Telchar of Nogrod by Lindariel

Telchar of Nogrod

Smithcraft looms large in Tolkien's legendarium, with much of the history of Arda dependent on the actions of a few famous divine and Elvish smiths: Aulë, Mairon, Fëanor, Eöl, and Celebrimbor. No famous smiths are named among the Children of Men, but from among the Dwarves of the Elder Days the names of two survive: Telchar of Nogrod and his master.

Little information exists about the life of Telchar. The details of his ancestry and lifespan are all unknown. He was born in the First Age in the Dwarven city of Nogrod, the more southern of the two great delvings in the Ered Lindon. The Ered Lindon was home to both the Firebeard and the Broadbeam houses of Dwarves,¹ but it is not clear which house(s) dwelled where. Telchar may have been a Firebeard, a Broadbeam, or perhaps even a descendant of both houses. It is only possible to assign him a loose dating. He was definitely alive in the middle of the third century of the First Age, because he created one of his most famous works, the Helm of Azaghâl, at some point shortly after FA 260.²

Telchar was so famous a smith that even Thingol Greycloak of Doriath possessed a hoard of his blades and armor, along with those of Telchar's master, Gamil Zirak the Old.³ But there are no independent mentions of the work of Zirak, and he appears nowhere else in the stories of the Elder Days, so he must therefore have been decisively surpassed in skill by his student Telchar.

Despite the obscurity of his personal life, Telchar's influence over the history of Arda resounded even unto the Fourth Age through the fame of three works he created.

The Helm of Azaghâl

The Dwarves of the First Age wore as part of their battle attire "great masks ... hideous to look upon",⁴ of which the most famous was the one created by Telchar:

The Helm of Hador was given into Thingol’s hands. That helm was made of grey steel adorned with gold, and on it were graven runes of victory. A power was in it that guarded any who wore it from wound or death, for the sword that hewed it was broken, and the dart that smote it sprang aside. It was wrought by Telchar, the smith of Nogrod, whose works were renowned. It had a visor (after the manner of those that the Dwarves used in their forges for the shielding of their eyes), and the face of one that wore it struck fear into the hearts of all beholders, but was itself guarded from dart and fire. Upon its crest was set in defiance a gilded image of Glaurung the dragon; for it had been made soon after he first issued from the gates of Morgoth.⁵

Telchar originally crafted the helm for Azaghâl, Lord of Belegost,⁶ sometime shortly after the first appearance of Glaurung in FA 260. But it had many owners and many names down the length of the First Age, as the original version of the Narn i Chîn Húrin in Unfinished Tales goes on to tell, and it was more famous for people choosing not to wear it than for people wearing it. It passed from the Dwarves to the Elves when Azaghâl gave it to Maedhros, who gave it to Fingon. It passed from the Elves to the Children of Men when Fingon presented it to the House of Hador upon the enfeoffment of Hador Lórindol as Lord of Dor-lómin in 416 FA. It passed as an heirloom down the generations of that house, from Hador to Galdor to Húrin to Túrin, who did wear it and in whose tale it features prominently.

Like several before him, Húrin chose not to wear the helm, which was built large and heavy for a Dwarf warrior, but he treasured it, leaving it in the safekeeping of his wife Morwen when he went to the Nirnaeth Arnoediad in FA 472. After the capture of Húrin by Morgoth's forces at that battle, Morwen sent their young son Túrin, now Lord of Dor-lómin, to Doriath for his protection. When Thingol sent messengers to bring her and her infant daughter Nienor to Doriath as well, Morwen demurred, instead sending the helm as a gift to Thingol who was fostering Túrin:

Now Thingol had in Menegroth deep armouries filled with great wealth of weapons: metal wrought like fishes’ mail and shining like water in the moon; swords and axes, shields and helms, wrought by Telchar himself or by his master Gamil Zirak the old, or by elven-wrights more skilful still. For some things he had received in gift that came out of Valinor and were wrought by Fëanor in his mastery, than whom no craftsman was greater in all the days of the world. Yet Thingol handled the Helm of Hador as though his hoard were scanty, and he spoke courteous words, saying: ‘Proud were the head that bore this helm, which the sires of Húrin bore.'⁷

Thingol presented the helm to Túrin, who held off on taking possession of it until FA 481, the year he was seventeen and chose to leave Doriath for a warrior's life on the northern borders. Word got around that the highly recognizable Dragon-helm of Dor-lómin was afield again. But after three years, Túrin visited Doriath for weapon repairs and wound up fleeing west and south after the accidental death of Saeros was unjustly laid to his account. This action somehow involved his becoming separated from the helm. It is not clear what happened to the helm at that time, but it falls out of the story until Túrin's best friend Beleg Strongbow returned it to him at Bar-en-Danwedh on Amon Rûdh in FA 486.

In the spring of FA 487, Túrin wore the helm as he and Beleg led a band of Men on a series of raids against the Orcs who were infiltrating the Talath Dirnen. Túrin, who had a habit of giving himself a new name after every tragedy that befell him, named himself Gorthol, "the Dread Helm," during this period. Once again, news of the Dragon-helm got around, and this time Morgoth noticed. The Enemy sent Orcs to Amon Rûdh to capture Túrin, at which time he was apparently separated from the helm for good. There is no sure knowledge of what happened to the helm after that; perhaps the curse in which Túrin was caught up extended not just to his family and friends but to his helm also.

Angrist

Angrist, or "Iron-cleaver,"⁸ was a knife forged by Telchar of which it was said "iron it would cleave as if it were green wood."⁹ It belonged to Curufin, the fifth son of Fëanor, who wore it unprotected at his belt. When Beren foiled the attempted kidnapping of Lúthien by Celegorm and Curufin he confiscated all Curufin's weaponry, even the knife. Beren evidently retained the knife through his continuing adventures, because it was the blade he later used to cut a Silmaril out of its iron setting in the crown of Morgoth. After he cut the Silmaril free, the knife blade snapped in Beren's hand, striking the sleeping Morgoth in the face.¹⁰ No knife, whether in the Elder Days or thereafter, ever did a nobler deed than to free the Silmaril that eventually became the Star of Eärendil; the fate of Elves, Men, and Arda itself hinged on Beren having a tool this trenchant to hand.

Narsil

Narsil was a sword forged by Telchar.¹¹ Named in Quenya for the Sun and Moon, Anar and Isil, "it thus symbolised the chief heavenly lights, as enemies of darkness"¹² and "it shone with the light of the sun and of the moon."¹³ Its earlier history, original owner(s), and possible early names are unknown, but somehow it survived the destruction of Beleriand at the end of the First Age. At the end of the Second Age it was borne by Elendil in the Last Alliance of Elves and Men.¹⁴

After it broke during Elendil's death at the Battle of Dagorlad, Isildur used the stump of Narsil to cut the One Ring off the finger of Sauron. Isildur then entrusted the two pieces of Narsil to his squire Ohtar, who survived the ambush of the Gladden Fields to bring them to Isildur's son and heir Valandil at Rivendell.¹⁵ They were left in pieces, for Elrond prophesied that the sword would not be reforged until the One Ring and Sauron reemerged.¹⁶ The now lightless shards were kept by the heirs of the North Kingdom until the time of Aranath the first Chieftain of the Dúnedain in Third Age 1976; then they were "given into the keeping of Elrond"¹⁷ at Rivendell, where the heirs to the chieftains were thereafter fostered.¹⁸

Elrond gave the shards of Narsil to Aragorn, the Heir of Isildur, in Third Age 2951.¹⁹ After that Aragorn evidently wore them in a scabbard, as he revealed to the Hobbits in the Prancing Pony at Bree in Third Age 3018.²⁰ Later that fall, after the Council of Elrond, the shards of Narsil were reforged by Elven smiths of Rivendell into a new sword. They ornamented its blade with runes and images of the Sun, Moon, and seven stars and succeeded in restoring to the sword the red and white lights of Sun and Moon that Narsil had once cast. Aragorn renamed the sword Andúril, "Flame of the West"²¹ and wielded it throughout the War of the Ring. 

Andúril's lineage and the light it cast were often mentioned in the chronicle of the War of the Ring. On some occasions the sword is simply said to have glittered or gleamed, but there are several references to a flamelike light. Aragorn first declared his heritage and that of the sword to Éomer on the plains of Rohan, where in confirmation "the bright blade of Andúril shone like a sudden flame as he swept it out."²² Gandalf the White, housed in a new fana after his ordeal with the Balrog, counseled Aragorn with fresh insight that "[t]he light of Andúril must now be uncovered in the battle for which it has so long waited."²³ Pressed to relinquish the sword at the doors of Meduseld, Aragorn again declared its lineage, this time invoking its maker as well: "In this Elvish sheath dwells the Blade that was Broken and has been made again. Telchar first wrought it in the deeps of time."²⁴ 

At Helm's Deep the light of Andúril was first witnessed in battle by an army: "Andúril rose and fell, gleaming with white fire. A shout went up from wall and tower: ‘Andúril! Andúril goes to war. The Blade that was Broken shines again!’"²⁵ Later in that battle, "three times Andúril flamed in a desperate charge."²⁶ The flame for which Andúril was named featured prominently during what is arguably the most stirring battle passage in the entire War of the Rings story: "before all went Aragorn with the Flame of the West, Andúril like a new fire kindled, Narsil re-forged as deadly as of old."²⁷ 

During Aragorn's subsequent coronation, one of the attributes of the king announced by the Steward of Gondor was "wielder of the Sword Reforged."²⁸ That is the last mention of Andúril, whose deeds were among the most noble done by any ancient sword. 

Development of the Character and His Works

The textual record relating the seven Houses of the Dwarves to the various delvings in Beleriand and Middle-earth is hopelessly tangled. Most early materials spoke only of the Longbeards, attributing their home to various locations. The essay Of Dwarves and Men, written in the late 1960s, gives the most firm and complete information, listing the Firebeards and Broadbeams as the two houses that awoke in the delvings of Ered Lindon.²⁹ This contradicts much of what is said early on about the Longbeards, and it still does not clearly state which of the houses lived in Nogrod. Sometimes the text is so intractable that no concise answer is possible, as is the case here. We can never know for certain from which house Telchar sprung.

Indeed, given the jumble of the early texts it is difficult enough to be reasonably sure which delving housed Telchar, particularly when considering the Quenta Silmarillion, in which both answers, Belegost and Nogrod, are most confusingly (and perhaps Elvishly) given. In Draft QS(D) of the Quenta Silmarillion, Telchar remains "Telchar the dwarf-smith of Belegost."³⁰ But in the version of the Quenta Silmarillion that was eventually published³¹ and in all drafts thereafter, Telchar of Nogrod is the rule. 

However, there is one text that gives what seems to be the most definitive understanding of the differences between Belegost and Nogrod. The Grey Annals tell that the Dwarves of Belegost were the best at constructing, and Thingol sought them out in Valian Year 1300 to help him build Menegroth. For smithcraft, however, "none among them surpassed the craftsmen of Nogrod, of whom Telchar the Smith was the greatest in renown."³² Telchar, of course, was not alive when Menegroth was built, but this text seems to regard him as the greatest of a great house.

The Quenta Silmarillion is also the first work to give the name of Telchar's master, Zirak the Old,³³ about whom even less is known than Telchar. He is only mentioned once more in the published canon. His given name means "spike"; Tolkien elucidated the meaning of the Khuzdul word zirak with a little drawing of a spiked mountaintop.³⁴ Zirak's name is elaborated in the Narn to Gamil Zirak the Old,³⁵ in what looks very much like a doubling of the byname "old" by addition of a form of the Old Norse word for aged, gamall. "Old Spike the Old" must have been a formidable smith himself, if his work was good enough for Thingol to hoard. More about him would be a welcome enhancement to the tale of the First Age.

Tolkien's pattern with all three known works of Telchar was first to imagine the work, and only later to attribute it to Telchar. 

Even before the character Telchar existed, Tolkien imagined a magic Dwarven helm, and to a certain extent the evolution of the character is intertwined with the evolution of the magic helm's story. The first mentioned of the three works eventually attributed to Telchar, the Dragon-helm is introduced quite early in the legendarium, in the first version of the alliterative poem "Túrin Son of Húrin & Glórund the Dragon," which name was later emended in the second version from simply "Túrin" to "The Children of Húrin."³⁶ It is described as "a helm of Húrin ... o'erwritten with runes / by wrights of old."³⁷

Telchar himself is introduced in the second version of the same poem, of roughly the same date as the first (sometime between 1923 and 1925). Nothing is told of Telchar personally, but the poem elaborates on the date, maker, and magic of the helm, describing it as being 

o'er-written with runes  by wrights of yore
in dark dwarfland  in the deeps of time,
ere Men to Mithrim  and misty Hithlum
o'er the world wandered ... 
'Tis Telchar's work  of worth untold,
its wearer warded  from wound or magic,
from glaive guarded  or gleaming axe.³⁸

The next historic clue to Telchar came in The Quenta [Noldorinwa] (1930). In the Quenta is given a more elaborate description of the helm, mentioning for the first time the dragon-crest on it: "[t]hereon was set in mockery the image of the head of Glόmund, and oft it had gone into victory, so that the Men of Hithlum said: We have a dragon of more worth than theirs. It was Telchar’s work, the great smith of Belegost."³⁹  Glόmund is an early name for Glaurung, the flightless dragon known as the Great Worm of Angband.

As noted above, the Quenta Silmarillion (1937) contains the first mention of Telchar's master Zirak, and it also marked the point in the development of the legendarium when Telchar's origin also shifted from one Dwarvish city in the Ered Lindon to the other.

After that there are no more developments until the burst of new material in the 1950s that accompanied the finishing of The Lord of the Rings. In those related works—particularly the Narn i Hîn Húrin and The Grey Annals -- Tolkien elaborates, sometimes in incomplete or even fragmentary fashion, on the topics of Telchar, Zirak, and the Dragon-helm.  Some of the later material on the helm is included in the Appendix to the Narn.⁴⁰ Into the synthesized work Christopher Tolkien edited, Narn i Chîn Húrin: The Tale of the Children of Húrin (2007), he chose not to integrate most of the material on the Dragon-helm from that period, such as the original owner of the helm being Azaghâl, Lord of Belegost, and the helm's chain of custody from Telchar to Hador Lórindol. An appendix to the Narn i Chîn Húrin⁴¹ elucidates his editorial decisions.

The first appearance of the unnamed blade that would later become Angrist is in the Lay of Leithian, where it replaced the kitchen knife from Tevildo's castle that Beren used in the earliest version of the story⁴² to remove a Silmaril from the crown of Melkor. Curufin's knife is largely in final form in this first appearance: 

hanging sheathless, wrought of steel ....
the dwarves had made it, singing slow
enchantments, where their hammers fell
in Nogrod ringing like a bell.
Iron as tender wood it cleft.⁴³

The origin of the knife, "o'er which in Nogrod songs had rolled / of dwarvish armourers singing slow / to hammer-music long ago,"⁴⁴ is reinforced later in the Lay. Yet the knife remained unnamed until the B draft of the Quenta Silmarillion, which detailed the story of Beren and Lúthien⁴⁵ and first called the knife Angrist. Shortly afterward, in the completed manuscript of the Quenta Silmarillion that Tolkien sent off to his publisher in 1937, Telchar was identified as the maker of Angrist,⁴⁶ and the story of Angrist remained in that form thereafter.

The original concept of Narsil/Andúril did not evolve until Tolkien had undertaken the drafting of The Lord of the Rings. During the early drafting phase in the early 1940s, the idea of the Sword that was Broken came first, predating the idea that it broke under Elendil when he fell. Also, Elendil was originally the person who prophesied about the future of his sword: "And Elendil said: 'This sword shall not be brandished again for many years; but when a cry is heard in Minas Anor, and the power of Sauron grows great in the Middle-earth, then let it be whetted.'"⁴⁷ The reforged sword was originally renamed Branding⁴⁸ a name that, like Narsil and Andúril, highlighted its fiery nature. 

Later the sword's earlier name, Narsil, was added.⁴⁹ But even then the sword was not attributed to Telchar. The date of that addition to the text is obscure; it does not occur in the lengthy published material in The History of Middle-earth that covers the early drafts of The Lord of the Rings, nor in the initial drafts of the 1940s, nor the later materials written just before The Lord of the Rings was published in 1954-1955. Only one thing is certain: at some point just before the publication of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien made the decision to attribute the Sword of Elendil to Telchar, an existing Elder Days smith character, rather than to any other existing or new Elvish or Mannish character. 

Thus the sword was the last of the three known works of Telchar to be confirmed as of his make. Yet this last-imagined among all of the works of Telchar proved to be the most famous of them, surviving the longest in the history of Middle-earth and foremost in the popular imagination.

Works Cited

1. History of Middle-earth, Volume XII: The Peoples of Middle-earth, Of Dwarves and Men, "Relations of the Longbeard Dwarves and Men.”
2. Unfinished Tales, Narn i Hîn Húrin, "The Departure of Túrin."
3. The Children of Húrin, "The Departure of Túrin."
4. The Silmarillion, "Of the Fifth Battle: Nirnaeth Arnoediad."
5. The Children of Húrin, "The Departure of Túrin."
6. Unfinished Tales, Narn i Hîn Húrin, "The Departure of Túrin."
7. Ibid.
8. The Silmarillion, "Index of Names."
9. The Silmarillion, "Of Beren and Lúthien."
10. Ibid.
11. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, "The King of the Golden Hall."
12. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, "347 to Richard Jeffery, 17 December 1972."
13. The Silmarillion, Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age.
14. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, "The Council of Elrond."
15. Ibid.
16. The Silmarillion, Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age.
17. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Appendix B, The Tale of Years, "The Third Age"
18. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Appendix A, "I - The Númenórean Kings, iii - Eriador, Arnor, and the Heirs of Isildur."
19. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Appendix B, The Tale of Years, "The Third Age."
20. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, "Strider."
21. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, "The Ring Goes South."
22. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, "The Riders of Rohan."
23. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, "The White Rider."
24. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, "The King of the Golden Hall."
25. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, "Helm's Deep."
26. Ibid.
27. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, "The Battle of the Pelennor Fields."
28. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, "The Steward and the King."
29. History of Middle-earth, Volume XII: The Peoples of Middle-earth, Of Dwarves and Men, "Relations of the Longbeard Dwarves and Men."
30. History of Middle-earth, Volume V: The Lost Road and Other Writings, Quenta Silmarillion, "Of Túrin Turamarth or Túrin the Hapless," §31.
31. Ibid., "12-15 Of Beren and Tinúviel."
32. History of Middle-Earth, Volume XI: The War of the Jewels, The Grey Annals, §28.
33. History of Middle-earth, Volume V: The Lost Road and Other Writings, Quenta Silmarillion, "Of Turin Turamarth or Turin the Hapless," §32.
34. J.R.R. Tolkien, "Words, Phrases & Passages in various tongues in the Lord of the Rings," ed. Christopher Gilson, Parma Eldalamberon 17 (2007): 36.
35. Unfinished Tales, Narn i Hîn Húrin, "The Departure of Túrin."
36. History of Middle-earth, Volume III: The Lays of Beleriand, The Lay of the Children of Húrin.
37. History of Middle-earth, Volume III: The Lays of Beleriand, The Lay of the Children of Húrin, "Túrin Son of Húrin & Glórund the Dragon, Túrin's Fostering," lines 298-300.
38. History of Middle-earth, Volume III: The Lays of Beleriand, The Lay of the Children of Húrin, "The Children of Húrin, Túrin's Fostering," lines 671-680.
39. History of Middle-earth, Volume IV: The Shaping of Middle-earth, The Quenta Noldorinwa, §11.
40. Unfinished Tales, Narn i Hîn Húrin, "Appendix."
41. The Children of Húrin, Appendix, "The Composition of the Text."
42. History of Middle-earth, Volume II: The Book of Lost Tales, Part 2: The Tale of Tinúviel.
43. History of Middle-earth, Volume III: The Lays of Beleriand, The Lay of Leithian, lines 3054-3060.
44. Ibid., lines 4145-4147.
45. History of Middle-earth, Volume V: The Lost Road, Quenta Silmarillion, "Of Beren and Tinúviel."
46. Ibid.
47. History of Middle-earth, Volume VII: The Treason of Isengard, "The Council of Elrond."
48. History of Middle-earth, Volume VII: The Treason of Isengard, "The Ring Goes South."
49. History of Middle-earth, Volume VIII: The War of the Ring: "The Battle of the Pelennor Fields."