Q: Are There Any Superstitions in Middle-earth?
ANSWER: It’s hard to make a case for superstition in a fictional world where angels and fallen angels regularly interact with mortal beings. However, there are a few passages that suggest there may be some unsubstantiated beliefs in “ill omen” among Middle-earth’s inhabitants.
For example, when Aragorn tells Barliman Butterbur that the Black Riders come from Mordor, Barliman’s reaction seems to mirror that of superstitious people. On the other hand, scenes like this may be Tolkien’s way of implying to the reader that what are now superstitious behaviors may have roots in things once required in real life.
Another semi-superstitious passage is the one relating the Numenorean custom of placing a wreath on the bow of ships to invoke the blessings of the Valar and protect the mariners while they are at sea. Aldarion’s father Tar-Meneldur forbids this blessing on one of his son’s journeys and when Aldarion returns many years later his ship is battered.
When Gandalf speaks in the Black Speech at Rivendell, reciting the inscription from the One Ring, the Elves cover their ears. Is this a superstitious reaction?
When the Fellowship attempted to cross the Misty Mountains by the Redhorn pass a severe winter storm stopped their progress. Boromir said that the men of his land believed Sauron could command the storms in the mountains on his borders. The reader is left to wonder if the storm was summoned by Sauron or one of his many servants; Gandalf’s comment, “His arm is grown long indeed”, would seem to support that view.
Still, these and other instances in the stories suggest that Middle-earth’s inhabitants may have feared things that were perhaps not as fully threatening as fear made them out to be. Some people might argue these are indeed superstitions; other people might say that if the powers behind the threats were real then any distortions of those fears that made them seem irrational were not necessarily superstitions. They may simply have been overstated fears.
At what point does a superstitious practice become a superstitious practice? We are accustomed to thinking that these behaviors don’t have any basis in fact but they have a basis in the historical beliefs of the people who took them up — and within the scope of those beliefs the worlds that made these superstitions seem real were themselves quite real, if only in the thoughts and beliefs of those people.
It’s a very subtle point and perhaps not one Tolkien really intended to delve into. On the other hand, he included a number of colloquialisms that eventually became ancient sayings in our own real history (such as “the hands of the king are the hands of a healer, and so the rightful king was ever known”). This aphorism, already verging on superstition in Gondor by the time of the War of the Ring, turned out to be true when Gandalf brought Aragorn into the city to treat the ill and the wounded. This transitional power of popular wisdom — reflecting both ancient truth and future superstition — may have been Tolkien’s philological nod to the changefulness of language, culture, and faith.
And so perhaps Middle-earth was too young to have many superstitions but it was already giving birth to a few.
# # #
Have you read our other Tolkien and Middle-earth Questions and Answers articles?
In Tolkien’s world everything has to have an explanation, ultimately from divine Creation, so there isn’t much room for superstition as such. The nearest might be the “foresight” of the Northern Dunedain. Most impressive is when Halbarad says matter-of-factly and correctly “this is an evil door, and my death lies beyond it” (‘The Passing of the Grey Company’). I have heard that this kind of foresight, always of a death, still happens in Celtic places e.g. the Western Isles of Scotland.