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noWizardme
Half-elven
May 1 2015, 2:24pm
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A tricky passage, and two deaths, in Children of Hurin - do Norse ideas of fate help?
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There's a passage in Children of Hurin in which Turin Turambar sets off with two companions on a dangerous expedition to try to kill the dragon Glaurung. Turambar's companions are Dorlas and Hunthor. To reach the dragon, they must make a perilous downwards climb. Dorlas is afraid, and turns back. Hunthor and Turambar go on, but Hunthor is killed by a falling rock, so that Turambar must go on to fight the dragon alone. Later, Dorlas is found hiding in the bushes, and gets into an argument with another character, Brandir. Brandir is incensed that Dorlas first deserted his companions, and then did not even bring tidings to the others (because in the absence of news, other characters have set out to find out what was happening, and have come to grief). The argument becomes a fight, and Brandir kills Dorlas.
This all seems (in my reading) to be to do with the forces of fate, doom and luck that swirl around Turin Turambar, But I've found it hard to come up with a satisfactory explanation for the fates of Dorlas and Hunthor. Dorlas clearly does the wrong thing, Hunthor does the right thing, but they both end up dead, dying seemingly meaningless deaths
The simplest reading is rather bleak - it doesn't matter what you do, we're all doomed. But this seems at odds with the story (let alone with the hope-filled Lord Of The Rings!)
Another reading is that Turambar is to tackle the dragon alone (he soliloquises as much when Hunthor dies) and Hunthor and Dorlas are mere collateral damage in Turambar's fate. That also seems a bit grim.
But recently I came across a page about Norse concepts of honour and of fate, which might help. It might be relevant because I read that Children of Hurin is much influenced by Norse sagas.
This is the what I read about Norse beliefs on the timing of someone's death:
Two other beliefs influenced the behavior of Viking-age people: fate and luck. The Norse myths say that when a baby is born, the three Nornar (women of destiny, left) choose the moment of its death. The Norse people believed that while nothing else in life was predetermined, no man could live past the moment chosen for him by the Nornar. Nothing could change that time, regardless of whether a person stayed at home in bed, or went out on bold adventures. Since there was nothing to lose and everything to gain by being venturesome, Norse people tended to be bold and daring, seeking out ways to increase honor and enhance their good names. Honor, Dueling, and Drengskapr in the Viking Age http://www.hurstwic.org/...ety/text/drengur.htm
We are used to real and fictional people weighing up the chances of their survival as part of deciding what to do in a perilous situation. But if you believed that you were unavoidably going to die on a particular day, then the risk of death becomes moot. Either today is Death Day, or it is not.
To use this idea in Children of Hurin, we'd need to assume that Hunthor and Dorlas were both slated to die that day. That Hunthor did the honourable thing and Dorlas did the cowardly thing did not affect this. But they could each make decisions that affected the manner of their dying.
What do you think - does this idea help?
~~~~~~
"nowimë I am in the West, Furincurunir to the Dwarves (or at least, to their best friend) and by other names in other lands. Mostly they just say 'Oh no it's him - look busy!' "
Or "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!"
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
May 1 2015, 2:49pm
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We know that Tolkien was influenced by Nordic legends
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The Song of Eru can be partially connected to fate even if not directly to the Norns. The Children of Iluvatar do possess free will and the ability to forge their own destinies (perhaps moreso for Men). However there does seem to be an element of destiny in the Music of the Ainur; the actions of Men and Elves and Dwarves can affect their destiny but may not be able to completely override it.
"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." - Phantom F. Harlock
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squire
Half-elven
May 1 2015, 6:15pm
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I don't know enough about the mythology end to comment intelligently - I've heard of the three Norns, but I always thought they were more closely linked to the classical Fates in weaving a person's life as a combination of free will and predestination. I didn't know that the Norsemen believed the Norns granted them an inevitable Death Day which led their heroes to act fearlessly under the logic of 'today I either must die or cannot die', or when you're gonna go, you're gonna go.
However, as far as Tolkien's fiction is concerned, and fiction in general, I should think any hint of such rigid predestination would be fatal to the suspense about outcome that makes any plot engaging. Tolkien isn't really writing mythology, he's writing romance in mythological clothing. I think he wants his reader to assume a character in danger could die or not based on effort, luck, etc. rather than because his time has come that day, as was written in stone decades earlier by the gods.
In the Turin story, I happen to think the moral really is 'we're all doomed' - cheerless, as you say, and not in line (not completely, anyway) with The Lord of the Rings. It's a depressing tale, and it's meant to be depressing by contrast with the parallel story of Tuor.
Finally, although I'm sure Tolkien knew all about the Norse world-view, how much of the Turin story preserves its tone and outlook from its source in the Tale of Kullervo in the Finnish Kalevala? Did the Finns have the same perception of inevitable fate as the Norse?
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oliphaunt
Lorien
May 1 2015, 8:28pm
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When Hunthor and Dorlas made the free choice to follow Turin, did they become joined to and victims of his doom? They were not the first to follow Turin and die. Turin is a desirable leader because of his charisma, but a dangerous one because of his curse. For me, Dorlas's death ended my sympathy for Brandir. But then, Brandir was enmeshed in Turin's doom as well.
Let's not despair, and remember that Men have a fate beyond the circles of the world!
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CuriousG
Half-elven
May 3 2015, 11:36pm
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I guess my own view of the Turin story is that most people who come into contact with him had a bad fate, so Hunthor and Dorlas went along with Beleg, Finrod, Nienor, Finduilas, etc. Turin was like a toxic cloud of doom.
That's interesting that people took fate so literally, that your Death Day really was fixed. I guess in the modern age, it seems that "fate" is usually said after the fact. Something happens, and people say it was meant to be. Someone dies, and people say it's because of the way they led their life. There's less conviction about the future, such as, "I'm sure I'm going to die on March 28th, 2020."
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Morthoron
Gondor
May 13 2015, 12:43pm
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Wyrd is cognate with the Norse urðr (personalized as one of the feminine Norns) and deals with ørlog (fate, as seen in the Völuspá ), which is certainly something that Tolkien was intimately aware of, as it played a part in many of the great Anglo-Saxon poems he translated. Tolkien uses the word "doom" in place of "wyrd", but they are interchangeable, and it is evident that he was drawing from his expertise in not only Anglo-Saxon literature but in the use of the Kalevala as the structural basis of Turin. The Kalevala places a heavy emphasis on fate or doom as well.
In regards to the uses of the word "wyrd" in Anglo-Saxon literature, we find that such a fate is relentless and cruel. Hunthor's death is merely collateral damage to Turin's overarching doom:
"Wyrd bið ful aræd" ("Fate remains wholly inexorable").
" She (Wyrd) snatches the earls away from the joys of life..."
"...the wearied mind of man cannot withstand her (Wyrd)." -- From The Wanderer.
"Gæð a wyrd swa hio scel!" ("Fate goes ever as she shall!"). - From Beowulf
P.S. It is not coincidence that the three witches in the first scene of Shakespeare's Hamlet are referred to as the "Weird Sisters".
Please visit my blog...The Dark Elf File...a slighty skewed journal of music and literary comment, fan-fiction and interminable essays.
(This post was edited by Morthoron on May 13 2015, 12:57pm)
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