard of Scatha. Fram would not yield them a penny, and sent to them instead the teeth of Scatha made into a necklace, saying: ‘‘Jewels such as these you will not match in your treasuries, for they are hard to come by.’’ Some say that the Dwarves slew Fram for this insult. There was no great love between Éothéod and the Dwarves. JRR Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, “The House of Eorl”

There’s some additional detail in a poem (Scatha the Worm) published in The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien, but basically that’s all we know about Scatha. However, we note that the horn which Éowyn gifted Merry was from Scatha’s hoard.

Then Éowyn gave to Merry an ancient horn, small but cunningly wrought all of fair silver with a baldric of green; and wrights had engraven upon it swift horsemen riding in a line that wound about it from the tip to the mouth; and there were set runes of great virtue.

‘This is an heirloom of our house,’ said Éowyn. ‘It was made by the Dwarves, and came from the hoard of Scatha the Worm. Eorl the Young brought it from the North. He that blows it at need shall set fear in the hearts of his enemies and joy in the hearts of his friends, and they shall hear him and come to him.’

Then Merry took the horn, for it could not be refused, and he kissed Éowyn’s hand; and they embraced him, and so they parted for that time.

JRR Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King, “Many Partings”

Eorl the Young was Fram’s grandson. Both lived in the Third Age, but well before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Smaug the Golden

Smaug the winged fire-drake is the central antagonist in The Hobbit. Tolkien implies that Smaug is the last of the great dragons, though there are clearly still some dragons (presumably smaller and weaker than Smaug and the above) left by the end of the Third Age.

Smaug is, to my knowledge, unique among dragons for one specific thing: he worked to counteract his weakness. However, it turns out that dragons actually have two weaknesses: not only is a dragon’s underbelly unarmored and vulnerable, but a dragon cannot actually see his underside.

“I have always understood,” said Bilbo in a frightened squeak, “that dragons were softer underneath, especially in the region of the-er-chest; but doubtless one so fortified has thought of that.”

The dragon stopped short in his boasting. “Your information is antiquated,” he snapped. “I am armoured above and below with iron scales and hard gems. No blade can pierce me.”

“I might have guessed it,” said Bilbo. “Truly there can nowhere be found the equal of Lord Smaug the Impenetrable. What magnificence to possess a waistcoat of fine diamonds!”

“Yes, it is rare and wonderful, indeed,” said Smaug absurdly pleased. He did not know that the hobbit had already caught a glimpse of his peculiar under-covering on his previous visit, and was itching for a closer view for reasons of his own. The dragon rolled over. “Look!” he said. “What do you say to that?”

“Dazzlingly marvellous! Perfect! Flawless! Staggering!” exclaimed Bilbo aloud, but what he thought inside was: “Old fool! Why there is a large patch in the hollow of his left breast as bare as a snail out of its shell!”

JRR Tolkien, The Hobbit, “Inside Information”

Smaug thus met his bitter end at the tip of Bard’s black arrow.

Dain’s Bane

Dáin I is slain by an unnamed cold-drake:

But Thorin I his son removed and went into the far North to the Grey Mountains, where most of Durin’s folk were now gathering; for those mountains were rich and little explored. But there were dragons in the wastes beyond; and after many years they became strong again and multiplied, and they made war on the Dwarves, and plundered their works. At last Dáin I, together with Frór his second son, was slain at the doors of his hall by a great cold-drake.

JRR Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, “Durin’s Folk”

Obviously this dragon does not quite belong in the category of named dragons, but still worth noting.

Chrysophylax Dives

In Tolkien’s short story Farmer Giles of Ham, a somewhat goofy and whimsical dragon named Chrysophylax Dives makes an appearance. The story is not set in Middle-earth (or in his Legendarium at all), and I include this dragon here only for completeness.

What are the different types of dragons

Dragons are differentiated along three axes:

In Tolkien’s writing, fire-breathing dragons are called fire-drakes. Angcalagon and Smaug are fire-drakes. Non-fire-breathing dragons are called cold-drakes. Glaurung and Scatha are cold-drakes.

Dragons with wings are called, accurately enough, winged dragons. Angcalagon and Smaug are winged dragons. Glaurung and Scatha are not winged dragons.

Dragons without legs are sometimes called worms or wyrms, though worm is also just an old-timey word for any type of dragon and Tolkien does not strictly differentiate. Scatha had no legs and is referred to as a long-worm. Smaug and Glaurung had four legs. The number of legs Angcalagon had is indeterminate, but probably also four. Some people (mainly Dungeons and Dragons players or heraldry nerds) refer to winged dragons with two legs as wyverns, but Tolkien does not make this distinction, and as far as we can tell all of his legged dragons were quadrupedal.

Not all combinations appear in the Legendarium. We see:

There is nothing to conclusively rule out other combinations, but they are not explicitly present. If you were to, for example, see a movie that portrayed a two-legged fire drake, that director has taken some liberties with the source material.

Who has killed a dragon?

Interestingly, dragons seem to be overwhelmingly killed by Men. Túrin, Fram, and Bard all took down their dragon opponents, and Eärendil, half-Elven, slew Ancalagon with the help of the Great Eagles.

Presumably, though, the high score in dragon slaying likely either goes to the Dwarves, who fought quite a few dragons encroaching from the north of the Iron Hills into their domains, or the Elves, who would have slain their share of Morgoth’s dragons in the War of Wrath. However, none of these dragons are named and their tales remain untold.

Why did Tolkien include dragons in his world?

Because he loves them, and because they embody a fantastical other-ness that he wants his worlds to have.

I never imagined that the dragon was of the same order as the horse. And that was not solely because I saw horses daily, but never even the footprint of a worm. The dragon had the trade-mark Of Faerie written plain upon him. In whatever world he had his being it was an Other-world. Fantasy, the making or glimpsing of Other-worlds, was the heart of the desire of Faërie. I desired dragons with a profound desire. Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighbourhood, intruding into my relatively safe world, in which it was, for instance, possible to read stories in peace of mind, free from fear. But the world that contained even the imagination of Fáfnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever cost of peril. The dweller in the quiet and fertile plains may hear of the tormented hills and the unharvested sea and long for them in his heart. For the heart is hard though the body be soft.

JRR Tolkien, “On Fairy-stories”

In particular, Tolkien was fond of Fáfnir.

I find ‘dragons’ a fascinating product of imagination. But I don’t think the Beowulf one is frightfully good…. Fáfnir in the late Norse versions of the Sigurd-story is better; and Smaug and his conversation obviously is in debt there.

JRR Tolkien, The Letters of JRR Tolkien, “Letter 122: To Naomi Mitchison”

Dragons as Middle-earth tanks

One of the earliest-written stories of Tolkien’s Legendarium is the fall of Gondolin. In that early version, we see something unexpected [note: In later versions Melko became Melkor and Balrogs became less numerous]:

Then on a time Melko assembled all his most cunning smiths and sorcerers, and of iron and flame they wrought a host of monsters such as have only at that time been seen and shall not again be till the Great End. Some were all of iron so cunningly linked that they might flow like slow rivers of metal or coil themselves around and above all obstacles before them, and these were filled in their innermost depths with the grimmest of the Orcs with scimitars and spears; others of bronze and copper were given hearts and spirits of blazing fire, and they blasted all that stood before them with the terror of their snorting or trampled whatso escaped the ardour of their breath; yet others were creatures of pure flame that writhed like ropes of molten metal, and they brought to ruin whatever fabric they came nigh, and iron and stone melted before them and became as water, and upon them rode Balrogs in hundreds; and these were the most dire of all those monsters which Melko devised against Gondolin.

JRR Tolkien, The Book of Lost Tales II (The History of Middle-Earth, Volume 2), “The Fall of Gondolin”

It’s worth noting that Tolkien began writing this story in 1917 in an army barracks. I like to think that things like dragon-tanks had less of a place in the professor’s mind and heart as as the horrors of modern warfare became more remote, leading to him removing this passage and this concept entirely.

However, even in this early passage, one can see the idea of dragons was never far from Tolkien’s mind.

How many Rings of Power did dragons eat?

Four.

Seven the Dwarf-kings possessed, but three he has recovered, and the others the dragons have consumed.

JRR Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, “The Shadow of the Past”

OK, so “consumed” here probably doesn’t mean that the dragons ate the Rings, merely that they breathed fire at their wearers which destroyed both wearer and Ring simultaneously. But I like to think of a fire-drake enjoying a tasty Ring of Power treat after conquering a Dwarven kingdom.

Annotated Bibliography

The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Humphrey Carpenter, editor.

“On Fairy-Stories”, J.R.R. Tolkien.
I’ve cited this essay before, and though long it is truly excellent in its entirety. I used it in this essay because of its mention of dragons and what they mean to Tolkien. I think this is an excellent usage of the passage (if I do say so myself), but admittedly I did pluck it as an almost-aside from Tolkien’s main point, which was rebutting the idea of society (in general) and author Andrew Lang (in particular) that Fairy-stories (i.e. fantasy novels and novellas) are nothing more than child’s fare.

The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien.
I reference The Hobbit only rarely, because as a source it is highly suspect. It was not originally intended to be part of Tolkien’s Legendarium, and it shows. However, the particular quote I chose (from the chapter “Inside Information”) is reasonably reliable.

The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien.
I reference “The Shadow of the Past” here, which is both exposition-heavy and very early in the book. This chapter is quite possibly the main reason that Tolkien has a reputation for lengthy world-building, but I deeply loved it as a child and continue to love it as an adult (as well as being quite grateful for it as a Tolkien essayist).

The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien.
Just a brief reference to the chapter “Many Partings”, where Éowyn gives Merry the horn from Scatha’s horde. You will likely recall that Merry later sounds this horn at the Battle of Bywater.

The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, J.R.R. Tolkien.
It’s a bit hard to read the Appendices right after finishing The Lord of the Rings, as it’s quite the mental shift. In any case, Appendix A includes historical and genealogical information from various people groups, and sometimes drops neat little tidbits along the way. It’s here we find the story of Helm Hammerhand, for example. I draw from two chapters in this essay: “Durin’s Folk”, which mentions the death of Dáin I to a cold-drake, and “The House of Eorl”, which mentions Fram’s slaying of Scatha.

The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien, Scatha the Worm, J.R.R. Tolkien; Christina Scull, Wayne G. Hammond eds.
This poetry collection was published quite recently (2024), and contains tons of previously-unpublished poems. This particular one gives a little extra detail regarding the eponymous dragon. Side note: the editors (Scull and Hammond) are some of the preeminent Tolkien researchers, scholars, and writers and also, delightfully, happen to be married to each-other.

The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two (History of Middle-Earth volume 2), Christopher Tolkien.
The Book(s) of Lost Tales contain information about the creation of The Silmarillion. A number of the key events of Middle-earth are recounted here as Tolkien first wrote them. These can be quite helpful as they show the original thought behind some of the stories in The Silmarillion, but unlike The Silmarillion, which was intended to be effectively a stand-alone novel of sorts, the Book of Lost Tales is a much rougher sketch of the ideas that went into the stories. In this essay, I look at the story of Gondolin’s fall (told thrice; once here in the Book of Lost Tales, once in The Silmarillion, and once in the stand-alone The Fall of Gondolin). Specifically, I look at the imagining of the terrifying siege engines which, while not dragons, are sufficiently dragon-like to suggest that Tolkien had the beasts in mind when writing the passage.

The War of the Jewels (History of Middle-Earth volume 11), Christopher Tolkien.
If the Book of Lost Tales is the history of The Silmarillion, The War of the Jewels and Morgoth’s Ring are the future – essays, scribbles, ideas, and brainstorms which did not make it into The Silmarillion. These can be helpful for understanding Tolkien’s thinking on a topic, but they can also considerably muddy the waters. Did Tolkien consider the idea and reject it, or did he embrace it but never have time to incorporate it into the text? Is this text his final word on the matter, or a dead end? There is sometimes no indication. I quote from “The Grey Annals”, and I feel pretty confident that the passage I pulled is reasonable ground to stand on.

The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien and Christopher Tolkien.
I pull two quotes from The Silmarillion. The first is from “Of Túrin Turambar” (a similar passage appears in The Children of Húrin, which calls Glaurung the “father of dragons”), while the second is from “Of the Voyage of Eärendil and the War of Wrath”, which describes the defeat of Morgoth and (more relevant to us) the fall of Ancalagon the Black.

Final note

Although after my lengthy treatise on Orcs I prefer to stay away from “how did this type of creature come about” discussions, Dragons are a fascinating enough subject to be worthy of further study. I hope this essay has provided both interesting and useful information!