Does Turin Fight in the War of Wrath and Dagor Dagorath?

Q: Will Túrin Fight in Dagor Dagorath?

#tolkien #middleearth
ANSWER: This question was submitted by a reader in September 2021:

Can we assume that Túrin turambar fought both in the war of wrath and in dagor dagorath? Túrin fights in the war of wrath and slays the ancalagon. Then fights again against melkor in dagor dagorath?

Canonically? No. Hypothetically – if you want to imagine that.

The problem with questions about Dagor Dagorath (the “battle of battles”) is that it’s a pre-Lord of the Rings concept. It belongs to an earlier mythology which didn’t include Hobbits, Arnor and Gondor, and all that. The last volume of The History of Middle-earth in which there is any mention of the Dagor Dagorath or discussion of the Second Prophecy of Mandos is The Lost Road and Other Writings (volume V). (Christopher mentions the Second Prophecy in passing in The War of the Jewels.)

J.R.R. Tolkien never mentioned this event – or Túrin’s return – in any of his letters (that have been published or otherwise come to light), in The Lord of the Rings, in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, in The Road Goes Ever On, or in any of the post-LoTR texts Christopher Tolkien published in Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth.

All the angst Tolkien fans express over Túrin’s presumed eventual return from death and this “last battle on the plains of Valinor” are due to wilfull and deliberate misconstructions by a small coterie of people who insisted for years on conflating all of the History of Middle-earth texts into a single, impossible “legendarium” that combines everything they conveniently want to include and excludes the things that annoy them.

Dagor Dagorath Is A Thinly Veiled Ragnarok

The origin of this prophecy goes all the way back to The Book of Lost Tales, which when Tolkien worked on it (from about 1916/7 to 1923-ish) was intended to be a putative “lost mythology for England”. That fictional English mythology was heavily influenced by classical European mythology (Greek and Norse, mostly) and traditional English folklore (quite a bit of the latter, actually, at least in the mentions of pixies and faes and things).

In The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two in the section titled “VI. The History of Eriol or Aelfwine and the End of the Tales” Christopher Tolkien discusses his father’s various attempts to bring the story of Eriol’s time among the Elves to an end. Christopher explains that several stories alluded to in his father’s notes have been lost forever, and he mentions several times a “notebook C” from which he took an outline for the end of the Tales:

The conclusion of the whole story as originally envisaged was to be rejected in its entirety. For it we are very largely dependent on the outline in notebook C, continuing on from citation (1) above; this is extremely rough and disjointed, and is given here in a very slightly edited form.

(4) After the departure of Earendel and the coming of the Elves to Tol Eressea (and most of this belongs to the history of Men) great ages elapse; Men spread and thrive, and the Elves of the Great Lands fade. As Men’s stature grows theirs diminishes. Men and Elves were formerly of a size, though Men always larger.’

Melko again breaks away, by the aid of Tevildo (who in long ages gnaws his bonds); the Gods are in dissension about Men and Elves, some favouring the one and some the other. Melko goes to Tol Eressea and tries to stir up dissension among the Elves (between Gnomes and Solosimpi), who are in consternation and send to Valinor. No help comes, but Tulkas sends privily Telimektar (Taimonto) his son. Telimektar of the silver sword and Ingil surprise Melko and wound him, and he flees and climbs up the great Pine of Tavrobel.

Before the Inwir left Valinor Belaurin (Palurien)~ gave them a seed, and said that it must be guarded, for great tidings would one day come of its growth. But it was forgotten, and cast in the garden of Gilfanon, and a mighty pine arose that reached to Ilwe and the stars.’

Telimektar and Ingil pursue him, and they remain now in the sky to ward it, and Melko stalks high above the air seeking ever to do a hurt to the Sun and Moon and stars (eclipses, meteors). He is continually frustrated, but on his first attempt — saying that the Gods stole his fire for its making — he upset the Sun, so that Urwendi fell into the Sea, and the Ship fell near the ground, scorching regions of the Earth. The clarity of the Sun’s radiance has not been so great since, and something of magic has gone from it. Hence it is, and long has been, that the fairies dance and sing more sweetly and can the better be seen by the light of the Moon — because of the death of Urwendi.

The ‘Rekindling of the Magic Sun’ refers in part to the Trees and in part to Urwendi.

Fionwe’s rage and grief. In the end he will slay Melko. ‘Orion’ is only the image of Telimektar in the sky? [sic] Varda gave him stars, and he bears them aloft that the Gods may know he watches; he has diamonds on his sword-sheath, and this will go red when he draws his sword at the Great End.

But now Telimektar, and Gil~ who follows him like a Blue Bee, ward off evil, and Varda immediately replaces any stars that Melko loosens and casts down.

Although grieved at the Gods’ behest, the Pine is cut down; and Melko is thus now out of the world — but one day he will find a way back, and the last great uproars will begin before the Great End.

The evils that still happen come about in this wise. The Gods can cause things to enter the hearts of Men, but not of Elves (hence their difficult dealings in the old days of the Exile of the Gnomes) and though Melko sits without, gnawing his fingers and gazing in anger on the world, he can suggest evil to Men so inclined — but the lies he planted of old still grow and spread.

Hence Melko can now work hurt and damage and evil in the world only through Men, and he has more power and subtlety with Men than Manwe or any of the Gods, because of his long sojourn in the world and among Men.

At this point Christopher interjects with his own thoughts:

In these early chartings we are in a primitive mythology, with Melko reduced to a grotesque figure chased up a great pine-tree, which is thereupon cut down to keep him out of the world, where he ‘stalks high above the air’ or ‘sits without, gnawing his fingers’, and upsets the Sun-ship so that Urwendi falls into the Sea — and, most strangely, meets her death.

That Ingil (Gil) who with Telimektar pursues Melko is to be identified with Ingil son of Inwe who built Kortirion is certain and appears from several notes; see the Appendix on Names to Vol. I, entries Ingil, Telimektar. This is the fullest statement of the Orion-myth, which is referred to in the Tale of the Sun and Moon (see I. 182, 200): of Nielluin [Sirius] too, who is the Bee of Azure, Nielluin whom still may all men see in autumn or winter burning nigh the foot of Telimektar son of Tulkas whose tale is yet to tell.

I’ve cited all this to illustrate just how different The Book of Lost Tales was (and was meant to be) from the later mythology that evolved into the published Silmarillion. A little further on in his commentary, Christopher has this to say:

With the reference to Fionwe’s slaying of Melko ‘in the end’ cf. the end of The Hiding of Valinor (I. 219):

Fionwe Urion, son of Manwe, of love for Urwendi shall in the end be, Melko’s bane, and shall destroy the world to destroy his foe, and so shall all things then be rolled away.

Cf. also the Tale of Turambar, p. 116, where it is said that Turambar ‘shall stand beside Fionwe in the Great Wrack’. For the prophecies and hopes of the Elves concerning the Rekindling of the Magic Sun see pp.285 — 6.

The outline in C continues and concludes thus (again with some very slight and insignificant editing):

(5)

Longer ages elapse. Gilfanon is now the oldest and wisest Elf in Tol Eressea, but is not of the Inwir — hence Meril-i-Túrinqi is Lady of the Isle.

Eriol comes to Tol Eressea. Sojourns at Kortirion. Goes to Tavrobel to see Gilfanon, and sojourns in the house of a hundred chimneys — for this is the last condition of his drinking limpe. Gilfanon bids him write down all he has heard before he drinks.

Eriol drinks limpe. Gilfanon tells him of things to be; that in his mind (although the fairies hope not) he believes that Tol Eressea will become a dwelling of Men. Gilfanon also prophesies concerning the Great End, and of the Wrack of Things, and of Fionwe, Tulkas, and Melko and the last fight on the Plains of Valinor. Eriol ends his life at Tavrobel but in his last days is consumed with longing for the black cliffs of his shores, even as Meril said. The book lay untouched in the house of Gilfanon during many ages of Men.

I’ve taken all that from a very old text file and had to reformat it as I went along. It may not exactly resemble the published text of the book. This is essentially the earlier form of the “Second Prophecy of Mandos”. But there’s another revision (presented slightly further on in the book):

On the opposite page is written:

Were the Trees relit all the paths to Valinor would become clear to follow — and the Shadowy Seas open clear and free — Men as well as Elves would taste the blessedness of the Gods, and Mandos be emptied. This prophecy is clearly behind Vaire’s words to Eriol (I. 19 — 20): ‘… the Faring Forth, when if all goes well the roads through Arvalin to Valinor shall be thronged with the sons and daughters of Men.’

Since ‘the Sun and Moon will be recalled’ when the Two Trees give light again, it seems that here ‘the Rekindling of the Magic Sun’ (to which the toast was drunk in Mar Vanwa Tyalieva, I. 17, 65) refers to the relighting of the Trees. But in citation (4) above it is said that ‘the “Rekindling of the Magic Sun” refers in part to the Trees and in part to Urwendi’, while in the Tale of the Sun and Moon (I. 179) Yavanna seems to distinguish the two ideas:

‘Many things shall be done and come to pass, and the Gods grow old, and the Elves come nigh to fading, ere ye shall see the rekindling of these trees or the Magic Sun relit’, and the Gods knew not what she meant, speaking of the Magic Sun, nor did for a long while after.

Citation (xix) on p. 264 does not make the reference clear: Earendel ‘returns from the firmament ever and anon with Voronwe to Kor to see if the Magic Sun has been lit and the fairies have come back’; but in the following isolated note the Rekindling of the Magic Sun explicitly means the re-arising of Urwendi:

(7) Urwendi imprisoned by Moru (upset out of the boat by Melko and only the Moon has been magic since). The Faring Forth and the Battle of Erumani would release her and rekindle the Magic Sun.

This ‘upsetting’ of the Sun-ship by Melko and the loss of the Sun’s ‘magic’ is referred to also in (4), where it is added that Urwendi fell into the sea and met her ‘death’. In the tale of The Theft of Melko it is said (I. 151) that the cavern in which Melko met Ungweliant was the place where the Sun and Moon were imprisoned afterwards, for ‘the primeval spirit Moru’ was indeed Ungweliant (see I. 261). The Battle of Erumani is referred to also in (6), and is possibly to be identified with ‘the last fight on the plains of Valinor’ prophesied by Gilfanon in (5). But the last part In (5) we meet the conception of the dragging of Tol Eressea back eastwards across the Ocean to the geographical position of England — it becomes England (see I. 26); that the part which was torn off by Osse, the Isle of Iverin, is Ireland is explicitly stated in the Qenya dictionary. The promontory of Ros is perhaps Brittany.

Here also there is a clear definition of the ‘fading’ of the Elves, their physical diminution and increasing tenuity and transparency, so that of (5) shows that the Faring Forth came to nothing, and the prophecies were not fulfilled.

J.R.R. Tolkien abandoned all of these ideas, and most of what Christopher summarizes above (as he notes in his comments) was rejected or lost soon after it was composed. His father couldn’t finish the original mythology and in 1925 he began working on a new mythology, carrying forward some of the characters and plots but essentially abandoning the entire “mythology for England” concept. The elves and their mortal allies were transferred to a completely imaginary land and England was left behind.

The idea that Túrin would return to seek vengeance against Melko (not Melkor) in a “final battle” (the Dagor Dagorath) would survive another 10-12 years but it, too, was eventually abandoned. (In The War of the Jewels Christopher mentions that his father copied a section title from an old text forward, but never did anything afterward – and that was the last time J.R.R. Tolkien wrote anything concerning a “second prophecy of Mandos”.)

A few lost souls of fandom will tell you that, no, Tolkien resurrected these ideas in the 1950s after The Lord of the Rings was published. But that’s not so, according to Christopher Tolkien. He states that his father re-edited and in some cases copied old “Quenta Silmarillion” and other texts in preparation for what he hoped would be the final production of The Silmarillion, a book the publication of which had been rejected in the 1930s but which was now in demand thanks to references Tolkien dropped into The Lord of the Rings.

But the old Silmarillion mythology was incomplete and incompatible with the stories Tolkien had told in the second edition of The Hobbit (inadvertently – he merely suggested the book should be changed and his publisher took action without telling him) and the first edition of The Lord of the Rings.

And before Tolkien could truly begin to write a Silmarillion that was compatible with the published stories, he began writing new background stories to explain many things in The Lord of the Rings. At one point Tolkien began working on “a substantial history, developing in detail the summary accounts given in Appendix A to The Lord of the Rings“. I speculated in my essay “Middle-earth Revised, Again” (2002) that Tolkien may have been working on a “companion volume” to The Lord of the Rings late in his life. However, he never produced such a book, and the closest approximation we have for it is Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth (but we don’t know what a final companion volume would have looked like).

In any event, Tolkien became distracted by other needs. He began rewriting The Hobbit in 1960 to be more compatible with The Lord of the Rings, but he never finished that. And then he put together The Adventures of Tom Bombadil for his aunt, and then he compiled notes for Donald Swann’s musical interpretation of some of the songs of LoTR for The Road Goes Ever On, and then Ace Books published unauthorized editions of both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, so he had to revise them again to get the Third and Second editions out in the mid-1960s.

While Tolkien never abandoned the idea of writing The Silmarillion through all those years, he did abandon the idea of bringing Túrin back. He was even in doubt about whether he should provide a detailed prophecy about the end times, because Melkor/Morgoth was no longer a pagan god – he was now Satan. And The Bible has already told us how the future end battles will unfold. There is no mention of Túrin.

There’s just no point in imagining some reinvention of the scraps of notes with which The Book of Lost Tales ended. We don’t even have a coherent story to use as an inspiration. And when Christopher Tolkien compiled what became the published Silmarillion he only reluctantly drew upon any of The Book of Lost Tales texts. He regretted using much of that material for “The Fall of Gondolin”, eventually apologizing for excessive editorial intrusion.

So, to answer your question directly, NO. We cannot assume that Túrin fought in both the War of Wrath and the Dagor Dagorath. He didn’t even fight in the War of Wrath. He was dead and not coming back by that point in the published Silmarillion mythology. But if you prefer the earlier mythology to the one CJRT published, that’s perfectly fine, too. Somewhere in all those lost and abandoned texts, Túrin Turambar exacted vengeance for all the wrongs inflicted by Melko upon men.

See also

Did Tolkien Ever Use the Phrase “Mythology for England”?

Why Did Tolkien Leave Out the Second Prophecy of Mandos?

Can Melkor Ever Return?

Middle-earth Revised, Again

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Canon (Classic Essay)

# # #

Have you read our other Tolkien and Middle-earth Questions and Answers articles?

5

Click to Like