19 Facts About Balrog

Balrog is a powerful fictional demonic monster in JR R Tolkien's Middle-earth.

Tolkien invented the name "Balrog", providing an in-universe etymology for it as a word in his invented Sindarin language.

Balrog may have gained the idea of a fire demon from his philological study of the Old English word Sigelwara, which he studied in detail in the 1930s.

When Gandalf threw it from the peak of Zirakzigil, the Balrog "broke the mountain-side where he smote it in his ruin".

Balrog is physically massive and strong, and in one version he is some 12 feet tall.

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Balrog wields a black axe and whip of flame as his weapons.

Balrog is about to kill Tuor when Ecthelion of the Fountain, a Noldorin Elf-lord, intervenes.

For more than five millennia, the Balrog remained in its deep hiding place at the roots of Caradhras, one of the Mountains of Moria, until in the Third Age, the mithril-miners of the Dwarf-kingdom of Khazad-dum disturbed it.

The Balrog killed Durin VI, the Dwarf-King of Khazad-dum, whereafter it was called Durin's Bane by the Dwarves.

Balrog's party managed to start a colony, but was massacred a few years later.

The Fellowship fled through a side door, but when the wizard Gandalf the Grey tried to place a "shutting spell" on the door to block the pursuit behind them, the Balrog entered the chamber on the other side and cast a "terrible" counterspell.

Balrog fled with him, but the Orcs and the Balrog, taking a different route, caught up with them at the Bridge of Khazad-dum.

Gandalf pursued the monster for eight days, until they climbed to the peak of Zirakzigil, where the Balrog was forced to turn and fight, its body erupting into new flame.

Balrog wondered why the Anglo-Saxons would have had a word with this meaning, conjecturing that it had formerly had a different meaning.

Balrog stated that Sigel meant "both sun and jewel", the former as it was the name of the Sun rune *sowilo, the latter connotation from Latin sigillum, a seal.

Balrog decided that Hearwa was related to Old English heorð, "hearth", and ultimately to Latin carbo, "soot".

Balrog suggested from all this that Sigelhearwan implied "rather the sons of Muspell than of Ham", a class of demons in Northern mythology "with red-hot eyes that emitted sparks and faces black as soot".

The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey states that this both "helped to naturalise the Balrog" and contributed to the Silmarils, which combined the nature of the sun and jewels.

Real-world etymological counterpart for the word "Balrog" existed long before Tolkien's languages, in Norse mythology; an epithet of the Norse god Odin was Baleygr, "fire-eyed".