"… thus at last came they
To Mirkwood’s margin under mountain shadows:
Waste was behind them, walls before them;
On the houseless hill ever higher mounting
Vast, unvanquished, lay the veiled forest.
Dark and dreary were the deep valleys,
Where limbs gigantic of lowering trees
In endless ailes were arched o’er rivers
Flowing down afar from fells of ice."
- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fall of Arthur
The dark forest lies at the border. From it emanates an unsettling gloom, cold whispers, howls in the night. Stories get passed down from the old-man who in his youth once ventured inside. He probably lost a hand, or his sanity.
The archetype of the dark forest is so universally prevalent in Western storytelling that it almost goes unnoticed- the hero’s journey inside may be notable, but the forest itself gets glossed over. But these forests are an integral part of the “Perilous Realm” that this series deals with, they have an identity of their own. In fact, it would be hard to find a legend or myth that does not include some form of the dark forest. It is a gateway to Faerie, from the known world to the wild.
Legends of Mirkwood begin back with early Germanic sagas (or at least, that’s as far back as we trace it. It probably has much older origins). In those days it was called “Myrkviðr”, which directly translates to dark(myrk) forest(viðr). Later, English writers Anglicized this to the more familiar “Mirkwood”.
Mythologically, it was a general term for dark forest on the outskirts of Midgard, and was home to giants and monsters. In the Poetic Edda, it is said to be somewhere between Asgard and Muspelheim. Francis Gentry wrote that "in the Norse tradition 'crossing the Black Forest' came to signify penetrating the barriers between one world and another, especially the world of the gods and the world of fire, where Surt lives…”. Many other heroic poems and sagas mention this mythic forest.
However, in addition to this mythic conception there were also real world locations given for this dark wood. While the name and its etymological descendants later became a general term used for many forests around Germanic Europe (there are numerous “black woods” now), there are multiple specific locations attested to be the original “Mirkwood”.
The old sagas gave different locations of this forest all over Germanic and even Slavic Europe. (read here for more historical info):
There is Kolmården, a Swedish forest and natural border, identified in multiple Norse sagas as the location of Mirkwood. There is also another Swedish location, the forest called “Lunsen”.
The Ore Mountains on the Czech-German border have been identified with Mirkwood.
Most popularly though, it has been linked in multiple sources to the great forest north of the Ukrainian Steppe, and a barrier between the Huns and Burgundians, or the Huns and the Goths. Omeljan Pritsak iIdentified the Mirkwood in the Hervarar saga with what would later be called the "dark blue forest" and the "black forest" north of the Ukrainian steppe
The Atlakviða ("The Lay of Atli", in the Elder Edda) and the Hlöðskviða ("The Battle of the Goths and Huns", in Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks) both mention that the Mirkwood was beside the Danpar, the River Dnieper, which runs through Ukraine to the Black Sea.
This is where Tolkien believed this forest to be located as well. He wrote in a letter that “It was probably the Primitive Germanic name for the great mountainous forest regions that anciently formed a barrier to the south of the lands of Germanic expansion. In some traditions it became used especially of the boundary between Goths and Huns”. In my article on Tolkien and Ice Age Europe, you’ll see that this is exactly where his “Mirkwood” falls laid over a map of Europe.
This location of Mirkwood adds another common element to the archetype, the idea that the dark forest lies specifically to the East of the safe or civilized world (the world in this case being the lands of the German people).
Perhaps this forest in the Ukraine was once a real Mirkwood, and perhaps there was truth to the legends the German poets left us. Perhaps many of the other locations were in fact true Mirkwoods at one point as well.
However, we are now going to move on from history and discuss what exactly this forest is, and what it means in our mythology.
Tolkien believed that the name “Black Forest” or “Mirkwood” had less to do with with the color or the light quality of the forest, and more to do with its character.
He wrote that “It was never, I think, a mere 'colour' word: 'black', and was from the beginning weighted with the sense of 'gloom’…
A “Mirkwood” is first and foremost a forest of gloom and foreboding. It is a wood where some evil lurks and broods, a place where the human spirit is dampened.
It is difficult to say whether the forest exists in the “real” world or not. The entrance can be found in our world, but once inside, it usually appears that you have entered a gateway to another realm. It is in the “other” category that the elements of the Perilous Realm so often fall into. As I discussed before, the mythic realm overlaps with our own at certain places, and these dark forests appear to be one of them.
The inhabitants of the dark forests are all manner of monstrous creatures. Myths commonly include werewolves, giants, witches, giant spiders, and dragons. It is commonly implied that the dark forest is a breeding ground for these monsters, the location of the lair of giants and dragons. This is why heroes’ journeys so often involve a quest into the forest to slay some creature that has fled back to its cave.
There is also usually some treasure to be found inside. An ancient sword, a treasure hoard, maybe a sleeping princess. There has to be some reason for the hero to venture in. Its where every ring and heirloom lay hidden.
These are the forests that commonly lay on the edge of a village, or outside a castle’s walls. There may be some ancient fireside tale or nursery rhyme about the monsters in the trees. An inhabitant of the town, usually a young boy, will be called to the forest by some mysterious force. The forests usually has some power to draw people to it and inside. Once inside, the forest usually also has the power to trap men in its twisted paths until they starve or go mad.
Mirkwood also acts as a barrier between realms. Earlier I mentioned how it was said that it lay between Asgard and Muspelheim. We can understand this in archetypal language to mean that the dark forest lays between the gods and the fire demons, between heaven and hell. This makes sense, as we established earlier in this series that “Faerie” is neither a realm of angels or demons, but something in the middle.
The idea of the Mirkwood being a path between two realms can be found in Beowulf as well. The poem mentions that the path between the worlds of men and monsters, from Hrothgar's hall to Grendel's lair, runs ofer myrcan mor(across a gloomy moor) and wynleasne wudu (a joyless wood).
So, the forest is an enchanted realm that lays somewhere between our own and the realms of the gods and demons. Most broadly, we could define this forest as the place where all the evil things of Faerie lurk.
There are countless examples of the dark forest archetype in modern storytelling.
Walter Scott first used the English name, and it was first fully anglicized as Mirkwood by William Morris in A Tale of the House of the Wolfings. Walter Scott used the name as well.
Tolkien, who read the books of both these men, has been the one to most famously use the name. He wrote several “Mirkwoods” into his books. There is the Old Forest on the border of Buckland, home to the dark and deadly Old Man Willow. In the Silmarillion there was the ancient forest in Beleriand of Taur-nu-Fuin, the "Forest of Darkness", or "Forest of Nightshade” that was overrun with the monsters of Sauron. Then finally there was Mirkwood itself. Tolkien placed it in the wild East, matching the sagas that placed it in the Ukraine, and he did a fantastic job at capturing the archetypal gloom and stifling darkness of this mythic location. Tolkien’s Mirkwood is the home of the Necromancer, a witch of the wood, and is also a barrier between the “civilized” West and the wild East-lands. Being a scholar of Germanic myth and languages, Tolkien was able to include just about every essential piece of the Mirkwood archetype in his stories.
Another fantastic example is Mythago Wood, which deals with the Mirkwood archetype in a meta sense. The story is about an enchanted wood itself, one that has the power to produce mythic archetypes from the human being that live around its borders. I highly recommend the book if you are interested in European folklore and archetypal mythology.
Harry Potter actually includes this archetype very well with the forest on the borders of Hogwarts. Its name gives it away quite quickly- The Forbidden Forest. Inside are giant spiders, werewolves, centaurs, giants, and all other manner of dangers. The main characters of the story are again and again driven, or called, to enter. Rowling is a better writer of European myth than she is usually given credit for.
The video game series The Legend of Zelda makes great use of this forest with its “Lost Woods”. The hero has to explore this mysterious forest in almost every entry, usually to discover an ancient sword that will allow him to cut down evil. The forest is dark, gloomy, and incredibly easy to become lost in. Not bad European imagery for a Japanese game developer.
But beyond these famous examples, the Mirkwood is really seen every time any hero delves into any dangerous, dark forest. It is there anytime the sun goes down and the trees are bathed in darkness. It can be in your backyard. It is an archetype so deep in our subconscious that it just comes out, in countless stories. An author does not have to be a scholar like Tolkien to use it- an amateur’s dark forest may not be as mythologically rich as Tolkien’s, but it will probably still fit the archetype. A dark wood, full of danger, that our hero must enter. Even a child knows this forest.
There is another mythic Forest in the European mythos- the faerie forest, the wildwood. It is the light equivalent to Mirkwood, though to call it “safe” may not necessarily be true. But we have to save this companion to Mirkwood for another time.
I hope you enjoyed this breakdown of one of the core archetypes of our mythos. As always, shares and recommendations of this Substack to your family and friends are greatly appreciated.
God Bless.
ME VENTURING INTO THE MIRKWOOD (ARID WOODED PROPERTY WITH KEEP OUT SIGN) TO SLAY THE EVIL CAVE CREATURES (HANDCUFF NON-US CITIZENS)