Glaurung

Glaurung is the first of the fire-drakes in J.R.R. Tolkien's legendarium, a wingless, fire-breathing dragon of Morgoth whose cruel spells and lies destroy the hero Túrin Turambar and his sister Nienor.

The Story

Glaurung is the first and in many ways the most dangerous of the dragons bred by Morgoth, the dark power of Tolkien's First Age. He crawls out of Angband while still young and half-grown, and the Elves drive him back. Later, fully grown, he leads Morgoth's armies in the great battles that break the Elves' siege, spreading fire and terror across the northern lands.

His story is bound up with Túrin Turambar, the doomed hero of The Children of Húrin. When the Elven city of Nargothrond falls, Glaurung holds Túrin with his gaze and fills his mind with lies, sending him away while his beloved is carried off. Glaurung then settles on the city's treasure. Later he casts a spell of forgetting on Túrin's sister Nienor, who wanders off without memory. Túrin, not knowing who she is, marries her.

Túrin finally kills the dragon by climbing a ravine and driving his sword up into Glaurung's soft belly as the beast crosses above him. As he dies, Glaurung lifts his spell and reveals the truth to Nienor, and the tragedy that follows claims both brother and sister. The story echoes Sigurd's killing of Fáfnir from a pit, a parallel Tolkien scholars often point out.

Appearance and Powers

Glaurung has no wings; Tolkien describes him as a great worm that crawls. He is golden, armored in hard scales, and breathes fire. His blood is poisonous and burns Túrin's hand. His deadliest weapon is his "dragon-spell": his eyes and voice can bind a person's will, cloud their memory, and twist the truth into despair. He is malicious rather than simply greedy, though he does lie on Nargothrond's hoard like a classic dragon.

Origins and Sources

Tolkien first wrote Glaurung's story around 1919 as "Turambar and the Foalókë," where the dragon is called Glorund. That early version was published only in 1984 in The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two. Readers first met Glaurung in The Silmarillion (1977), edited by Christopher Tolkien after his father's death, and a fuller version appears in The Children of Húrin (2007).

Legacy

Glaurung is less famous than Smaug, but many readers find him more frightening. He set a pattern for the dragon whose real danger is the mind, a theme later picked up in games and novels. Tolkien's wingless fire-drake also recalls the older lindworm shape of Northern legend; see types of dragons.

Related

• Smaug: Smaug is the greedy, cunning fire-breathing dragon of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit (1937), who seizes the dwarves' treasure under the Lonely Mountain and is killed by Bard the Bowman.
• Ancalagon the Black: Ancalagon the Black is the greatest of the winged dragons in J.R.R. Tolkien's legendarium, unleashed by Morgoth at the end of the First Age and slain by the mariner Eärendil in a battle in the sky.
• Fáfnir: Fáfnir is a dwarf turned dragon in Norse legend who guards a cursed hoard of gold until the hero Sigurd kills him by stabbing him from a pit dug in his path.
• Lindworm: A lindworm is a huge serpent-dragon of Scandinavian and German folklore, usually wingless and with two front legs or none, that devours livestock, guards treasure, and sometimes proves to be an enchanted prince.
• Famous Dragons
• Dragon Types

Sources and Further Reading

• J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, ed. Christopher Tolkien (George Allen & Unwin, 1977)
• J.R.R. Tolkien, The Children of Húrin, ed. Christopher Tolkien (HarperCollins, 2007)
• J.R.R. Tolkien, The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two, ed. Christopher Tolkien (George Allen & Unwin, 1984)
• Tom Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (HarperCollins, 2000)

Cite this entry: “Glaurung,” Draconika Encyclopedia of Dragons, https://www.draconika.com/dragons/glaurung.