I am happy to post this interview what is binary option with author Benita J. Prins, fellow lover of all things Tolkien and a great writer in her own right too! I read her fantasy, Sea of Crystal, Sea of Glass recently and recommend … Continue reading
Tolkien was a philologist before he was a novelist, and the One Ring that anchors The Lord of the Rings is no isolated invention. It belongs to a deep well of European folklore in which enchanted rings bring ruin to those who possess them. From the tarnished gold of Norse legend to the glittering torcs of Celtic tradition, the motif of a cursed ring appears again and again across centuries of storytelling, always carrying the same warning: treasure that chooses its bearer will eventually consume them.
Readers in Australia encounter these echoes in unexpected places. A browse through the fantasy shelves at Readings in Carlton, or a wander through the mythology section at the State Library of Victoria, reveals how thoroughly the cursed-ring motif has permeated global storytelling. Even Australian writers working in very different landscapes have felt the pull of this ancient pattern, reshaping it through local idioms and concerns.
The most direct ancestor of Tolkien's Ring sits in the Eddas. The dwarf Andvari possesses a ring called Andvaranaut, taken from him by the god Loki to pay compensation to Hreidmar. The ring carries a curse laid by Andvari upon its wearer, and that curse ripples outward through the Volsung cycle, bringing death to Fafnir, Sigurd, Brynhild, and ultimately Gunnar. Tolkien knew this story intimately, and the One Ring shares its essential architecture: a treasure taken from a hidden maker, a curse attached to it, and a chain of destruction that follows every hand that holds it.
Odin, by contrast, possesses a ring called Draupnir, forged by the dwarven brothers Brokkr and Sindri. Draupnir is not cursed; every ninth night, eight identical rings drop from it. It represents the beneficent version of the same archetype, a ring of multiplication and continuity rather than destruction. The two rings together form a dialectic that Tolkien understood well: the same form can carry opposite moral weight. Sauron's Ring collapses this distinction by forcing every wearer into the same gravitational pull toward evil, regardless of intention.
Celtic tradition offers a different set of ring motifs, often quieter in tone but equally relentless. In the Welsh Mabinogion, rings appear as tokens of binding and betrayal. In the Second Branch, Branwen receives a ring from the Irish king Matholwch, and that ring later becomes evidence of betrayal, passed through a sequence of birds. The ring here is less an object of power than a recorder of broken faith, a small piece of gold that holds the memory of a wrong.
Irish tradition layers in further resonance. Rings feature in tales of the Tuatha Dé Danann, and the Lia Fáil, though a stone rather than a ring, belongs to the same symbolic family: objects that cry out under a rightful king and fall silent under a false one. Cursed objects in Celtic tradition often reveal truth rather than conceal it; they expose the bearer's inner state. Tolkien borrowed this dynamic for the One Ring, which cannot be hidden by any who use it, since it works to return to its master. The Ring reveals the bearer as much as the bearer reveals the Ring, a paradox at the heart of the entire legend.
Folklore curses follow a recognisable grammar. A transgression occurs, often theft from a non-human maker or a violation of hospitality. The curse is then uttered by the injured party, and it attaches itself to the object rather than to a specific person. The object becomes contagious, carrying the curse forward through every transaction. This pattern appears not only in Norse and Celtic material but also in the Greek tale of Midas, in the ring of Polycrates, and in countless local traditions across Europe.
The grammar matters because it explains why the curse cannot be lifted by good intentions alone. Frodo's purity of heart does not dissolve the Ring's curse; it merely allows him to carry it further than most could. In folklore, the only resolution to such a curse is the destruction of the object or the death of the cursed line. Tolkien honours this pattern when the Ring is unmade in the fires of Mount Doom, but he complicates it by suggesting that mercy, shown to Sméagol, plays a role too. This tension between folklore convention and theological hope is one of the great quiet achievements of the book.
Cursed rings in folklore rarely leave their bearers unchanged. The Ring of the Nibelung transforms Siegfried from a vulnerable youth into an invincible hero, but the transformation is purchased through the murder of Fafnir, and the hero carries the stain of that deed into every subsequent act. In the romances of the Arthurian cycle, rings of forgetting erase memory and identity, a motif later picked up by writers as varied as T.H. White and Patricia McKillip. Rings make new people of their bearers, and these new people are rarely happier than the originals.
Tolkien takes this transformation seriously. Isildur becomes a different man the moment he takes the Ring from Sauron's hand. Sméagol becomes Gollum over centuries of possession. Even Tom Bombadil, who seems immune, treats the Ring as a toy, and that casualness reveals how thoroughly the object has surveyed every other being it meets. The cursed ring in folklore does not simply change the wearer; it exposes who the wearer always was, only now unable to hide. Australian readers will recognise this pattern in local works too, particularly in the way Margo Lanagan's Sea Hearts treats objects of binding and obsession that gradually rewrite the identities of those who accept them.
Australian fantasy has its own relationship with the cursed-object tradition, often refracted through the lens of settler history and the uneasy relationship between people and land. Garth Nix, working from his long Sydney base, has built a substantial body of work in which objects carry moral weight, from the bells of the Old Kingdom series to the Charter marks that bind magic to its wielders. These are not rings in the Tolkienian sense, but they belong to the same folklore family: magical implements that demand something of the bearer and reshape them in return. Readers will tell you, over a flat white in Glebe or at a launch at Kinokuniya, that Nix's bells do what folklore rings have always done.
The Australian book market has welcomed these explorations, partly because local readers are well-versed in the European traditions that feed into them. Walking through a Saturday market stall in Fremantle, or attending a panel at Continuum in Melbourne, one hears fantasy readers who can trace a line from Wagner to Tolkien to Garth Nix with surprising fluency. The Australian appetite for fantasy has always been strong, and Dymocks' flagship store on George Street in Sydney keeps whole sections devoted to mythopoeic fiction. It is a market where the grammar of the curse is widely understood, and where local writers feel free to play with its conventions rather than treat them as fixed.
When readers today pick up The Lord of the Rings, they enter a conversation that began long before Tolkien and continues long after him. The cursed ring is a recurring chord struck across cultures, and recognising its variations deepens the pleasure of the reading. Below is a brief comparison of how this motif appears in some of the most influential examples.
| Work | Origin | The cursed object | Effect on bearer | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Volsunga Saga | Norse | Ring of Andvari | Death and ruin across generations | Ring returned to Andvari's daughter; curse lingers |
| The Lord of the Rings | English (Tolkien) | The One Ring | Slow corruption, loss of identity | Cast into Mount Doom |
| Mabinogion (Second Branch) | Welsh | Branwen's ring | Exposes betrayal, drives exile | Ring never recovered; memory of wrong persists |
| Sea Hearts | Australian (Margo Lanagan) | Sea-formed binding | Transforms women into sea creatures | Curse breaks through refusal and time |
The comparison is a map, not a verdict. Each tradition handles the curse differently, and each handling tells us something about the culture that produced it. Norse tradition, shaped by heroic fatalism, tends toward chain reactions of death. Celtic tradition, with its deeper investment in memory and witness, preserves the trace of the wrong. Tolkien's Christian-inflected northern modernism seeks resolution through sacrifice. Lanagan's Australian work explores how curses bind across generations and can be refused, though never cheaply. Reading these works beside one another is a way of listening to a long conversation across centuries, a conversation that any curious reader, including those in Melbourne's Athenaeum or a quiet suburban library in Perth, can still join with pleasure and with profit.
An essay I wrote about the desire of Tolkien and the TCBS to be a light to their darkening world. A century later, he still provides light. Thank you, Professor and God trade binary option bless! Art by Justin Gerard … Continue reading