Morgoth (originally Melkor)

Two lights once stood at the center of the world, one silver and one gold, and a spear came out of the dark to put an end to both. The hand on the spear belonged to the mightiest being ever to walk Arda, and he had not come to rule the light. He had come to unmake it. Behind him crept a thing of pure hunger, a spider bloated with the absence of everything, and when the Two Trees of Valinor had been drained and broken the two of them left the gardens of the gods wrapped in a darkness that had texture, that pressed on the skin like cold water. This was the work he was best at. He had been doing it, in one shape or another, since before the world had a shape of its own.

He was not always called Morgoth. In the beginning he was Melkor, “He Who Arises in Might,” and the name was honest. Of all the Ainur, the deathless spirits drawn from the thought of Ilúvatar, he was the greatest, gifted with a share of every power the others held between them. When the world was sung into being through a vast Music, Melkor could not bear to sing another’s theme. He raised his own voice against the design, loud and proud and discordant, and the song buckled around him. Some accounts make his early strength so great he could have overmatched all the other Valar at once; others are more cautious. They agree on the shape of the fall if not its precise measure. The greatest of them wanted to be the only one.

In those first ages he could wear any form he chose. He could rise as a mountain that waded in the sea, ice-clad, its head crowned with smoke and fire, and the light of his eyes was a flame that withered with heat and pierced with a deadly cold. That freedom did not last. The figure remembered in the later tales is heavier and grimmer: a towering king sheathed in black iron, and on his brow an iron crown into which he had hammered the three Silmarils, the holiest jewels ever made. He never took the crown off. It cannot have been comfortable. The same jewels that proved his triumph had scorched his hands black the moment he closed them, because the Silmarils were hallowed and he was not, and the burn never healed.

The theft of those jewels is the hinge of his story. After the Trees were killed he fled to the north, to the deep fortress of Angband, and there he set the Silmarils in his crown and sat beneath the weight of them. It was Fëanor, the elf who had made the jewels and whose father Melkor had murdered to take them, who gave the dark king the name that stuck. Morgoth. The Black Foe of the World. The Elves used no other name for him after that.

What he did in Angband was patient and methodical. In the pits below the fortress the forges never cooled, and the air down there tasted of iron and ash. He took Elves captured in the early wars and broke them over long cruelty into a servile, hating people, and so the Orcs were made, mockeries bred from something he could not himself create. He raised Balrogs of shadow and flame. He bred the first dragons. Everything he commanded was a corruption of something finer, because corruption was the only kind of making left to him.

Once, a single rider came to his gate. Fingolfin, a king of the Elves, rode alone to the doors of Angband and struck them and called Morgoth out by name to answer for what he had done. Morgoth came, slowly, and would rather not have. He fought because his own court was watching. The elf was small against him and lasted far longer than anyone had a right to, and before the end he drove his sword clean through Morgoth’s foot. Seven wounds the king carried away from that duel, and a limp he kept for the rest of his existence, and a face torn open by an eagle as he stooped over the body.

That duel exposed the truth about his power. To hold Arda completely, Morgoth had poured his strength out into the very substance of the world, into its stone and its creatures, hoping to own all of it from the inside. The strategy worked and ruined him at once. His might was now everywhere, and therefore no longer his to gather. He could no longer change his shape. He could be wounded, and lamed, and made to bleed, and he could not heal. The being who had once been the equal of every god in the world had spent himself buying a kingdom of dirt.

The end came as a war. The hosts of the West fell on Angband in the War of Wrath, and the land itself broke under the fighting. The mariner Eärendil slew the greatest of the dragons in the sky, the fortress was thrown down, and Morgoth was dragged out of the deepest of his own mines, the place he had hidden when courage finally failed him. They bound him in the chain that had held him once before, beat his iron crown into a collar for his neck, and thrust him out through the Door of Night into the empty Void beyond the walls of the world. He is there still, watched, unable to return. But the lies he worked into the hearts of Elves and Men were never recalled, and they go on doing their quiet damage. The old prophecies say he will find the door again at the end of days, and that when he does it will be a mortal man, Túrin, who finally kills him.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Morgoth?

Morgoth is the first and greatest evil of Tolkien’s invented mythology, originally the mightiest of the Ainur, the godlike spirits made from the thought of the creator Ilúvatar. He rebelled against the design of the world and spent the rest of his existence trying to dominate and corrupt it.

Why is Morgoth also called Melkor?

Melkor, meaning “He Who Arises in Might,” was his original name as the greatest of the Valar. He was renamed Morgoth, the “Black Foe of the World,” by the elf Fëanor after Morgoth destroyed the Two Trees of Valinor, murdered Fëanor’s father, and stole the jewels called the Silmarils.

Why are Morgoth’s hands burned black?

Morgoth’s hands were scorched black the moment he seized the three Silmarils, because the jewels were hallowed and he was not. The burns never healed, and he wore the stolen Silmarils set into an iron crown despite the constant pain.

How was Morgoth defeated?

Morgoth was defeated in the War of Wrath, when the hosts of the West destroyed his fortress of Angband. He was dragged from the deepest of his mines, bound in chains, and cast out through the Door of Night into the Void beyond the world, where he remains imprisoned.

Why couldn’t Morgoth heal his wounds?

Morgoth lost the ability to heal because he had poured his power out into the physical substance of the world in order to control it. With his might dispersed into Arda itself, he could no longer change shape or mend his body, so the seven wounds and the limp from his duel with Fingolfin stayed with him permanently.

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