Corsairs and Variags

I don't talk about Tolkien all that much on this blog, but of course Tolkien is my real first love when it comes to the fantasy genre. Not the first real fantasy that I read—that would be Lloyd Alexander—but Tolkien quickly rose to the top and stayed there for four decades. One of the things that always fascinated me with Tolkien's work, of course, was the world-building, particularly digging into what we could with offhand references and notes on maps of places and peoples that we otherwise know little about. I want to talk briefly about two such today; the Corsairs of Umbar and the Variags of Khand.

But first, some context. Tolkien was very clear—although it takes several sources to get all of the details about it—that during the Second Age, Numenorean settlements along the coast were plentiful. After the fall of Numenor, we also got the Exiles who set up their kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor, which of course are the protagonist nations of the series, but these other Numenorean realms persisted, at least for a time, as well. We know that many of them existed, but that they were opposed to Gondor and Arnor, at least politically and to some extent religiously and culturally, as they became the Black Numenoreans... descendants of the King's Men who were more hostile to the Eldar and the worship of the Valar. It's also stated in a few spots that the majority of the King's Men (who were the majority of the Numenoreans) were "Hadorian" of the House of Hador; the tallest, most populous and most notable house of the Edain. They were famous for their fair skin, blue eyes and blond hair as well. Although Numenoreans of the Third Age and later are typically depicted as dark-haired, this is because the Faithful, who made up the populations of Arnor and Gonder were much more heavily weighted towards Beorian Numenoreans, not Hadorian Numenoreans. Prior to the sinking of Numenor, the Faithful had visited Lindon and founded Pelargir; they maintained a much more northern presence on the coastlines of Middle-earth, while the King's Men settled along the south, where Umbar was their most northerly settlement. Black Numenoreans would also have been very tall, perhaps even taller, and more likely to be blond and blue-eyed rather than dark hair and gray-eyed. At least as long as their genetics remained more or less unmixed with men of Middle-earth.

Ar-Pharazon, the most infamous of the Kings for which the Kings Men were known, showing off the typical Numenorean phenotype before the sinking of Numenor.

This is all very interesting, because while Tolkien says that the Black Numenoreans—King's Men who didn't sink with the island or invade Valinor—remained an ethnic group in Middle-earth for some time. He says also that they dwindled and became mixed with other men (although the same happened to the Dunedain—it seems to be implied that the King's Men did it more comprehensively or more quickly, perhaps) but Black Numenoreans remained an identifiable ethnic group all the way through the Third Age, when the so-called Mouth of Sauron is identified as one. It's not clear what is meant by being "diminished or mingled"; that their numbers diminished? Their lifespan? Their knowledge and high culture? Their height (I'm only being partially flippant here.) And were some of them diminished and some mingled, or were they all either diminished or mingled? I think it's likely that what happened was similar to what happened to the Gondorians in that all of those happened to some degree, while still maintaining at least a core of Numenorean culture and genetic continuity, although their knowledge and power faded due to the natural entropy of Middle-earth. 

Famous offhand reference Queen Beruthiel (the one with the cats) was wife (for a time) of Tarannon Falastur, the first of Gondor's so-called "Ship-kings" and was also a Black Numenorean, although obviously many centuries earlier than the Mouth of Sauron. I had thought it most likely that she was from Umbar, which was later absorbed into Gondor itself shortly after the reign of Tarannon for many years, but what little we know of her is that she didn't seem to like being by the coast, which would be unusual for someone raised in a coastal city, so maybe there were other strongholds still of Black Numenoreans at that time that still held on to a Numenorean ethnic identity. If so, none of them are named, and their existence is only vaguely hinted at. Umbar, being located in the south, was frequently associated with neighboring Haradrim, of course, but it's important to note that Haradrim was not an ethnic designation but a geographic one (as was Easterling, for that matter) and meant at least two ethnic groups that we know of for sure, mentioned in the Battle of Pelennor Fields, and probably many others, especially depending on the time in which the reference is made.

Umbar's Numenorean cultural and genetic identity was changed and probably also strengthened and maybe even somewhat renewed with Gondorian rebels from the civil war known as the Kin-strife. In fact, the Corsairs of Umbar are specifically associated with these rebellious Gondorians, but it seems very unlikely that a mingling of Gondorian rebels, older Black Numenoreans and other associated southerners of some kind or other didn't all create the Corsairs of later. The Kin-strife happened a good 1500-1600 years before the War of the Ring, and the Corsairs that Aragorn met were probably considerably changed from the Corsairs that killed King Minardil in the 1600s. But it's also reasonable to assume that a strong element of Numenorean culture and even genetics still persisted in Umbar. But the Corsairs themselves are specifically associated with the Gondorian rebels who followed Castamir. Although of course, they were following in the footsteps of previous inhabitants of Umbar who did the same thing.

The Corsairs of Umbar are often associated with the Barbary Corsairs of the late 1700s by many fans as an analog from the real world, but given that Tolkien never really did anything that "modern" (except some elements of familiar Shire culture) and he also specifically mentioned dromunds as ships that they sailed, it seems that they'd be more like the Vandals of the Vandalic War against the Byzantines in the early/mid 500s. In fact, I think it's intriguing to wonder how much Tolkien had the Vandalic Kingdom in mind in general when envisioning the Corsairs, but if so, it again strengthens my suspicion that they shouldn't be seen as "too Semitic" in nature, but rather more like a rebellious mirror image, in some small way, to Gondor itself. 

The next topic is another one that's fascinated me for a long time; the Variags of Khand. Variag is a very interesting word, and I'm sure if Tolkien picked it, he did so very deliberately. Variag (or Varyag) is a transliteration (from Cyrillic) of the Slavic word for Varangian. Varangian is an Anglicization of an old Norse word væringi which had cognates in most Germanic languages: Old English wærgenga, Old Frankish wargengus, Langobardic waregang, a compound that meant "sworn companion" or, more casually, bodyguard. This tradition goes back a long ways; the Julio-Claudian dynasty of early Imperial Rome had the Cohors Germanorum or Batavorum (referencing the specific tribe that most of them were drawn from), after the ambush at Teutoburg Forest it was disbanded, but the idea persisted and subsequent later Roman Emperors or even lesser figures had them. Herod the Great, the tyrant of Judaea famously during the time of Jesus birth had a 2,000 guard force called the Doryphnoroi who had a Thracian, Gallic and Germanic contingent. The idea that these barbarians were 1) great fighters, 2) lacking in political ties to enemies at home and therefore more trustworthy, and 3) high in honor and bound to their sworn word was a big part of the draw, and after the Empire split, the Byzantine half famously reinstated the Varangians. It was initially founded by Swedish Vikings that came through the Viking settlement of Kievan Rus', who may indeed have used the word to denote the Scandinavians as a specific culturo-ethnic group. It's unclear how Scandinavian the Rus' remained, however; within just a couple of generations, their leaders had Slavic names, and it's clear that to at least some degree, they "went native" and merged with the local Slavic population. But it's also clear that they maintained some Viking culture for quite some time as well, and the word does connote a legion of foreigners as a professional army of sworn soldiers. The Varangian Guard, when formed in "Greece" (Byzantium) was started amongst the Kievan Rus', but recruits from Scandinavia were plentiful, and the essentially Scandinavian character of it was remarked on for many years still. In fact, so many Scandinavians went to earn money in Greece that Scandinavian kings actually started passing laws to discourage people from doing it to maintain a population at home!

After the Norman conquest of England, the ethnic nature of the Varangians changed, and many Anglo-Saxons went to Greece, to the point where it was later characterized as a specifically "English" organization.

Of course, if Tolkien had wanted to emphasize that, he could have used an Angliziced word, like Waring or something. But he specifically used a Slavic version of the word. I think that that's significant. Khand is mentioned much earlier than the War of the Ring, of course. There's an episode in the Appendices, given even more detail in Unfinished Tales that discusses the Wainriders and their subsequent descendants the Balchoth who swept in from the east on chariots, and had savage women who sometimes fought in their horde. All in all, they strongly resemble the various Scythian tribes, most especially the Sarmatians, who were famous for their warrior-women, although honestly the warrior women were probably indifferent archers and more like mascots for the real warriors rather than a threat to be taken seriously. These Wainriders first attacked the Northmen of Rhovanian, who at the time were at a more primitive "Gothic" level (at least, two of them are given Gothic names). Tolkien also suggested that some Northmen fought with the Easterlings, either in hopes of plunder, or to further their own petty feuds between various chieftains. After preying on the Northmen for a time, they invaded Gondor's easternmost frontier, where they were eventually beaten and pushed back. However, they seem to have moved around the eastern frontier of Mordor, fought the peoples of Khand for a time, but then joined forces with them to create a much more serious threat to Gondor. They were eventually defeated, and their bodies became yet another layer in the Dead Marshes. 

Khand, as you no doubt already know, is located directly to the southeast of Mordor. Not all of Mordor is like the part that we see in the films and books; volcanic wastelands and stuff. In fact, outside of the Plateau of Gorgoroth, most of Mordor is described (vaguely) as fertile farmlands on the banks of the Sea of Nurnen, albeit unhappy because whomever it is that lives there were peoples who were enslaved until Aragorn specifically freed them at the end of the War of the Ring, and gave them the land that they had farmed as freemen and allies of Gondor. Khand allied, as noted above, with both the Wainriders from the East and some kind of southerners from Near Harad (who knows, maybe even including some Black Numenoreans), but they curiously were not called Variags there, just "the peoples of Khand". It wasn't until the Battle of Pelennor Fields that we're given the term Variags of Khand. 

Many people (including Middle-Earth Roleplaying by I.C.E. assumed that the Variags were some kind of ethnic group of exotic peoples, but I doubt that Tolkien would have used the (relatively) familiar word Variag to describe them in that case and avoided using it in another context to describe the peoples of Khand; he was very deliberate in his word choice, especially for words that had a specific, historical or linguistic meaning. Therefore, I think the most likely explanation for the Variags is that they were, like the Varangians who had another version of their same name, renegade Northmen who came to Khand through the eastern (Slavic?) lands to serve as a kind of "French Foreign Legion" or Cohors of some kind in Khand.

The Easterlings of the movies were even more bizarre than the Corsairs, and much less likely to be anything at all like Tolkien described them. While there could be some call to assume that Tolkien was inspired, at least partly, by historical descriptions of Huns, Mongols or the Golden Horde or whatever, the Wainriders and Balchoth have a very specifically Scythian-like description to them, and the Easterlings of the Battle of Pelennor Fields are described as a "new type" of Easterling that the men of Gondor weren't familiar with, notable for being bearded like dwarves and carrying axes. Perhaps ironically, the completely unrelated Easterlings of the First Age bear a much more notable resemblance to Huns, specifically in how they're described and what kinds of names they bear, whereas in my minds' eye the Easterlings of the War of the Ring are like axe-wielding, bearded Cossacks.

All in all, I think Tolkien gave Middle-earth a much more European cast than most people are willing to assume nowadays. There's no reason to make anyone in Middle-earth with the possible exception of some of the Haradrim, especially of Far Harad, to look anything like Africans, for instance, and there's no reason to make anyone look like Huns, Mongols, Magyars, or anyone else that's from beyond Europe's sphere. The Corsairs are primarily Numenoreans, with an unknown amount of mixing with anonymous peoples of Near Harad, who are described as looking somewhat Greek or Carthaginian when they make a minor appearance in The Lord of the Rings, and the Easterlings have some vague yet tantalizing hints that most of them were meant to represent Scythians (earlier) Slavs (Variags?) or even renegade eastern Vikings who happened to be on the wrong side of their distant cousins the Rohirrim and men of Dale.