Q: Was the Elvenking of The Hobbit Supposed to be Thingol Greycloak?
ANSWER: John Rateliff addressed this question in The History of The Hobbit without really closing the issue, although he favors the view (based on the available evidence) that the Elvenking of The Hobbit (whom we learn is named Thranduil in The Lord of the Rings) is NOT to be equated with King Thingol in The Silmarillion.
Rateliff’s research (which completes the work begun by his friend Taum Santoski, who sadly passed away before he could complete the work of documenting the history of The Hobbit) has revealed conclusively that when J.R.R. Tolkien was composing the original manuscripts of The Hobbit he clearly intended Bilbo Baggins to be a part of the same world as his great Silmarillion stories, but only in a peripheral sense. That is, Bilbo traveled AWAY from some (but not all) of the action in Beleriand.
There is one major inconvenience in the connections that Tolkien drew between Bilbo and Beleriand: he positioned the Necromancer to the south of Mirkwood, which if that character is indeed supposed to be the Thû of the 1930s “Silmarillion” (whom Tolkien transformed into Sauron for The Lord of the Rings), then the action in The Hobbit would have to take place somewhere in Dorthonion or northward — which is completely inconsistent with the geography of Beleriand that Tolkien had devised to that time.
But this is a type of error that reflects Tolkien’s unfolding creativity as he crafts new pieces of a story and stitches them into a pre-existing fabric. When called upon to finish writing the tale and put it into a publishable form, Tolkien dropped nearly all references to the “Silmarillion” and its world, except for these primary connections:
- The inclusion of Elrond, specifically stated to be related to the High Elves of the West
- The revelation that Glamdring and Orcrist came from Gondolin
- The comparison of the Elvenking to his older predecessor, the unnamed king (Thingol) who quarreled with Dwarves
Only with Rateliff’s research can we know that the Necromancer was the sorceror defeated by Beren and Luthien. But in addition to the wrong geographical placement of the Necromancer’s fortress (Thû fled to Dorthonion after his fortress on Tol Sirion was destroyed), the fact that Elrond — a descendant of Beren and Luthien — is in the story at all shows that Tolkien was only throwing odds and ends together without thinking through all the required steps to make these references work.
So while we could argue that maybe Bilbo’s story was originally conceived as happening some time after the overthrow of Melkor, it still seems to be placed very close in time to the events of the “Silmarillion” stories. And Tolkien ultimately distanced The Hobbit from his unpublished mythology, though only enough so as not to cause confusion should the latter ever be published.
And upon enjoying a successful release for The Hobbit Tolkien’s publisher, George Allen & Unwin, asked to see anything else he had written. Tolkien gave them “The Silmarillion” for consideration, which they rejected as being “too Celtic”. In his correspondence Tolkien seemed to accept and agree with the rejection but I have always interpreted his words as being somewhat stung and disheartened. It may be that the rejection contributed significantly to his lifelong obsession with “fixing” the Silmarillion stories, although obviously he also needed to make them consistent with The Lord of the Rings.
All that aside, there was already plentiful explanation for a second woodland king among the Elves in the “Silmarillion” material, for Thingol was not the only Elf leader whom Tolkien named among the Teleri. There were also Lenwë (originally named Dan) and his son Denethor. The Elvenking of The Hobbit could easily have been someone like them, who established himself as a leader of “lost Elves” who never passed into Beleriand.
So, as Rateliff surmises, Tolkien left his options open for explaining many things in The Hobbit without compromising his “Silmarillion” while attaching it to that story retroactively whenever he could have it published.
I think readers are justified in concluding that the Elvenking (Thranduil) was never intended to be equated with Thingol. Thingol served as an archetype for the character, nothing more.
See also:
- How is Thranduil Different from the Book?
- Why Does Thranduil Wear Rings in the Movies?
- Why Did Thranduil Refuse to Help the Dwarves of Erebor?
- How Faithful is Peter Jackson’s Hobbit to Tolkien’s Book?
# # #
Have you read our other Tolkien and Middle-earth Questions and Answers articles?
Wow! That was deep. I’m betting that Tolkien would have tied it all together if the Silmarillion hadn’t been rejected. This probably left him a bit disappointed and that’s why there’s bits and pieces in the stories.
[…] [Read More] […]
I don’t know the time-line of writing. But where does the account of Thingol’s death due to the Dwarves & the squabble over the Nauglafring fit in with the composing of The Hobbit? Thingol’s storyline, it seems to me, had to be at least in rough draft form before Tolkien embarked upon writing The Hobbit. It seems the death of Thingol was ordained from the time the Silmarils became something more than just some of Feanor’s better quality jewels.
The original story (“The Nauglafring”) was composed for The Book of Lost Tales (Tolkien’s “mythology for England”). The idea of an argument between King Thingol and the Dwarves was always part of Tolkien’s Legendarium but he never fully developed it in a Silmarillion-compatible format. The story that was included in The Silmarillion was largely composed by Christopher Tolkien.
Thanks for this post, Michael! Interesting material, but I feel like I’m missing some crucial logical steps in this process. Can you clarify?
Based solely on the article posted here (since I haven’t read Rateliff nor the original version of the Silmarillion), I don’t understand some of the claims you make, namely:
– Even if we do assume that the Necromancer WAS intended to be the “Thû” from the Silmarillion at this early point, why is it necessary that The Hobbit’s action takes place in Dorthonion, rather than, say, south of Mirkwood? Just because Thû flees to Dorthonion from Tol Sirion doesn’t mean Thû can’t move somewhere else after that, no?
– “the fact that Elrond … is in the story at all shows that Tolkien was only throwing odds and ends together without [taking] steps to make these references work.” Why does it show that? The fact that Elrond is a descendant of Beren & Luthien doesn’t seem obviously problematic to me unless we assume the story takes place close to the time of the Silmarillion.
– “Bilbo’s story … still seems to be placed very close in time to the events of the “Silmarillion” stories.” Again, why/how? This is not apparent to me.
In fact, unless we have missed some key points, it seems like suggesting that Bilbo’s story is close in time to the Silmarillion’s events is precisely the thing that causes complications: (1) how is the Necromancer so far away from Beleriand — south of Mirkwood — instead of still in Dorthonion where he fled from Tol Sirion? (2) how is a descendant of Beren & Luthien taking part in the story, despite his ancestors from long ago having just now defeated Thû?
Was there a reason given for why we *should* believe that the events of the two stories were closer in space or time? Thanks for your time! 🙂
Benjamin, it may help to think in terms of multiple versions of The Hobbit.
Pre-publication version — This is comprised of several manuscripts, some of which blend together. The Silmarillion-references are in this group and this is the version that is most closely tied to Beleriand (although not necessarily IN Beleriand). The Silmarillion references do not have to be explained or justified in any way; they simply exist as they are, incomplete, incongruent with any known version of “The Silmarillion” and its world up to the end of the 1930s.
First Edition Hobbit — In publication from 1937 to 1950, this book is essentially a “standalone adventure” set in its own self-contained world. Although much of the story was retained going forward, there was nothing else in publication to anchor it.
Second Edition Hobbit — Published in 1951, this version incorporated experimental changes Tolkien had sent to his publisher in 1947. At the time he only intended those changes to be illustrative, and he believed he would revise The Hobbit more extensively. Nonetheless, these changes made the story more consistent with the world of The Lord of the Rings as it existed in 1947 (although Tolkien had enlarged and revised much of that literary world by the time LoTR was published in 1954-6). When notified in 1950 of the impending second edition, Tolkien apparently modified some of the background material he was working on for the LoTR appendices to be compatible with the 1947 experimental changes.
1960 Edition Hobbit — Never finished and only published in The History of The Hobbit in 2007, this version of the story would have been the one Tolkien wanted to tell — in a more adult tone. Someone close to Tolkien persuaded him not to finish this project, so we will never know what it would have turned out to be.
1965 (Third) Edition Hobbit — This was the hastily edited version of the book that Tolkien put together to secure his copyright over the book in the United States. These changes were not as extensive as those Tolkien would have made, had he finished the 1960 version; nor did he alter the narrative voice and style of the story. The 1965 edition is the one most often cited as “canonical” or “authoritative” by many people, although scholars are careful to distinguish between editions when necessary.
Subsequent Corrected Editions — As with The Lord of the Rings, there have been a few attempts to fix typographical errors and include accidentally omitted text. I have been told by people knowledgeable in these matters that it is almost impossible to ensure that a “perfect” edition will ever be published, so we may continue to see textual variations in future editions.
Taken all together, these various phases of The Hobbit create an informational strobe effect, where now something is “canonical” and now it’s not.
As for the point about Elrond: he was the great-grandson of Beren and Luthien, born after they died. Furthermore, in his analysis of the evolution of the story and its maps, John Rateliff writes: “if the two maps [early Silmarillion and Fimbulfambi’s map] were blended, the Mountain would probably be to the southeast of the highlands later known as Dorthonion, just off the eastern edge of the map, near where Tolkien would later place the Hill of Himring….We are told by Bladorthin that the Withered Heath is ‘where the Great Dragons used to live’, and I think it more than coincidence that Anfauglith is where Glorund, Ancalagon the Black, an all the rest of Morgoth’s dragons are first seen by the outside world.”
Elrond was born so close to the end of the First Age (then simply the Elder Days) that he could not have been very old in the original conception of The Hobbit; but in the “Second Phase” of the story Bladorthin talks about Beren and Luthien destroying the Necromancer’s fortress within recent memory, and the Necromancer has fled. These details (concerning a wizard finding a Dwarf in the Necromaner’s fortress) are inconsistent with the published Silmarillion and any of its immediate predecessors. The story as it stood at this stage was an experimental evolution of the Silmarillion world that was abandoned, probably due more to the story being published than anything else.
Thanks for that!
I assume that, when you say ‘Bladorthin’, you (and Rateliff) are referring to the Pre-Publication(?) Hobbit, wherein Gandalf’s character was instead named Bladorthin — rather than the relic Bladorthin that survives in later editions?
Yes, Bladorthin in this context is the early name for the wizard who was later named Gandalf in the published stories.
[…] Visto no The One Ring e adaptado do blog do Michael Martinez. […]