Vampires In Middle Earth?

“Denn die Todten reiten Schnell. (For the dead travel fast)”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula

 

 

Happy Halloween 2013!

Being my favorite holiday and all, I thought it was a good time to talk about one of my favorite subjects Vampires! I have loved  the vampire since I was 6 years old, my father and I watched a classic movie from his childhood. The 1931 Classic Dracula. Yep from that day on I was “Bitten”. I’ll have to take of picture of all my “Vampire” related items. (I can stop anytime I want!)

Hold on, you might be asking your self how in the world does this have anything to do with LOTRO or Tolkien? Let’s take a look to see what the good professor has to say on the subject shall we?

“A vampire shape with pinions vast  screeching leaped from the ground, and passed, its dark blood dripping on the trees” — The Lay Of Leithian : Cantos 9, 10

Sadly there are a very few references to vampires in J.R.R. Tolkien’s writings, and they seem to be confined to his First Age legends. Here is what I could find of the vampire myth.

Thuringwethil, the messenger of Sauron, is said to have flown in a bat-shape or vampire-form when she traveled across Middle-earth. while not the vampire of we think of today,  she is often considered to have been a type of fallen demi-god, or Maia.  She is described as having huge fingered wings with iron claws and flying as a messenger for Sauron.  

Sauron himself takes on a vampire shape after surrendering to Luthien and Huan.  

“Then Sauron yielded himself, and Luthien took the mastery of the isle and all that was there; and Huan released him. And immediately he took the form of a vampire, great as a dark cloud across the moon, and he fled, dripping blood from his throat upon the trees, and came to Tar-nu-Fuin, and dwelt there, filling it with horror.”  The Silmarillon Chapter 19

And in the Battle of Five Armies, some of the bats fasten themselves to fallen warriors “vampire-like” and suck their blood.

The term vampire was not popularized until the early 18th century, after an influx of vampire superstition into Western Europe from areas where vampire legends were frequent, such as the Balkans and Eastern Europe, although local variants were also known by different names, such as vrykolakas in Greece and strigoi in Romania. The word vampire has an uncertain etymology but it is believed to be derived from the  German Vampir, in turn derived in the early 18th century from the Serbian вампир/vampir a word that may originally have meant something like “witch”. Tolkien mentioned in Letter No. 142, written in 1953, that he had at one time studied Serbian and Russian (without much success).

Alas, there is no Sindarin word for vampire (That I could find)  but Christopher Tolkien translated Thuringwethil as “woman of secret shadow” in The Silmarillion (based on transforming gwath,wath into weth). According to some scholar’s her name might also mean “secret sisters” or “hidden sisters” (thurin + gwethil).  Gwethil is identified as the plural form of gwathel, “sister”.

In The Lord of the Rings Online  the Merrevail (singular, Morroval) appear to be based on Tolkien’s vampires. They are fearsome bat-winged women with sharp talons.

Also in LOTRO if you dare to brave the dark of Mirkwood you might run into Carcharan, a vampire of Morgoth in his bat form!

And remember children

“The blood is the life!”
―Bram Stoker, Dracula