Mithril and Tolkien’s Inspiration

I’m digging deep into mithril because that’s just what I do 😭

Apparently, no one truly knows what inspired Tolkien to come up mithril for his Lord of the Rings books, which is one of the few entirely fictional compounds in his stories.

Many people think it’s silver, platinum or titanium (titanium metal is a good guess as it was just being manufactured in the U.S. in 1910).  But to me, I think there has to be a deeper connection for Tolkien to adopt it and be a prominent part of his stories.  So, to ease my mind and try to find the answer, I have spent way too much time researching and I think I found an interesting connection.

I first started researching what new technology was being developed during Tolkien’s time, and the tech that was making waves, and probably a lot of money, was…German Silver.

In the LOTR, mithril (a Sindarin word, one  of the languages the elves speak) is known as Moria Silver (what the dwarfs called it), Which looks like silver but has superior properties.  

IRL, German Silver was made to look like silver, but it had superior properties. It is stronger and doesn’t tarnish, and can take a polish like glass (surprisingly, those were words also used by Gandalf and in scholarly historical accounts of the real alloy, weird right?)

Despite the name German Silver, it contains no silver (it’s an copper-zinc-nickel alloy, but looks like silver) and it was first manufactured commercially in Birmingham England by Mathew Boulton’s company, but at that time under the trade name of ‘fused plate.’  During this time period, mid to late 1800s, being able to make nickel metal from ore was a huge technological advancement in Europe (however the Chinese had been doing it for centuries, but I digress), and Boulton became rich and famous.  The material was amazing.  

Even more interesting, Boulton operated the Sarehole Mill, which is where Tolkien grew up as a kid and was the inspiration for the Shire! 🤯 

The Sarehole Mill did lots of things, but one of those things was flattening metal sheets at the mill to be later made into silverware and other silvery things.   Birmingham would become the center of German Silver in the UK until about 1924, 13 years before LOTR was published. Sarehole Mill is only 4 miles from the dark pit of Birmingham industrial center, where Tolkien also lived later in life (the ‘dark pit’ is the English version of the Sindarin word, Moria, the dwarf’s word for it is Khazad-dûm, and possibly another reference to Moria Silver). 

Apologies to those from Birmingham, but Industrial Revolution Birmingham was not the beautiful city we know today.

Tolkien is widely known for using locations and names around him in his books.  Add a little bit of imagination and artistic freedom and I think you have the real life origin story of mithril.  

Pictures:

Copper - can come from native copper metal

Zinc - principle ore of zinc comes from the mineral smithsonite

Nickel - laterite is a major ore for nickel