Mithril
Impenetrable armour occurs in Norse mythology in Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks, a story that Tolkien certainly knew and could have used for his mithril mail-coat.
The scholar Charles A. Huttar states that Tolkien treats mineral treasures as having the potential for both good and evil, recalling the association of mining and metalwork in John Milton's Paradise Lost with Satan.
The scholar Paul Kocher interprets the Dwarves' intense secrecy around mithril as an expression of sexual frustration, given that they have very few dwarf-women.
[T 1]The Noldor of Eregion, the Elvish land to the west of Moria, made an alloy from it called ithildin ("star moon"), used to decorate gateways, portals and pathways.
Before Moria was abandoned by the Dwarves, while it was still being actively mined, mithril was worth ten times its weight in gold.
[T 1] Tolkien hints that mithril was found in the lost island kingdom of Númenor[T 4] and the inaccessible continent of Aman.
[T 5] The principal item made of mithril in the works of Tolkien is the "small coat of mail" that Thorin Oakenshield gave to Bilbo Baggins after it had been retrieved from the hoard of Smaug the dragon.
Tolkien first described the shirt as being made of mithril in The Lord of the Rings in 1954,[T 1] and it was retrospectively mentioned in the third, revised edition of The Hobbit in 1966.
[T 4][4] Greatest of all, according to legend, was the ship of Eärendil, Vingilótë, which he sailed into the sky, making the gleam of truesilver visible to the world as the Evening and Morning Star.
[T 5] The linguist of Elvish languages Anthony Appleyard wrote that this machine, with "no shaven oar nor sail", was evidently of an advanced technology, "sound[ing] suspiciously like most people's image of a spaceship.
"[5] Norse culture contains myths of impenetrable armour, such as the shirt made by elves and used in battle by Örvar-Oddr (Ørvar Odd),[6] as related in the Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks.
In Kundu's view the nearest material would be a stainless steel alloy of iron with enough nano-scale carbon to make it hard.
[12] The geologist William Sarjeant, however, notes that mithril crystallises out "at so high a temperature that it is only found in veins at great depths", and proposes that it may be a native alloy of platinum with another metal, which might be palladium.
[14] Greed for mithril could unleash the terror of the Balrog, by digging too far down into the dark realm, but at the same time, he writes, the metal was prized for both its beauty and its usefulness, yielding the best armour.
In his view, these symbolise the evil "inherent in the mineral treasures hidden in the womb of Earth",[14] just as mining and metalwork are associated with Satan in John Milton's Paradise Lost (I, 670–751).
[15] The name "mithril" (also spelt mith, mithral, or mythril) is used in multiple fictional contexts influenced by Tolkien.
