Interview with Savannah Horrell by Anérea by Savannah Horrell, Anérea

In her abstract for her Mereth Aderthad 2025 presentation, titled "By Guile Committed: Comparing Tolkien’s Thieves to Beowulf," Savannah Horrell notes that while many mythic traditions around the world feature heroic thieves or tricksters, they are largely absent from the Northern European poetic canon, so it's interesting that heroic thieves turn up frequently throughout Tolkien's legendarium. Savannah quotes: "The earliest story of theft in Germanic literature is a subplot in Beowulf," and goes on to note that although Tolkien incorporated this famous first theft into the plot of The Hobbit, a key difference stands out: whereas Beowulf’s thief is a slave seeking reconciliation with his master and his ultimate fate is as murky as his origins, the Hobbit’s thief is the hero of the tale, a man of wealth and social standing who returns home richer and more prestigious, though marked by his experience, The quest of Beren and Lúthien as well as the infiltration of Mordor can both be classified as heroic thief stories. In her paper, Savannah will contrast legal, social, and narrative norms surrounding thievery in Old English sources with in and out of narrative treatment of burglary in The Hobbit and Silmarillion to determine how closely Tolkien’s thieves really resemble their inspiration.

Anérea: Your presentation connects Beowulf with Tolkien's main legendarium, so it's clear you have a wide appreciation of his works. What draws you to Tolkien?

Savannah: Tolkien’s works were a major part of my childhood—in a way they’re my first fandom. While other interests come and go, I find myself returning to Tolkien again and again, discovering new aspects of his work every time. It’s a text which never gets worn out. There’s always a new angle or lens through which to examine it. As I’ve begun to dive into Tolkien academia, the breadth of fascinating Tolkien lore available has opened up even more.

Anérea: Do you have a favourite part of the legendarium? And a favourite aspect of Beowulf? (And a favourite other work of his?)

Savannah: My favorite part of the legendarium is its historical richness! You can definitely sense how Tolkien’s work as a historian and life’s work in the classics influenced his idea of fantasy. He understood linguistic drift, the social norms of a pre-modern society, and the unreliability of historical records (and he balanced them with the story’s needs). He doesn’t flesh out details of how the Shire’s economy works but he gives it a unique calendar and hundreds of years of history.

My favorite part of Beowulf is the role of women in the text. Although rarely centered, they have enormous implicit power as peace-weavers and treasure-givers. They are framed as individuals who can make or break kingdoms—and also as the first casualties of conflicts between them. Adding in Grendel’s mother, the unnamed monster who lives and dies for vengeance, it paints such an interesting picture of the status and power of women.

Indirect power as expressed in Beowulf, and the strictures of who gets to be a hero in the Germanic epic tradition, was a big inspiration for this piece on thieves. There are very few guile heroes or underdog heroes in what we have left of the Germanic heroic legend—most figures in the surviving epics are of greater than average ability, warriors or magicians of power who accomplish great deeds while abiding by a code (and Old English moral codes frowned heavily on theft!) This is obviously a big contrast with the Hobbits, singers, and burglars who dominate many of Tolkien’s narratives—it felt worthwhile to unpack that!

If I had to pick another favorite Tolkien work, I’d probably say Farmer Giles of Ham. It’s objectively not his best short story, but I read it at an impressionable age! Many of the themes, of a small man becoming big through simple bravery, of dragons and magic swords, resonate through the rest of his work.

Anérea: I have to admit that I've not read Beowulf so my knowledge is from what I've osmosed over the years through references in other works or in conversations. (Plus a Sellic Spell/Hobbit fanfic by bunn.) Since everything humans create is based on something (and usually many somethings) I experience a particular enjoyment in discovering the sources of concepts and tracing a creator's path, so I was naturally intrigued by your presentation linking the thief from Beowulf with the various thefts in Middle-earth. What about it inspired you to explore this topic?

Savannah: Finding influences on Tolkien was a big part of what drew me to Beowulf, and I was delighted to find I enjoyed it in its own right! It’s a fascinating text with a wonderful mouthfeel. I read both Seamus Heaney and Tolkien’s translations and often found myself murmuring them out loud.

Getting into the text and reading Tolkien’s annotations, it became obvious how much his study of Beowulf shaped his entire ethos on fantasy, both directly and indirectly. There are the obvious nods, like the plot of The Hobbit being drawn from the dragon-hunting section, where thirteen companions including one thief go to find a dragon in its lair, or the twist on ring-giving as an indicator of domination and kingship. There’s also some more oblique influences—Grendel, the fallen, cannibalistic wild man who both is and isn’t human and does and doesn’t have a soul—clearly shaped the Orcs significantly. Because it’s so foundationally inspirational, the gaps, the places where Tolkien clearly diverges from Beowulf’s model and puts his own twist on things, become much more interesting.

I was also inspired by the fact that Tolkien’s thieves have had such an outsized impact on fantasy as a whole. The entire Dungeons and Dragons Rogue class and the hundreds of pastiches that have followed are a result of Tolkien deciding to frame his children’s novel through the eyes of the unnamed thief instead of Beowulf himself (and, as Sellic Spell demonstrates, he clearly knew how to make Beowulf’s story into a fairytale).

Finally, I was a little bit inspired by the endless online fussing among The Silmarillion fandom about Silmaril Property Rights—it made me consider why Tolkien made so many of his heroes thieves in the first place! He clearly had an interest in the theme of heroic burglary, why not ask why?

Anérea: Your answers are so compelling! Thank you!

Beowulf is one of those books perpetually on my To Be Read list, but your comments have now got me very keen to finally actually read it, and I'm sure other fans will be too. You mentioned Heaney's translation as well as Tolkien's; would you recommend one over the other, or both, and if so, in any particular order? And how about Sellic Spell?

Savannah: I think Tolkien’s annotations make it a more interesting overall piece, even if it doesn’t have Heaney’s modern flow. And Sellic Spell is just a goofy little story, it’s very fun.

Anérea: Thanks! That also gives a brief sense of their differences.

Thank you so much for your inspirational and thought-provoking answers, I'm even more excited about your presentation now!