Goðmog

From Maria Artamonova* I learn that Tolkien, not content with writing Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion in modern English, also composed Old English Annals or Chronicles-style texts concerning various events in his imagined history. Here’s an example:

MMCCCCXCIX Hér gefeaht Féanores fierd wiþ þam orcum / sige námon / þá orcas gefliemdon oþ Angband (þaet is Irenhelle); ac Goðmog, Morgoðes þegn, ofslóh Féanor, and Maegdros gewéold siþþan Féanores folc. Þis gefeoht hátte Tungolguð

Here Fëanor’s host fought with the Orcs and was victorious, and pursued them to Angband (that is Iron Hell); but Gothmog, servant of Morgoth, slew Fëanor, and Maedhros ruled Fëanor’s folk after that. This battle was called the Battle-under-the-Stars [quoted in Artamonova, 86]

From this I learn (a) that Tolkien was Method, when it came to his own writing; and (b) that he chanced upon the greatest name for a villain in the history of Fantasy—Gothmog. Beware the coming of The Gothmog! Black, black like the heart of a crow, his collar studded with silver skulls, his soundtrack of Sisters of Mercy abruptly drowned-out by his earth-shattering MIAOW.

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[* ‘Writing for an Anglo-Saxon Audience in the Twentieth Century: J.R.R.Tolkien’s Old English Chronicles’, in David Clark and Nicholas Perkins (eds), Anglo Saxon Culture and the Modern Imagination (Cambridge: D S Brewer, 2000), 71-88]