richard buckle

Hi all,

In an unrelated discussion of Aragorn's pre-battle speech at the Black
Gate of Mordor in the "Return of the King" film, someone pointed out a
deliberate reference to the ancient Norse epic "Völuspá" and quoted the
source. As soon as I saw the source, I noticed the names of Myth's
ages:

----- quote -----
'An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the Age of Men comes
crashing down'

Vsp. 45 4-5
skeggöld, skálmöld - skildir 'ro klofnir - vindöld, vargöld, ádhr
veröld steypisk.

'An axe-age, a sword-age - shields are cloven - a wind-age, a wolf-age,
before the world (veröld) collapses'.

This is extraordinarily good, because 'veröld' (a loan-word into Norse
from Old English 'weorold' 'world') actually means 'world', but its
etymological sense is 'man-age', the world seen in human time, not in
space. The structure of the word is exactly and visibly parallel with
'skeggöld', 'skálmöld', 'vindöld', 'vargöld'; ON 'verr', OE 'wer',
poetical word for 'man', cognate with Lat. 'vir'. The cloven shields
reflect the cloven sky (using the same word) also described in Völuspá
52.


Whoever composed that line to put into Aragorn's mouth knew all this
exactly, and Aragorn is talking not only about the end of the Age of
Men but the End of the World. Inspired. Tolkien would have been happy
with this.

Incidentally, 'vargöld' contains the element that Tolkien anglicised /
modernised as 'warg'.

----- end quote -----

So there you have it: the names of the ages in Myth come from Völuspá.

Richard.