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Revision as of 17:39, 6 June 2024 editChiswick Chap (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users, Page movers, New page reviewers, Pending changes reviewers, Rollbackers296,071 edits Legacy: wl← Previous edit Revision as of 17:57, 6 June 2024 edit undoChiswick Chap (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users, Page movers, New page reviewers, Pending changes reviewers, Rollbackers296,071 edits Scyld Scefing, Ælfwine, and the Straight Road: Beowulf 48–52 (Porter 2008)Tag: harv-errorNext edit →
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] arrives in the world as a baby in a boat, with a sheaf of corn. 1891 painting by ] ]] ] arrives in the world as a baby in a boat, with a sheaf of corn. 1891 painting by ] ]]


'']'', an ] that Tolkien knew well, contains, among its ]es, its unexplained or problematic passages, a mention right at the start of ]. This, Shippey notes, has several odd features, making it the kind of thing that attracted Tolkien's interest. "Scefing" looks like a ], but can't be as Scyld's father isn't known. It could equally mean "with a sheaf", evidently a symbol. When Scyld dies, he is given a ship burial, being placed in a ship supplied with many gifts for his one-way journey into the afterlife. However, and uniquely for a Viking ship burial, the ship is not set on fire, so in practical terms the ship would certainly have been looted. The cosmology of this story is not explained, beyond the cryptic statement that "those" had sent Scyld as a baby into the world. Shippey asks who they were, and whether the ship was to sail into the West on a Lost Road to return to them. He suggests that Tolkien wondered exactly who they were, and that this could have prompted him to create the Valar to fill this gap in ''Beowulf'', just as he had invented his Elves, ]s, and ]s to fill other gaps in the poem.{{sfn|Shippey|2022|pp=166–180}} ] notes that ''Beowulf'' describes Scyld's funeral ship sailing on its own to its unknown harbour.{{sfn|Fimi|2007|pp=55–56}} '']'', an ] that Tolkien knew well, contains, among its ]es, its unexplained or problematic passages, a mention right at the start of ]. This, Shippey notes, has several odd features, making it the kind of thing that attracted Tolkien's interest. "Scefing" looks like a ], but can't be as Scyld's father isn't known. It could equally mean "with a sheaf", evidently a symbol. When Scyld dies, he is given a ship burial, being placed in a ship supplied with many gifts for his one-way journey into the afterlife. However, and uniquely for a Viking ship burial, the ship is not set on fire, so in practical terms the ship would certainly have been looted. The cosmology of this story is not explained, beyond the cryptic statement that "those" had sent Scyld as a baby into the world. Shippey asks who they were, and whether the ship was to sail into the West on a Lost Road to return to them. He suggests that Tolkien wondered exactly who they were, and that this could have prompted him to create the Valar to fill this gap in ''Beowulf'', just as he had invented his Elves, ]s, and ]s to fill other gaps in the poem.{{sfn|Shippey|2022|pp=166–180}} ] notes that ''Beowulf'' (lines 26–52) describes Scyld's funeral ship sailing on its own to its unknown harbour:{{sfn|Fimi|2007|pp=55–56}}

{| cellpadding=5 style="margin:1em auto;"
|+ The Scyldings let Scyld's funeral ship sail by itself back to whoever he came from
|-
! '']'' lines 48–52 !! John Porter's "literal" 1991 translation{{sfn|Porter|2008|pp=14–15}}
|-
| <poem>.................. / leton holm beran,
geafon on garsecg; / him wæs geomor sefa,
murnende mod. / Men ne cunnon
secgan to soðe, / selerædende,
hæleð under heofenum, / hwa þæm hlæste onfeng.</poem>
| <poem>.................. / they let sea carry,
gave to ocean; / in them was gloomy heart,
mourning mind. / Men not can
say for truth, / hall-counsellors,
heroes under heaven, who that cargo received.</poem>
|}


Further, Tolkien wrote a poem, "]" which touches on the Scyld Scefing theme. Sheave is the father of Beow ("]"), making him a corn-god. He is lost from his bed, but found again alive and well outside, recalling ]'s empty tomb and his being found alive, walking in a garden. The reign of King Sheave is described as "the Golden Years", linking him to ], who is also a Christ-figure. Tolkien makes the connection with the time-travellers and Elendil, by having the story of the Old Straight Road told by ] in the Anglo-Saxon ]'s hall.{{sfn|Shippey|2022|pp=166–180}} Further, Tolkien wrote a poem, "]" which touches on the Scyld Scefing theme. Sheave is the father of Beow ("]"), making him a corn-god. He is lost from his bed, but found again alive and well outside, recalling ]'s empty tomb and his being found alive, walking in a garden. The reign of King Sheave is described as "the Golden Years", linking him to ], who is also a Christ-figure. Tolkien makes the connection with the time-travellers and Elendil, by having the story of the Old Straight Road told by ] in the Anglo-Saxon ]'s hall.{{sfn|Shippey|2022|pp=166–180}}

Revision as of 17:57, 6 June 2024

The Old Straight Road or the "Lost Road" is J. R. R. Tolkien's conception, in his fantasy world of Arda, of the route that his Elves are able to follow to reach the earthly paradise of Valinor, realm of the godlike Valar. The Elves are immortal, but may grow weary of the world, and then sail across the Great Sea to reach Valinor. The men of Númenor are persuaded by Sauron, servant of the first Dark Lord Melkor, to attack Valinor to get the immortality they feel should be theirs. The Valar ask for help from the creator, Eru Ilúvatar. He destroys Númenor and its army, in the process reshaping Arda into a sphere, and separating it and its continent of Middle-earth from Valinor so that men can no longer reach it. But the Elves can still set sail from the shores of Middle-earth in ships, bound for Valinor: they sail into the Uttermost West, following the Old Straight Road.

Scholars have noted the importance of the theme to Tolkien, as he revisited it repeatedly. Possible inspirations for the theme include a novel by John Buchan, and a literary crux in Beowulf in the shape of the character Scyld Scefing. He arrives in the world as a baby in a boat filled with gifts, and he departs from it in a ship-burial, with the odd feature that the ship is not set on fire, as in the typical Viking ritual. The scholar Tom Shippey suggests that Tolkien may have imagined that Scyld is being sent back to the gods via the Straight Road, and that Tolkien perhaps created his Valar to explain that gap in Beowulf.

Narratives

The Silmarillion

Further information: Akallabêth
The Downfall of Númenor and the Changing of the World. The intervention of Eru Ilúvatar cataclysmically reshaped Arda into a sphere, removing Valinor from Arda, so that Men could no longer reach it. The Elves however could continue to follow the old straight road, sailing into the West from Middle-earth.

In the Second Age of Middle-earth, the godlike Valar give the island of Númenor, in the Great Sea to the West of Middle-earth, to the three loyal houses of Men who had aided the Elves in the war against him. Through the favour of the Valar, the Dúnedain were granted wisdom and power and longer life, beyond that of other Men. Indeed, the isle of Númenor lay closer to the Valar's earthly paradise of Valinor, on the continent of Aman, than to Middle-earth. The fall of Númenor came about through the influence of Sauron, the chief servant of the fallen Vala Melkor, who wished to conquer Middle-earth.

The Númenóreans took Sauron prisoner. He quickly enthralled their king, Ar-Pharazôn, urging him to seek the immortality that the Valar had apparently denied him. Sauron persuaded them to wage war against the Valar to seize the immortality denied them. Ar-Pharazôn raised the mightiest army and fleet Númenor had ever seen, and sailed to Valinor. The Valar called on the creator, Ilúvatar, for help. When Ar-Pharazôn landed, Ilúvatar destroyed his forces and sent a great wave to submerge Númenor, killing all but those Númenóreans who had remained loyal to the Valar. The world was remade, and Aman was removed beyond the Uttermost West, so that Men could not sail there to threaten it.

The Elves, however, can still sail into the "Uttermost West", on what to Men is the lost road to Valinor; Cirdan the Shipwright, at the Grey Havens of Lindon, still builds ships in the Third Age for Elves who wish to leave Middle-earth.

Sauron's physical form was destroyed. The loyal Númenóreans, led by Elendil, escaped by ship to Middle-earth.

Two unfinished time travel novels

Further information: Time in Tolkien's fiction

Tolkien made two attempts at a time travel novel, both remaining unfinished: first in the 1936 The Lost Road, and then in 1945 The Notion Club Papers. In both of them, he provides a frame story in which a father-and-son pair of modern Englishmen visit past times in dreams, successively going further back until they reach Númenor and discover the story of the lost road. In each case, one of the time travellers has a name which means "Elf-friend", tying him directly to the loyal Númenórean Elendil, whose name has the same meaning in the classical Elf-language, Quenya.

Time-travelling frame story characters with the periods they visit
Period Second Age
Over 9,000 years ago
Lombards
(568–774)
Anglo-Saxons
(c. 450–1066)
England
20th century
Language
of names
Quenya (in Númenor) Germanic Old English Modern English Meaning
of names
Character 1 Elendil Alboin Ælfwine Alwin Elf-friend
Character 2 Herendil Audoin Eadwine Edwin Bliss-friend
Character 3 Valandil ("Valar-friend") ——— Oswine Oswin, cf. Oswald God-friend

Analysis

Cosmology

Further information: Cosmology of Tolkien's legendarium

In Tolkien's conception, Arda was created specifically as the place for Elves and Men to live in. It is envisaged in a flat Earth cosmology, with the stars, and later also the sun and moon, revolving around it. Tolkien's legendarium addresses the spherical Earth paradigm by depicting a catastrophic transition from a flat to a spherical world, the Akallabêth, in which Valinor becomes inaccessible to mortal Men. All that is left is the memory of the old straight road, or the tale of the Elves able to travel by it. When Men die, they leave the world of Arda entirely, perhaps to go to a heaven. Elves, on the other hand, cannot leave "the circles of the world", and are constrained to go to Valinor, or, if they die in battle, to the Halls of Mandos, from where they may be allowed to return to Valinor.

Fates of Elves and Men in Tolkien's legendarium. Elves are immortal, but may grow weary of Middle-earth, and follow the Old Straight Road into the Uttermost West to reach Valinor. Men are mortal, and when they die they go beyond the circles of the world, even the Elves not knowing where that might be.

Major theme

Because of the evil implanted by Sauron in the minds of the men of Númenor, the world became bent, so men could no longer sail the Straight Road westwards to Valinor. Tom Shippey writes that Tolkien's personal war experience was Manichean: evil seemed at least as powerful as good, and could easily have been victorious, a strand which can also be seen in Middle-earth.

The image of the Straight Road was, Shippey writes, evidently important to Tolkien, as he revisited it repeatedly in his legendarium. The two time travel novels both foundered on the problem that while they made perfect sense to him as frame stories, which he worked out in some detail, this was at the expense of their actual narratives, which he never got around to writing.

Verlyn Flieger writes that Tolkien's essay "Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics", his "On Fairy-Stories", and The Lost Road all indicate his "desire to pass through that open door into Other Time." She adds that The Lost Road illustrated his "vision of the lost paradise and the longing to return to it" which "became a more and more powerful element in his later fiction", forming eventually the "underpinning" of The Lord of the Rings.

Among the possible inspirations for this is John Buchan's 1921 novel The Path of the King. It tells of how Abraham Lincoln inherits a ring that had once been owned by a King of the Vikings; he loses the ring, which is all right as the old story is over. Tolkien stated that he much liked Buchan's stories.

Scyld Scefing, Ælfwine, and the Straight Road

Scyld Scefing arrives in the world as a baby in a boat, with a sheaf of corn. 1891 painting by Herman Siegumfeldt

Beowulf, an Anglo-Saxon poem that Tolkien knew well, contains, among its cruxes, its unexplained or problematic passages, a mention right at the start of Scyld Scefing. This, Shippey notes, has several odd features, making it the kind of thing that attracted Tolkien's interest. "Scefing" looks like a patronymic, but can't be as Scyld's father isn't known. It could equally mean "with a sheaf", evidently a symbol. When Scyld dies, he is given a ship burial, being placed in a ship supplied with many gifts for his one-way journey into the afterlife. However, and uniquely for a Viking ship burial, the ship is not set on fire, so in practical terms the ship would certainly have been looted. The cosmology of this story is not explained, beyond the cryptic statement that "those" had sent Scyld as a baby into the world. Shippey asks who they were, and whether the ship was to sail into the West on a Lost Road to return to them. He suggests that Tolkien wondered exactly who they were, and that this could have prompted him to create the Valar to fill this gap in Beowulf, just as he had invented his Elves, Ents, and Orcs to fill other gaps in the poem. Dimitra Fimi notes that Beowulf (lines 26–52) describes Scyld's funeral ship sailing on its own to its unknown harbour:

The Scyldings let Scyld's funeral ship sail by itself back to whoever he came from
Beowulf lines 48–52 John Porter's "literal" 1991 translation

.................. / leton holm beran,
geafon on garsecg; / him wæs geomor sefa,
murnende mod. / Men ne cunnon
secgan to soðe, / selerædende,
hæleð under heofenum, / hwa þæm hlæste onfeng.

.................. / they let sea carry,
gave to ocean; / in them was gloomy heart,
mourning mind. / Men not can
say for truth, / hall-counsellors,
heroes under heaven, who that cargo received.

Further, Tolkien wrote a poem, "King Sheave" which touches on the Scyld Scefing theme. Sheave is the father of Beow ("Barley"), making him a corn-god. He is lost from his bed, but found again alive and well outside, recalling Christ's empty tomb and his being found alive, walking in a garden. The reign of King Sheave is described as "the Golden Years", linking him to Fróði, who is also a Christ-figure. Tolkien makes the connection with the time-travellers and Elendil, by having the story of the Old Straight Road told by Ælfwine in the Anglo-Saxon King Alfred's hall.

Fimi comments that Tolkien seemed to be intending to use his translation of the Anglo-Saxon poem "The Seafarer" to express "Ælfwine's desire to sail upon the western sea and find the 'Straight Road', the 'Lost Road' that leads to Valinor and the Elves even after the world is 'bent'." She was surprised that Tolkien apparently linked "Ælfwine's voyage to the West with the immram genre of Irish tradition and specifically with the voyage of St. Brendan, which Tolkien was to use again in his later writings." All the same, she notes the parallels between "the Western happy otherworld island and the geography and function of Valinor", commenting that the Celtic otherworld derives from the earthly paradise, the Garden of Eden, of the Bible.

Legacy

Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea series has been described as directly influenced by Tolkien. The Tolkien scholar David Bratman writes that there is a recurring theme of locale in her fantasy stories, especially in her 1985 novel Always Coming Home. In that work, she named a path which roughly tracks California highway 29 as "The Old Straight Road". Bratman states that the story conveys "a sense of a mythology" of the region.

References

  1. ^ Shippey 2005, pp. 324–328.
  2. ^ Tolkien 1977, Akallabêth
  3. Tolkien 1977, ch. 20 "Of the Fifth Battle: Nirnaeth Arnoediad".
  4. Tolkien 1977, "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age".
  5. Tolkien 1987.
  6. Tolkien 1992.
  7. ^ Shippey 2005, pp. 336–337.
  8. Bolintineanu 2013, "Arda".
  9. Shippey 2005, pp. 269–272.
  10. Shippey 2005, pp. 169–170.
  11. ^ Shippey 2022, pp. 166–180.
  12. ^ Flieger 2001, p. 19.
  13. ^ Fimi 2007, pp. 55–56.
  14. Porter 2008, pp. 14–15. sfn error: no target: CITEREFPorter2008 (help)
  15. Roberts 2013, p. 19.
  16. Bernardo & Murphy 2006, pp. 92–93.
  17. Bratman 2021.

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