Links Between The Silmarillion and The Hobbit

An Addendum

(avg. read time: 5–9 mins.)

In our recently concluded series, we reviewed the many links Tolkien made between The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, a work he intended to publish as a companion volume, but this proved unpopular with the prospective and actual publishers. Of course, Tolkien worked on the stories of The Silmarillion long before he had any ideas for LOTR or The Hobbit before it. Thus, it is unsurprising that we see links to The Silmarillion even in Tolkien’s work from 1937 before he came up with the work that was supposed to provide the framework to connect them more extensively. As a supplement to the recent series, I go over the fewer, but still notable, links to The Silmarillion in The Hobbit. As with the LOTR series, the references will be by chapter number, as there as so many editions and differences in pagination that it is better, as Tolkien scholarship has long recognized, to give references by chapter than by page number.

As with LOTR, there are a few characters that serve as living links between The Silmarillion and The Hobbit. They are not as numerously named, but the White Council includes individuals who appear in both works (such as Galadriel and Saruman). Radagast, referenced only once in this book in conversation with Beorn, is not mentioned by name in The Silmarillion, but he was one of the five Istari whose coming to Middle-earth is noted in that work. The Necromancer, the name Sauron goes by in this book, is a rather obvious link between the two, as is the Ring Bilbo finds. Otherwise, the major living links between these texts who are named are Elrond and Gandalf.

The first links Tolkien makes appear in chapter 2, “Roast Mutton.” After the Trolls have been turned to stone, the company searches their cave to look for supplies. Their most significant findings, though, are three blades: Glamdring, Orcrist, and Sting. The blades are never referenced by name in The Silmarillion, but their significance becomes clearer in chapter 3, when Elrond tells the company of how these blades came from Gondolin. This is further reinforced in chapter 4, where the Goblins are said to know Orcrist and Glamdring as “Biter” and “Beater,” respectively, from when “the fair elves of Gondolin hunted them in the hills or did battle before their walls.” In chapter 5, Bilbo is said to be comforted somehow knowing that he was “wearing a blade made in Gondolin for the goblin-wars of which so many songs had sung; and also he had noticed that such weapons made a great impression on goblins that came upon them suddenly.”

Chapter 3, “A Short Rest,” being the relative hotspot of links to The Silmarillion in the book, also has this interesting note about Elrond:

The master of the house was an elf-friend—one of those people whose fathers came into the strange stories before the beginning of History, the wars of the evil goblins and the elves and the first men in the North. In those days of our tale there were still some people who had both elves and heroes of the North for ancestors, and Elrond the master of the house was their chief.

This is all a summary fashion of referring to The Silmarillion and the stories contained therein, particularly with reference to the war of the First Age that took place in the North that is now (almost entirely) under the Sea. And indeed Elrond himself, being born near the end of the First Age, had many heroes among the Elves and Men of the North in his ancestry (and extended family tree), including, but not limited to, Eärendil, Elwing, Dior, Beren, Lúthien, Tuor, Idril, Turgon, Huor, Barahir, and so on. And that is only counting his direct ancestors, not his much larger family tree.

In an aforementioned piece of Elrond’s dialogue about the blades taken from the Troll den, he makes multiple links to the stories of The Silmarillion:

They are old swords, very old swords of the High Elves of the West, my kin. They were made in Gondolin for the Goblin-wars. They must have come from a dragon’s hoard or goblin plunder, for dragons and goblins destroyed that city many ages ago. This, Thorin, the runes name Orcrist, the Goblin-cleaver in the ancient tongue of Gondolin; it was a famous blade. This, Gandalf, was Glamdring, Foehammer that the king of Gondolin once wore.

We have multiple references here to Gondolin. Gondolin was the greatest of the kingdoms of the Exiles in Middle-earth (being of what Elrond calls the “High Elves of the West,” the Elves who had gone to Aman and dwelt with the Valar). It was the last such kingdom to fall to Morgoth in what is called here the “Goblin-wars” (i.e., the war that defined the First Age). The runes are said to be “in the ancient tongue of Gondolin” because it was a hidden kingdom that developed its own ways and history with only occasional interactions with the outside world after its establishment, and the Elves of the realm even had their own name, the Gondolindrim (though they had constituted their own people even before the city was founded, as they had dwelt together in Nevrast). It was founded by Turgon, referred to here as “the king of Gondolin” (he was the only one) and as the wielder of Glamdring. The whole story of Gondolin was of specifical significance to Tolkien, being the first he had composed of the stories of The Silmarillion. The first and most complete version of the story of its fall was first written about twenty years before The Hobbit was published.

Not much longer after this, Thorin references Durin I. He says of him, “He was the father of the fathers of the eldest race of Dwarves, the Longbeards, and my first ancestor: I am his heir.” Durin was the eldest of the Dwarves though he was made with others, being the ancestors of the seven kindreds of the Dwarves. The story of their making, of their being put to sleep and re-awakened after the Elves, and so on is told in The Silmarillion. There is an additional reference to “Thror and Thrain of the race of Durin” in chapter 10, as well as to “Fili and Kili of the race of Durin” in the same chapter. Röac in chapter 15 refers to the folk of Durin. Thorin also invokes “the beard of Durin” in his rage against Bilbo in chapter 17.

Chapter 6, “Out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire,” features one reference of relevance to this analysis. Shortly after introducing the Eagles into the story, the narrator tells us about this specific kind of Eagles that they were of the ancient race of the northern mountains and the greatest of all birds. What makes them so great is explained in The Silmarillion. Furthermore, although the “northern mountains” makes enough sense in this context on its own, it has a further resonance with the fact that these great Eagles also inhabited the mountains of the northern lands that are now under the Sea.

Chapter 8, “Flies and Spiders,” has the most extensive passage linking The Hobbit to The Silmarillion. Specifically, it is a text where the narrator speaks of the different kinds of Elves:

The feasting people were Wood-elves, of course. These are not wicked folk. If they have a fault it is distrust of strangers. Though their magic was strong, even in those days they were wary. They differed from the High Elves of the West, and were more dangerous and less wise. For most of them (together with their scattered relations in the hills and mountains) were descended from the ancient tribes that never went to Faerie in the West. There the Light-elves and the Deep-elves and the Sea-elves went and lived for ages, and grew fairer and wiser and more learned, and invented their magic and their cunning craft in the making of beautiful and marvellous things, before some came back into the Wide World. In the Wide World the Wood-elves lingered in the twilight of our Sun and Moon, but loved best the stars; and they wandered in the great forests that grew tall in lands that are now lost. They dwelt most often by the edges of the woods, from which they could escape at times to hunt, or to ride and run over the open lands by moonlight or starlight; and after the coming of Men they took ever more and more to the gloaming and the dusk. Still elves they were and remain, and that is Good People.

Of course, in The Silmarillion itself and in the various drafts that compose The History of Middle-earth, Tolkien used several categorizations of Elves. But it is still the stories told in The Silmarillion that further explain these divisions. The Wood-elves are the Silvan Elves, those who dwelt mostly in the woods and mostly did not cross over into Beleriand (or only crossed at a much later time). This distinguished them from the Sindar, who did cross over into Beleriand but did not cross the Sundering Seas to Aman, where the Valar and Maiar lived, and from the Three Kindreds of the Eldar, who did make that journey into the Uttermost West. Thus, the latter were also called the High Elves for how they became exalted from their time in the Uttermost West among the Valar and Maiar and in the light of the Two Trees (whereas the other Elves lived under the twilight before the Sun and Moon were made). The three divisions of these High Elves correspond to the Vanyar (“Light-elves”), Noldor (“Deep-elves”), and Teleri (“Sea-elves”), respectively. The details on these divisions and what they meant are further explored in The Silmarillion.

This same passage also references “the coming of Men” and how it affected the Elves. The progressive effects show that this description has multiple applications, as, of course, the narrator has a view to his own present. But the original event is one that is noted in The Silmarillion, that is, the Awakening of Men, along with their dispersion throughout Middle-earth. The narrator also tells of how “Men change the language that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful.” This fits the description of the days of the Watchful Peace in Beleriand when Men came there, before the war of the First Age took its turn.

Finally, in chapter 18, as Thorin is on his deathbed and saying farewell to Bilbo, he declares, “I go now to the halls of waiting to sit beside my fathers, until the world is renewed.” There are multiple references to such an eschatological hope in The Silmarillion, even from the first chapter that recounts the creation. Although The Silmarillion is said to be derived primarily from Elvish sources, it is mentioned that the Dwarves share in this hope, despite what some Elves are inclined to think.