Where Do the Spiders of Mirkwood Come From?

Q: Where Do the Spiders of Mirkwood Come From?

ANSWER: The spiders of Mirkwood are probably the second most frightful and horrifying evil creatures Bilbo Baggins encounters on his journey, after Smaug. Although Tolkien made them look a bit silly in The Hobbit (to mitigate their terrifying nature for children), readers are treated to the full terror of a giant spider in Sam and Frodo’s encounter with Shelob in The Lord of the Rings. There we are told that Shelob (“She” + “Lob/spider”) is the mother of the spiders of Mirkwood, and that she herself is the last child of Ungoliant in the world.

Ungoliant was a primitive being (perhaps a fallen Maia in the view of some readers) who managed to inhabit a desolate part of Aman before the rebellion of the Noldor. Ungoliant took the form of a huge spider and she spun webs all across the vast region of Avathar, a coastland in southern Aman facing the sea of Belegaer. Ungoliant’s webs absorbed light, which she hated and fed upon, so Avathar was covered in darkness. None of the texts in which Tolkien writes about Ungoliant suggests that she had any children in Avathar.

Melkor was captured and imprisoned by the Valar after they discovered that the Elves had awakened and were being threatened by Melkor’s creatures. After he was released from his prison Melkor devised a plan to destroy the Two Trees of the Valar, which gave light to most of the land of Aman, and to steal the three Silmarils that Fëanor had made. The Silmarils contained the light of the Two Trees and had been made holy by Varda.

To execute his plan Melkor persuaded Ungoliant (with whom he had once been associated or allied) to accompany him into Valinor (that part of Aman where the Valar dwelt with the Maiar and many Elves). Melkor wounded the Two Trees with a spear and Ungoliant drained them of life. She also drank up all the pools of light that the Valar captured from the dew drops of the Two Trees.

Melkor and Ungoliant then fled north, going toward the Noldorin stronghold of Formenos, where Finwë (King of the Noldor) had taken up residence with Fëanor and his sons after the Valar banished Fëanor for drawing a sword upon his younger half-brother, Fingolfin. While Fëanor was attending the court of the Valar to formally conclude his punishment Melkor and Ungoliant attacked Formenos. They slew Finwë and stole all the jewels of the Noldorin lords, including the Silmarils.

As part of their bargain Melkor had promised to give Ungoliant anything she asked; he had also strengthened her by granting her part of his native power. When the two reached Middle-earth Ungoliant demanded all the treasures they had stolen from Formenos. Melkor reluctantly gave her all the lesser gems of the Noldor but when only the Silmarils were left and Ungoliant demanded those, too, Melkor refused to complete his part of the bargain.

Ungoliant then attacked Melkor but he cried out in such pain that his greatest servants, the Balrogs, flew up from Angband and attacked Ungoliant in their fiery forms, driving her away. Ungoliant fled to the Mountains of Dorthonion (north of the Sindarin kingdom of Doriath in Beleriand) and she settled for a time in the valley that was named Nan Dungortheb. There she mated with one or more (apparently large) spiders (most likely creatures bred by Melkor or one of his servants).

After a time Ungoliant fled south out of Beleriand and was presumed by the Elves to have eventually died of starvation, consumed by her own hatred for and hunger for light.

Of the giant spiders of Nan Dungortheb there is little told, although The Lord of the Rings says that Beren fought these great creatures after fleeing from his homeland in Dorthonion. Beren’s people (the House of Beor, the First House of the Edain) had been defeated in the great battle Dagor Bragollach; driven out of their homes, most of the Beorians fled to Hithlum. Barahir, father of Beren, had assumed the lordship of the Beorians and he led a rearguard defense while his wife, Emeldir, led their people south through Nan Dungortheb to the ancient road that ran from the Ered Luin in the east to the Sindarin cities of Brithombar and Eglarest on the western coast of Beleriand.

Barahir’s men dwindled through attrition in battle until he was left with only a few companions; from that point forward they were outlaws, refusing to leave their homeland but powerless to recapture it from Melkor’s forces (led at that time by Sauron, Melkor’s greatest lieutenant). In time Sauron captured one of Barahir’s men, Gorlim the Unhappy, and used him to find and kill all the outlaws. Only Beren survived, and he remained in Dorthonion for a few more years before Sauron’s search for him drove him in desperation to seek refuge in the south. Beren had to follow Emeldir’s path through Nan Dungortheb.

Of Beren and Shelob J.R.R. Tolkien had this to say about both in The Lord of the Rings:

There [in Cirith Ungol] agelong she had dwelt, an evil thing in spider-form, even such as once of old had lived in the Land of the Elves in the West that is now under the Sea, such as Beren fought in the Mountains of Terror in Doriath, and so came to Lúthien upon the green sward amid the hemlocks in the moonlight long ago. How Shelob came there, flying from ruin, no tale tells, for out of the Dark Years few tales have come. But still she was there, who was there before Sauron, and before the first stone of Barad-dûr; and she served none but herself, drinking the blood of Elves and Men, bloated and grown fat with endless brooding on her feasts, weaving webs of shadow; for all living things were her food, and her vomit darkness. Far and wide her lesser broods, bastards of the miserable mates, her own offspring, that she slew, spread from glen to glen, from the Ephel Dúath to the eastern hills, to Dol Guldur and the fastnesses of Mirkwood. But none could rival her, Shelob the Great, last child of Ungoliant to trouble the unhappy world.

Tolkien does not explain what “the eastern hills” were, but perhaps they were hills in Mordor. The migration of the great spiders from Mordor to Mirkwood would have been fairly simple.

We know that Greenwood the Great was once a clean, safe forest. It was only renamed Mirkwood after a shadow fell upon it around the Third Age year 1050. Presumably the great spiders were drawn to the forest by Sauron’s evil will; or maybe he had the Orcs bring some spiders north. Either way, it is almost certain that but for Sauron’s recovery from “death” in the Third Age and his decision to make a strongold at Amon Lanc in southern Greenwood there would have been no great spiders in the forest for Bilbo and the Dwarves to meet.

Over the next 1900 years the spiders gradually spread north through the forest until they threatened nearly all of its lands. Only Thranduil’s realm in the north and perhaps the areas near the Woodmen appear to have been relatively free of the spiders.

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