Dragons
the great worms of the North; the fire-drakes and their kind
Name and Nature
The Dragons — “the great worms”, the fire-drakes and their cunning kin — were the most terrible of Melkor's bred armies: — they were “cold-drakes” — Tolkien’s myth: the first was Glaurung (the “Father of Dragons”), and their lineage grew throughout the age. They are — the fire-drakes belched flame; the cold-drakes had no fire but great guile; and all were — greedy, hoarding, long-lived, possessed of the dark immortality of Angband.
The History of the Worms
- The first brake: Glaurung’s rising in the Dagor Bragollach; the burning of the plains; Nargothrond’s ruin; the Doom of the Children of Húrin (Glaurung’s work in person).
- The multiplying: As the age darkened into the Nirnaeth, the “host of the dragons” grew; the Quenta tells of winged dragons arriving in the age’s last wars (the winged fire-drakes of the War of Wrath, whose chief was Ancalagon the Black).
- The end: In the War of Wrath the dragons fought terribly; Ancalagon was cast down by Eärendil from the Vingilot and broke the towers of Thangorodrim; and the might of the worms was broken with the fall of their lord — though some fled and hid in the north (the hoards, and the later dragons of the Third Age, derive from them; and the cold-drake Scatha of the Ered Mithrin appears in later annals).
The Dragons in the Legend
The Dragon is the central horror of Tolkien’s “Northern-germ” mythology — a synthesis of the Norse worm, the greedy hoarder, and the serpent of malice; their mythic function: the destroyer of the old age’s kingdoms, whom only the most heroic — a Túrin, an Eärendil — can even wound. Their doom is bound to Morgoth’s: when the Dark Lord fell, the dragons lost their lord.