[davem]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

The fact that they were made in the latter part of the twelfth century (if the dating is accurate) suggests that the old legends and mythologies lived on in Norway at least well into what were Christianised centuries in England. (Can't say what the status was for Scotland.) We could probably do with more discussion here of how Tolkien incorporated allusions to the old Norse myths.

I'm taken with the (possibly apocryphal) tale that the man who found the Lewis chessmen ran away in fright at first because he thought they were fairies!

"Yes it certainly is! No I could not! And I was explaining very carefully,"answered the wizard crossly. "If you must know more, his name is Beorn. He is very strong, and he is a skin-changer."

"What! a furrier, a man that calls rabbits conies, when he doesn't turn their skins into squirrels?"asked Bilbo.

He is a skin-changer. He changes his skin; sometimes he is a huge black bear, sometimes he is a great strong black-haired man with huge arms and a great beard. I cannot tell you much more, though that ought to be enough. Some say that he is a bear descended from the great and ancient bears of the mountains that lived there before the giants came. Others say that he is a man descended from the first men who lived before Smaug or the other dragons came into this part of the world, and before the goblins came into the hills out of the North. I cannot say, though I fancy the last is the true tale. He is not the sort of person to ask questions of.'

"At any rate he is under no enchantment but his own. ......As a bear he ranges far and wide. I once saw him sitting all alone on the top of the Carrock at night watching the moon sinking towards the Misty Mountains, and I heard him growl in the tongue of bears; 'The day will come when they will perish and I shall go back!' That is why I believe he once came from the mountains himself."

Do bears live in the mountains? And why did they leave when the giants came - & where did the giants come from in the first place? Anyway, one can assume that they lived in the caves, if they lived there at all. It is clear that it is the giants who are preventing him from returning. The implication here is that Beorn expects the giants to die out before he himself, so that he can return to his home. I like the hanging question of whether he is a descendent of bears who became human or humans who became bears. Neither of these options seems to fit in with the 'laws' of M-e. The reference to 'the first men who lived before Smaug or the other dragons came into this part of the world, and before the goblins came into the hills out of the North' seems to refer back to the Atani of the First Age - which would imply that (though he nowhere mentions them) there were 'berserkers' among the human warriors of the FA.

EDIT (from Ring of Words Berserk is probably derived from 'bear-shirt' (a reference to their supposed skin changing abilities) & in Old English 'beorn' meant not bear but a warrior, a hero, a man of valour.