They wage war across Middle Earth, servants of Sauron; they build alliances with demons, then shirk them to build a political dominion over the World of Warcraft; they serve deities and try to remember their heritage in Skyrim; they haunt the mountains and wild places, fighting among themselves until the day comes that a leader unites them to plunder human settlements in Warcraft. They are the orcs.
But really, who are they? Where did they come from?
Daniel Greene, a Youtuber and specialist in reviewing fantasy fiction, claims that orcs arrived in our collective unconsciousness from the work of J. R. R. Tolkien, in his magnum opus, the Lord of the Rings (see the bottom of the article for links). And while he may have a point about there being no ‘orcs’ as we would recognise them today before that, he has missed some important clues I feel.
Apart from writing the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings and other tales, Tolkien was a linguist. He spent years developing the language the elves spoke in Lord of the Rings. He translated Beowulf into English. He was not just a student of language, not just a doctor of it, but a professor of ancient languages. Words were his passion. And as someone who could speak multiple languages, he could draw from those to inform his choices in fantasy fiction.
He was almost certainly aware of the Roman god, Orcus, who ruled the Underworld. And as a Professor of Anglo-Saxon, he knew that orcneus meant a monster in those tongues. He knew than, at a time when the bow was being replaced with pikes and muskets, the word orc derived from either of these roots and had become a synonym to ogre in common parlance.
If one were to google, they might also discover:
Orc is from Old English orcneas, which appears in the epic poem Beowulf, and refers to one of the races who are called the offspring of Cain during the initial description of Grendel(“Þanon untydras ealle onwocon,/eotenas ond ylfe, ond orcneas”, ll. 111–112). In a letter of 1954 Tolkien gave orc as “demon” and claimed he used the word because of its “phonetic suitability”—its similarity to various equivalent terms in his Middle-earth languages.[1] In an essay on Elven languages, written in 1954, Tolkien gives meaning of ‘orc’ as “evil spirit or bogey” and goes on to state that the origin of the Old English word is the Latin name Orcus—god of the underworld.[2]
Wikipedia – Orc (Middle Earth) entry, current on the 2nd September, 2019
The Hobbit was published in 1937 but even then, the Orcs that we know and love didn’t quite exist yet. However, the word ‘orc’ does appear in the name of the Goblin Cleaver, the sword found in the troll cave. It is called Orcrist in the language of Gondolin. In no other part of the Hobbit is the word ‘Orc’ used for any race.
In 1954, the first instalment of the Lord of the Rings came out and poor Boromir was killed, and Orcs cemented themselves in the public unconscious form that point on.
And Since Then?
The orcs’ origins lie within the mind of a brilliant professor of languages and the receptive readers who devoured his novels and clamoured for more. But how have they changed since their initial conception in the Lord of the Rings?
Clearly, they began life as mooks a.k.a. red-shirts, a.k.a disposable extras in fiction and in games such as Dungeons and Dragons. They were the epitome of the Other, the barbarians at the gates, the monsters who fought for the evil empire. But as time has worn on, there has sprung up a revisionist view of the race.
The TV Trope: ‘Our Orcs are Different’ best describes this. Where the antagonistic orcs are largely as Tolkien wrote them, even when they are the mind-controlled Urgals of the Inheritance cycle or the fierce warbands of the Warhammer universe, the revisionst orcs are different. They aren’t human (Unless you’re reading ‘Orcs’ by Stan Nichols, then they might as well be) but they are much more likable. The TV Trope site describes them as Warcraft Orcs, which if fair, as Orcs in Warcraft III and in the subsequent titles were much more ‘potagonist’-y.
So where will they go next?
Orcs are changing as our perception of race changes. Tolkien was writing at a time when the British Empire was sill ‘a thing’, and a certain superior mindset had settled on some sections of society. We are more careful of race now. The recent film, Bright, tried to use fantasy races as an allegory for racism in the modern world and I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a sequel already being written (by monkeys using chainsaws on a bunch of dictionaries). Amazon (I believe) is making a TV show based in Middle Earth. With the recent popularity of Bright, I would not be surprised if one of the main characters was an Orc (and probably sexy in some way, shape or form).
The revisionist orcs are here to stay – indeed they are becoming the more popular view of the orc race. In the end, we may find some fusion of ‘the Other’ and ‘a culture with its own intrinsic value’ that becomes more mainstream than it seems to be currently.
One thing is sure, though. Orcs are here to stay.
Key Sources
Daniel Greene’s Orc video – I didn’t see this until AFTER I’d written my article and I was forced to go back and re-write it in response. Thanks Daniel! He does a great job of describing the orcs of both flavours in his video and it is well worth a watch.
The TV Tropes page gives a great academic breakdown of both flavour of orcs and illustrates them with an exhaustive list of examples. Well worth checking out too! https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurOrcsAreDifferent
Imagine Erratically 