Norse Myth, Tolkien, and Death
In Conversation with Andrew Snyder
Edited from its original podcast format for brevity and ease of reading
Andrew:
Now, on the literary angle, especially regarding Lewis and Tolkien, that you brought up, you know, I didn't really grow up reading that much, or at least I didn't read much fiction. I would read some nonfiction, even as a teenager, as I was getting older. I read some history or theology, that sort of thing. Yeah. But I didn't really grasp the value of fiction, probably not until grad school. I felt like if I wanted a story, I'd just watch a movie. It's not worth that kind of investment. But it wasn't until I really started to go through what was really the deepest sorrow of my life, as my wife and I had six consecutive miscarriages.
Jonathan:
Oh, wow.
Andrew:
Absolutely, I mean, it continues to be a life-impacting season for us. But it was in the midst of that sorrow when I started to better understand the things that I've kind of always believed on a more existential level. I think it's a turn of providence. I was working with Kierkegaard at the same time I was dealing with all this. It was at that time when I started to develop a recognition that there is a deep reality to be found in good stories. That's when I first really discovered Tolkien in a meaningful way.
Jonathan:
So what is it about Tolkien that drew you to him? Because I have a faint inclination of what it might be, but what was it for you that drew you to Tolkien? Rather than somebody like Lewis who has books on pain with “the Problem of Pain?” Or somebody like Dostoevsky whose entire body of novels is just about people who have had traumatic experiences. What was it particularly about Tolkien that drew you?
Andrew:
Yeah, so I found that Tolkien did such a remarkable job of interweaving the themes of sorrow and wisdom and hope. These things are deeply connected within his worldview. Even beyond that, just the way that he writes, I could tell that I was reading something real. It wasn't long after that that I read his essay on fairy stories where he really gets into this idea of subcreation. A good story is real, perhaps in a different way than nonfiction is real, but not less real for that reason. It's a way of focusing on very real narratives that map onto the way that we live, the way we engage with the world around us. So as we enter into that, we're encountering something real that can map onto our own lives. Not in a straight way like, “I'm gonna go defeat the dark lord kind of way.” You know, it's something more profound and existential than that. One of my favorite quotes from Tolkien, which I reference on a pretty regular basis, actually comes from the Silmarillion. He says, “If joyful is the fountain that rises in the sun, its springs are rooted in wells of sorrow with the foundations of the earth.” This idea, especially from the Christian perspective, that there is no joy without sorrow. So, you know, the very cross itself, the symbol of absolute anguish, is also the symbol of absolute hope. So at the time when I needed it most, that resonated with me in a really deep manner. Then from that point on, I've just been on a nonstop rampage on literature, making up for the lost time. That really just unlocked it for me.
Jonathan:
That's interesting! So, obviously you've always been interested in philosophy and theology, and that's what your academic background is in. But you weren't much of a reader up until about this period of time?
Andrew:
Yeah. And like I said, I would occasionally read nonfiction of sorts, but even then, I wouldn't call myself an avid reader. But I really never voluntarily picked up fiction until I hit grad school and when they just all this clicked for me.
Jonathan:
I guess I'm rather ashamed to say after I've just read the Lord of the Rings. Technically, I listened to them and as I listened to it, I thought to myself, I don't know if I've ever actually sat down and read or listened to these books before. I've been a Tolkien fan my entire life. My grandpa was a Tolkien fan. My dad, less so. My Uncle, who's the pastor of our church, has in his church office a full wall-sized map of Middle Earth. We’ve always been Tolkien fans, always been CS Lewis fans. But listening to them, I kind of had the realization that I think when we listened to them as a family on a car trip, we must have gotten, like, an abridged version. One of the things that constantly struck me as I listened to the book was often he references a good death. Such as when they're journeying towards Gondor for the battle of Pelennor Fields, how often Theoden references or makes mention of we're going, but we're going to our death. Yet it's honorable, and it's good that we do that. Also, how many times Frodo and Sam say the same sorts of things. There really is this deep interweaving of sorrow, they also know that the outcome doesn't matter. They're saying even if we lose, then at least we'll be remembered in songs, hopefully, and something good will come of this eventually. It reminded me a lot of, in The Last Battle, which I had just listened to just before LoTR, when Roonwit says that “a good death is a thing that no man is too poor to buy”. That really struck me. I'm already ready to reread the whole Lord of the Rings again, and I just finished it, just to kind of dig deeper into that concept. So do you think that's one of the things that drew you to it? These concepts of honor that just completely don't exist any longer, how you can't really extradite honor because it requires some sort of sacrifice, and sacrifice inherently requires some form of sorrow. And some people, obviously, have much more sorrow in their lives than other people. I've been a very fortunate and blessed person. At this point, most of my understanding of grief and pain is mostly secondhand and kind of mental, I guess.
Andrew:
Yeah, I think that's one reason why an acquaintance with literature is so important because, on one hand, real deep sorrow is not something you can really know until you are in the throes of it. But if you fill your mind with the right framework, then when you are in the throes of it, you have something to hold on to. And then you have a context to place it in. Now to that point of the noble death and that sort of thing, obviously, Tolkien was very strongly influenced by the northern Germanic tales, you know, Nordic mythology. In the Nordic mythos ultimately those who do choose the side of virtue, those who side with the gods over the monsters recognize that even in the end, things are not gonna go very well for the good guys right? In the northern mythology, the gods lose in the end, you know, following Ragnarok. The monsters of chaos win. And so the best you can hope for is a virtuous death. Tolkien really uses that idea of virtue in the face of catastrophe, but then, of course, he has this broader Christian context he kind of baptizes that into, which is
where he gets the idea of the Eucatastrophe right? The happy end, the turnaround; I often think about Tolkien's overarching narrative in reference to the battle at Helm's Deep. Where, if you were just telling a Nordic tale then we would have Theoden and the men of the west standing against the monsters until the last man falls in darkness. It looks like that's exactly what's happening, but what makes it ultimately a Christian tale is that Gandalf arrives from the East .There is that happy turn that in the end, the good guys actually win, but it's almost through a kind of death.
Jonathan:
Yeah, I agree. The Nordic tales, that's what I always kind of appreciated about the Norse myths because to some extent, they always seemed a little bit more real to me because of that. Like, this is what really happens. How many times in Greek myth did Zeus die and then come back to life, or almost die? I mean, they can't really die, in the Greek myths. And I think maybe Norse myths hit on a different aspect of reality because of that?
I've always kind of known this idea that Tolkien believed in the true myth, and that argument, that line of reasoning is what eventually would persuade Lewis. After a long embattled journey towards faith, it would lead him to Christianity. So I've always kind of had that in the back of my mind because that's a story that we grew up with. It is the story of CS Lewis being a convert through Tolkien. I've known about that “true myth” for a long time. I’d say a couple of years ago, I listened to a series of lectures by Michael Heizer called “The Unseen Realm.” Which clicked it in for me on another level, all of these myths and stories that we tell, they're real.
If a story lasts for a long time, it's probably telling you about something. I think the Greeks are talking about a different sort of thing than are the Norse, which is why Greek gods can't die. However, the Norse gods can die, and even in the rebirth of the world after Ragnarok, even then you think everything's good and jolly. Then the serpent or the, the dragon flies back overhead again and goes back down towards the roots of Yggdrasil. They are never getting away from this, I think that's much more of an existential thing. I think the Norse myths are telling about a different layer of reality. Would you agree with that?
Andrew:
No. I mean, it absolutely does. In many ways, the Hellenistic myths are almost more of a bromance, there's more kind of give and take here. There's less of an idea about a definitive doom that is approaching. Whereas the Nordic myths have that sense of doom that all things are going to come to an end. I love Tolkien's essay on Beowulf, the myth and the monsters or something like that. He makes the point that in the Nordic Pagan virtue, you simply have the warriors. Those who are standing in their little circle of light while the darkness continues closing in, and all they can do is stand as long as the light stands. Recognizing that eventually it is going to be extinguished, I like that, I think there's something fundamentally true about that.
Now, again, obviously you place that into a Christian context, and then you do have hope in the end, but there is no hope apart from death. It's a very real approach to life because a lot of times, in the realm of fairy, we think that everything is just going to turn out okay. However, there is a reason why Tolkien refers to fairy as the perilous realm. It is a place of great danger because, in fact, human life is a place of great danger. Even if nothing ever seems to go wrong in a finite sense, even with the best luck in the world, you're gonna die. That shadow always looms over human experience.
Jonathan:
I think there are two reasons why you're right because ultimately we will die. But I thought there was something interesting in the appendix of the Lord of the Rings. In the appendix, I believe, it talks about Numenor and how the Numenoreans had a long life, as they come from the descendants of half-elves. Yet, originally death was called the blessing of men or the gift of man. However, when the Numenoreans came and did all the things that the Numenoreans knew they shouldn't have done, it began to be referred to as the curse of man, that they would die. I think that's very interesting because it is the shortness, it is the rarity that makes life interesting. What makes life valuable is the fact that it will end. At the same time this is something that people have to wrestle with. If you don't have hope, if you only see it in the pagan sense, then you don't really have any hope it becomes a despairing idea.
Moreover, I think, if you have the best of luck, if everything goes right for you in life and you have no sorrow, no difficulties. I think it might be Teddy Roosevelt who said something very similar to this, you haven't really tried to do anything. If you don't encounter any kind of failures, any kind of difficulties, then you probably haven't lived that adventurous of a life. You probably haven't lived the Teacher says “Time and Chance happen to all.” Even if you live a great life you still have to deal with death, and that's a big thing to grapple with. Still though, perhaps we should all live a little more adventurously.
Andrew:
I mean, yeah, if all you're interested in is avoiding pain, avoiding sorrow, then certainly don't get married, right? Don't have kids. Don't get involved in any kind of meaningful project in the world.
Jonathan:
Don’t leave your door, stay in the Metaverse, in Plato’s Cave.
Andrew:
And then in the end, you still die, the only difference between you and someone else is your death doesn't necessarily mean anything…
