Barrow-wights

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Frodo Baggins attacked by a Barrow-wight

"Cold be hand and heart and bone
and cold be sleep under stone
never more to wake on stony bed
never, till the Sun fails and the Moon is dead
In the black wind the stars shall die
and still be gold here let them lie
till the Dark Lord lifts his hand over dead sea and withered land."

—The dismal, tortured chant of the Barrow-wight

The Barrow-wights were shape-shifting beings of darkness, similar in circumstance to Wraiths, who dwelt in dark places of Eriador such as the Barrow-downs.

Description

The ones which attacked the four Hobbits reanimated the corpses of the Kings of the Barrows. Most often the Barrow-wight came on the unwary traveller in the guise of a dark phantom whose eyes were luminous and cold. The voice of the figure was at once horrible and hypnotic; its skeletal hand had a touch like ice and a grip like the iron jaws of a trap. Once under the spell, the victim had no will of his own. In this way the Barrow-wights drew the living into the tombs of the downs. A dismal choir of tortured souls could be heard inside the Barrow as, in the green half-light, the Barrow-wight laid his victim on a stone altar and bound him in chains of gold. He draped him in pale cloth and precious jewelry of the ancient dead, and with a sacrificial sword ended them.

A Barrow-wight in The Battle for Middle-earth II

East of the Brandywine River beyond the Old Forest were the Barrow-downs, the most ancient burial ground of men in Middle-earth. There were no trees nor water there, but only grass and turf covering dome-shaped hills that were crowned with monoliths and great rings of bone-white stone. These hills were the burial mounds that were made in the First Age of the Sun for the Kings of Men. For many ages the Barrow-downs were sacred and revered, until out of the Kingdom of Angmar many terrible and tortured spirits fled across Middle-earth, desperately searching to hide from the ravening light of the Sun. Demons whose bodies had been destroyed looked for other bodies in which their evil spirits could dwell. And so it was that the Barrow-downs became a haunted and terrible place. The demons became Barrow-wights, the Undead who animated the bones and jeweled armor of the ancient Kings of Men who had lived in the First Age.

Barrow-wight Decipher Card image

In the darkness they were powerful spirits and they could be held at bay only with the spell of strong incantations, such as Tom Bombadil's song. However, normally they could be destroyed only by exposure to light, the entity they hated and feared the most. The Barrow-wights were lost and tortured spirits, and their last chance to remain upon Earth depended on the dark security of burial vaults. Once the stone chamber was broken open, light would pour in on the Barrow-wights and they would fade like mist before the sun and be gone forever.

History

The Barrow-wights began appearing in the Barrow-downs after the Dúnedain of Cardolan succumbed to the ravages of the Great Plague. They were put there by sorcerers of Angmar who corrupted the souls of the inhabitants of the Barrow-downs. The sorcerers were sent by the Witch-king of Angmar who wished to keep the Dúnedain away from there.

On September 28 of 3018 Frodo Baggins and his companions, Sam Gamgee, Merry, and Pippin while passing through the Barrow-downs were captured by Barrow-wights, and trapped in what was believed to be the cairn of the last prince of Cardolan.

A Barrow-wight

There they were almost slain by a wight; three of the Hobbits had been lain in a barrow filled with a strange green light and were dressed in white robes and wore jewels and gold and had a sword across their necks. The wight had finished an incantation, and was preparing to finish them off when Frodo summoned up the courage to slice off its hand; he then called upon Tom Bombadil when the wight extinguished the dim light in the cavern. Bombadil performed some kind of exorcism on the barrow, through the rare power of his singing, which caused the wight to flee with a shriek; he then gave the hobbits swords and then spread out the gold and treasures from the barrow on the grass, so that the barrow's spell was broken and no Wight could make habitat there.

Behind the scenes

It is possible that the Witch-king himself had visited the Barrow-downs during the Ringwraiths' search for Frodo, and that it was he who had roused the Barrow-wights to be on the watch for trespassers on their land.

Other versions of the legendarium

Due to his inspiration from the Hrómundar saga Gripssonar, during the writing of The Lord of the Rings Tolkien at first saw a link between the Wights and the Ringwraiths, initially describing the Black Riders as "horsed Wights", but the suggestion that they were the same kind of creatures was dropped in the published work.

Inspirations

The concept of a burial mound housing evil spirits was not a new one created by Tolkien. The Barrow-wights themselves are based on a similar creature in Germanic Mythology known in Norse as Draugar (the singular being Draugr).

They were said to be evil spirits residing in the bodies of dead heroes and kings and usually (but not universally) unharmed by conventional weapons. In such cases a hero of great strength and bravery. The defeat of a Draugr was not always permanent; they could return to plague the living if certain actions were not performed after the Draugr was vanquished. The usual means of destroying a Draugr was to cut off its head and to burn the body, for only then would the evil spirit be prevented from returning to the body.

Another, probably related, creature from Germanic and Slavic folklore was the Mahr (also called an Alp), a Vampire-like creature that was said to rise from its barrow after dark to plague the sleeping and drink their blood. The primary way to vanquish them was to open their Barrow to the rays of the Sun, much like the Barrow-wight from Tolkien's mythology.

A very similar creature in Japanese mythology is the onryo, undead spirits that dwell in darkness and are seemingly affected by the Sun. They are deceased women who have returned to Earth for vengeance. These spirits can also possess the living, dead, and undead.

Etymology

The term Barrow-wights was based on the Old Norse "Draugr". Barrow refers to the burial mounds they inhabited and wight is the modern derivation of wiht, an Old English word for "living being" or "creature" (it does not mean "spirit" or "ghost"; it is cognate to modern German "Wicht", meaning "unpleasant person"). Tolkien likely borrowed the concept from Norse mythology, specifically from Waking of Angantyr or the Hrómundar saga Gripssonar.

A Barrow-wight Archer from The Lord of the Rings Online

Appearances in adaptations

• The Hobbit: The Video Game (Sierra) - "Wight Lord" (Spiders & Flies Level Boss)
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Video Game
• The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring
• The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II
• The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II, The Rise of the Witch-king
  • Karsh, a fictional Wraith-hero from Cardolan who therefore has the appearance of a Wight
• The Lord of the Rings Online
  • Sambrog, a fictional Wight-boss
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
• LEGO The Lord of the Rings: The Video Game (Downloadable character)
• LEGO The Hobbit: The Video Game (Downloadable character)

Translations

Foreign Language	Translated name
Czech	Mohyloví duchové
Danish	Begravelseshøjen-vætter/Dyssegæster
Dutch	Grafgeesten
Estonian	Kääpavahid
Finnish	Haudanhaamut
French	Esprits des Tertres/Etres des Galgals
German	Grabunholde
Greek	Μπάροου Γουάιτς
Hebrew	רפאי הכוכים
Italian	Spettri dei Tumuli
Japanese	塚人 ?
Norwegian	Haugvetter
Polish	Upiory Kurhanów
Russian	Умертвия
Slovak	Mohylové príšery
Swedish	Kummelgastar
Turkish	Höyüklü Kişiler