# The Dragons



## Ermundo (Oct 30, 2005)

Where did they come from?
What did they come from?
Who made them?

We know a lot about the things that the Balrogs did but no one knows how they originated. The Silmarillion doesn't tell a thing about how the dragons came to be and I am not going to go through all 13 books written by Christopher Tolkien about Middle Earth. So where and what did they come from?


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## Celebthôl (Oct 30, 2005)

Can't remember how they were created, but i know that Morgoth created them...


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## Thorondor_ (Oct 30, 2005)

The earliest refference I know of the creation of the dragons is in The Fall of Gondolin, HoME II:


> But the rede that Meglin gave to Melko was that not all the host of the Orcs nor the Balrogs in their fierceness might by assault or siege hope ever to overthrow the walls and gates of Gondolin even if they availed to win unto the plain without. Therefore he counselled Melko to devise out of his sorceries a succour for his warriors in their endeavour. From the greatness of his wealth of metals and his powers of fire he bid him make beasts like snakes and dragons of irresistible might that should overcreep the Encircling Hills and lap that plain and its fair city in flame and death
> ...
> yet they knew this [attack] must be done with speed, for the heats of those drakes lasted not for ever, and might only be plenished from the wells of fire that Melko had made in the fastness of his own land
> ...
> In The Silmarillion the dragons that came against Gondolin were 'of the brood of Glaurung', which 'were become now many and terrible'; whereas in the tale the language employed suggests that some at least of the 'Monsters' were inanimate 'devices', the construction of smiths in the forges of Angband. But even the 'things of iron' that 'opened about their middles' to disgorge bands of Orcs are called 'ruthless beasts', and Gothmog 'bade' them 'pile themselves'; those made of bronze or copper 'were given hearts and spirits of blazing fire'; while the 'fire-drake' that Tuor hewed screamed and lashed with its tail


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## YayGollum (Oct 30, 2005)

Yes, that part seemed very creepy to me, since I am used to thinking that the dragons were just a superly cool race. In my brain, most probably some giant lizard thing (since there were lots of giant animalic mostrous things in ancient Middle Earth) from that Last Desert place. Which is why there is some crazy bit of mythology about Wereworms in the Last Desert. Anyways, sure, the Thorondor_ person's quote shows that the dragon types were just a bunch of metal combined with spirits who were fans of Mel. Many strange experiments were done by Mel. Mayhaps some were entirely metal, while others had more animalicness in them.


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## Alcuin (Nov 14, 2005)

“Glaurung the golden, father of dragons” was the first of the Uruloki or “fire-drakes of the North,” but he was flightless. In _Silmarillion_, Tolkien says that Glaurung “spoke by the evil spirit that was in him,” so like Carcharoth and the werewolves of Sauron, he may have had some minor Maia or other spirit imbued within his physical frame. I don’t recall that Tolkien says how long he was, but he was so large, that “at Cabed-en-Aras, where the river ran in a deep and narrow gorge that a hunted deer might overleap, … with a great noise and blast cast his forward part across the chasm, and began to draw his bulk after.” A white-tail deer can leap over 8 feet high and 30 feet long, so Glaurung was perhaps twice 30 feet in length or more. 

Ancalagon the Black was the greatest dragon of the First Age and the first of the winged dragons. Gandalf tells Frodo in “Shadow of the Past” that, “It has been said that dragon-fire could melt and consume the Rings of Power, but there is not now any dragon left on earth in which the old fire is hot enough; nor was there ever any dragon, not even Ancalagon the Black, who could have harmed the One Ring, the Ruling Ring, for that was made by Sauron himself.” So apparently Ancalagon was the fiercest of the dragons that ever lived.

In the Third Age, dragons came from the Withered Heath in the Grey Mountains in the far north, the remains of the old Iron Mountains of Angband (which is probably be why the Dragons were there in the first place). Scatha the Worm was killed by Fram son of Frumgar (an ancestor of Eorl the Young); the little silver horn given to Merry by Éowyn and Éomer on his departure from Rohan, which he blew to rally the hobbits in the Scouring of the Shire, came from Scatha’s horde.

And of course Smaug came from the Withered Heath as well. He was apparently the last of the great dragons in Middle-earth. Gandalf believed the Sauron planned to use Smaug in assaults on Lórien and Rivendell, prompting his deep involvement with Thorin Oakenshield and his plan to return to the Lonely Mountain – and Gandalf’s selection of Bilbo Baggins to join the expedition, since Smaug had never before encountered a hobbit and would not recognize the smell (and the danger to him it represented), and because hobbits were so quiet.

In addition, there seem to have been some monsters called “cold-drakes”, perhaps forerunners of the fire-drakes or an essay by Morgoth in the development of the fire-drakes.


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## Walter (Dec 18, 2005)

*The Dragons (from a somewhat different angle of view)*



> As for the poem, one dragon, however hot, does not make a summer, or a host; and a man might well exchange for one good dragon what he would not sell for a wilderness. And dragons, real dragons, essential both to the machinery and the ideas of a poem or tale, are actually rare. In northern literature there are only _two_ that are significant. If we omit from consideration the vast and vague Encircler of the World, Miðgarðsormr, the doom of the great gods and no matter for heroes, we have but the dragon of the Völsungs, Fáfnir, and Beowulf's bane. It is true that both of these are in _Beowulf_, one in the main story, and the other spoken of by a minstrel praising Beowulf himself. But this is not a wilderness of dragons. Indeed the allusion to the more renowned worm killed by the Wælsing is sufficient indication that the poet selected a dragon of well-founded purpose (or saw its significance in the plot as it had reached him), even as he was careful to compare his hero, Beowulf son of Ecgtheow, to the prince of the heroes of the North, the dragon-slaying Wælsing. He esteemed dragons, as rare as they are dire, as some do still. He liked them - as a poet, not as a sober zoologist; and he had good reason.
> 
> BEOWULF: THE MONSTERS AND THE CRITICS



I am not sure what 'literature' Tolkien had in mind about dragons when he stated that _In northern literature there are only two that are significant_. Even when we leave aside the Miðgarðsormr and all related tales we find a multitude of dragons in European myths, legends, folk-tales and fairy-stories. Maybe he is restraining his point of view to Icelandic/Norse tradition and the time when the Eddic tales and Beowulf were being written. I also do not really know what Tolkien's criteria are for a dragon to be considered 'signficant'...

But be that as it may, Tolkien seems to have been fascinated by dragons ever since his childhood (as we learn from H. Carpenter) and they seem to have still sparked his fantasy much later. 

Thorondor already quoted parts of "The Fall of Gondolin" as the earliest source for the creation of dragons in Tolkien's legendarium (as inanimate devices, at first), but it is interesting also to note, that in the tale preceding "The Fall of Gondolin" in _The Book of Lost Tales_ - "Turambar and the Foalókë" - the dragon(s) we encounter are _very different_. Though we learn there too that they are made by Melko they are portrayed much differently:



> Now those drakes and worms are the evillest creatures that Melko has made, and the most uncouth, yet of all are they the most powerful, save it be the Balrogs only. A great cunning and wisdom have they, so that it has been long said amongst Men that whosoever might taste the heart of a dragon would know all tongues of Gods or Men, of birds or beasts, and his ears would catch whispers of the Valar or of Melko such as never had he heard before. Few have there been that ever achieved a deed of such prowess as the slaying of a drake, nor might any even of such doughty ones taste their blood and live, for it is as a poison of fires that slays all save the most godlike in strength. Howso that may be, even as their lord these foul beasts love lies and lust after gold and precious things with a great fierceness of desire, albeit they may not use nor enjoy them. Thus was it that this lókë (for so do the Eldar name the worms of Melko) suffered the Orcs to slay whom they would and to gather whom they listed into a very great and very sorrowful throng of women, maids, and little children, but all the mighty treasure that they had brought from the rocky halls and heaped glistering in the sun before the doors he coveted for himself and forbade them set finger on it, and they durst not withstand him, nor could they have done so an they would.
> _BoLTII_ – "Turambar and the Foalókë"



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Generally it is interesting that we encounter dragons (as primeval monsters) already in the earliest pieces of written tradition: Tiamat in the Babylonian Creation Myth (aka "Enuma Elish"; which cannot be dated precisely, the tablets stem mostly from the first millennium BCE, though the tale probably originates from the beginning of the second millennium BCE).

The popular dragons of the Greek-, Hebrew-(Biblical-) and Norse- myths (Okeanos, Leviathan and the abovementioned Miðgarðsormr) are most probably successors of Tiamat.

Chinese dragons are much older still (though they are mythologically entirely different from the "Western" dragons), the earliest finding up to-date is a mussel-shell dragon in a grave in Ziyang, Province Henan which is probably some 6000 years old.

Fascinating beasts, those...aren't they?


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## Sangahyando (Dec 22, 2005)

And don't forget about the Squirrel, the Bird and their big ol' buddy: Nidhogg, the dragon at the bottom of the Yggdrasil.

Sanghayando, great-grandson of Castamir the Usurper


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