# Talk:Eagles in Middle-earth

I disagreed with this paragraph: 
Apparently the same origin for the Great Eagles is implied by the speech of Manwë within the essay: "... before the Children awake there shall go forth with wings like the wind the Eagles of the Lords of the West. ... In the mountains the Eagles shall house, and hear the voices of those who call upon [the Valar]."  Apparently the same origin for the Great Eagles is implied by the speech of Manwë within the essay (...)
After all, it’s said in "O Silmarillion":
”When the Children awake, then the thought of Yavanna will awake also, and it will summon spirits from afar (…)”
The spirits summoned by Yavanna come to Arda only afterwards the Awakening of the Elves, nevertheless the eagles already existed "before the Children awake”. So, the eagles is not between the spirts summoned by Yavanna in that paragraph. 
This way I think the Myths VIII is “valid”, yet. Eagles have no fëar, they are like dragons: they have inside themselves a "part" of their creator, which defines their conduct, or their “programming”.
Where Tokien said that dragons didn't have spirits on they own? It is fairly obvious fo me that they were incarnated maiar... Also premanently incarnated maiar could have chidren - Luthien was a child of Melian and ents could have children. Mithoron (talk) 16:11, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Christopher Tolkien's comments about the "Eagle picture" are in his foreword to the 50th-anniversary edition of The Hobbit.  All the eagles in The Hobbit are the same, as is clear from the beginning of Chapter VII, at least in this edition.  The only speculation is that they include Gwaihir and Landroval.  —JerryFriedman 18:10, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The unanswered question is: Why didn't the Council of Elrond simply ask some Eagles to fly to Mordor with the One Ring, and drop it into Mount Doom? It would have been much easier than to go through all the side plots of the actual story. If you postulate the existence of such creatures as Eagles, and use them in the story, you ought to explain why you don't use them to resolve the primary plot tension.

Because it was Frodo's resistance to the evil of the ring wich make him unique, not even Gandalf dare to touch the ring.Seba5618 20:12, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
This is what people who don't read the material (enough) gripe about. [1]
Yeah yeah, then why not have Frodo carry the ring while riding to Mordor on one of Gandalf's giant eagle friends, so it's still only in the trusted hands of the hobbit the whole time?  If it's about Frodo's "character" not being matured enough yet, welp, I got some bad news, even in the real story after all his misadventures he still doesn't throw it in, and Gollum basically does it for him, so that argument's moot.
And if Mordor was too dangerous for a giant eagle with a hobbit on it to fly through, why not just use one to at least carry him closer to it, far above all those jagged mountain ranges and enemy armies?    That one eagle obviously didn't get shot down when it flew right over Saruman's tower / base full of orcs and goblins, so it seems pretty safe to me.   That also shows that the eagles were willing to do some pretty risky stuff for Gandalf, so I don't think it would have been a problem convincing them to, you know, save the world by doing the exact same thing they already did again.
Even if Sauron somehow magically knew the ring was being flown around in the air far away from Mordor, he would still have to do something about it rather quickly, with armies that pretty much showed themselves incapable of shooting an eagle down.  If you're worried about him sending the flying Nazgul guys, no worries, he also didn't send them zipping over all those times Frodo put on the ring causing Sauron to see right where he was.   Go on, try and rationalize all this with some magical explanation.  In truth, I think the guy who said Tolkein just didn't think of this gaping logical hole got it right, which I think is hilarious.136.165.245.107 (talk) 05:16, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
One possibility is that there were no Eagles available when they were needed. (Gandalf never summons them with a moth or anything in the book!) Another common argument is that Mordor was well defended, while the Eagles were wary even of shepherds with bows. It may have been an issue of secrecy: a group of Eagles far from the Misty Mountains flying toward Mordor might well have drawn Sauron's attention, and might have even hinted at the plan to destroy the Ring. Some suggest that like the Istari, the Eagles were forbidden by the Valar to help so directly. Another suggestion is that Frodo may have needed the long journey to (hopefully) develop enough strength of will to cast the Ring into the Fire. Uthanc 07:38, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
We are not sure wheather eagles lived upon the Thangorodrim or not.13:04, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
One does not simply fly into Mordor. It seems to me that Sauron would send the fell beasts used by the Nazgûl at a formation of eagles carrying hobbit with a Ring of Doom. Willworkforicecream (talk) 06:35, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
It is indeed a problem.  It might seem no less risky to attempt a sudden dash on an eagle to Mount Doom than to send a hobbit walking into Mordor.  The real answer is probably that Tolkien didn't think about it, or else he likely would have had a character suggest this very thing and be refuted.  There are other, similar ideas for disposing of the ring (if Radagast was a 'master of hues and shape changes, why not fly into Mordor, etc.).  But I think the argument that Mordor was too well defended is as good as any.  When Frodo made it to Orodruin, central Mordor had been virtually emptied as Sauron concentrated his forces in the north; and that only occurred in response to the Captains of the West unexpectedly challenging Sauron's might, and that was only possible after the Battle of the Pelannor Fields, etc.  In other words, it couldn't have been foreseen that Mount Doom would ever have been so undefended, and usually there were many orcs about it, capable of shooting down an eagle--  to say nothing of the Nazgul (winged or no), other spectres of Sauron's domain, and Sauron himself.  Who knows how quickly Sauron could have travelled to Orodruin?  He sent the Nazgul when he perceived Frodo and didn't go himself.  But if an eagle, or a flight of eagles, suddenly penetrated his realm, it seems likely he would immediately be aware of them, and perceive that one carried the Ringbearer too.  And he would have done whatever he could to bring down the eagle long before it reached the slopes of Orodruin. Basically, as fast as they were, the eagles weren't fast enough to get to Mount Doom before "countermeasures" would have brought them down.  169.253.4.21 (talk) 12:22, 9 June 2008 (UTC)TexxasFinn

I don't understand how the idea of the eagles being maiar leads to the idea of Beorn being one. The eagles being maiar is a good explanation for them to have fëa, but Beorn was a man, not an animal.Seba5618 20:12, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

So I just remove the thought of Beorn being a maiar, it just doesn't fit. Eagles might be maiar because that's an explanation for their fëa, but Beorn is a men (with a weird hability I agree).  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Seba5618 (talk • contribs) 03:18, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

An important influence on Tolkien's conceptualization of the Eagles and the role they play as Gandalf's rescuer (many times) comes from the Kalevala, the Finnish epic myth.  The Kalevala influenced Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings in many ways.  Few people in the States realize to just how great an extent since the epic isn't very well known in the U.S.  Tom Bombadil, the tale of Turin, the song of Tinuviel before Morgoth's throne, and many other episodes are based in whole or in part on the Finnish poems.  Likewise the Eagles as rescuers.  In the Kalevala, a great Eagle, the lord of the skies, rescues the hero Vainamoinen (a bard and wizard who was an influence on the characters of both Gandalf and Tom Bombadil) from peril after he's been waylaid by an enemy, and carries him to the destination of his quest far to the north.  Tolkien read the Kalevala when he was a student at Cambridge, and the eagle-rescue episode with the Finnish wizard doubtless appealed to him and was transformed into into Gandalf's encounter(s). 169.253.4.21 (talk) 12:58, 9 June 2008 (UTC)TexxasFinn

Add this in with a reference. Uthanc (talk) 06:21, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I provided the reference photography and talon/beak castings for Weta Digital for the Peter Jackson LOTR films.  Photos here: www.gryphonking.com and the bird is indeed a golden eagle.  It is also my understanding that the idea for the Great Eagles was in part inspired by a pub called the Eagle And Child that Tolkien and his colleagues frequented.  Mercedes Lackey, American fantasy and science fiction writer, visited it and reports that the Eagle and Child is on an out-of-the-way side street at Oxford, and was frequented by the Inklings and was a popular professorial hangout.  Its sign features the image of a huge eagle carrying away a child (presumably to eat it).  Also, the gryphons (who are often lead, viewpoint characters) in the novels written by Mercedes Lackey and me often serve many similar story purposes to Tolkein's eagles, but have more in common with hangar-queen fighter jets and cocky pilots than with angels and holy messengers. However, their vanity precludes them realizing they aren't divine.  Larry Dixon The Gryphon King (talk) 10:25, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Now that's interesting, thanks for the hint. I've added a bit about the films to the article. But while the theory about The Eagle and Child sounds plausible, we'd need something verifiable like an online text by either Misty or someone else to back it up. De728631 (talk) 16:14, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I've made some initial edits to reduce the level of POV in the section on the nature and origin of the Eagles, but I think there's a lot of work still to be done there. Most importantly, the final paragraph of that section feels a whole lot like a (good!) forum discussion post rather than like a neutral tertiary source. The claims that it previously made are not consensus claims in the "scholarly" community. My edits at this point have merely softened its conclusions, but that paragraph is still structured like it's making an argument rather than simply summarizing the known "facts" from the texts and their predominant interpretations: it needs a more thorough rewrite than I have time to give right now. Steuard (talk) 12:55, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

Um, a lot of time has elapsed but the article (and not just the 'Nature' section) remains in a parlous state, with as you say plenty of Original Research arguing freely from primary (Tolkien) material rather than so much as mentioning scholarly analysis. Basically it all needs a rewrite: the stats can speak for themselves here – 47 primary sources and 6 secondary (of which one's a screenwriter, one a fantasy artist who had a stuffed eagle, one is about a genus of wasps, and one is a video game report: so, basically we have almost NO proper discussion of the eagles here at all). Words like WP:TNT do come to mind. Chiswick Chap (talk) 22:05, 29 November 2022 (UTC)