Balrog

According to the mythology in The Silmarillion, the evil Vala Melkor, later called "Morgoth", corrupted lesser Maiar (angelic beings) to his service, as Balrogs, in the days of his splendour before the making of Arda.

When Melkor returned to Middle-earth from Valinor, he was attacked by the evil giant spider Ungoliant; his scream drew the Balrogs out of hiding to his rescue.

[T 9] They were fierce demons, associated with fire, armed with fiery whips of many thongs and claws like steel, and Morgoth delighted in using them to torture his captives.

[T 13] In later writings they ceased to be creatures, but are instead Maiar, lesser Ainur like Gandalf or Sauron, spirits of fire whom Melkor had corrupted before the creation of the World.

[T 20] In earlier drafts of The Lord of the Rings, some further indications of Tolkien's evolving conceptions appear, as when A figure strode to the fissure, no more than man-high yet terror seemed to go before it.

[T 24] He leads Balrogs, Orc-hosts, and Dragons as Morgoth's commander in the field in the Fifth Battle, Nírnaeth Arnoediad, and slays Fingon, High King of the Noldor.

[T 26] In The Book of Lost Tales, Tolkien describes Kosomot, the original version of Gothmog, as a son of Morgoth and the ogress Fluithuin or Ulbandi.

[T 32] For more than five millennia, the Balrog remained in its deep hiding place at the roots of Caradhras,[T 33] one of the Mountains of Moria, until in the Third Age, the mithril-miners of the Dwarf-kingdom of Khazad-dûm disturbed it.

[T 35][T 36] For another 500 years, Moria was left to the Balrog; though according to Unfinished Tales, Orcs crept in soon after the Dwarves were driven out, leading to Nimrodel's flight.

[T 14] After a long fall, the two crashed into a deep subterranean lake, which extinguished the flames of the Balrog's body; however it remained "a thing of slime, stronger than a strangling snake".

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.

Critics such as Jerram Barrs have recognised this as a transfiguration similar to that of Jesus Christ, suggesting Gandalf's prophet-like status.

[1] An early list of names described Balrog as "an Orc-word with no pure equivalent in Tolkien's invented language of Quenya: 'borrowed Malaroko-' ".

[T 39] By the 1940s, when Tolkien began writing The Lord of the Rings, he had come to think of Balrog as Noldorin balch 'cruel' + rhaug 'demon', with a Quenya equivalent Malarauko (from nwalya- 'to torture' + rauko 'demon').

[T 40] The last etymology, appearing in the invented languages Quendi and Eldar, derives Balrog as the Sindarin translation of the Quenya form Valarauko (Demon of Might).

[T 41][T 42] Gandalf on the bridge of Khazad-dûm calls the Balrog "flame of Udûn" ( the Sindarin name of Morgoth's fortress Utumno).

[T 44] The Balrog and other concepts in his writings derived from the Old English word Sigelwara, used in texts such as the Codex Junius to mean "Aethiopian".

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

[T 43] 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.

[10] Joe Abbott, writing in Mythlore, notes that the Old Norse Voluspa mentions that the fire-demon Surt carries both a sword and a sviga laevi, a deadly whipping-stick or switch; he suggests that it is "a short step" from that to the Balrog's flaming whip.

[1] Abbott makes a connection, too, with the Beowulf poet's account of the monster Grendel: he notes that Tolkien wrote that Grendel was "physical enough in form and power, but vaguely felt as belonging to a different order of being, one allied to the malevolent 'ghosts' of the dead", and compares this with Aragorn's description of the Balrog as "both a shadow and a flame, strong and terrible".

The Elf Ecthelion leads the charge against the Orcs, and fights Gothmog, the greatest Balrog; they wound each other and both fall into the king's fountain in Gondolin; both drown.

[14] Peter Jackson's 2001 and 2002 films The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers had similar wings, expressing its "satanic, demonic nature".

In the real-time strategy game The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth, and its sequel, both based on Jackson's movies, the Balrog can use its wings, although only in short leaps.

In the role-playing game The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age, also based on the Jackson movies, the Balrog uses its wings to fly into the air, and comes crashing down, sending a damaging shockwave of flames at the player.

[16][17] A Balrog features in King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard's 2017 album Murder of the Universe (2017) as a giant reanimated monster.