Did the Knights of Dol Amroth Fight With Lances?

Q: Did the Knights of Dol Amroth Fight With Lances?

ANSWER: There is an old saying in Middle-earth: “Elves fight with lances, Men with spears”.

Okay, I made that up. The discussion of lance versus spear is a very complex topic when it comes to assessing J.R.R. Tolkien’s fiction. On the one hand, lance entered English from the French and German usage, but linguists are not entirely sure of where the word comes from. The Online Etymology Dictionary suggests that the word may be of Celtiberian origin, borrowed into Latin as lancea. The lancea was a “light spear”.

A light spear doesn’t sound very much like the late medieval lance that armored knights used for jousting. Nor does it sound much like the very long spears used by the steppe peoples who rode into European history and trod down Roman and medieval armies. One can imagine a rather colorful blend of events that must have led people to confuse the light spears of pre-Moor Iberia with the long spears used by the cavalry forces of the eastern steppe-lands.

Not that it matters a great deal, but it’s possible that the Visigoths brought about the change in meaning; the Goths settled in the steppe-lands of what is now western Russia (eastern Europe) from the shores of the Baltic sea south to the Crimean peninsula on the Black Sea, probably between 100 CE and 200 CE. They established one or more large, powerful kingdoms in those lands that lasted until the Huns overran them in the 300s. Gothic history became very complicated after that point.

Some Goths remained with the Huns, eventually following them into western Europe. Of these eastern Goths, there are historical traces all the way down to the 16th century and very probably their descendants still live in and/or near Crimea today.

The western Goths became divided into two peoples, each with their own kings. The first of these groups entered the Roman Empire in the late 300s seeking refuge and protection from the Huns. These people became known to history as the Visigoths (West Goths) and their greatest king was Alaric, rebelled against the empire and eventually sacked Rome but he died before he was able to fulfill his promise to his people of finding a homeland. The Emperor Honorius bestowed much of Gaul on the Visigoths, where they settled until the Franks drove them south into Iberia.

The second group of “western” Goths became known to history as the Ostrogoths (East Goths). The Ostrogoths eventually conquered Italy and took it as their own kingdom, but they did not last very long. Still, many Italian people today can probably claim descent from Ostrogoths (along with many other German tribes that settled in Italy or from whom mercenaries and slaves who later settled in Italy were drawn).

The Franks, under their ferocious king Clovis, drove the Visigoths into Iberia around 507 CE. After a brief regency under Theodoric the Great, the Ostrogothic king in Italy, the Visigoths achieved independence under their own king Amalaric in 526 CE. They gradually gained control over the entire peninsula and remained in firm control until the year 711, when Roderic (the last king of the old Visigothic dynasty) was defeated by the invading Umayyads from northern Africa.

The Visigoths are believed to have retained their steppe warfare traditions for at least several generations, and even by Roderic’s time Visigothic cavalry was still considered to be formidable. The Umayyads completed their invasion partly due to treachery by some Visigothic nobles and also because Roderic was slain in battle.

So why is this discussion of Goths, Visigoths, and Ostrogoths so important to the question of whether the Knights of Dol Amroth fought with lances? Technically, it’s hard to understand such a connection but in ages past when I fought in the Wars of Beleriand — that is, many years ago during a rather long-winded and hyper-extended online debate — some Tolkien readers argued strenuously that the Knights of Dol Amroth MUST have used lances because “they were medieval knights” (technically, they argued many rather convoluted points which I have chosen to boil down to this one silly statement because I’m really only interested in addressing ONE specific question: Did the Knights of Dol Amroth fight with lances?). Not that J.R.R. Tolkien ever said any such thing himself. What follows is a lightly glossed, glibly stitched, completely non-representative bounce around the debate in which I pluck points at random for entertainment purposes.

In perusing the books I was unable to find any examples of mounted warriors using lances, although the Rohirrim used spears. In fact, according to one passage in The Lord of the Rings the Rohirrim used “long spears”:

Then Théoden was aware of him, and would not wait for his onset, but crying to Snowmane he charged headlong to greet him. Great was the clash of their meeting. But the white fury of the Northmen burned the hotter, and more skilled was their knighthood with long spears and bitter. Fewer were they but they clove through the Southrons like a fire-bolt in a forest. Right through the press drove Théoden Thengel’s son, and his spear was shivered as he threw down their chieftain. Out swept his sword, and he spurred to the standard, hewed staff and bearer; and the black serpent foundered. Then all that was left unslain of their cavalry turned and fled far away.

“Well, there you have it!” I was told. “The Rohirrim are referred to as knights and they are fighting with long spears (i.e., lances)”. Hence, therefore, ergo cog sum ignito, The Knights of Dol Amroth might have been using lances, too.

I swear, I cannot possibly make up this stuff. The chain of ill-logic becomes much longer and more grossly extended than I can possibly do justice to, but suffice to say that no one was ever able to produce any shred of proof that any soldier from Dol Amroth carried a lance. Prince Imrahil wore a burnished vambrace, but vambraces could be made from either leather or metal and therefore we don’t know if Imrahil was wearing chain mail (which is the only type of armor Tolkien ever mentions in the book) with a leather vambrace or if he was leaping from the saddle in a full or half-suit of plate armor to test Eowyn’s breath. The argument was supposed to assure us (somehow) that if Imrahil were shown to be wearing plate armor then he MUST have had a trusty lance by his side (however, his erstwhile squire is not even mentioned in The History of The Lord of the Rings).

The chain mail-wearing Eomer, as it turns out, does have an esquire who accompanies him to the rear of his company when they are overtaken by Halbarad and the Rangers of Eriador after leaving Isengard. Theoden appoints Meriadoc as his esquire and Denethor appoints Peregrin Took to replace the esquire of his own chambers. With all these esquires running around, it must be clear that all the knights are wearing suits of armor and fighting with lances, right? For those who are curious, an esquire or squire was a shield-bearer, but the usage of the word changed over time.

Well, by this point in the discussion we have yet to determine if Tolkien even used the word lance, which he actually did — in one passage. I checked The Silmarillion, The Children of Hurin, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and and Unfinished Tales. I even glanced through The Adventures of Tom Bombdil for good measure. The only place where I can find Tolkien using “lance” is in the poem about Gil-galad:

Gil-galad was an Elven-king.
Of him the harpers sadly sing:
the last whose realm was fair and free
between the Mountains and the Sea.

His sword was long, his lance was keen,
his shining helm afar was seen;
the countless stars of heaven’s field
were mirrored in his silver shield.

But long ago he rode away,
and where he dwelleth none can say;
for into darkness fell his star
in Mordor where the shadows are.

Gil-galad’s lance was quite famous, for it was named Aiglos according to Elrond:

`I was the herald of Gil-galad and marched with his host. I was at the Battle of Dagorlad before the Black Gate of Mordor, where we had the mastery: for the Spear of Gil-galad and the Sword of Elendil, Aiglos and Narsil, none could withstand. I beheld the last combat on the slopes of Orodruin, where Gil-galad died, and Elendil fell, and Narsil broke beneath him; but Sauron himself was overthrown, and Isildur cut the Ring from his hand with the hilt-shard of his father’s sword, and took it for his own.’

Hence, my little joke starting this article: “Elves fight with lances, Men with spears”.

There are relatively few references to spearmen in the Tolkien stories, although Thranduil has a thousand Elven warriors who fought with spears in The Hobbit. Most of the soldiers and warriors fight with swords or bows, but you can find some references to spearmen — almost all fighting on foot. The Rohirrim can fight on foot or on horseback. When mounted they prefer to charge with their spears first and then they fall back on swords. That style suits all manner of ancient cavalry from Persians to Macedonians to Scythians to Goths to medieval knights.

So why did Tolkien prefer to use the word “spear” over “lance”? I have speculated it may have something to do with the fact that lance appears to have been borrowed into English from the French language (regardless of where the French obtained it). Spear is a good, old-fashioned Germano-Latin-Indo-European word. Tolkien seems to have preferred to use words with English roots to their French equivalents. In fact, the word knight comes down from Old English (and older German) meaning “servant, vassal” sometimes even a young servant. Rider is cognate with old German Ritter, a “knight”.

And the Rohirrim called themselves the Riders of the Mark — essentially, the “Border Knights”. Not all fighting Rohirrim were Riders, by the way — there were many fighting men of the Mark who supported the Riders, whose total number was fixed at 12,000 in Theoden’s time (and according to Unfinished Tales there were even more men in Rohan who had been trained and served as Riders — so the Muster of Rohan is not some hereditary body of courtly knights from the Middle Ages).

And what does all this have to do with the Knights of Dol Amroth? Well, that’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? Tolkien devoted a great deal of time and thought and writing to explaining (and perhaps understanding) the nomenclature and culture of Rohan but he didn’t invest much of anything into the Knights of Dol Amroth. Hence, some readers extend their interpretations of Tolkien’s Rohirric nomenclature and associations to the Knights of Dol Amroth (who were accompanied by 700 men-at-arms so they must have been medieval knights in shining armor carrying lances).

The long and short of all this, really, is that Tolkien did not specifically say that the Knights of Dol Amroth fought in the same fashion as the Rohirrim or that they fought with spears (or lances); and that we cannot exclude some deeper philological meaning from Tolkien’s diction. He chose his words carefully and for his own purposes.

No one is going to stop you from saying that the Knights of Dol Amroth could have fought with spears or lances but there is no text in the published Tolkien works that will support such a conclusion. The argument built upon drawing connections where Tolkien did not make them is rather unconvincing to me but it elicits great passion from some other people.

Tolkien’s expression of knighthood among the Rohirrim is rather unique and distinct, whereas his use of the word knight to describe certain types of Numenorean soldiers (Isildur was also accompanied by knights who marched to their death in the Vales of Anduin) is vague and ambiguous. He may not have fully developed the concept and so it leaves us puzzled and divided. Inigo Montoya could easily have said to Tolkien, “You keep using that word. I do not thin’ it means what you thin’ it means.”

Tolkien might have agreed with him — or he might have written an essay that explained everything cogently. Unfortunately, Inigo never prompted Tolkien to take such action, and so we are left with questions, lexical arguments, and disparate opinions on the significance of Tolkien’s choice of words.

As for me, I finally came to the conclusion that Elves fight with lances, Men fight with spears, and if that doesn’t make it clear enough to your satisfaction then I’m afraid I have no idea of what will.

See also:

• Was Imrahil’s Vambrace Made of Metal?
• What Kind of Armor did Tolkien’s Dwarves Use?
• How Did Tolkien Envision Gondorian Armor?

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