Thread: Bye Bye Balrogs
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Old 05-25-2016, 07:40 AM   #86
Gothmog, LoB
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In my it is pretty obvious that Manwe's dealings with the Balrogs in Utumno actually refer to a physical fight and their subsequent defeat.

Considering that this was the War of the Powers we can be reasonably sure that the Valar and Maiar (and Melkor's minions) did not exactly fight in a way they and the Eruhíni would fight Melkor's creatures later on. The War of Wrath most likely involved a lot of more physical weaponry and violence than the War of the Powers during which many (if not all) of the ealar involved would not yet have been permanently bound to their bodily forms.

In that sense, I see no problems with an unspecified number of Balrogs being 'slain' by Manwe himself at Utumno since that would only have bereft them of their bodily shapes. They wouldn't have died in any real sense.

In fact, we know from Note 5 of the Òsanwe-kenta that only one Vala (Melkor-Morgoth) ever became permanently incarnated. With the Maiar this tends to happen more quickly, but Melian is cited as the only example (although that causes problems if we try to imagine the details of her return into the West prior to the voyage of Eärendil). The Istari we certainly can cite as later examples for this (although their incarnation seems to have been 'special' in the sense that it might have been more binding from the beginning, unlike the slow process that made Melian and Sauron earthbound).

However, the note also includes an interesting revelation about Sauron and his confrontation with Lúthien during the Lay of Leithian. Unlike the old text JRRT seems to have changed his mind about Sauron not losing his body back then and there, stating that 'the first destruction of the bodily form of Sauron was recorded in the histories of the Elder Days, in the Lay of Leithian.'

This suggests that Sauron doesn't become a 'special case' using the One Ring as his anchor to the physical world. And Tolkien also specifies that this extends to Morgoth's mother minions, not just Sauron: 'So it was also with even some of his [Morgoth's] greatest servants, as in these later days we see: they became wedded to the forms of their evil deeds, and if these bodies were taken from them or destroyed, they were nullified, until they had rebuilt a semblance of their former habitations, with which they could continue the evil courses in which they had become fixed.'

A momentary 'nullification' due to the loss of one's hröa didn't necessitate a permanent end. One assumes that fallen Maiar/Úmaiar couldn't 'die' and restore their bodies indefinitely, but they could do so quite a few times.

In that sense I'd argue that there is little problem with the number of the Balrogs aside from the actual descriptions of certain battles.

But there should be an unspecified number of Balrogs throughout all the battles of the First Age, acting as Morgoth's generals and his most fearsome warriors. And there is also no need to mess with any of the details of the fights between Elves and Balrogs (Gothmog & Balrogs vs. Feanor; Gothmog & Balrog vs. Fingon; Gothmog vs. Ecthelion; Glorfindel vs. Balrogs).

It is part of the story that the Eldar in their youth were very powerful, or had the potential to become very powerful, and this explicitly confirmed for Feanor. The idea that this man could have fought of multiple Balrogs of the type the Fellowship faced in Moria isn't far-fetched at all. And with Fingolfin fighting against and physically wounding Morgoth himself there is also no reason to believe that Fingon, Ecthelion, and Glorfindel did what they did.

One could even imagine that some of the other Gondolindrim slew some Balrogs - they could all have made themselves new bodies for the War of Wrath. The Noldor of Gondolin were the cream of the Eldar warriors in Middle-earth, and we know there was later much and long fighting between the Maiar-Vanyar-Noldor host and Morgoth's armies during the War of Wrath. One assumes that Morgoth's creatures and servants were not only fought by the Maiar during that war but by the Eldar (and Edain) as well.
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