March 3, 2004

About Beorn
Finrod Felagund

Hello everyone, this is my first post here. I've read two posts about this guy, one of 'em askin' what kind of being is he, and other one where his called a human. The second one suits to this character's human shape and habits, but there's something else we could wonder about him. The mithology of nordic civilizations of Europe such as germans and scandinavians tell about hideous warriors called "Berzerkers", some kind of lycanthrope, that wore no armor in battle but a bear or a wolf hide and fought with their bare hands. They where induced to battlerage when they had their outfits on, according to the legends, but in case they had existed, probably through some kind of drug. In the Snorra Eda they are mentioned once, when they held Fenriswolf still (or Loki?) so the Asen, the high gods of the northern beliefs, could chain him to the ground (sounds familiar? check Melkor and Tulkas). Such as that was their strenght. This was used even for a great movie called "13 Warriors" with Antonio Banderas as an arab narrator in a group of vikings fighting against a blood thirsty clan of cavemen somwhere in ancient Scandinavia, and they actually wore bear hides for battle. Profesor Tolkien introduced the idea of adapting old myths to an actually believable literacy, with the proper background for each character, folk, civilization, and even places and creatures. In my opinion, Beorn was a Berzerker in race, the last remain of some forgoten kind of people that dwelled the somewhere in Midle Earth before the rise of the sun and moon and had the ability to change their shape, ability the lost eventually through the ages. Sauron himself had this ability, and another lesser known character, Telvido, the prince of cats, is mentioned as some sort of cat lycanthrope. Let's remember that in the battle of the five armies Beorn showed up in the shape of a huge bear, and when he fought in his human shape he wielded an axe in a way that he was actually fighting as a whole army himself. Sadly, this character was underated to participate in a more active way during the later developement of Profesor Tolkien's work, and the questions of his origin or how come his offspring could not shift their shape will remain unanswered just like many other things, but, hey! isn't that unacurate info what keeps P. Tolkien's flame burning, and fans such as us getting deeper and deeper in a neverending trip to a "could have been" reality? Maybe his greater gift was the posibility to dig and finding out for ourselves, or at least to wonder about the things and facts that took place outside the pages of the written history of Midle Earth.
-JC