Scholars have identified numerous themes in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth writings, among them paganism. Despite Tolkien's assertion that The Lord of the Rings was a fundamentally Christian work, paganism appears in that book and elsewhere in his fictional world of Middle-earth in multiple ways. These include a pantheon of god-like beings, the Valar, who function like the Norse gods, the Æsir; the person of the wizard Gandalf, who Tolkien stated in a letter is an "Odinic wanderer"; Elbereth, the Elves' "Queen of the Stars", associated with Venus; animism, the way that the natural world seems to be alive; and a Beowulf-like "northern courage" which is determined to press on, no matter how bleak the outlook.
Tolkien was a Christian interested in religion, and placed many hints of Christianity in The Lord of the Rings, but given that Middle-earth is the Earth in the distant past, long before the time of Christ, he could not make his characters Christian, even the most virtuous pagans among them. He was in addition a philologist, a scholar of Old English language and literature, especially of Beowulf, and he made extensive use of that poem in his Middle-earth writings.
- ^ Garth 2003, p. 86.
- ^ Chance 2004, p. 169.