| Isengard | |
|---|---|
| J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium location | |
 The Orcs of Isengard boreupon their shields the symbol of the White Hand on a black field.[T 1] | |
| First appearance | The Fellowship of the Ring |
| In-universe information | |
| Other names | Angrenost, Nan Curunír, Wizard's Vale |
| Type | Fortress built to guard theGap of Rohan |
| Ruled by | Saruman |
| Locations | The Tower of Orthanc, the Ring of Isengard, the pillar of the White Hand, the Isen |
| Location | Calenardhon |
| Lifespan | Second Age –Fourth Age |
| Founder | Gondor, during the time ofIsildur |
InJ. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy writings,Isengard (/ˈaɪzənɡɑːrd/) is a large fortress inNan Curunír, the Wizard's Vale, in the western part ofMiddle-earth. In the fantasy world, the name of the fortress is described as a translation ofAngrenost, a word in Tolkien'selvish language,Sindarin, a compound of twoOld English words:īsen andġeard, meaning "enclosure of iron".
InThe Lord of the Rings,Orthanc, the tower at the centre of Isengard, is the home of theWizardSaruman. He had been ensnared by the Dark LordSauron through the tower'spalantír, a far-seeing crystal ball able to communicate with others like it. Saruman had bredOrcs in Isengard, in imitation of Sauron's forces, to be ready for war withRohan. The Orcs cut down many trees in the forest of theEnts, who retaliate by destroying Isengard while the army of Orcs is away attacking Rohan atHelm's Deep. However, the Ents are unable to harm the tower of Orthanc. Saruman, isolated in the tower, is visited by members of theFellowship of the Ring; his staff is broken by the WizardGandalf.
Isengard has been described by Tolkien scholars asan industrial hell, and as an illustration of the homogeneity ofevil, in contrast to the evident diversity of the free societies of Middle-earth, including those of theElves,Dwarves, andGondor. Others have compared it toVichy France, and its proposed governor on behalf ofMordor, theMouth of Sauron, to a traitorousQuisling.
TheNúmenóreans in exile built Isengard in theSecond Age as a walled circular enclosure, with the tower of Orthanc at its centre. It lay just outside the north-western corner ofRohan, guarding the Fords of Isen from enemy incursions intoCalenardhon together with the fortress ofAglarond to its south.[T 2]
The river Isen or Angren began on Methedras, the southernmost peak of theMisty Mountains. Methedras stood behind Isengard, forming its northern wall. The rest of its perimeter consisted of a large wall, the Ring of Isengard, breached only by the inflow of the river at the north-east through aportcullis, and the gate of Isengard at the south, on the river. For most of its history, Isengard was a green and pleasant place, with many fruiting trees.[T 2]
Orthanc was built towards the end of the Second Age by men ofGondor from four many-sided columns of rock joined by an unknown process and then hardened. No known weapon could harm it.[T 3] Orthanc rose to more than 500 feet (152 metres) above the plain of Isengard, and ended in four sharp peaks.[T 2][1] Its only entrance was at the top of a high stair, and above that was a small window and balcony.[T 4] It housed one of thepalantírs of the South Kingdom, and was guarded by a warden.[T 5]
In theThird Age the land around Isengard (Calenardhon) became depopulated, and the last warden of Orthanc was recalled toMinas Tirith. Isengard remained guarded by a small company, led by a hereditary captain. Contact with Minas Tirith gradually decreased and eventually ceased altogether. When Cirion,Steward of Gondor, gave Calenardhon to the Éothéod, becoming the land of Rohan, Isengard was the sole fortress retained by Gondor north of theEred Nimrais. The small guard intermarried much with theDunlendings, until the fortress became Dunlending in all but name. The tower of Orthanc however remained locked and inaccessible to the Dunlendings, as the Steward of Gondor alone held the keys inMinas Tirith. The line of hereditary Captains died out, and during the rule of Rohan's King Déor, Isengard became openly hostile to theRohirrim. Using Isengard as their base, the Dunlendings continually raided Rohan until during the rule of Helm Hammerhand, the Dunlending lord Freca and his sonWulf nearly managed to destroy the Rohirrim. The Rohirrim fought off the invaders and blockaded Isengard, eventually taking it.[T 5]
Gondor did not wish to relinquish its claim to the tower, but lacked the strength to garrison it. A solution presented itself to the Steward of Gondor, Beren, as theWizardSaruman suddenly reappeared from the East, offering to guard Isengard. Beren gladly gave him the keys to Orthanc. At first he resided there as Warden of the Tower on behalf of Gondor.[T 5] The valley became known as Nan Curunír, the "Wizard's Vale".[T 2] OnSauron's return to Mordor, Saruman asserted himself as Lord of Isengard.[T 2]
During theWar of the Ring, Saruman prepares for war against Rohan, defiling the valley of Isengard with deep pits where he breeds large numbers of powerful warriorOrcs, Uruk-hai, smithing weapons in underground workshops full of machinery, and felling the valley's trees.[T 2]
The Orcs of Isengard bear upon their shields the symbol of a White Hand on a black field, and on their helmets an S-rune (
) to signifySaruman. A carved and painted White Hand of stone is set on a black pillar outside the gates of Isengard.[T 1][T 6][T 2]
Treebeard, leader of theEnts, seeing that the Orcs would destroy his forest of Fangorn, leads an army of Ents andHuorns to Isengard, destroys it, and floods it, leaving Saruman isolated in the tower of Orthanc.[T 3] ThehobbitsMerry Brandybuck andPippin Took, as the new "doorwardens", receiveThéoden King of Rohan,Aragorn and the wizardGandalf at the wrecked gates.[T 3] Gandalf speaks with Saruman and breaks his staff.Grima Wormtongue throws the Orthanc palantír, a stone of seeing, at the party;[T 4] both Pippin and Aragorn later use it, seeing and deceiving Sauron as to the Fellowship's intentions.[2]
Saruman is locked in Orthanc and guarded by Treebeard, who later sets him free. Saruman hands the tower's keys over to Treebeard, and takes Gríma with him. Saruman exploits Treebeard's unwillingness to see any living thing caged, most likely usinghis power with words.[T 7]
During theFourth Age, when Aragorn has been crowned as King Elessar ("Elfstone"), he visits Orthanc, finding there heirlooms ofIsildur, among them theElendilmir, the Star of Arnor, and the small gold case on a chain that Isildur had used to carry the One Ring, evidence that Saruman had found and apparently destroyed Isildur's remains.[T 8][3] Isengard is restored, and the entire valley granted to the Ents. The Ents name the new forest the Treegarth of Orthanc. Orthanc becomes again a tower of the Reunited Kingdom of Gondor and Arnor.[T 7]
"Isengard" is fromOld Englishīsen, "iron" andgeard, "court, enclosure".[5] The names, supposedly given by theRohirrim, for Orthanc, the cunningly-built tower of Isengard, and for the Ents, the tree-giants of Fangorn forest who eventually destroy Isengard, are similarly in reality from Old English. Both are found in the poemThe Ruin, which describes the ancient Roman ruins asorþanc, "skilful work", andenta geweorc, "the work of giants"[6] and inMaxims II.[7]Clark Hall gives the meanings of the nounorþanc as "intelligence, understanding, mind; cleverness, skill; skilful work, mechanical art", and as an adjective "ingenious, skilful".[8] The Tolkien scholarTom Shippey suggests that Tolkien may have chosen to read the phrase also as "Orthanc, the Ent's fortress".[4]
The historian Casper Clemmensen suggests that Tolkien was inspired byNorse mythology and the Danish landscape, with the manor houseIsgård ("Ice manor") on theDjursland peninsula as the inspiration for Isengard.[9]
The name of the tower of Orthanc is unique in that it is explicitlystated to be a bilingual pun inThe Two Towers: Tolkien gives the two meanings as "Mount Fang" in Elvish (Sindarin), and "Cunning Mind" in the "language of the Mark of Old",Rohirric.[4][10] However, "Orthanc" genuinely means "Cunning Mind" in the language Tolkien had used to represent Rohirric,Old English: he hadpretended that he had translated Rohirric into Old English, and the relatedWestron into modern English. The unlikely coincidence of homonyms and synonyms makes Tolkien's claim about Rohirric look like a mistake.[11]
![In The Two Towers, Tolkien said Orthanc had meanings in Sindarin and Rohirric; but it is also a synonym and homonym in Old English, making Tolkien's claim look like a mistake.[11]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aMultiple_Homonym_Error_in_The_Two_Towers.svg)
Tolkien madedetailed sketches of Isengard and Orthanc, published inJ. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator, as he developed his conception of them.[13]
The scholar of English literatureCharles A. Huttar describes Isengard as an "industrialhell".[12] He quotes Tolkien's description of Isengard, supplying his own emphasis on Tolkien's words: "tunneled .. circle .. dark .. deep .. graveyard of unquiet dead .. the ground trembled .. treasuries .. furnaces .. iron wheels .. endlessly .. lit from beneath .. venomous".[T 9][12] Huttar comments: "The imagery is familiar, its connotations plain. This is yet another hell [afterMoria andMordor]".[12] All the same, he writes, the tower of Orthanc cannot but be admired, with its "marvellous shape" and wonderful, ancient strength; he supposes that for Tolkien, technology could neither be "wholeheartedly embraced nor utterly rejected".[12]
Shippey, discussing Saruman's character, notes several facts about him: Treebeard's comment that "He has a mind of metal and wheels"; that Isengard means "Irontown"; that the Ents are attacked in Isengard with "a kind ofnapalm [or] perhaps ... [given] Tolkien's own experience, aFlammenwerfer".[14] Shippey concludes that Saruman had been led into "wantonpollution ... by something corrupting in the love of machines",[14] which he connects to "Tolkien's own childhood image of industrial ugliness ...Sarehole Mill, with itsliterally bone-grinding owner".[14]
David D. Oberhelman, writing in theJ.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, states, following Anne C. Petty, that there are multiple "industrial 'hells' in Tolkien's work, such as Saruman's blighted, machine-ridden Isengard".[15][16] He notes that its prototype was the fallenValaMorgoth's subterranean fortress,Angband, whose name meant "Iron Prison" or "Hell of Iron".[15]
Isengard is the promised reward for the nameless "Mouth of Sauron", as soon as Gondor and its allies had surrendered. In his words in front of the Black Gate:[T 10]
West of the Anduin as far as the Misty Mountains and the Gap of Rohan shall be tributary to Mordor, and men there shall bear no weapons, but shall have leave to govern their own affairs. But they shall help to rebuild Isengard which they have wantonly destroyed, and that shall be Sauron's, and there his lieutenant shall dwell: not Saruman, but one more worthy of trust.[T 10]
Shippey compares Sauron's offer to the Vichy treaty imposed on France after its surrender in 1940: "sovereignty over the disputed territory of Ithilien [East of the Anduin], theAlsace-Lorraine of Middle-earth, is to be transferred", and in the lands to the West "ademilitarized zone, with what one can only callVichy status, which will paywar-reparations, and be governed [from Isengard] by what one can again only call aQuisling".[17]
During the War of the Ring, Isengard was controlled by Saruman until the fortress's destruction, but Saruman had become "more like Sauron than he realizes",[18] like him believing in "supremacy through absolute power",[18] and unintentionally a pupil of Sauron, having against Elrond's advice "stud[ied] too deeply the arts of the enemy".[18] The Tolkien scholars Wayne Hammond andChristina Scull note that the palantír in Orthanc had formed what Gandalf called "some link between Isengard and Mordor, which I have not yet fathomed": the link was that Sauron had used the stone to take control of Saruman, and through him his forces of Orcs.[19] InThe Two Towers, Tolkien himself described Saruman's Isengard as "only a little copy, a child's model or a slave's flattery ... [of Sauron's] vast fortress, armoury, prison, furnace of great power,Barad-dûr".[T 2] The Tolkien scholarBrian Rosebury writes that Tolkien was making the point that whereas good government in free societies like those of Gondor, theDwarves, theElves, theDrúedain, andthe Shire leads to diversity, "evil tends to homogeneity".[20]
InPeter Jackson'sfilms ofThe Lord of the Rings, Isengard and Orthanc were based onAlan Lee's illustrations and modelled under the direction ofRichard Taylor;[1] Lee worked as the project's conceptual artist in New Zealand throughout the making of the film trilogy.[21] The very large miniature or "bigature" of Orthanc was cast and then carved frommicro-crystalline wax byWētā Workshop to resembleobsidian, black volcanic glass; it was made at 1/35 scale, standing some 15 feet (4.6 m) high. The model of the walled circular area of Isengard was more than 65 feet (20 m) wide.[1] Inpost-production, thelong shots of the Orthanc model were combined, usingchroma keying, with panoramic views of theMount Earnslaw / Pikirakatahi region andMount Aspiring National Park nearQueenstown andGlenorchy,New Zealand.[22]
