Smaug

Origin

The direct source is J.R.R. Tolkien's 'The Hobbit, or There and Back Again', first published on 21 September 1937 by George Allen & Unwin, London, growing out of stories Tolkien told his children while he was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1930-1936. Tolkien's own 1937 watercolour 'Conversation with Smaug' (Bodleian Library, Tolkien Collection, MS Tolkien Drawings 30), showing Bilbo before the coiled dragon, is the iconographic standard. Tolkien himself acknowledged the mythic models in Letter 25 (1937): the dragon Fáfnir of the Old Norse 'Völsunga saga' — the Bilbo / Smaug conversation directly mirrors the Sigurd / Fáfnir colloquy — and the old hoard-dragon of the closing portion of the Old English 'Beowulf' (lines 2200-3182), the subject of Tolkien's 1936 British Academy lecture 'Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics'. The figure was later filmed by Peter Jackson in 'The Hobbit' trilogy (2012-14), with Benedict Cumberbatch performing both motion capture and voice.

Features

• Great crimson-scaled, bat-winged, two-legged fire-drake (a wyvern by strict heraldry)
• Single bare patch over the left breast — his only physical weak point
• Held the Lonely Mountain (Erebor) and Durin's Folk for about one hundred and seventy years
• Modern prototype of the hoard-sleeping dragon
• Archaic, vainglorious diction; susceptible to flattery and to slips of pride
• Killed by the Black Arrow of Bard the Bowman of Esgaroth

Stories

Direct visual and narrative template for every modern fire-dragon: the D&D Red Dragon of the 1977 AD&D Monster Manual onward, Drogon of HBO's 'Game of Thrones', Alduin and the boss dragons of 'Skyrim', the dragons of the 'Dragon Age' series. The hoard-sleeping motif was absorbed into the D&D colour-coded chromatic taxonomy by 'Deities & Demigods' (1980).

Weakness

The single bare patch over the left breast and Smaug's vainglory — boasting his greatness to Bilbo, he gives away the very location of that weak spot. The two together are Tolkien's synthesis of the underside-vulnerability of the Norse Fáfnir and the proud-monster slip of the Indo-European Chaoskampf tradition.

Cultural Significance

Smaug is Tolkien's 1937 modern synthesis of the Norse Fáfnir, the Old English Beowulf hoard-dragon and the dragon of the medieval European bestiaries (the Aberdeen Bestiary, twelfth century). Of any single character, he is the most thoroughly absorbed into post-1980 English-language fantasy — D&D, Dragonlance, 'Magic: The Gathering', 'Game of Thrones', 'Skyrim'.

In Popular Culture

J.R.R. Tolkien's 'The Hobbit' (1937), Tolkien's own watercolour 'Conversation with Smaug' (1937, Bodleian Library), the Erebor chronicle in the appendices to 'The Lord of the Rings' (1955), the 1977 Rankin/Bass animated 'Hobbit' (Arthur Rankin Jr.), Peter Jackson's live-action 'Hobbit' trilogy (2012-14) with Benedict Cumberbatch, the 1980 D&D 'Deities & Demigods' and 'Magic: The Gathering's' Shivan Dragon (1993).

Trivia

The name 'Smaug' is the strong past tense of the Proto-Germanic verb 'smúgan' (to squeeze through a hole), an etymology Tolkien himself gave in a 1937 letter to the Observer. Tolkien specified the pronunciation as 'Smowg' (/smaʊɡ/), though Peter Jackson's films use 'Smahg' (/smɔːɡ/). Benedict Cumberbatch said in interviews that he prepared by studying Komodo dragons at London Zoo before recording the motion-capture sessions.