Contents:
Bilbo Baggins he has one, which appeared when he was young in the treasure of the dragon Smaug, and he just gives it to his nephew Frodo before he goes on a trip to Mount Doom. When Durin shows Elrond a small piece of mithril, he explains that it is the harder metal that they have found, but at the same time very light and points out that they could make all kinds of tools or weapons with it. The elf, for his part, is struck by the shine of the metal, which seems to come from within him. In fact, his name is the Elvish Sindarin translation of the words “gray glitter”. New Line CinemaElsewhere on Middle-earth, other mithril remnants remain. It reflects only starlight and moonlight and marks the door at the West-gate to Khazad-Dûm.
“One reason we chose superconductors is that a new one could potentially change the world,” Stiles explained. Yet in examples of post-Tolkien fiction, Mithril is only consider a mid-level magic metal, above steel but below the mighty adamantium. Metals that are brittle, flammable, react violently with water or air or are useless for forging swords and shields never appear in fantasy. Although there are many things like this in real life, such as mercury. In real life, metal or metal is one of the elements in the periodic table. That belongs to one particular group / column and have a certain type of crystal lattice with free electrons.
In modern times, aluminum and its alloys are used for many industrial purposes due to its light weight — at 35 to 45% less weight than steel, when built to the same standards, it is considered much stronger per unit weight. It also has a nice silverish gleam when polished and was in use for over a century by the time of Tolkien’s writings. For people so in touch with the mountains, it’s exciting to discover an entirely new ore. Durin’s Folk have only just discovered the “grey glitter,” the dwarven name for Mithril on The Rings of Power.
History
Tolkien first wrote of it in The Lord of the Rings, and it was retrospectively mentioned in the third, revised edition of The Hobbit in 1966. In the first 1937 edition, the mail shirt given to Bilbo Baggins is described as being made of “silvered steel”. It’s silvery and stronger than steel but much lighter in weight. The author first wrote of it in The Lord of the Rings, and it was retconned into the second, revised edition of The Hobbit in 1966.
The doors of Moria were inscribed with ithildin, an alloy of unknown composition that contains mithril. The Guards of the Citadel of Minas Tirith wore helmets of mithril, “heirlooms from the glory of old days.” I is mithril real think from the above quote it’s fairly likely Gandalf is referring to the pure substance of mithril, not an alloy . True, you can do a mesh weave but it would need another material with it to be more metal like.
- Somewhat doubtful, but then I did upvote HorusKol’s answer as a good guess.
- It has a color similar to silver and is the hardest metal imaginable; it is capable of eternally resisting oxidation, and blackening and is much more valuable than diamonds or gold.
- The name mithril consists of the two Sindarin words mith (“grey, light grey”) + ril (“brilliance”).
- In The Rings of Power, viewers are shown Dwarves discovering mithril for the first time.
The doors were made by cooperation between the Elven craftsman, Celebrimbor and the dwarf, Narvi. They guard Moria against foes with the riddle “speak, friend, and enter.” In The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo and his companions encounter these doors on their journey. The door stumps them briefly, but Merry Brandybuck asks Gandalf the word for friend. When Gandalf answers, “Mellon,” the doors swing open and allow the group to enter. However, despite its lightness, it is neither as hard nor as silvery as titanium. In the fourth chapter of The Rings of Power, Durin tries to keep something a secret from his friend Elrond, but in the end he has no choice but to confess.
Contrary to the accepted answer, I propose that Mithril is closest to Aluminum.
Mithril was worth ten times its weight in gold when it could still be mined by the Dwarves. The Ñoldor of Eregion discovered how to make an alloy out of it called ithildin (“star moon”), which was often used to decorate gateways and portals, and was visible only by starlight or moonlight. Though most commonly referred to by its Elven name, the metal was called many things. The guards of Citadel in Minas Tirith wore mithril helmets that lasted for generations as a remnant of their former glory. Additionally, one of the Elven rings of power was forged from mithril — the ring was given to Galadriel and will likely appear later in the series. He eventually passes the mithril shirt along to his nephew Frodo for his journey to destroy the One Ring.
Mithril is just the right thing to make a tough corselet of mail rings. But any skilled smith might have been able to have enhanced its properties still further, by controlling the crystalline structure of the material — an important determinant of its hardness. Swordsmiths can control the properties of blades by forging them in just the right way to ensure that the edge is extremely hard and brittle, but the main body of the blade is flexible. A key step in the forging of a samurai sword involves wrapping the sword in clay, with only the edge exposed. The sword is then heated to above what is known as the ‘martensitic’ transition, when the steel adopts a different kind of crystalline configuration. The bulk of the blade, shielded by the clay, cools more gently, resulting in a structure with much larger crystal grains, fewer defects and therefore greater resistance to fracture.
It has physical properties that are impossible in a non-magical world. Carbon fiber or titanium alloys may be light and strong, but weave them into chain mail and you’ll still be plenty hurt if skewered with a high-mass spearhead. The Dwarves had a secret word for their name of the ore, claimed by Durin to be “Grey Glitter” but the term “Mithril” comes from the equivalent words in Sindarin Elvish. For fans of The Lord of the Rings, you might recognize it as the ore used for the shirt which saved Frodo’s life from a rampaging cave troll in Moria and was eventually seized by the orcs of Mordor as an offering to Sauron. Although a mail-shirt of mithril rings isn’t quite the same thing as a sword, one might imagine how a smith might put it through a quench-hardening process.
Unfortunately, very ductile materials ooze out of the way when you stab them. But since HorusKol has found the proper quote, I grant that perhaps mithril itself was ductile, but the dwarves made an alloy that was not. Somewhat doubtful, but then I did upvote HorusKol’s answer as a good guess. I assumed that mithril was a relatively malleable metal, but that the metal made from it which was used for armor, etc, would be an alloy. Aluminum might be a better fit than titanium, since it’s workable in pure form, but can be used to create alloys that are lightweight & extremely tough.
In the D&D-inspired Nodwick comic, mithril has been a very cheap metal for a long time–bottle caps have been made from it since time immemorial. In the MMORPG Everquest, mithril is a metal that can make weapons, armor, and other equipment. The computer game Princess Maker 2 has a character who wears mithril armor when she fences.
While the destruction of Moria would be thrilling, these events are meant to happen hundreds of years later. If adhering strictly to Tolkien’s text, the Balrog is awoken during the time of Durin IV’s grandson. Mithril is the prized ore of Durin’s Folk in Khazad-dûm, “lighter than silk, harder than iron, it would best our proudest blades. Or we would be, were it not for the extremely recent discovery of a family of simple intermetallics that are shiny, strong, light — and ductile. They all consist of a regular metal, such as copper or silver, allied with one of a member of the intriguing and exotic ‘rare earth’ metals, hardly known to the general public outside Tom Lehrer’s song The Elements.
After Gimli became Lord of the Glittering Caves, he and his Dwarves forged great gates of mithril and steel to replace the Great Gate of Minas Tirith which was broken by the Witch-king https://cryptolisting.org/ of Angmar. This article is about the precious metal of J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendarium. For the the real-world producers of metal mintiatures, see Mithril Miniatures.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
If adhering strictly to Tolkien’s text, the Balrog is awoken during the time of Durin IV’s grandson. The series already has a lot of action to cover without expanding that far into Middle Earth’s future. Although the destruction would mirror the Númenor plot beautifully, it seems unlikely The Rings of Power will get to the end of this particular story.
It may be stronger per unit weight, but it has to be larger (“around 50% or so larger”). New Line CinemaMithril also shows up in many other fantasy stories and role-playing games. The name, or close alternate spellings, has become ubiquitous with a beautiful and rare metal often used in armor. Prime VideoA new addition to the lore of Middle-earth created by The Rings of Power, resonating is the practice of singing to the stone. Disa first detects mithril and describes how to differentiate earth, ore, air, and water within the mountain. “Sing to it properly, each of those parts will reflect your song back to you,” she says.
A. Salvatore’s Forgotten Realms books on the world of Dark Elves, Dwarves, and other Underdark worlds. Mithril is a medium-tier metal in the online MMORPG RuneScape and its old school variant, as well as World of Warcraft. Mithril armour is featured in the video game series The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion. It seems unlikely that Durin will let it rest forever, given the lore explained in The Lord of the Rings, and, perhaps more importantly, mithril’s growing part in Rings of Power.
Under the Hood: Deep Learning for Materials Science
In the MMORPG RuneScape, mithril is a dark blue metal that can be mined, made into bars, and then forged into various weapons and armor. While it is one of the weaker metals in the game , it is stronger than steel. It also appears to be lighter than other metal armors in the game, possibly as a reference to Tolkien.
The researchers’ favourite is yttrium silver, an intermetallic in which atoms of silver and atoms of the rare-earth element yttrium occur in precisely equal amounts. Yttrium silver is so ductile that a wire can be stretched to a fifth again its length before it snaps. There is something about its crystal structure, not yet fully understood, that allows it a degree of plastic flow without its breaking into ragged fragments.
Quench hardening does not work with metals that do not undergo the martensitic transition, but the elastic properties of metals more generally can be controlled by varying their microstructure through careful manufacture. There is, however, an intriguing alloy of nickel and titanium that undergoes the martensitic transition — and which, therefore, could be quench-hardened. The wonderful property of this alloy is that it is a ‘memory’ metal — it is light and flexible, but springs back to its original shape once bent. A multidisciplinary team at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, has discovered a novel superconductor using artificial intelligence . The key to this breakthrough came through combining materials science expertise and real data into a predictive AI model, which vastly accelerates the timeline of targeted materials discovery. Mithril was a precious, silvery metal, very lightweight but immensely strong, discovered and mined by the Dwarves in Khazad-dûm.