Since the Fellowship is in montage-mode marching south along the Misty Mountains, I’ve been taking a look back at Frodo’s time in Rivendell. Today we’ll spend about 1,000 words checking out a throw away line spoken by Gandalf. Indulge me, won’t you?
The line: “there are wargs and werewolves”
Okay. What the hell, Tollers?
Here’s what the hell. While we’re familiar with wargs from The Hobbit and werewolves from legend, Universal Pictures, and MST3K, Tolkien actually invented neither (though he sort of made wargs his own).
So let’s start with Wargs. To the reader, they were first mentioned in the Hobbit, Chapter Six, and seemed nearly synonymous with evil wolves “over the Edge of the Wild”. They were more intelligent then wolves, having a language that Gandalf could understand. They and the goblins would help each other in performing “wicked deeds,” even splitting the booty.
When Tolkien first…
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mintvalf 