In the first hobbit movie, Gandalf scratches a rune into bilbo’s lovely green door. An F with the arms pointing to the lower right. I think I saw you show that rune before. What is it and what does it mean?
Which was quite clever, seeing as they were going to try to recover a treasure from a dragon.
It’s actually the letter G for Gandalf in the Cirth runic alphabet! Tolkien modeled Cirth off real-world runes because he was a Norse uber-nerd, of course.
Yep! It works on a couple of levels; it’s ‘G’ in Tolkien’s runic alphabet, which he based on the Futhark; the top of Gandalf the white’s staff is also made of stylized linked runes, as you can see here
But it’s also identical to the rune Fehu, which is of course the rune of wealth, and they were going to burgle a dragon horde.
In addition, Odin is of course the inspiration for Gandalf, to the point where if you threw some ravens in there and subtracted an eye the character is nearly identical in appearance, and one of Odin’s chiefly used names is ‘Gondlir’, which means ‘wand/staff bearer’. And there, of course, is the ‘G’ again!
It works on many levels that delight me.
doesn’t the
Rohirrim call Gandalf storm raven or something close? I read the books in french so I’m iffy on the actual name.
“Stormcrow”
Again, 10000000000% not a coincidence. Indeed, Gandalf’s tendency to pick up different names fucking everywhere is trait of Odin’s that wasn’t changed a single bit.
…and his original name among the Maiar was Olórin. And he’s Gandalf the Grey, which in Norse myth is the colour of magic. The elvish ‘Mithrandir’ means ‘Grey Wanderer’. Oh, also he’s associated with wisdom – ‘wisest among the Maiar’ and all that. I mean. Tolkien was Not Subtle about this.
Like, At All.
Tolkien wasn’t subtle about anything. He was just like “eh most people don’t know the history I’m pretty much just blatantly ripping off, it’ll be fine” and it was fine. Most people don’t know, and the handful that do think it’s rad as fuck.
Penhales 