Legolas, light running, and the Fianna of Celtic myth

Darren Grey

Darren Grey

Active Member
I think the key to understanding Legolas' athletic ability in running over snow is in how he introduces it - "for running light over grass and leaf, or over snow - an Elf". This immediately puts me in mind of the myths of the Fianna, a band of men of Irish legend. The Fianna famously had to pass seven trials, one of which is to run through a forest without breaking a twig. The idea is to be so light and careful of foot as to not break a twig in your running. Physically impossible, but far from the strangest thing in Irish legend.

Tolkien's Elves bear many characteristics familiar from Celtic myths, and I think this is one such example. The way he frames it in the text is almost as if he's writing it and coming to this conclusion himself. "Well if they can run over twigs and grasses lightly then it should work for snow too."

I don't think it should be taken as a "wonder" any more than Elvish eyesight or healing is a wondrous thing. It's part of their supernatural athletic ability, or their attunement to natural forces, or whatever way you want to think of Elves as special.
 
I wonder if it is more like a fairytale motif, the japanese yuki-onna is said to float about the snow and leave no footprints... any ideas of , maybe norse or finnish, fairies with such abilities?

I read such things cannbe found in modern urban legends or modernnfairytale,,but it could appear in traditional ones too i guess...
 
I don't remeber the name of the one of the Fianna who was so famous for this running, but he was said to be able to run so swiftly that not a blade of grass bent under him.
 
It is mildly interesting that the Norse god of skiing is Ullr. There are a lot of stories about him; not very many go back to early source material, though, where references to him are scarce. (Besides that it was common to swear oaths on Ullr's name while touching one's own ring; if one betrayed the oath, the ring would shrink down, lopping your finger off.)

In post-Eddic materials it is sometimes said that the aurora borealis is Ullr's skis kicking up snow; and contrarily it is sometimes said, of note here, that he can ski without leaving marks on the snow. Possibly he is, then, an elf.
 
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I must admit my first point of comparison was the young Grasshopper (Kwai Chang Caine) having to walk over rice paper without breaking it in the old TV series "Kung Fu" 🙂

The analogy is silly, I admit, but it does at least raise the question of whether we can see Legolas' nixambulatory abilities as a _skill_. The idea was skirted around in class with the analogy to Luthien's dancing. I don't think it's a coincidence that both use the idiom of light-footedness, and maybe if we could see Luthien dance we would find the sight just as miraculous as that of Legolas running over snow!
 
I've said it before and I repeat it now. When I first read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings back in the 60's in 8th grade or so, I encountered much that suggested to me that Elves were slight of build and small of stature. Consider Legolas running over snow, or lightly running along a rope or walking with light shoes or barefoot (like a hobbit), or the possibility of a hobbit (Took) marriage to a fairy (elf), or Legolas and Gimli sharing a horse (elf + robust dwarf = weight and size of a man riding that same horse). I know an Elf Lord like Glorfindel rides a horse, not a pony. But it's not so large a horse that it's too big for little Frodo to ride safely. I also recognize that when the hobbits walk along side Glorfindel's elves, they are spoken of as tall elves; but the books also speak of Merry and Pippin as tall. Tall is relative. I can't remember where, perhaps it's with with Faramir, men seeing hobbits wonder whether they might be elves, but then correct themselves but saying that elves are fair, not that elves are bigger than the hobbits before them.

I am aware that there are other writings (outside of those books I read as a boy) that suggest that Elves were bigger that what I pictured as a boy reading those books; but I never read them as a boy, and I still think of those writings as revisionist.

In any case, I believe Legolas running lightly over snow might have something to do with skill or magic, but it seems to me more likely to have something to do with size and stature. I know hobbits had little facial hair and I think this also applies to elves (but not dwarves or men), but wasn't there somebody named Occam that said something about shaving away the hairy explanation and leaving the clean (shaven) and simple?
 
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TThurston said:
I know hobbits had little facial hair and I think this also applies to elves (but not dwarves or men), but wasn't there somebody named Occam that said something about shaving away the hairy explanation and leaving the clean (shaven) and simple?
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Elves do not grow beards until a "late" stage of live - which few have reached in the books - notably Cirdan has- and all humans with elvish descent are naturally beardless in the books - this includes Aragorn, Boromir, Faramir, Denethor and Imrahil and all of the Numenorean and Gondorian/Arnorian kings/chieftains.
 
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Regarding small people and footprints, you've got me there. Hobbits would leave footprints. But still, the text of Lord of the Rings seems to pretty clearly describe Boromir and Aragorn as the only candidates for heavily pushing their way through the snow in contrast to Legolas running lightly over the top of it. In Gondor Gambolling 59, Corey talks about Tolkien's late essay on the Palantiri and his feeling that is not entirely true to the canonical published Lord of the Rings text. I feel the same way about the Unfinished Tales descriptions of Elves like Legolas as someone looking like an NBA point guard - nimble and slender, but taller than the average man and very muscular; think of John Stockton but maybe a little taller. I think of them more like a young teenage gymnast I remember, not the guy doing iron cross on the rings but the guy doing the floor exercise - quick, light, and graceful; think of a male version of Nadia Comenici.
 
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