Gandalf - Concept and Creation

Concept and Creation

Humphrey Carpenter in his 1977 biography relates that Tolkien owned a postcard entitled Der Berggeist (German: "the mountain spirit"), and on the paper cover in which he kept it, he wrote "the origin of Gandalf". The postcard reproduces a painting of a bearded figure, sitting on a rock under a pine tree in a mountainous setting. He wears a wide-brimmed round hat and a long red cloak, and a white fawn is nuzzling his upturned hands.

Carpenter said that Tolkien recalled buying the postcard during his holiday in Switzerland in 1911. Manfred Zimmerman, however, discovered that the painting was by German artist Josef Madlener and dates to the mid–1920s. Carpenter acknowledged that Tolkien was probably mistaken about the origin of the postcard.

The original painting was auctioned at Sotheby's in London on 12 July 2005 for £84,000. The previous owner had been given the painting by Madlener in the 1940s and recalled that Madlener said the mountains in the background were the Torri del Vaiolet, peaks of Dolomites.

When writing The Hobbit in the early 1930s Tolkien gave the name Gandalf to the leader of the Dwarves, the character later called Thorin Oakenshield. The name is taken from the same source as all the other Dwarf names (save Balin) in The Hobbit: the "Catalogue of Dwarves" in the Völuspá. The Old Norse name Gandalfr incorporates the words gandr meaning "wand", "staff" or (especially in compounds) "magic" and álfr "elf". The name Gandalf is found in at least one more place in Norse myth, in the semihistorical Heimskringla, which briefly describes Gandalf Alfgeirsson, a legendary Norse king from Eastern Norway and rival of Halfdan the Black.

The name "Gandolf" occurs as a character in William Morris' 1896 fantasy novel The Well at the World's End. Morris' book is a multi-part 'magical journey' involving elves, dwarves and kings in a pseudo-medieval landscape which is known to have deeply influenced Tolkien.

The wizard that was to become Gandalf was originally named Bladorthin. Tolkien later assigned this name to an ancient king who had ordered some spears from the dwarves.

Tolkien came to regret his ad hoc use of Old Norse name, referring to a "rabble of eddaic-named dwarves, ... invented in an idle hour" in 1937. But the decision to use Old Norse names came to have far-reaching consequences in the composition of The Lord of the Rings; in 1942, Tolkien decided that the work was to be a purported translation from the fictional language of Westron, and in the English translation Old Norse names were taken to represent names in the language of Dale. Gandalf, in this setting, is thus a representation in English (anglicised from Old Norse) of the name the dwarves of Dale had given to Olórin in the language they used "externally" in their daily affairs, while Tharkûn is the (untranslated) name, presumably of the same meaning, that the dwarves gave him in their native Khuzdul language. Tolkien explains this in his Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings (1967) to prospective translators.

Throughout the early drafts, and through to the first edition of The Hobbit Bladorthin/Gandalf is described as being a "little old man", distinct from a dwarf, but not of the full human stature that would later be described in The Lord of the Rings. Even in The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf was not tall; shorter, for example, than Elrond or the other wizards.

Gandalf's role and importance was substantially increased in the conception of The Lord of the Rings, and in a letter of 1954, Tolkien refers to Gandalf as an "angel incarnate". In the same letter Tolkien states he was given the form of an old man in order to limit his powers on Earth. Both in 1965 and 1971 Tolkien again refers to Gandalf as an angelic being.

In a letter of 1946 Tolkien stated that he thought of Gandalf as an "Odinic wanderer". Other commentators have also compared Gandalf to the Norse god Odin in his "Wanderer" guise — an old man with one eye, a long white beard, a wide brimmed hat, and a staff.