How ancient history influenced Tolkien: did a forgotten legend inspire Rings of Power's Celebrimbor?

One of those characters was Celebrimbor – a name that has become better known in recent years as a central figure in the Prime Video series, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, played by Charles Edwards.

Celebrimbor is a master smith of the elves responsible for forging the three Elven rings of power, and he occupies a peripheral-but-pivotal position in Tolkien’s lore. Looking to Irish and Celtic mythology, and real-world archaeology, the character’s origins offer fascinating insight into the influences behind Tolkien’s Middle-earth.

Celebrimbor and the legend of Nuada Airgetlám

Nuada Airgetlám is a prominent, heroic figure in ancient Irish mythology. He was the first king of a race of supernatural beings, the Tuatha Dé Danann, but was stripped of his right to rule when he lost his hand (or arm) in battle.

Though, all was not lost; two deific brothers of the Tuatha Dé Danann healed Nuada and crafted him a prosthetic out of silver. The epithet ‘Airgetlám’ translates to ‘Silver Hand’.

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Tolkien, apparently inspired by this legend, gave his elven smith the name of Celebrimbor, which translates to ‘Silver Hand’ in Sindarin – a constructed language that he devised for the elves of Middle-earth.

Where Nuada’s own ‘silver hand’ is a literal reference to his prosthetic, which allowed him to regain his place as king, Celebrimbor’s derives from his near-unparalleled skills as a metalworker. He’s the creator of magical artifacts, rather than the recipient of them.

Yet Tolkien did not just find the name in some dusty tome in a library at Oxford, and neither was it just coincidence that his elven smith shared a name with an Irish mythic hero. His interests in Nuada were much more personal than that.

The roots of Nuada Airgetlám and Celebrimbor: a Celtic god?

In the late 1920s, two eminent British archaeologists – Sir Mortimer Wheeler and his wife Tessa – led an excavation at Lydney Park in Gloucestershire. The site, evocatively known as Dwarf’s Hill, revealed the ruins of a Romano-Celtic temple dedicated to a Celtic god of healing, Nodens.

This mysterious deity was revered at Lydney Park, with pilgrims travelling there to seek blessings. The Wheelers found the temple had been adorned with mosaics and symbols, and unearthed thousands of votive offerings left by worshippers.

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Perhaps the most fascinating find was a curse tablet. Dedicated to Nodens, a man named Silvianus called upon the god to place a curse on a thief, Senicianus, wishing him ill health until he returned the ring that he had stolen. Silvianus offered half of the ring’s value to Nodens.

Upon further investigation of the temple, Wheeler made the connection between the tablet and an earlier discovery of a Roman ring, which had been found fewer than a hundred miles away in Hampshire. He speculated that the so-called Vyne Ring – a large, golden band from the fourth century – might have been Silvianus’s stolen jewellery.

This was where Tolkien entered the story.

How Tolkien’s study influenced Celebrimbor

What, then, connects Nodens and the Vyne Ring to Tolkien, Nuada Airgetlám and Celebrimbor?

Looking to uncover more about Nodens, Wheeler invited Tolkien to play a role in uncovering the mysteries of Lydney Park. With his reputation as a scholar of linguistics, Tolkein’s task was to provide an etymological analysis of the name ‘Nodens’, in the hopes of better understanding the god and his worship at the temple.

Working at Dwarf’s Hill to identify a definitive cognate root-verb of Nodens from ancient European languages, Tolkien was taken with the area. He ultimately suggested – publishing an essay on the subject in 1932 – that there could have been a linguistic connection between Nodens and the analogous Irish hero, Nuada Airgetlám.

In helping Wheeler illuminate a piece of the history behind the temple, furthering knowledge of the story of the curse tablet and corresponding golden ring, Tolkien had been sucked into the orbit of Celtic legend. His time there would, according to Tolkien scholars, leave its influence on his later writing.

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Here was a cursed ring and a reference to dwarves; the mine-shaft holes at Lydney Park have even been likened to Hobbit holes. And a link to the mythical ‘Silver Hand’ had inspired the name of Celebrimbor in his later works.

Tolkien never explicitly acknowledged the connection between Celebrimbor and Nuada, Airgetlám or Nodens. But his involvement at Lydney Park and personal experiences with the ring of Silvianus add to the collection of clues about what real-world influences permeated Tolkien’s creative visions.

At the very least, they demonstrate how his love of languages could be the catalyst for a narrative that explored both history and mythology. That would be a central pillar to how Tolkien wove together an intricate tapestry drawn from the real and the fantastical, to craft The Lord of the Rings and the larger mythology of Middle-earth.

Cerebrimbor, whether inspired by an Irish hero or not, is a small yet important part of that legacy.