Ask About Middle Earth — Why Do Dragons Hoard Treasure?

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There is a Desolation of Smaug spoiler in this post - if you haven’t read The Hobbit, and want to avoid movie spoilers, then this is not the post for you! Bookmark it and wait until after the movie.

It’s true that Middle Earth’s dragons all seem to have an obsession with treasure. Though Smaug is mentioned as being especially greedy, there are at least two other specific examples of dragons hoarding treasure (Glaurung and Scatha), as well as a vague mention that many dwarvish halls in the Grey Mountains had been attacked by dragons seeking treasure. And it’s an odd quality for dragons to have, since they really can’t gain anything from this treasure (with one possible exception, and here’s the spoiler: it’s mentioned in The Hobbit that, by lying on his treasure hoard, Smaug has managed to create a sort of armor for his relatively unprotected underbelly. But it doesn’t sound as if this was really much of a motivating factor behind his greed, but rather a sort of bonus.)

Thorin describes the conundrum pretty well himself, saying

Dragons steal gold and jewels, you know, from men and elves and dwarves, wherever they can find them; and they guard their plunder as long as they live (which is practically forever, unless they are killed), and never enjoy a brass ring of it. Indeed they hardly know a good bit of work from a bag, though they usually have a good notion of the current market value; and they can’t make a thing for themselves, not even mend a little loose scale of their armor.

Thorin makes some good points. Mainly that there really is no practical reason for a dragon to want treasure. He chalks it all up to greed, and though he’s a bit biased, I don’t think he’s necessarily wrong. But I think there might be a deeper reason. For me, the key phrase in Thorin’s description is “they can’t make a thing for themselves.”

Though I honestly didn’t think of this until I was researching this question, it occurs to me know that this is rather similar to the various mentions Tolkien makes about the fact that Morgoth can’t really make anything because he’s spent all his power on hate. In fact, in The Silmarillion Tolkien says that, in the end, “he could make nothing save mockery of the thought of others.” It’s implied that Morgoth’s inability to create for himself is part of what drives him to control, corrupt, and destroy the creations of others - like, for example, the silmarils. Morgoth didn’t have any practical use for the silmarils - whatever power they had didn’t seem to be compatible with his evil, so it’s not as if he got much from them. But he knew that he couldn’t have made them himself, and the combination of jealousy and hate drove him to steal the jewels for himself.

It’s a stretch, and I’ve no idea if Tolkien considered this at all, but I think the dragons’ urge to hoard treasure might be an echo of this aspect of Morgoth’s spirit. No matter how dragons originally came to being, they would undoubtedly have been influenced by Morgoth. It just might be that their obsession with treasures they could not make for themselves are an effect of this influence.

(Also, western culture has long portrayed dragons as creatures that hoard treasure, especially gold, so there’s a great chance that Tolkien was just following the formula. But, personally, I think my explanation’s a bit more fun, lol.)

SOURCES: The Hobbit, The Silmarillion

158 notes // 12:02 PM // REBLOGdragons of middle earthmorgothSilmarilsmaugThorin OakenshieldScathaGlaurung

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    Dragons are definitely a metaphor of greed and envy. But if Morgoth cannot make anything of his own, how did he teach...

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