Q: Could Aragorn and Boromir have Helped Gandalf against the Balrog?
ANSWER: This is one of those questions that invites speculation. While I don’t recall seeing any forum discussions about this particular point, I’m pretty sure they have happened. I received the following question from a reader in April 2020:
…I was intrigued by an alternate-path scenario suggested in “Fellowship of the Ring,” during the incredibly tense and dramatic battle in Khazad-dum/Moria between Gandalf and the Balrog. We know that Gandalf identified the Balrog to the Fellowship company as a “foe beyond any of you.” Yet during their struggle, Aragorn incredibly declares “He [Gandalf] cannot stand alone!” and attempts to support Gandalf by fighting the Balrog alongside him. Boromir elects to join him in what seems like a desperate, last-stand engagement just a moment later.
Of course, we all know what happens next…Aragorn and Boromir are never able to join the battle. If readers are aware of some of the heroic tales from Tolkien’s First Age, it feels like at this moment that a microcosm of one of that age’s great, last-stand, desperate fights is about to be enacted, with Third Age characters: for example, Ectheliion versus his own Balrog foe, Turin versus Glaurung, or even the most famous version, where the doomed Fingolfin challenges Morgoth. So this moment in LOTR’s fellowship to me was just frighteningly tense because it recalled the desperate heroism out of almost mythological past ages. Even Faramir imagined that Boromir might have died a better (more noble) death if he had fallen defending the Company on the Bridge of Khazad-dum, possible recalling some of these earlier heroic stories.
My questions: What would the likely outcome have been, within the actual encounter, if Aragorn and Boromir had joined the fray? I know in past articles you’ve discussed the mortality and vulnerability of Maiar’s incarnated physical forms, and that mighty mortal warriors would have some chance to affect them, especially if their weapons were forged by superior sword-smiths (was Narsil an Elvish weapon, originally?). Conversely for the heroes here, I always envisioned that the Balrog probably shared that same quality as Sauron of being clothed effectively in burning-hot skin, which would simply combust beings it came into close contact with. This property, coupled with what I’ve imagined as a monster possessing some kind of giant’s strength (even if not quite giant-sized in form), I felt would make the Balrog likely too powerful for even exceptional mortals to really truly contend with (which kind of begs its own question: were the First Age elvish and human warriors just far superior warriors to their Third Age contemporaries?).
Lacking the classic D&D frost-brand sword you’d be lucky to have in an encounter like this, how do you think the mortal heroes would have fared? Do you think the trio had some small chance to win the encounter, drive the Balrog off, or at least delay it long enough for the rest of the Company to flee? Do you think Aragorn, a character I always felt was a strategist/thinker/historian, as well as an accomplished fighter/ranger, felt at that moment that he needed to support Gandalf as a kind of immediate last stand/rear-guard action? I wondered if Aragorn himself might have cried out “Fly you fools” to the Company, if he felt that they needed to run for the woods of Lothlorien as fast as possible, lest Fred the Balrog sweep the defenders clear off the bridge and directly pursue the rest of the Fellowship beyond Moria gate itself and right outside under the sun. (I know you’ve written in past posts about how we only speculate as to why Fred never ventured outside at all.)
You have asked a powderkeg of questions – nay, a magazine of questions. Perhaps an armory’s worth of questions. I will do my best. But first, a digression…
You mention Tolkien’s “First Age” tales. I suppose you mean The Silmarillion. While it is (in my opinion) one of the greatest fantasy books ever composed, it’s not enitrely J.R.R. Tolkien’s work. His son Christopher had a hand or two in writing those tales, especially in the later chapters. And he acknowledged some input from Guy (Gavriel) Kay. As it turns out, you’ve chosen a section of the book that is as dark and tortured as the winding backways of Moria. I speak, of course, of “The Fall of Gondolin” – that chapter of The Silmarillion which was more written by Christopher Tolkien than J.R.R. Tolkien.
In his Foreword to The Silmarillion, Christopher wrote: “A complete consistency (either within the compass of The Silmarillion itself or between The Silmarillion and other published writings of my fatherís) is not to be looked for, and could only be achieved, if at all at heavy and needless cost.” Needless to say, legions of fans have sought such consistency anyway. That’s what fans do, I suppose.
In the Foreword to The War of the Jewels (Volume XI of The History of Middle-earth), Christopher Tolkien wrote:
‘The Silmarillion’, again in the widest sense, is very evidently a literary entity of a singular nature. I would say that it can only be defined in terms of its history; and that history is with this book largely completed (‘largely’, because I have not entered further into the complexities of the tale of Turin in those parts that my father left in confusion and uncertainty, as explained in Unfinished Tales, p. 6). It is indeed the only ‘completion’ possible, because it was always ‘in progress’; the published work is not in any way a completion, but a construction devised out of the existing materials. Those materials are now made available, save only in a few details and in the matter of ‘Turin’ just mentioned; and with them a criticism of the ‘constructed’ Silmarillion becomes possible. I shall not enter into that question; although it will be apparent in this book that there are aspects of the work that I view with regret.
The two stories that Christopher Tolkien most intruded upon as a secondary author were “The Fall of Gondolin” and “Of the Ruin of Doriath”:
This story [“Of the Ruin of Doriath”] was not lightly or easily conceived, but was the outcome of long experimentation among alternative conceptions. In this work Guy Kay took a major part, and the chapter that I finally wrote owes much to my discussions with him. It is, and was, obvious that a Step was being taken of a different order from any other ‘manipulation’ of my father’s own writing in the course of the book: even in the case of the story of The Fall of Gondolin, to which my father had never returned, something could be contrived without introducing radical changes in the narrative. It seemed at that time that there were elements inherent in the story of the Ruin of Doriath as it stood that were radically incompatible with ‘The Silmarillion’ as projected, and that there was here an inescapable choice: either to abandon that conception, or else to alter the story. I think now that this was a mistaken view, and that the undoubted difficulties could have been, and should have been, surmounted without so far overstepping the bounds of the editorial function.
So, with respect to “The Fall of Gondolin” and the Balrogs of the First Age, one should not seek “a complete consistency” between those creatures and the creature described in The Lord of the Rings.
J.R.R. Tolkien changed his conception of Balrogs while writing The Lord of the Rings. He reduced their numbers from hundreds (or thousands) to only a few, changed their origin (from creatures made by Melko to Maiar corrupted by Morgoth), and greatly revised their appearance, strength, and capabilities. The Balrogs of The Silmarillion are amalgams of the earlier, pre-Middle-earth creatures and the one from The Lord of the Rings.
Gandalf’s Balrog, Fred, (so named by the fans at SF-Fandom’s Tolkien and Middle-earth Forum) is a singular creature. Not because the Balrogs of the First Age were different – he is of their kind. But because his story is told in so much more detail by the sole authority on Balrogs: J.R.R. Tolkien himself.
So, with that in mind, I’ll now run through your questions.
Q: What would the likely outcome have been, within the actual encounter, if Aragorn and Boromir had joined the fray?
I think the most likely outcome is they would have been killed. How does one slay a creature made of flame and “shadow”? It was literally snorting flames – breathing fire as it were. As I have often said when discussing Balrog wings, “clearly, the Balrog is not a creature of flesh and blood.”
If the Balrog were (self-)incarnated in a more human-like form, I would have greater faith in Aragorn and Boromir’s abilities to kill it. That said, given that when Gandalf and the Balrog finally hit the water it becomes “a thing of slime”, maybe they could have contrived something. But their chances of doing so on a narrow stone bridge spanning a deep chasm would have been next to nothing.
At best, maybe Tolkien would have had them attempt to persuade Gandalf to retreat, perhaps grabbing him and pulling him away. In Letter No. 144, Tolkien wrote: “It is observable that only the Elf knows what the thing is – and doubtless Gandalf.” Aragorn and Boromir had no idea of what they would have been facing. They were valiant warriors and loyal companions. It was inconceivable to them (in that moment) that they should abandon Gandalf to any foe. But I think they would have died if they could have engaged the Balrog because they didn’t know what it was or what it would take to kill it.
Q: Was Narsil an elvish weapon, originally?
No. Narsil was originally forged by Telchar of Nogrod, the greatest of Dwarven smiths (of his time). However, his artifacts apparently were deemed quite valuable and worthy by the Noldor.
Q: Were the First Age elvish and human warriors just far superior warriors to their Third Age contemporaries?
Elves, yes. Men, no. But I think a Third Age elven warrior was pretty darned good. Legolas all but waded through his battles, compared with how others seemed to fare. One gets the impression from the battles where many elves die (such as the Battle of Five Armies) that the Third Age elves weren’t that powerful. Or, “they’re Silvan Elves, not Noldor” is held against them. The First Age Noldor lost their war, as I recall. Thranduil’s people survived for thousands of years.
Even so, the Elves of the First Age were undisputedly “mightier” in some sense than their Third Age successors. No doubt it has something to do with the fact that many of them (even among the Sindar) directly interacted with and learned from Valar and/or Maiar.
Q: How do you think the mortal heroes would have fared?
On the bridge, poorly. If they could have chosen better ground, I think they would have given the Balrog a challenge. But remember that Fred had destroyed an entire Dwarven civilization – the most powerful one (so far as we know) in the span of about 2 years.
Q: Do you think Aragorn … felt .. he needed to support Gandalf as a kind of immediate last stand/rear-guard action?
I think Tolkien meant Aragorn was acting instinctively, as a brave man does when he sees a friend and mentor in danger. But I don’t think he was humming “it’s a good day to die” to himself. He was ready to die for his friends or his people, but he had survived many encounters. I’m sure Tolkien meant he was a very confident and capable warrior. He wouldn’t have been thinking about a rear-guard action, in my opinion. I think he was just convinced the Fellowship needed Gandalf.
Conclusion
I think Tolkien anticipated questions like yours. I have no doubt that is why Gandalf did what he did:
With a bound the Balrog leaped full upon the bridge. Its whip whirled and hissed.
‘He cannot stand alone!’ cried Aragorn suddenly and ran back along the bridge.
‘Elendil!‘ he shouted. ‘I am with you, Gandalf!’
‘Gondor!’ cried Boromir and leaped after him.
At that moment Gandalf lifted his staff, and crying aloud he smote the bridge before him. The staff broke asunder and fell from his hand. A blinding sheet of white flame sprang up. The bridge cracked. Right at the Balrog’s feet it broke, and the stone upon which it stood crashed into the gulf, while the rest remained, poised, quivering like a tongue of rock thrust out into emptiness.
Whether Tolkien was thinking Gandalf intended to break the bridge anyway is anyone’s guess – but I think he broke the bridge at that precise moment to spare Aragorn and Boromir. They had other tasks before them. Gandalf had already told them Fred was a foe beyond their capabilities. He knew what he had to do. If anything, Aragorn and Boromir unwittingly forced him to act without hesitation.
And if I am correct, I think that means J.R.R. Tolkien felt they would have died on the bridge had they been able to engage with the Balrog. There is an old rock song, “I Fought the Law and the Law Won”, that would make a fitting background piece for a fannish enactment of Aragorn and Boromir fighting with Fred: “I Fought the Balrog and the Balrog Won”.
See Also …
Did Christopher Tolkien Write The Silmarillion?
Can Anyone Slay a Balrog? And How Can A Balrog be Slain?
Why Do You Say that Balrogs Evolved? When Did they Evolve?
How Did Glorfindel Die in the First Age?
# # #
Have you read our other Tolkien and Middle-earth Questions and Answers articles?
Follow The Middle-earth Blog | |
|
|
Click here to follow The Middle-earth Blog on Twitter: @tolkien_qna. The Middle-earth Blog's RSS Feed (summaries only) |
I always wondered why Gandalf thought it was a good idea for the Fellowship to go through Moria, and why he discounted the danger of Durin’s Bane. I mean, Gandalf had been in Middle Earth for almost a thousand years by the time the Balrog was awoken, and then another thousand years later by the time of the War of the Ring, did he just forget? How did he not know it was a Balrog, or some other great power that could threaten them? As you stated, the Balrog destroyed the Khazad-Dum – did Gandalf think the danger had just passed or went away?
Plus, it seems he also disregarded the fact that Balin’s colony hadn’t been heard from in decades – wouldn’t that fact also have been a warning?
I think that Aragorn could have helped, in spite of Gandalf’s warning.
Argagorn has Anduril, which i think is the most powerful weapon in Middle Earth.
Even Sauron was afraid of it.
Anduril is interesting because it was made by a Dwarf and then reforged by Elves.
So it has the best qualities of both races.
But the narrow bridge would have made it difficult for Aragorn or Boromir to assist.
I think Tolkien was mainly concerned with removing Gandalf from the fellowship in order
for other characters to come in the foreground.
I don’t think that Gandalf knew what type of creature Durin’s Bane was.
However both Gandalf and Aragorn had passed through Moria so he probably assumed that it
was either dormant or not present.
It does seem from the text that, until the actual encounter, Gandalf did not realise that the hostile power in Moria was a Balrog. After all, the Dwarves had never identified it as such: they referred to “Durin’s Bane” and a “nameless fear”. When Legolas identified the being, Gandalf muttered, “Now I understand.” Presumably, from his time as Olorin the Maia, he had some knowledge or experience of Balrogs, but his mission had involved him concealing, perhaps even forgetting, a lot about his true nature. His decision to risk the passage of Moria followed the unsuccessful attempt to cross the mountains, so it wasn’t a journey which he particularly relished – indeed, he commented that he had feared all along that the company would have to make it. Perhaps this was one of what Tolkien himself referred to as Gandalf’s errors of judgement?
When they told Galadriel and Celeborn their story, Aragorn acknowledged that he had never encountered anything like it before, which implies that neither he nor Boromir had a clue what they were facing.
You’ve mentioned that between First-Age and Third-Age versions, only the Elves have weakened. I would really like it if you could expound on that. There’s a lot of analysis possible.
– while First-Age Elves benefited from closer contact with the Ainur so did the Men of the First and Second Age benefit from closer contact with Elves.
– Case in point: Numenor. How could anyone argue that Third Age Men are in any way equal to Numenor? Most basically, Men’s lifespans are shorter even among those of Numenorean descent. But Numenor was an imperial power so impressive that even Sauron saw no point in defying them. They were even capable of creating great magical artifacts such as the Hobbit swords and palantir.
– Aragon is much shorter than Elendil. Is that height discrepancy a literary device to show much mightier Men used to be?
– Isn’t Turin considered one of the mightiest warriors of Middle-Earth? How could any Third-Age Man rival Turin? Or Hurin for that matter with his questionable Gothmog encounter.
I agree with your comparison of Men from the Second and Third Ages, as long as we’re talking about Numenoreans (2nd Age) and Dunedain. However, the question was about Men from the First and Third Ages. And although a few Men interacted with the Valar and Maiar in the First Age, the Edain of Beleriand did not possess the special gifts that the Dunedain of the Third Age enjoyed.
Numenor is irrelevant in that context. But clearly the height of Edainic/Numenorean capability occurred in the middle of the Second Age, before the Shadow fell upon Numenor.
Turin and Hurin both benefited from living in close proximity to Noldor and Sindar. They also served in the courts of Eldarin kings. So, yes, they assuredly benefited from their Elvish lifestyles. But the Dunedain maintained contact with the Elves in the Third Age, especially in the north. Although Gondor lost its chief source of Elvish contact after Amroth’s death, the southern Dunedain apparently had extensive contact with Elves throughout the first two thousand years of the Third Age.
So I don’t think Hurin and Turin, or Tuor and Beren, represent anything more than exceptional First Age Men. That perspective is shaped by the pseudo-historical distance Tolkien intentionally created between the Third Age and the First Age. But the Edain of Beleriand would never have been able to overthrow Sauron.
The Dunedain of Arnor and Gondor defeated Sauron’s forces time and again, despite suffering grievous losses and losing both territory and strength in numbers. The Edain didn’t last much more than 150 years in Beleriand before they were nearly wiped out by Morgoth. The Dunedain of Arnor maintained their realms for almost 1,000 years against Angmar and survived until the end of the Third Age.
Gondor, of course, was still very powerful at the end of the Third Age – the most powerful of all Sauron’s enemies. The Edain of Beleriand achieved nothing like Gondor’s civilization.
I understand that in general the line from BOLT Balrogs to Fred is not a solid one for all the reasons mentioned. However, from a writing/literature point of view I would pull one item consistently through all versions: If you are wearing a physical form when you are fighting a Balrog, you may win, but you will die.
Ecthelion, Glorfindel, Gandalf.
I think that holds true whether there are 50 balrogs in M.E. or 2.
Well, except for the ones that were flame-wagons I guess. Or were those dragons?
The dragons in Book of Lost Tales were machines, or made of metal, or something like that. Not living creatures.
I am glad to hear that the last of the Balrogs is not an anonymous being anymore and has been identified as Fred! How did that happen? Well, there are claims that the Balrog, when he fully revealed himself, flapped his somewhat shady and fuzzy wings in synch with a strangely catching song with some pretty enigmatic lyrics: “Pleased to meet you, I hope you guess my name? But what’s puzzling you is the nature of my game!” Aragorn and Boromir clearly had no idea about the nature of the Balrog’s game, but Gandalf knew that the Balrog was out of their league and that Fred had not just invited them to another round of the popular Middle Earth guessing game “Riddles In The Dark”! And since Gandalf fought with the Balrog for 11 days, there must have been some lulls in between, which were used for a proper introduction. The question arises why Gandalf later never revealed the Balrog’s name! I can only speculate that Gandalf was not overly proud of having slain the last specimen of these formidable ancient creatures. And knowing that once upon a time he was called Fred by his loved ones, somehow makes it worse! It sounds much more acceptable to say: “I overcame the Flame of Udûn, who was Durin’s bane and a demon of the ancient world!” than acknowledging to have just killed Fred who happened to be the last surviving balrog! But it is good to know that Fred’s good name has been restored.
So Aragorn and Boromir could do little against Fred but Elandil and Gil Galad could kill ring wielding Suaron? How does that make sense?
reposting
Elendil was far superior to his descendant Aragorn in might, and it goes without saying that Gil Galad totally outclassed Boromir. Also, Elendil and Gil Galad both died against Sauron, and Gandalf probably knew that even if Aragorn could kill the Balrog before he died to it, Aragorn’s mission was meant to be elsewhere. But I think Sauron also made himself vulnerable to Elendil and Gil Galad. He chose a physical form, because I think some part of his burning anger wished to physically rip the Elves and Dunedain who defied him to pieces. He appeared after seven years of siege and seems to have assaulted Gil Galad with his bare hand. So, it seems to me that if he wanted to be in a form that could physically hit his attackers, they would also be able to hit back.
https://middle-earth.xenite.org/can-anyone-slay-a-Balrog-and-how-can-Balrogs-be-slain/
This article would suggest otherwise as well
My answer was provided in the context of the situation described in the Moria scene. The bridge was narrow and I don’t see how Aragorn and Boromir could have defeated the balrog there. Also, I don’t see swords slaying a creature in the form the balrog had taken.
I don’t know if this site allows outside links, but I’ll try. This song isn’t directly related to the article, but it is a good description of what would probably have been the result.
“Bashing the Balrog” by Leslie Fish