Who Were the Variags of Khand?

I received an interesting email that prompted me to dig a little more deeply into the question of the Variags of Khand than I have previously. It’s a question that has piqued the curiosity of many a Tolkien reader: who were the Variags? Tolkien scholarship has been largely silent on the subject because — apparently — no one has yet uncovered any previously unpublished note or manuscript segment that offers explanation of what Tolkien might have had in mind with his references to the people(s) of Khand.

Khand, as many sources note, is a named land that abuts Mordor’s south-eastern border. There are few named countries outside of Arnor, Gondor, Rohan, and the Elvish lands. It seems odd that Tolkien should have given such a prominent position on both the map and in the primary narrative to a land about which he says virtually nothing.

I know of only four Tolkienic sources of information on Khand and the Variags: The Return of the King, Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth, The War of the Ring (Volume VIII of The History of Middle-earth), and The Peoples of Middle-earth (Volume XII of HoME). People such as David Salo and Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull have offered a little etymological lore about the name “Variag” but none have published (to my knowledge) any attempt to tie the pieces together.

The first passage where we encounter Variags or Khand is in the chapter “The Battle of the Pelennor Fields” where Tolkien describes the course of the battle after Eowyn dispatches the Lord of the Nazgul:

Not too soon came their aid to the Rohirrim….And if the Rohirrim at their onset were thrice outnumbered by the Haradrim alone soon their case became worse; for new strength came now streaming to the field out of Osgiliath. There they had been mustered for the sack of the City and the rape of Gondor waiting on the call of their Captain. He now was destroyed; but Gothmog the lieutenant of Morgul had flung them into the fray; Easterlings with axes and Variags of Khand Southrons in scarlet and out of Far Harad black men like half-trolls with white eyes and red tongues….

Some commenters have suggested that the Variags fight with axes but that does not appear to be the case. We encounter Khand once again in LoTR Appendix A:

Many of the Wainriders now passed south of Mordor and made alliance with men of Khand and of Near Harad; and in this great assault from north and south Gondor came near to destruction….

Unfinished Tales embellishes the information in the appendix only slightly:

In the meanwhile the Wainriders licked their wounds and plotted their revenge. Beyond the reach of the arms of Gondor in lands east of the Sea of Rhun from which no tidings came to its Kings their kinsfolk spread and multiplied and they were eager for conquests and booty and filled with hatred of Gondor which stood in their way. It was long however before they moved. On the one hand they feared the might of Gondor and knowing nothing of what passed west of Anduin they believed that its realm was larger and more populous than it was in truth at that time. On the other hand the eastern Wainriders had been spreading southward beyond Mordor and were in conflict with the peoples of Khand and their neighbours further south. Eventually a peace and alliance was agreed between these enemies of Gondor and an attack was prepared that be made at the same time from north and south.

Further on:

But it was not so. The Wainriders had mustered a great host by the southern shores of the inland Sea of Rhun strengthened by men of their kinsfolk in Rhovanion and from their new allies in Khand. When all was ready they set out for Gondor from the East moving with all the speed they could along the line of the Ered Lithui where there approach was not observed until too late. So it came to pass that the head of the army of Gondor had only drawn level with the Gates of Mordor (the Morannon) when a great dust borne on a wind from the East announced the oncoming of the enemy vanguard. This was composed not only of the war-chariots of the Wainriders but also of a force of cavalry far greater than any that had been expected….

The information provided in The War of the Ring is scant. We can infer from it that both the Variags and Khand were later additions to the narrative and the Second Map. Christopher Tolkien’s commentary on “The Battle of the Pelennor Fields” suggests that the Variags and Khand were added at the same time that other embellishments including the names of Imrahil and Hurin the Tall were added to the primary story.

In his discussion on the development of the appendix on languages for The Lord of the Rings Christopher Tolkien notes in The Peoples of Middle-earth that:

Of (the manuscript Christopher denotes as) F 4 there are only a few other points to mention. The origin of the Common Speech is here formulated in these words:There [at Pelargir] Adunaic was spoken to which language the tongues of Men that dwelt round about were closely akin so that already a common speech had grown up in that region and spread thence along the coasts among all those that had dealings with Westerness.

After typing the text my father added this sentence:Of the speech of Men of the East and allies of Sauron all that appears is mumak a name of the great elephant of the Harad.

A carbon copy of F 4 is extent and here my father in a similar addition named beside mumak also Variag and Khand (RK pp. 121 123 329).

I know of no other uses of these names by J.R.R. Tolkien.

In their Reader’s Companion Hammond and Scull have this to say about the Variags:

According to Index Khand is a land south-east of Mordor ‘inhabited by Variags’. The Oxford English Dictionary notes that ‘in the old Russian chronicle of Nestor’ Variags is used of the people usually named Varangians ‘the Scandinavian rowers who in the 9th and 10th centuries overran parts of Russia and reached Constantinople’ a group of whom formed the Varangian Guard of the Byzantine Emperor.

In 1996 David Salo posted the following message to the Tolk-Lang mailing list:

The following item may come as no surprise to the Slavicists on this List but it was news to me and will probably be news to many Tolkien fans certainly to those who recently on one of the Tolkien-related newsgroups were wondering whether “Variags” referred to some sort of non-human species.

I had simply supposed that “Variag” was a national designation with some internal meaning in Tolkien’s world but I was often struck by the way it was casually dropped into the text without previous reference as if it were a word one might recognize or at least find in an English dictionary. And I also wondered why only the people of distant Khand should have this strange designation; why do we not know the names of the nations of the Harad?

I can now report that my uneasy feeling which drove me to search out the origins of this word was well founded. The word Variag is indeed English but is so rare that it cannot be found in most dictionaries and encyclopedias. Yet I have before me a definition from Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language:

variag n. cap [Russ _Varyag_ of Scand origin; akin to ON _Vaeringjar_ Varangians]: Varangian.

The Varangians were the Vikings of the east marauders not by sea but by land and river and also mercenaries and traders. Originating in Denmark and Sweden they spread across the Baltic through Russia and Ukraine to the Black Sea in the 9th-11th centuries some of them finding employment in the Byzantine Emperor’s “Varangian Guard” (though this was actually a kind of Foreign Legion and included many nationalities). It is therefore probable that when Tolkien used the word “Variag” that he meant little more than “barbarian mercenary”. It is however interesting that he should use the Russian version of the word. Together with Beorn/Medved and other interesting items it suggests that more attention needs to be paid to Tolkien’s knowledge and use of Russian.

Well there is nothing to discount David’s analysis (although Christopher’s note in The Peoples of Middle-earth seems to confirm David’s initial idea) but there is more information available that may be relevant to the matter. For one thing simply noting the connection between Tolkien and the historical word “variag” doesn’t really tell us anything. Tolkien as Tom Shippey and a few others have noted was wont to use archaic words in a very meaningful way. One of Shippey’s favorite examples is the word “emnet” which Tolkien uses in two place-names for Rohan (the following is cited from The Road to Middle-earth):

However the point that should be taken by now is not just that Tolkien worked by ‘reconstruction’ or from the premise that poetry is in essence true; rather it is that his continual play with the calques and cruxes gave The Lord of the Rings a dinosaur-like vitality which cannot be conveyed in any synopsis but reveals itself in so many thousands of details that only the most biased critical mind could miss them all. It is not a paradox to say further that this decentralised life is also at the same time ‘nuggety’ tending always to focus on names and words and the things or realities which lie behind them. The first Rohirric place-name we hear is ‘Eastemnet’ followed soon by ‘Westemnet’. An ’emnet’ is a thing in Middle-earth, also a place in Norfolk, also an asterisk-word *emnaeth for ‘steppe’ or ‘prairie’, also the green grass which the Riders use as a touchstone for reality. Everything Tolkien wrote was based on fusions like that on ‘woses’ and ’emnets’ and eoreds, on ‘elvish’ or orthanc or panaches.

Tolkien himself offered some clarity on one of these calques (an expression introduced into one language from another). An early draft for the LoTR appendix on languages contains this text:

$41 The nomenclature of the Hobbits themselves and of the places in which they lived has nonetheless presented some obstacles to the satisfactory carrying out of this process of translation. Their place-names being (in the Shire especially) almost all originally of C.S. form have proved least difficult. I have converted them into as nearly similar English place-names that seemed suitable in both sense and in period: that is in being still current (like hill) or slightly altered or reduced from current words (like ton beside town) or no longer found outside place-names (like wich bold bottle). The Shire seems to me very adequately to translate the Hobbit Suza-t since this word was now only used by them with reference to their country though originally it had meant ‘a sphere of occupation (as of the land claimed by a family or land) of office or business.’ In Gondor the word suza was still applied to the divisions of the realm such as Anorien, Ithilien, Lebennin, for which in Noldorin the word lhann was used….

The Online Etymology Dictionary offers this history for the word: “O.E. scir ‘administrative office or district ‘ from P.Gmc. *skizo (cf. O.H.G. scira “care official charge”).” People have tried to argue that Gondor must have had a feudal government because Tolkien used the term “fiefs” to refer to the regions of Gondor named above. Fief is derived from a French word used in the 12th century to denote a “possession holding domain”. Do you see how Tolkien explicitly favored the Old English use for “shire” in translating suza-t which was translated as “fief” with respect to Gondor?

It’s a clever linguistic play suggesting a family-derived claim to land ownership without the encumbrance of feudalism — in other words Tolkien’s fiefs and shires are so named in a pre-medieval, pre-feudal sense but a historical sense nonetheless. That is, he was reusing a historically significant term in a way that most of his readers would not be expected to understand. Tolkien seems to do this over and over again.

Which leads us back to the question of who were the Variags of Khand? If Tolkien was simply reusing the word “variag” in its historical sense does that mean he intended the reader to see the Variags as nothing more than perhaps mercenaries? I don’t think so. I think he intended the reader to see them as a native race of Middle-earth, probably Men who had their own history and significance within Middle-earth — but a history and significance that might be mirroring an actual historical people.

And the only historical people called Variags were the Scandinavians who settled in Russia and also formed the core of the Byzantine Varangian Guard, right? WRONG

There is an interesting philological note from the late 1800s that you can read via Google Books. The source is titled “Notes and Queries (by Oxford Journals)” and bears the heading notation: 5th S. IX. Mar 16 ’78. On page 218 of this journal we find the following note:

VARANGIANS (5th S. i. 113 358) — Dr. Villhelm Thomson Professor of Comparative Philology in the University of Copenhagen gives the following explanation of this word in his lectures on The Origin of the Ancient Russ delivered in Oxford in 1876 and recently published. He says that Varangian was originally a designation of the Scandinavians and more particularly of the Swedes citing in proof passages from Byzantine Arabian and Russian authorities. The word is of Scandinavian orgin in Old Norse sagas Vaering-jar and is to be found in many forms — Russ. Variag, Arab. Varank, Gr. Bappayos, Eng. Waring, and in Leo Ostiensis, Guarani or Gualani. Vaeringjar is connected with a word found in different Teutonic languages the most ancient form of which is vara. The meaning of vara is (1) truth faithfulness; (2) plighted faith truce peace; (3) pledged security protection. Akin to vara are O.N. vaerr, safe, snug, easy; vari, abode, shelter; vaeringr, one who finds shelter and safety somewhere; ep. A-S. waergenga = advena. So Varangian means primarily a “denizen” or [Greek spelling], and took its rise among the Scandinavians to denote the Swedish settlers in Russia. The name was afterward given to the imperial body-guard at Constantinople, which was at first mainly a Scandinavian corps. — A.L. Mayhew Oxford

Now clearly this passage leads to a conclusion that supports everything that has been said about varangian but the interesting point that Professor Thomson raised was the equivalence of “varangian” with “denizen”. In modern fantasy we often see the word “denizen” or “denizens” used to denote dwellers or occupants or citizens of a region or country. However the original meaning of the word denoted aliens who were made naturalized citizens. Hence Varangians were historically seen as outsiders settling among (and being accepted among) the Slavic peoples of the region that later became Russia. That is stating the obvious but if we transfer that meaning to Tolkien’s use of Variags then we may have a little insight into what he was thinking as he added the Variags to the landscape of Middle-earth.

But one must ask why he would do so even if he was toying with the idea of assigning Variag to a non-Adunaic language. The story of Minalcar in LoTR Appendix A may shed further light on this topic:

Minalcar son of Calmacil was a man of great vigour and in 1240 Narmacil to rid himself of all cares made him Regent of the realm. From that time onwards he governed Gondor in the name of the kings until he succeeded his father. His chief concern was with the Northmen.

These had increased greatly in the peace brought by the power of Gondor. The kings showed them favour since they were the nearest in kin of lesser Men to the Dunedain (being for the most part descendants of those peoples from whom the Edain of old had come); and they gave them wide lands beyond Anduin south of Greenwood the Great to be a defence against men of the East. For in the past the attacks of the Easterlings had come mostly over the plain between the Inland Sea and the Ash Mountains.

In the days of Narmacil I their attacks began again though at first with little force; but it was learned by the regent that the Northmen did not always remain true to Gondor and some would join forces with the Easterlings either out of greed for spoil or in the furtherance of feuds among their princes. Minalcar therefore in 1248 led out a great force and between Rhovanion and the Inland Sea he defeated a large army of the Easterlings and destroyed all their camps and settlements east of the Sea. He then took the name Romendacil.

One may reasonably wonder what became of the disloyal Northmen. Minalcar’s chief ally was Vidugavia whose realm lay in the lands east of Mirkwood but the narrative indicates there were other princes ruling other groups of Northmen. One possibility is that some or all of the disloyal Northmen were driven away, perhaps to the south where they could have settled in Khand as “outsiders” granted citizenship.

Another possibility however is that the Variags could be descended from Numenoreans who had remained loyal to the fallen Kings of Numenor — perhaps numbered among or closely related to the Kings Men who became known in the Third Age as the Black Numenoreans. “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age” mentions two renegade Numenoreans, Herumor and Fuinur, who ruled lands in Harad just south of Mordor. They are mentioned as exceptions (other Numenorean princes settled much farther south along the coasts) but we don’t learn their fate or the fate of their Numenorean followers in the aftermath of the War of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men.

Khand itself seems to be an invented word but in fact it is used in place-names in Asia (e.g. Khandahar) and is the name (variant spelling Khond) of a tribe of Dravidian-Aryan people in India who in the 1800s practiced human sacrifice. There is another tribe called Khands who are members of the Pashto tribes (which live in Afghanistan and Pakistan and possibly eastern Iran). These Khands are Sunni Muslims and they are a widespread people.

Tolkien’s late introduction of the Variags of Khand into the narrative may imply that he was thinking of fleshing out either the historical background of the Northmen or the Black Numenoreans (who settled among the Haradrim who are often connected with Arab or Indian cultures through Tolkien’s imagery). He did in fact revise or enhance the history of the Northmen many times. For example the story of Minalcar I cited above actually dates from the Second Edition (1965) of The Lord of the Rings. Although a briefer account is included in the First Edition the reference to the disloyal Northmen is not present.

Hence while it could be argued that the disloyal Northmen must have been an afterthought produced in the 1960s it could also be argued (less persuasively perhaps) that the disloyal Northmen were an elaboration intended to provide a link to the Variags that was never fully exploited in any extant writings.

So while I obviously cannot produce Tolkien’s definitive explanation for who the Variags were (and what they represented) I think we can narrow down the possibilities by looking at how he integrated historical concepts into Middle-earth preferring on many occasions simpler more primitive applications of real meanings and contexts. At the very least I think we can say that the Variags of Khand were probably NOT intended to be the natives of the land, its original inhabitants. At the very most, I think we can say they may have had a connection by blood to the Northmen and other Edainic peoples, including the Numenoreans.