Q: What Happened to the Nazgûl When the One Ring Was Destroyed?
ANSWER: A reader submitted this question in January 2023:
Sauron has his ring cut by Isildur and it’s said by Gandalf [that] it has been many a year since the Nine have walked and if Sauron rises again, so shall they.
When the One Ring was destroyed, Sauron died and was maimed forever. (for a lack of a better term he was rendered comatose and unable to form a coherent thought from what I gathered from others and I think yourself).
The Ringwraiths deaths in the eruption of Mt Doom describe them as when caught in the ruin, cracked, withered and went out.
I am curious as to whether The Ringwraiths went to where men go, beyond the circles of the world or are they also rendered impotent spirits much like Sauron, unable to form coherent thoughts too?
The exact passage describing the end of the Ringwraiths reads thus:
A brief vision he had of swirling cloud, and in the midst of it towers and battlements, tall as hills, founded upon a mighty mountain-throne above immeasurable pits; great courts and dungeons, eyeless prisons sheer as cliffs, and gaping gates of steel and adamant: and then all passed. Towers fell and mountains slid; walls crumbled and melted, crashing down; vast spires of smoke and spouting steams went billowing up, up, until they toppled like an overwhelming wave, and its wild crest curled and came foaming down upon the land. And then at last over the miles between there came a rumble, rising to a deafening crash and roar; the earth shook, the plain heaved and cracked, and Orodruin reeled. Fire belched from its riven summit. The skies burst into thunder seared with lightning. Down like lashing whips fell a torrent of black rain. And into the heart of the storm, with a cry that pierced all other sounds, tearing the clouds asunder, the Nazgûl came, shooting like flaming bolts, as caught in the fiery ruin of hill and sky they crackled, withered, and went out.
The one immutable fact about them was that they were Men. Sauron could not alter their natures. Only Ilúvatar could do that, and he had only changed a person’s nature as a reward. Both Lúthien and Arwen chose to become mortal, and both Eärendil and Elwing had chosen to be of Elven kind.
So I think that in the end the Nazgûl’s spirits would indeed have departed from the Circles of the World (as Tolkien put it) and gone seeking elsewhere the way Men were destined to do.
One of the criticisms I’ve seen directed at Tolkien’s fiction is that he’s weak on theology, which I suppose is to be expected since he wasn’t writing allegory or inspirational fiction (as it’s now called). The lack of theological detail means we must extrapolate or imagine whatever we want to know about the fate of Men.
Of course, Tolkien said that The Lord of the Rings was a Christian (specifically Catholic) work of fiction, in that its values and background theology are meant to be consistent with his Christian/Catholic beliefs. So that must mean that the souls of the Nazgûl passed to whatever world the souls of all Men passed to. And there things get a little murky.
They had been enslaved to evil for thousands of years. Their own wills were suppressed by Sauron’s will. Does that mean they were not held responsible for their actions while deprived of free will? Or were they held accountable for the choices they made while fully alive?
I can’t provide a satisfactory answer to these questions.
Why Did the Nazgûl “Crackle, Wither, and [Go] Out”?
If they were only Men, what was with the crackling?
Maybe that was the release of whatever energy Sauron had bound them with. Or maybe it was due to the storm that erupted as Orodruin and Barad-dur were destroyed.
I infer from the “withered and went out” phrasing that they lost the last semblance of corporeality that their Rings or Sauron’s will had retained for them. Readers debate just how corporeal the Nazgûl remained. Apparently they were physical enough to ride horses, wear clothing, and feel the bite of Éowyn and Merry’s swords. But then they were faded enough that no ordinary person could see them.
I think the withering means their bodies finally faded completely. The “went out” means whatever energy was binding them or bound with them was released and dispersed, and so they became houseless spirits – true ghosts, as it were.
Did the Lord of the Nazgûl Truly Die?
Here is how J.R.R. Tolkien described his end:
‘Éowyn! Éowyn!’ cried Merry. Then tottering, struggling up, with her last strength she
drove her sword between crown and mantle, as the great shoulders bowed before her. The sword broke sparkling into many shards. The crown rolled away with a clang. Éowyn fell forward upon her fallen foe. But lo! the mantle and hauberk were empty. Shapeless they lay now on the ground, torn and tumbled; and a cry went up into the shuddering air, and faded to a shrill wailing, passing with the wind, a voice bodiless and thin that died, and was swallowed up, and was never heard again in that age of this world.
For some people this is enough. He was dead, truly dead, and not only merely dead, but so totally dead he could have left the world.
But then Frodo and Sam heard his spirit [maybe – see the comments below] pass overhead on its way to somewhere:
Crouched under a great boulder they sat facing back westward and did not speak for some time. Then Frodo breathed a sigh of relief. ‘It’s passed,’ he said. They stood up, and then they both stared in wonder. Away to their left, southward, against a sky that was turning grey, the peaks and high ridges of the great range began to appear dark and black, visible shapes. Light was growing behind them. Slowly it crept towards the North. There was battle far above in the high spaces of the air. The billowing clouds of Mordor were being driven back, their edges tattering as a wind out of the living world came up and swept the fumes and smokes towards the dark land of their home. Under the lifting skirts of the dreary canopy dim light leaked into Mordor like pale morning through the grimed window of a prison.
‘Look at it, Mr. Frodo!’ said Sam. ‘Look at it! The wind’s changed. Something’s happening. He’s not having it all his own way. His darkness is breaking up out in the world there. I wish I could see what is going on!’
It was the morning of the fifteenth of March, and over the Vale of Anduin the Sun was rising above the eastern shadow, and the south-west wind was blowing. Théoden lay dying on the Pelennor Fields.
As Frodo and Sam stood and gazed, the rim of light spread all along the line of the Ephel Dúath, and then they saw a shape, moving at a great speed out of the West, at first only a black speck against the glimmering strip above the mountain-tops, but growing, until it plunged like a bolt into the dark canopy and passed high above them. As it went it sent out a long shrill cry, the voice of a Nazgûl; but this cry no longer held any terror for them: it was a cry of woe and dismay, ill tidings for the Dark Tower. The Lord of the Ringwraiths had met his doom.
So what I find interesting about this passage is that Frodo and Sam saw the Lord of the Nazgûl. I mean, they literally saw his as a “black speck”.
Both Frodo and Sam had worn the Ring by this point, and Frodo had endured its torment for months. They had both grown spiritually, as Tolkien described it. And perhaps because they were in Mordor – approaching Sauron himself – the Ring was simply better able to bestow its perceptive ability upon them. Or maybe this was just a mistake in Tolkien’s writing and he didn’t think through the significance of the passage.
Either way, the Lord of the Nazgûl was no longer clothed. His raiment (“mantle and hauberk”) lay upon the battlefield.
So was the darkness – the “black speck” – the Lord of the Nazgûl’s soul, or was it the last remnant of his physical body? Sauron and the Ring were still intact at this point. Sauron’s will still bound at least 8 of the Nazgûl to the world.
Tolkien doesn’t say whether the Lord of the Nazgûl immediately departed from the world but I don’t think he did. I think he just became a wandering, wounded spirit, incapable of enacting Sauron’s intentions again. I think he would have required some final release from Sauron, and that apparently only happened when Sauron died again, too consumed by fury and disoriented to focus his will.
Conclusion
All we can do is speculate about when the Nazgûl would have “gone on” from the world. To some people it might seem reasonable that their spirits would remain trapped in the Circles of the World – perhaps awaiting the end of Time. Well, I can’t prove or disprove that.
But I don’t believe that would have been their fates. I think they went on once Sauron’s will was no longer strong enough to hold them back.
See also
Did the Nazgûl Have Physical Bodies?
Do the Nazgûl, Barrow-wights, and Dead Men of Dunharrow Have Physical Bodies?
Would the Nazgûl Have Been Immortal if Sauron Prevailed?
What Happened to the Nazgûl after Sauron Died?
How Was Sauron Able to Trap the Nazgûl in Middle-earth?
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I’ve always believed that the “black speck” that F&S see is one of the other Nazgul, racing to report to Sauron the “ill tidings” of the battle. This would corroborate Tolkien’s statement that the Lord of the Nazgul “was never heard again in that age of this world.”
The last sentence could have offered a little more clarity, in my opinion. I think the passage could be read either way, but I don’t see any significance to having one of the remaining Ringwraiths fly over Frodo and Sam’s head like that.
Tolkien gave so much detail for so many things it’s hard to get upset when he goes lightly on some things. That being said, I’m still upset he didn’t list all the Lords of Andúnië. 😉
I always read that paragraph as if the Nazgul were meteorites. They were racing towards Mt. Doom with all the speed the Fell Beasts could muster. But, the nearer to their goal, the more the power of Sauron was coming undone. Thus they physically burned up in the wrack of Mt Doom’s eruption. Cracking while being consumed with flame, until only the husk of the Fell Beast and their human remains withered and went out…(burnt out…nothing left to consume.) Finally crashing into the earth or even perhaps the sides of Mt Doom if they got that far.
When I first read that line that the LOTN “was never heard again in that age of this world”, I did idly wonder if that meant he was destined to make a comeback in some later age, either as a sidekick of a returning Sauron or as a menace in his own right. However, presumably his own Ring was destroyed or at least deactivated along with the One Ring, which would make recovery impossible as it did for Sauron. It seems clear that Tolkien intended the Nazgûl to be finally banished, and he wasn’t much interested in what happened to their “fear” – that was Iluvatar’s decision.
Tolkien’s considered to be weak on theology? Jeepers.
I think the theological standard by which some scholars judge his fiction is very different from that by which his supporters (in academia and the broader reading public) judge it. The mere lack of allegory is sufficient for many to dismiss the idea of LoTR having any theological value. I’m sure The Silmarillion receives a more accepting response from scholars, but some appear to go out of their ways to pretend that The Silmarillion doesn’t exist (or perhaps they consider it irrelevant due to its posthumous editing and publication).
Ultimately the Nazgul were still mortal men doomed to die, subject to the “Gift of Illuvatar”. The spirits of men upon the death of their bodies went to the Halls of Mandos to be judged before leaving Arda entirely. So I would assume that when the Ring was destroyed, the Nine failed, and what remained of their physical bodies were destroyed that their spirits went to the Halls of Mandos, were judged, and left Arda to whatever fate (presumably punishment) awaited them.
As to whether Frodo and Sam saw the Witch-King above them after his defeat is an interesting question. Like another poster above, i always have read that passage as one of the other Nazgul coming to report, but it is an interesting theory that Frodo and Sam saw the Witch-King’s spirit departing.
It’s not a hill I’ll die on. 🙂
If I thought about it at all, I always assumed that what Frodo and Sam heard was one of the other eight Nazgûl. However, I think it is possible to reconcile the line about the LOTN being “never heard again in that age of this world” with the idea that it’s his last despairing cry that Frodo and Sam hear above them in Mordor. Merry hears “a shrill wailing, passing with the wind, a voice bodiless and thin that died,” but it’s surely safe to assume that a disembodied spirit can move fairly fast. So it’s just feasible that Merry hears the same cry as Frodo and Sam do: it seems thinner to him because the fading Nazgûl is already far away, closer to Frodo and Sam’s location, a couple of hundred miles away (or however far it is from the Pelennor Field to Barad-dur). The question is, why would the Witch-king’s spirit fly to Barad-dur? Perhaps he had some idea that, even without the One Ring, Sauron could somehow save him from dissolution, but his residual strength wasn’t enough to get him back to base.
Martin, as always you ask some great questions.
When I initially read this passage, my first guess I believe was indeed that the Witch King’s disembodied spirit was flying back to Sauron in Barad-dur. I envisioned that the Nazgul’s nine rings were smaller versions of Sauron’s One Ring phylactery, nine small versions of Pandora’s box that Sauron kept because he literally possessed their spirits.
So, once disembodied, did their spirits return to the ring houses that Sauron originally contrived for them? And a related question: When they were disembodied (e.g. by the flood Elrond created), literally “houseless,” was it Sauron who had to spent energy to build new corporeal bodies for them?
With the Witch King’s spirit either destroyed or greatly reduced in potency, and now housed back in its original ring, could Sauron have doled this artifact out to another great but susceptible leader of men and sort of resurrected that evil spirit in a new fashion? Certainly, those nine rings were tainted with evil and could be assigned to new owners as Sauron saw fit–he created them, after all, and I assume could make room for new owners if necessary.
One question I’ve always had is why didn’t Sauron make many more of these artifacts to ensnare the many mortals his empire had contact with? Was the metal he needed to make them scarce? Could he ill afford to dissipate more of his innate power into small objects that didn’t confer huge gains in power back to him? I think we’ve established in these replies to Michael’s essays that his forges and foundries in Mt. Doom were very much active after he forged the Rings of Power. He seemed capable of making all kinds of fantastic stuff (he literally rebuilt the second version of Barad-dur as a fortress of adamant, which suggests an astounding amount of metalworks, in addition to stone masonry). And yet we also get odd details about scarcity: Sam tells us after his adventures in Cirith Ungol that the Mordor orcs’ gear wasn’t as well made as their Morgul compatriots’ stuff.
We’ll probably never know but it’s fun to speculate.
Perhaps, having poured an unclear portion of his own native strength into the One Ring, Sauron didn’t have enough left over to forge any extra rings AND run his empire. The way Tolkien depicts it, there were limits to any Maia’s power, including Sauron’s, and he couldn’t obtain any more once he had sealed some of it up in the Ring. Besides, he thought the One Ring controlling the others was all he needed.
After all, he didn’t make the Nine or the Seven – the Elves made them, admittedly with Sauron’s help. When he claimed them during his invasion of Eregion, it was like an intellectual property dispute (Celebrimbor: “we made them, they’re ours” –
Sauron: “Ah, but you couldn’t have made them without my formula” –
Celebrimbor: “But you posed as our friend and benefactor, now we know you’re a baddie so you can whistle for the rings”).
Once he had them, he “corrupted” them – Tolkien didn’t say how, we just have to accept that Sauron knew how to do it.
After he lost the One Ring, he still had enough mental muscle to dominate the Nazgûl and the Orcs, and he may have still had the skill to forge some extra Rings of Power, but without the One to help him dominate their keepers he may well have decided that he would be overstretched if he did make more. He had enough trouble combating powerful mentalities like Galadriel, Saruman and Denethor without trying to control anyone else directly.
Well stated as always, Martin. I continue to forget that the 9 weren’t devised entirely by Sauron’s hand. Do we know this to be certain? The elves needed Sauron’s Maia mind power to create their artifacts, but did Sauron need their help to create lesser rings designed to ensnare men, who were generally weaker willed?
I really agree with what you say here about Sauron only having a finite amount of power to “bottle” or disperse into external works, vessels, or even people to dominate. There were limits to his power, otherwise no resistance would have been possible. My hunch is there were fewer limits to his material creations when he had the resources and they didn’t involve any magic (e.g. building the Black Gate). For such projects, his mental design prowess alone would have been sufficient; his internal power wasn’t an endless wellspring. I imagine that conjuring the Great Plague or summoning weather patterns from great distances might have been very taxing phenomena for even such a great sorcerer to create and sustain.
Final thought: It was a fascinating idea suggested by Michael and others that the final showdown on the slopes of Barad-dur, in the War of the Last Alliance, may have had something to do with another magical project Sauron was working on in those forges–one that he did not want discovered or sabotaged. The One Ring obviously hadn’t helped sap the Last Alliance’s resolve or seduce any of their top leaders into some kind of act of treachery, mutiny, or abandonment.
So what was he building in there–a super-weapon of some kind? My mind wanders to the idea that Sauron could somehow pour most of his power into a geothermal retributive strike that would literally bring the volcano down on the Last Alliance’s army and the remnants of his own forces. All his chief enemies were in a single place, and combined with his inner power, the destructive power of Mt. Doom would have been awesome. Could he have held out in Barad-dur and survived? Because he burned with his own evil inner fire, it seems, would real lava have phased him much?
I’d love Michael’s thoughts on this–does it sort of cross over into revealing too much Maiaric destructive power? Since an active volcano is already naturally dangerous, it strikes me as an ideal doomsday device.
Haig, your question had me racing to the books, in case I was misremembering! It’s pretty clearly stated in the Silmarillion appendix “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age” that the Elves of Eregion cooked the Great Rings according to Sauron’s recipe, so to speak. Subsequently he tried to claim them on the basis that the Elves couldn’t have made them [more precisely, I suppose, couldn’t have incorporated so much power in them] without his help.
In summary, the Elves made an unknown number of “lesser rings” to start with (their fate is unknown), then nineteen Great Rings, including three particularly fine ones that Celebrimbor was able to spirit away, but there’s no way of telling from the published texts whether the other sixteen were identical, or if each was a unique creation. However, Saruman’s remark that the Great Rings all had their own special gems suggests that each was a unique item, so each may have had slight differences in amperage from the others. Maybe the one given to the Witch-King was a bit more powerful than the rest, so that’s how he became the leader of the Nazgûl?
Those gems, those gems…an inescapable part of Tolkien’s mythology (springing from the Silmarils, of course). Thanks for checking. So those other “great” rings, outside the 3, were then also created by the elves, with Sauron of course as their sort of “left hand mentor of darkness.” When he recovered the 7 and the 9, then, he clearly must have infused them with an evil taint because thereafter they became tools of seduction, mind control, and madness for the men and dwarves who “possessed” them.
A canonical Tolkien history of how and when Sauron distributed the 9 to mortal men would have been a fascinating work, even if it was only a series of tidbits and historical doggerel. Since these men were invariably great leaders, imagine the awe and eventual horror of their subjects when they arose to the apex of their power (aided by strange artifacts), but then simultaneously started to become more wraith-like and terrifying. Were these kings able to retain their hold on their original kingdoms and subjects, or were they forced to flee into the wilderness when they were eventually found out?
Was Sauron’s intention that they first found new realms of evil in Middle Earth, before he inexorably drew them back into the fold? I think this very likely, because a basic foundational part of Sauron’s kind of diabolism is to plant ideas in people’s heads so as they come to believe arrogantly that the ideas were theirs, wholly and original, from the start. Those kinds of servants must have been long-term works in progress, but all their roads inevitably lead to Barad-dur, simultaneously both in its service and as its perpetual prisoners.
Being neither a theologian nor a Catholic, I’m pretty rusty on such things, but I wonder if Tolkien’s idea was that the spirits of evil men (including the Nazgûl) had to do time in Purgatory before they went on to their next cycle of existence. Presumably the Halls of Mandos could have done duty as a purging place. Or maybe they just went straight into the void (Hell?) along with Morgoth, Sauron and the balrogs. Ilúvatar would have “got” that they were under Sauron’s spell and therefore not wholly responsible for their evil actions, but he might have concluded in the end that they had made a choice to follow the wrong path. We know from his blitzing of Numenor that there were limits to his compassion.