Mirkwood: Fairy Tale Forest Recast

[See also part I of this series, “Trees Royal and Divine”]

The Hobbit, published in 1937, was the world’s introduction to J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth legendarium and is still typically recommended as the best book to start with. Only one forest is featured in the book but it plays a major role: Mirkwood. Gandalf calls it “the greatest of the forests of the Northern World.”

Gloom and enchantment

After Bilbo and the Dwarves cross the Misty Mountains and the Great River of Wilderland, Mirkwood is the last major physical barrier between them and their destination, the Lonely Mountain. The book’s narrator characterizes this step as the “most dangerous part of all the journey.” Beorn, the “skin-changer” (i.e., shapeshifter) they meet, describes it as “dark” and “difficult.” He warns them not to drink from a black stream that crosses their way, and stresses that they “MUST NOT” stray from the path no matter what.

Seen in the distance, Mirkwood is a “a black and frowning wall” with its malevolence extending into the land around it. As they get closer “a silence began to draw in upon them. Birds began to sing less. There were no more deer; not even rabbits were to be seen.” When they reach the eaves we get our first close up look: “Their trunks were huge and gnarled, their branches twisted, their leaves were dark and long. Ivy grew on them and trailed along the ground.”

Bilbo doesn’t like the look of Mirkwood and asks Gandalf if they can go around. The wizard says no, it would take them too far out of their way, 200 miles north and “twice that” south before they could turn east again. This informs us the forest is around 600 miles across, about the distance between Chicago and Washington, DC, or Amsterdam and Vienna. Gandalf then departs the company to attend to “some pressing business away south” (which is necessary for the plot so Bilbo can become the hero) and his final words to them are “DON’T LEAVE THE PATH!” After two such stern warnings, we know what will end up happening.

Tolkien writes to his son Michael in 1966 that he borrowed the name “Mirkwood” from the “very early German” word, mirkiwidu. In Old English, he goes on to say, the related mirce and myrcan have the sense of murky, as in “wicked, hellish.” “It was never, I think, a mere ‘colour’ word: ‘black’,” he says, “and was from the beginning weighted with the sense of ‘gloom.’”

Gloom is certainly what the company gets as soon as they go in: “The entrance to the path was like a sort of arch leading into a gloomy tunnel made by two great trees that leant together, too old and strangled with ivy and hung with lichen to bear more than a few blackened leaves.” Soon it is dim and ominous with “a sort of watching and waiting feeling.” Black squirrels scuttle among the tree trunks. They hear “queer noises”: “grunts, scufflings, and hurryings in the undergrowth, and among the leaves that lay piled endlessly thick.” They see “dark dense cobwebs with threads extraordinarily thick, often stretched from tree to tree, or tangled in the lower branches on either side of them.” No sun or wind penetrates the thick canopy and the air is “everlastingly still and dark and stuffy.”

At night they are surrounded by an “enormous uncanny darkness.” “Pairs of yellow, red or green eyes” stare at them. Worst for Bilbo are the “horrible pale bulbous sort of eyes. ‘Insect eyes,’ he thought. ‘not animals eyes, only they are much too big.’” Watch fires don’t help because the light only brings “hundred and hundreds of eyes all around them” as well as “thousands of dark-grey and black moths, some nearly as big as your hand, flapping and whirring round their ears” and “hugs bats, black as a top hat.”

Eventually the company arrives at the enchanted stream crossing the path that Beorn warned them not to drink or touch. Fortunately a small boat is tied up on site and they are able to ferry across in groups of four. But just as the last Dwarf, Bombour, is disembarking and has only one foot on shore, a deer dashes down the path and jumps the stream, right over his head. He loses his balance and falls in the water. When the Dwarves pull him out, he is sound asleep, can’t be woken, and they must carry him much to their dismay.

Ecology

Mirkwood is not uniformly gloomy, and as they unknowingly draw nearer to the Elvish dominion on the far side, the forest changes. This paragraph is worth quoting in full, to show Tolkien’s talent with nature description:

About four days from the enchanted stream they came to a part where most of the trees were beeches. They were at first inclined to be cheered by the change, for here there was no undergrowth and the shadow was not so deep. There was a greenish light about them, and in places they could see some distance to either side of the path. Yet the light only showed them endless lines of straight grey trunks like the pillars of some huge twilight hall. There was a breath of air and a noise of wind, but it had a sad sound. A few leaves came rustling down to remind them that outside autumn was coming on. Their feet ruffled among the dead leaves of countless other autumns that drifted over the banks of the path from the deep red carpets of the forest.

The landscape changes again in a couple more days as they descend into a valley “filled almost entirely with a mighty growth of oaks.” Here Bilbo climbs to the top of a big tree to see how much forest is left—“He pushed his way through the tangled twigs with many a slap in the eye; he was greened and grimed from the old bark of the greater boughs”—but no end is in sight.

The air is full of hundreds of butterflies, though. The narrator says: “I expect they were a kind of ‘purple emperor’, a butterfly that loves the tops of oak-woods, but these were not purple at all, they were a dark dark velvety black without any markings to be seen.”

According to Wikipedia, the Purple Emperor does indeed have an affinity for the tops of oaks-woods:

Females spend most of their lives in the tree canopy, favouring dense and mature oak woodlands, coming down only to lay their eggs on the small willow bushes that grow in clearings and bridleways. Males also spend much of their time in the tree tops, defending their territory from rivals, though they will sometimes descend to drink from puddles or feed. Unlike most butterflies, the purple emperor does not feed from flowers but instead on the honeydew secreted by aphids, sap oozing from oak trees, and on dung, urine, and animal carcasses.

Tolkien invented a mythological species of butterfly, but made it enough like an actual species for it to be credible. Such verisimilitude in natural elements is a hallmark of his work, especially with trees.

Entrapment and escape

The narrator assures the reader that the company is indeed close to the edge of Mirkwood but that Bilbo just couldn’t tell because the tree he climbed was at the bottom of a vast bowl in the landscape. The Dwarves are disappointed and everyone marches on. Before too much longer, they run out of food. Bombour wakes from his slumber and is crestfallen at the lack of provisions. He had been dreaming of a great feast in a torch-lit forest with merry singing, presided over by a woodland king with a garland of leaves in his hair.

Night falls and they spy twinkling lights like lit torches, well off into the forest. Bombour is convinced it’s a feast like the one he dreamt of. After some arguing, the company decides to ignore both Beorn and Gandalf’s warnings and leave the path to creep up to the lights. When they are close, they can see that a great feast is indeed underway, matching Bombour’s description, with loads of food. They rush forward to beg and instantly all the lights go out and the merrymakers and food are gone. Quite a little while passes before they are able to find each other in the dark, and shortly after they do, they see the torches again. The same thing happens twice more, and after the last time, Bilbo finds himself separated from the Dwarves.

The Hobbit sets off on his own and discovers that the Dwarves have all been captured by giant spiders, wrapped in webbing, and hung from a tree branch like flies for later consumption. Eventually Bilbo is able to rescue the Dwarves but then they are taken prisoner by the Wood Elves. Bilbo stays free by using the magic ring he acquired under the Misty Mountains to make himself invisible. After spying out the ways of the Elves’ underground halls, he is again able to rescue everyone and they escape by stashing themselves in barrels that are floated down the river out of the Elven realm, and thence out of Mirkwood at last. Altogether the Mirkwood adventures take up two full chapters, about one sixth of the book’s length.

Myth and meaning

The Hobbit originated in bedtime stories Tolkien made up for his children. The influence of European fairy tales like the Brothers Grimm is infused throughout, and nowhere more than in the Mirkwood sequence: a dark forest with a magical stream, scary monsters, secretive Elves, a mysterious Necromancer, and centrally, an unlikely hero who saves the day. These narrative ingredients ring familiar to the Western ear; indeed, variations on them are still prevalent in contemporary media.

The forest in European fairy tales is also symbolic for danger, the unknown, and magic, and hence as a place for testing and transformation. Bilbo goes into Mirkwood somewhat toughened up by his adventures so far, but is still a fairly normal Hobbit. By the time he emerges on the other side, he has grown into a legit champion, displaying valor in his battle against the spiders, and ingenuity in his liberation of the Dwarves. Tolkien, as an appreciator (and translator) of old literature, was well-acquainted with such elements and themes and employs them consciously, and often playfully, in The Hobbit.

Thus for the Western reader, though Mirkwood is mythological, it is immediately recognizable as a conventional trope and it intuitively resonates. We haven’t encountered this forest before, but we know what it’s about. However, characterizing Mirkwood as merely a new verse in a well-known song would be underestimating the influence of thee book, which sold over 100 million copies worldwide, and so arguably recast a well-worn literary device for the modern era in a fresh way.

Mirkwood in the rest of the legendarium

The Hobbit gives us a glimpse of Mirkwood in one season of one year, but the forest has a long history, and is eventually freed of its gloom. In no other of Tolkien’s books is it given such a major narrative role, however, so most of what we know is found in passages here or there in LotR and in the appendices at the end of The Return of the King.

A fleeting reference is made in The Silmarillion to the area of Middle-earth shown in the map of “Wilderland” included in The Hobbit [maybe open this in another tab for the next few paragraphs]. In the deep past, even before the First Age, after the Elves (here called “the Eldar”) awaken in the far east of the world, they begin a long trek west, as is told in the chapter, “Of the Coming of the Elves”:

And it came to pass after many years of journeying in this manner that the Eldar took their course through a forest, and they came to a great river, wider than any they had yet seen; and beyond it were mountains whose sharp horns seemed to pierce the realm of the stars. This river, it is said, was even the river which was after called Anduin the Great, and was ever the frontier of the west-lands of Middle-earth. But the mountains were the Hithaeglir, the Towers of Mist upon the borders of Eriador…

The unnamed “forest” is Mirkwood, not yet called that. On the Wilderland map, the “great river” is the “Great River of Wilderland,” the “Towers of Mist” are the “Misty Mountains,” and “Eriador” is the “Western Lands.” The journey west is also mentioned in The Nature of Middle-earth, where the name Great Forest is used. Some Elves are afraid because “it contains lurking evils” but those who pass through find that it is “rich in fruit and berries.”

Sometime in the First Age (The Hobbit and LotR take place in the Third), the forest became known as Greenwood the Great. At this time, many Elves lived there who had chosen not to go further west. The “Old Forest Road’ on the map was made back then by Dwarves for traveling between their kingdoms in Moria (then known as Khazad-dûm) and the Lonely Mountain and the Iron Hills. Men (humans), who were the ancestors of The Hobbit’s woodmen and Beorn and of LotR’s Rohirrim, dwelt along the river the edges of the forest.

The Elvenking in The Hobbit—who is Thranduil, father of Legolas, though he is unnamed in the text—was not yet ensconced in the northern forest. In fact, he wasn’t even king of his people yet, as that title was still held by his father, Oropher, a refugee from the destruction of Beleriand at the end of the First Age. Oropher came to southern Greenwood around year 750 of the Second Age, was accepted as king by the Elves already living there, and built a fortress on a big hill called Amon Lanc, which means “naked hill” because no trees grew there although it was in the middle of the forest. Oropher moved the kingdom progressively northward through Greenwood over the course of Second Age due to the rising power of Sauron in the south and his resentment of Galadriel and Celeborn’s establishment of Lothlórien to the east, right across the Anduin. Which might sound a petty, but the three knew each other in the forest kingdom of Doriath in Beleriand in the First Age and there were certainly heated divisions among the Elves during those days. Oropher might have held a grudge against Galadriel because she was of a lineage of Elves who committed grievous acts in the First Age—including the murder of other Elves—though Galadriel’s own hands were clean. (That last sentence is a very breezy summary; see The Silmarillion for the full story.)

Oropher was killed during the War of the Last Alliance against Sauron at the end of the Second Age. This was the conflict that climaxed with Sauron’s defeat, the taking of his One Ring, and his subsequent (though temporary) diminishment. Thranduil returned to Greenwood with the remnants of the Woodland Elf fighting force—which took heavy casualties due to their lack of armor—and settled in the mountains labeled “Mountains of Mirkwood” on the Wilderland map.

In the year 1050 of the Third Age, Sauron had reconstituted himself enough to flex again, and took over the ruins of Oropher’s abandoned fortress on the hill of Amon Lanc, which then became known as Dol Guldur, the “Hill of Sorcery.” Evil creatures, including giant spiders (who were offspring of LotR’s Shelob) spread throughout the southern forest. This is when Greenwood was renamed Mirkwood.

This is when the Wizards, including Gandalf, Saruman and Radagast, appear in Middle-earth, sent as emissaries from the gods to organize the resistance against Sauron. Incidentally, the ancestors of the Shire’s hobbits lived along the Anduin River nearby, and they began migrating westward at this time due to the new terror. Gollum, né Smeagol, was a descendant of those who stayed behind.

Thranduil responded to the threat by moving further north still and building the underground halls we see in The Hobbit. He was inspired by the magnificent cave dwellings of Doriath, which he may or may not have remembered himself; his birth date is unknown. At the very least, he would have heard stories from his Oropher, including the brutal sacking of Doriath by Dwarves, hence his enmity for Thorin and company. Tolkien seems to be alluding to this incident with this passage in the chapter “Barrels out of Bond” in The Hobbit, when the Elvenking throws the Dwarves into his dungeons:

In ancient days they had had wars with some of the dwarves, whom they accused of stealing their treasure. It is only fair to say that the dwarves gave a different account, and said that they only took what was their due, for the elf-king had bargained with them to shape his raw gold and silver, and had afterwards refused to give them their pay.

Nobody knew it was Sauron yet, and he was called the Necromancer. In the year 2850 of the Third Age, Gandalf goes alone to Dol Guldur and discovers that it is Sauron. But it’s not until 2941—the year that Bilbo goes on the quest to the Lonely Mountain with the Dwarves—that Sauron is expelled. It’s mentioned near the end of The Hobbit, when Bilbo and Gandalf stop in Rivendell on the way home:

Gandalf had been to a great council of the white wizards, masters of lore and good magic; and that they had at last driven the Necromancer from his dark hold in the south of Mirkwood.

“Ere long now,” Gandalf was saying, “the Forest will grow somewhat more wholesome. The North will be freed from that horror for many long years, I hope. Yet I wish he were banished from the world!”

“It would be well indeed,” said Elrond; “but I fear that will not come about in this age of the world, or for many after.”

Earlier, when parting with the Elvenking, Gandalf tells him, “Merry be the greenwood, while the world is yet young! And merry be all your folk!” Here he reverts to the old name but too soon. Just ten years later, Sauron reestablishes his stronghold in Mordor and sends three of the Nazgûl—aka the Ring Wraiths or Black Riders—to Dol Guldur where they make it terrible again. Mirkwood it will remain for a little longer.

Mirkwood is marginal to LotR. None of the principal narrative’s action takes place there. At the Council of Elrond, we learn that Gandalf and Aragorn sought for Gollum there, that he was imprisoned there after his capture, and that he escaped after an ambush by orcs. In Lothlórien, Frodo, standing on a platform with Haldir, an Elf guide, gazes east at southern Mirkwood:

Beyond the river the land appeared flat and empty, formless and vague, until far away it rose again like a wall, dark and drear. The sun that lay on Lothlórien had no power to enlighten the shadow of that distant height.

‘There lies the fastness of Southern Mirkwood,’ said Haldir. ‘It is clad in a forest of dark fir, where the trees strive one against another and their branches rot and wither. In the midst upon a stony height stands Dol Guldur, where long the hidden Enemy had his dwelling. We fear that now it is inhabited again, and with power sevenfold. A black cloud lies often over it of late.

While Minas Tirith is being attacked during the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, Sauron’s forces from southern Mirkwood attack Thranduil’s kingdom in the north. There is “long battle under the trees and great ruin of fire” but they are repelled. Lothlórien is also assaulted by Dol Guldur for a second time that same day, and once more shortly after. Though the trees on the borders suffer “grievous harm,” the Elves are victorious. Then they take the fight to Dol Guldur itself where Galadriel “threw down its walls and laid bare its pits, and the forest was cleansed.”

Celeborn marches north and Thranduil south and they meet in the middle of the forest, which they rename the Wood of Greenleaves. Thranduil takes the northern portion for his realm, and Celeborn the southernmost, which he names East Lórien. The middle is given to the woodmen and the descendants of Beorn.

So in the end, Mirkwood is liberated from evil, but it will remain a place enchanted by Elves for a only little while longer. The Fourth Age is underway, and the time of Elves is passing. Before too long, the forest will merely be mundane, a source of logs and superstition. Here again is Tolkien’s theme of the passage of time inevitably bringing decline, which we will revisit in upcoming parts.