Origins of Tolkien's The Hobbit
With the last of The Hobbit trilogy in cinemas, author and Tolkien expert John Garth shows how J.R.R. drew on Norse and transatlantic mythology for his novel
The dragon soars overhead, its underside armoured with gems from its hoard. The bowman has only one arrow left. Then a bird flutters to his ear and whispers the monster's sole vulnerability: a bare patch at its breast. The last arrow strikes home. Exit Smaug the Magnificent.
It's a marvellous moment, thrillingly told in The Hobbit (though mashed out of recognition in the last of Peter Jackson's Middle-earth films, now showing in Hong Kong). But J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, did not conjure the scene from thin air. The peculiar manner of Smaug's death comes via a surprising source.
Smaug is made in the image of medieval Fafnir, the archetypal hoard-dragon of the Icelandic Volsunga saga, and it's been supposed his death owes something to the way Sigurd digs a pit to stab Fafnir in the vitals. But I felt a sudden, prickly recognition when reading - of all things - American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1855 poem The Song of Hiawatha.
Hiawatha faces Megissogwon, manito (spirit) of wealth, who is impervious in his shirt of wampum, the hard shell beads once used as currency. After a day-long battle, Hiawatha has only three arrows left. Victory appears impossible - until
"Suddenly from the boughs above him
Sang the Mama, the woodpecker: 'Aim your arrows, Hiawatha,