Do I need to learn reading Runes to fully understand Tolkien's Middle-Earth series?

Question

I have a Kindle edition of The Hobbit. In the beginning of the book, there's author's notes saying that English in ancient times wasn't perfect. That's fine, then I saw the corrections made on Runes in the book.

Runes certainly weren't created by Tolkien. AFAIK, Runes have been in existence since ancient times and often attached to paranormal things. Looks to me that Tolkien's Middle-Earth series is using the same Runes.

Do I need to learn Runes first in order to fully understand Tolkien's Middle-Earth series (I've emphasized fully)?

Answer 1

No. Let's go through them, and prove it¹

• Most printings of all books have tengwar and/or angerthas runes in the header and footer of the inside cover. I find tengwar hard to translate, so I'm not going to try. This fellow did, and according to him they read:

  The Lord of the Rings translated from the Red Book of Westmarch by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. Herein is set forth the history of the War of the Ring and the Return of the King as seen by the Hobbits.

The Silmarillion

• My copy (1999 Harper-Collins paperback) has angerthas runes lining the top of the front and back cover. A quick Google search indicates that not many covers have this, but they're not remotely mission-critical anyway; they translate to:

  kwenta sylmaryllyon dh hystory ov dh sylmaryls

  Or,

  Quenta Silmarillion: The History of the Silmarils

The Children of Húrin

No runes here. Move along.

Unfinished Tales

• My copy of Unfinished Tales (1999 Harper-Collins paperback) has a line of angerthas runes along the top of the front cover. They translate to:

  unfynysht tales ov nūmenor and myddle earth

  Or:

  Unfinished Tales of Nùmenor and Middle-Earth

  It appears that some other editions have runes that translate to:

  The Lord of the Rings, Translated From the Red Book

  Which is similar to some editions of The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

The Hobbit

• My copy of "The Hobbit (1995 Harper-Collins paperback) has an arc of what appear to be angerthas Moria runes. Thanks to a translation table I found here, I managed to translate this arc into:

  The Hobbit Or There and Back Again

  • A common cover for The Hobbit (Conversation with Smaug) includes some runes on the jar in the foreground. They're too faint to translate reliably, but they're likely not remarkably important, if they say anything coherent at all. (Thanks to Darth Satan for that one).

• The inside front cover of my copy has some more Angerthas Moria, reading:

  The Hobbit, or There and Back Again. Being the Record of a Year's Journey Made by Bilbo Baggins of Hobbiton. Compiled from his Memoirs by J.R.R. Tolkien, and Published by George Allen and Unwin Ltd.

  This one might be the key to unravelling the entire mystery of Tolkien's mythology²

• The reproduction of Thorin's Map has two sections of text:

  • The first, which would have been visible to Thorin & Co, reads:

    Five Feet High the Door and Three May Walk Abreast

    and is initialled "þ. þ.", which may be a reference to Thrór, Thrain, or both. This passage is translated in Chapter 1: "An Unexpected Party"

  • The second are the moon runes read by Elrond. They have horrible grammar (and spelling), but they read:

    Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks and the setting sun with the last light of Durin's Day will shine upon the keyhole

    This is translated (much better) in-text in Chapter 3: "A Short Rest"

• The foreword has a few runes, including the title ("The Hobbit or There and Back Again"), as well as two short passages, which just repeat the sections from the map

Fellowship of the Ring

• My copy of all three Lord of the Rings books (1995 Harper-Collins paperback) have an arc of angerthas runes above the title. They translate to:

  dh lord ov dh ryŋs translap³d from dh redbök

  Or,

  The Lord of the Rings, Translated from the Red Book

• In Book I Chapter 1: "A Long-Expected Party", Gandalf's fireworks are described as being labelled with a G rune, and two examples of G runes from different runic scripts are included in the text

• In Book I Chapter 2: "The Shadow of the Past", the inscription on the Ring is written in Tengwar characters. I'm not going to bother translating the Tengwar, since Gandalf helpfully does so immediately thereafter:

  One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them
  One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.

• In Book I Chapter 10: "Strider", the letter Gandalf leaves for the Hobbits in Bree is replete with G runes, but they were helpfully explained earlier

• Book II Chapter 4: "A Journey in the Dark" include a sketch of the inscription on the Door to Moria, including some Tengwar runes. The drawing itself translates these runes into Sindarin:

  Ennyn Durin Atan Moria: pedo mellon a minno. Im Narvi hain echant: Celebrimboro o Eregion teithant i thiw hin

  Gandalf translates in the text as:

  The Doors of Durin, Lord of Moria: Speak, friend, and enter. I, Narvi, made them. Celebrimbor of Hollin drew these signs.

• Chapter 4 also provides a reproduction of the runes on Balin's tomb in Moria. They read:

  Balin
  Fundinul
  Uzbadkazadumu Balinsonovfundinlordovmoria

  The first three lines seem to be Khuzdul, while the last is one run-on sentence reading:

  Balin, son of Fundin, Lord of Moria

  The Khuzdul likely means the same, considering the "Balin", "Fundin", and "Khazaddum" we can make out. In any case, Gandalf translates this in-text

The Two Towers

• My copy has the same arc of angerthas runes along the top as Fellowship of the Ring, meaning the same

The Return of the King

• As with Fellowship ad Towers, my copy has the same arc of angerthas along the top

• Tables of angerthas and tengwar runes are included in Appendix D, but they're just alphabets; no hidden messages

So no, it's not necessary for you to be able to read runes. If you wanted to learn, however, Tolkien helpfully provided a phonetic alphabet: Appendix E.

As a side note, I want to correct your misconception that runes are paranormal. They're not, although in popular culture they're often used to represent Norse (Read: Viking) magic. Runes are an alphabet⁴ used to represent ancient Germanic languages like Anglo-Saxon. They're no more paranormal than English or Cyrillic, except they're not used any more by anybody except fantasy authors and historians, so they feel mystical.

---

¹ I'm going to assume that you're only wanting to read the more narrative entries in Tolkien's Legendarium, so I'm going to exclude History of Middle-earth

² Okay, I'm a little bitter that I just spend twenty minutes translated a copyright notice

³ Anyone following along at home, the rune appears to be angerthas rune number 1 in Appendix E, which maps to the Latin character "p". If I've mistranslated, please correct me.

⁴ Actually many alphabets; there's more than one kind of runes, and the ones Tolkien uses don't fit neatly into any of the categories (Although I'm not an expert on Germanic languages, so I may be wrong)

Answer 2

No, you don't.

There is no information written in "runes", Elvish, or anything else in The Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, or the History of Middle Earth that is not explained or translated in the story.

Answer 3

No, you don't. The cover designs of the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings use runes as written by Tolkien. But they are simple transliterations of modern english words into runic characters