Tulkas
Astaldo; the Strong; delight and joy of the Valar
Tulkas the Strong
Names and Titles
His nature is pure and glad: “his laughter is the merriest of all things in the world”.
Dominion and Character
Tulkas is the athlete-god of the Valar: “the champion of the Valar, delighting in wrestling and in trials of strength. He does not helmeted go into the battle of the mind… he delights in conflict.” He “rides no steed, for he is swifter than any horse”
— though he is beloved of horses — and his coming turns the course of the first war with Melkor.
- In the Music: Tulkas entered late, “for his themes were of the delights of strength and the victories of the body, and the laughter of the strong”. His very arrival dismayed Melkor, who “loved no kind of laughter”.
- Against Melkor: When Melkor rebuilt his strength after Utumno and none of the Valar could dislodge him, “Tulkas came, and the terror of his laughter” drove the enemy — and in the War for the Sake of the Elves it was Tulkas that “contended with Melkor, and at the last overthrew him and bound him with the chain Angainor”. He is thus literally the Vala who has bested Melkor in arms.
- At the winning of the Trees: when Morgoth and Ungoliant destroyed the Two Trees and fled, Tulkas was among the pursuers; his anger was the dread of the Dark.
- In the Coming of the Elves: Tulkas is noted for his part in the Great Journey and the wars; at the final War of Wrath he was in the van, “the champion of the Valar”. His marriage to Nessa, the Swift, the sister of Oromë, is the happiest of the unions of the Valar: “she dances… and the deers of the wild come to her at the sound”.
Character and Meaning
Tulkas represents the Valar’s element of simple, cheerful, physical might, unsoured by thought; Tolkien uses him as the foil to Melkor’s corrupted malice and to the oppression of shadow
— “laughter is a weapon of the free”. He has no dwelling of his own, wandering free until the end; the Valar’s great feasts are held in his honour, “the joy of the Valar in their halls”.
In the Texts
Consistently present from the Book of Lost Tales, his stature grows in the Quenta as the first to meet Melkor and the only Vala Melkor truly feared in the field. In later essays his “simplicity” is praised as a kind of innocence that the Enemy could not corrupt.