Anglachel
the Black Sword; the blade of Eöl
Name and Origin
Anglachel — “the Black Sword”, one of the two swords forged by Eöl (the other, its brother, Anguirel) out of the strange black metal he learned from the Dwarves of the Blue Mountains. The Quenta: — “made of a meteor” — it was; Eöl gave it (reluctantly, as a fee) to King Thingol, in recompense for the wood for the Dwarves’ trade — and its dark hunger (the blade) is the Quenta’s point.
The Doom-blade
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The grey of the wood: Thingol kept the sword in Doriath, it was “the Doom-blade” — the wise warned it was “a greedier and more evil blade” — and when Túrin fled, Beleg (given the sword) bore it into the wild to rescue his friend — and it was by this blade that Beleg was slain (Túrin, waking in the dark, seized Anglachel and slew the friend who had cut his bonds) — the “sword of the doom” drawing its first blood in the curse.
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The killing of the king — Afterward Túrin bore it, “the Black Sword” (Mormegil) through Nargothrond, and the blade — it slew orcs and (above all) Glaurung the dragon, piercing the Father of Dragons’ belly at the last; and then it became Gurthang (“Iron of Death”),
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The end: Túrin, in his final despair at the horror of the curse, “bade the sword declare its will” — the famous words of Gurthang: — and fell upon it, ending the doom — the Doom-blade completing its work.
Significance
Anglachel is the malice-carrier of the tale — the black blade whose very forging (by the jealous Eöl, of the strange dark metal) made it the instrument of the doom of the Children of Húrin: neither rightly made nor rightly owned, it passes from master to master until it has eaten the doom through. It is one of the mythology’s “cursed weapons” (with Anguirel), and its history is the history of the nature of the curse made iron.