Thread by @SdeSilentio

According to J.R.R. Tolkien, one of the most important contributions of Norse culture to the Christian, chivalric culture that succeeded it, was a particular idea of courage.

He named this the Theory of Northern Courage. 🧵

According to Tolkien, when Christendom expanded into the British Isles and eventually Scandinavia and Iceland, it came into contact with a Heroic Age—preserved in Norse mythology—that was even more wild and primitive than the Greek had ever been.

This is evident if we, as Tolkien puts it, “contrast the ‘inhumanness’ of the Greek gods, however anthropomorphic, with the ‘humanness’ of the Northern, however titanic”.

The Greek gods exist outside the boundaries of time, untouched by the transient nature of life and the looming shadow of mortality.

They do not grapple with the fear of death. Their demeanour and nature are elevated, and their inscrutability makes them mysterious. Thus, their godlike stature and the chasm that exists between them and humanity are prominent.

The gods are certainly not without formidable enemies; there are tales of the Titanomachy, the war in which Zeus used his mighty lightning to defeat the Titans and banish them to Tartarus. Yet, this lies in a chaotic and distant past.

The overall trajectory is thus that the reigning gods stand unthreatened, free from constant danger or impending catastrophe. Although often enigmatic and in conflict with each other, the Greek gods are ultimately very much in control.

While the gods are more godlike, the monsters are also more domesticated. Consider the story of Odysseus and the Cyclops Polyphemus. While Polyphemus, by eating his guests, acts against the will of Zeus and other deities, he himself is a child of the gods and enjoys their protection.

Consequently, Odysseus’ injuring him is an offense by which Poseidon, the Cyclops’ father, is greatly offended. Poseidon's anger drives many of the challenges and obstacles that Odysseus faces on his journey home.

In Norse mythology, things are quite different. The gods are very much within time, and though they are powerful, strange, and enigmatic like the Greek gods, they are a lot more human. For, like mortals, they are not in control, and they are in constant conflict with the powers of evil.

In this war against the monsters, the gods must ally themselves with men. Men who are killed in battle go to Valhalla. There they prepare for war and drink beer with the gods. At Ragnarök, they fight alongside Odin, Thor, Tyr, and the other gods of Ásgard against the giants, and monsters such as the World Serpent and the Fenrir Wolf.

In Greek mythology, the interest of the gods lies in specific individuals as part of their individual schemes. In Norse mythology, by contrast, the gods’ interest in men forms part of a grand strategy where all good men serve as the infantry in a battle against monstrous evil.

What makes this wild Norse world so distinct is that this final battle is a battle that the gods and men have been foretold to lose. The winning side is Chaos and Unreason, the giants and the monsters.

The gods are doomed with their allies to death. Thor, who is killed by the World Serpent, and Odin, who is killed by the Fenrir Wolf, cannot escape death any more than mortal man.

Nevertheless, the gods, who know that they will be defeated, do not see certain defeat as a reason to give up, to stop fighting. And likewise, men, their chosen allies in this war, can share in this perfect resistance when acting heroically—a resistance that is perfect because it is without hope.

This mythology of the twilight of the gods and men, Ragnarök, gave birth to a tragic, yet inspiring, vision of courage. As Tolkien writes, Norse mythology put “the monsters in the centre, gave them Victory but no honour, and found a potent but terrible solution in naked will and courage”.

Thus, we have the Northern “creed of unyielding will”.

When this idea came into contact with Christianity, the idea was transfigured and ennobled, like a compound forming through a violent, explosive chemical reaction.

As Tolkien writes “Northern Courage is one of the most potent elements of a fusion that has occurred at a given point of contact between old and new, a product of thought and deep emotion”.

For, when the Christians looked back at this heroic age, the old gods dwindled. Partly because they according to the Christians had not really existed — they had always been mere delusions or lies fabricated by Satan—but also partly because their old names had been potent, and were still connected with active paganism.

In the heroic siege and last defeat, men and gods alike had been imagined in the same host. Now the heroic figures, the men of old, heroes under heaven, remained and still fought on until defeat.

For the ancient monsters remain, whether the gods come or go. They transform into representations or servants of the Dark Lord, manifesting themselves in the hideous bodies of the beasts of heathen imagination.

What hope the men of Midgard saw in their allies across Bifröst in Ásgard, had faded like a rainbow after a storm that has left behind only the memory of its vibrant hues.

As the Christian looked back into the past, surveying the history of kings and warriors in the old traditions, he sees that all glory and civilization ends in night.

Yet, this idea of Northern Courage can work, as it did with the godless viking, without the Norse gods. For its essence is that martial heroism is its own end and this idea quite easily lent itself to a Christian interpretation.

The Christian is still, like his forefathers, a mortal bound to a hostile world. The monsters remained the enemies of mankind, the infantry of the old war, and became inevitably the enemies of the one God.

We see this in the Old English poem Beowulf. This is a universe emptied of gods, but the monsters remain.

The gigantic foes whom Beowulf has to meet are identified with the foes of God. Grendel and the dragon are constantly referred to in language that is meant to recall the powers of darkness with which Christian men felt themselves to be encompassed.

They are the ‘offspring of Cain’, ‘inmates of Hell’, ‘adversaries of God’, and ‘enemies of mankind’. “They are directly connected with Scripture, yet they cannot be dissociated from the creatures of northern myth”, as Tolkien writes.

This is, Tolkien points out, not due to some confusion; instead, it shows that new Scripture and old traditions “touched and ignited”.

Man, alien in a hostile world, is engaged in a struggle that he cannot win while the world lasts. Yet, he is assured that his foes are the foes also of the Lord and that his courage is both noble in itself and the highest loyalty.

“The worth of defeated valour in this world is deeply felt.”

Yet, Christianity has not fully baptized the Northern Courage in Beowulf. The poem is uniquely coloured by the nearness of a pagan time. Its author is still concerned primarily with man on earth, with the fact that all men and all their works eventually die. A theme, as Tolkien writes, that “no Christian need despise”, but that still lacks something.

For as Christianity more fully seeps in, so the vision of the war changes. It “begins to dissolve, even as the contest on the fields of time thus takes on its largest aspect”, as Tolkien notes. The tragedy of the great temporal defeat remains poignant, but it no longer holds ultimate significance.

In fact, it is no defeat, for the end of the world is part of God’s plan who is above the mortal world. Beyond the struggle, there are glimpses of eternal victory, not just for the world but also for God’s faithful soldiers themselves.

Thus, the result was like increasing the contrast of a picture: the shadows become deeper, but the light becomes brighter.

It is this idea of courage that Tolkien brings into his work and that makes it so uniquely beautiful.

We see it for instance in The Lord of the Rings after the Fellowship has escaped the Mines of Moria. Gandalf, their leader, has just fallen into the dark, and their mission is in the balance:

“[Aragorn] looked towards the mountains and held up his sword. ‘Farewell, Gandalf!’ he cried. ‘… What hope have we without you?’

He turned to the Company. ‘We must do without hope,’ he said. ‘At least we may yet be avenged. Let us gird ourselves and weep no more! Come! We have a long road, and much to do.’”

We also see it at the Battle of the Pelennor fields:

“Stern now was Éomer’s mood, and his mind clear again. He let blow the horns to rally all men to his banner that could come thither; for he thought to make a great shield-wall at the last, and stand, and fight there on foot till all fell, and do deeds of song on the fields of Pelennor, though no man should be left in the West to remember the last King of the Mark.”

According to Aristotle, the coward is a despairing sort of person, while the couragous man has the opposite disposition, “for confidence is the mark of a hopeful disposition”. The Theory of Northern Courage is an elaboration on this, but a radical one.

For even when all grounds for hope are lost, the man of Northern Courage will nevertheless retain this hopeful disposition. One might say that he will hope for hope even when everything seems hopeless.

This is by definition irrational. It is a stubborn, bull-headed refusal to be reasonable in the face of adversity. The Theory of Northern Courage pushes courage beyond the limits of rational action, something the rationalist Aristotle probably would not endorse.

Yet, the idea contains a tremendous appeal. According to Tolkien, the Theory of Northern Courage is so potent that while the older Greek mythology “has faded for ever into literary ornament, [Northern Courage] has power, as it were, to revive its spirit even in our own times.”