Arda Kompendium

Durin's Bane

the Balrog of Moria; the terror beneath the mountains

beastbalrogdurins banemoriathird age

Name and Being

Durin’s Bane is the last of the Balrogs — the demon of flame whose kind served Melkor in the wars of the First Age — that survived the ruin of Angband and lurked hidden in the deepest dark beneath the Misty Mountains, under Khazad-dûm. When the Dwarves delved too deep in T.A. 1980, they woke the ancient terror, and it slew King Durin VI — whence its name, “Durin’s Bane” — and drove the folk of Moria from their home.

The Fall of the Demon

  • It stayed in the black deeps for a thousand years more, its presence (with the Orcs it drew) making Khazad-dûm the “Black Pit”. When the Fellowship of the Ring passed through the mines in 3019, the Balrog broke out at the bridge of Khazad-dûm.
  • There, at the great stair and on the highest peak of Celebdil (the “silver peak”), Gandalf the Grey met it in a duel that lasted from the Bridge of Khazad-dûm to the summit, and — casting himself down with the demon in their last grapple — they fell together into the deep; Gandalf “was slain” and returned as the White. The Balrog, the last of its kind, was destroyed.

Significance

Durin’s Bane is the living end of the Balrogs — the burned-out last of Melkor’s fire-demons surviving into the late Third Age, and the object that tests (and proves) Gandalf’s own worth; its death ends the story of the First Age’s flames.

Verknüpfte Seiten

BalrogsMelkorGandalfMoriaDurinConcordance — A to Z
Werke: die Quellen sind seitenübergreifend die Bücher von J.R.R. und Christopher Tolkien (Silmarillion, Hobbit, Herr der Ringe, Unfinished Tales, History of Middle-earth, Nature of Middle-earth u. a.) — eigene Zusammenfassung. Siehe die Concordance und den README der Quelle für die Einzelbelege.
Nach oben ↑