Abstract
The roots of Tolkien’s concepts in early Germanic understandings of the ideas of fate and doom are the subject of Whitt’s essay. Examines how these initially pagan notions were subsumed into the Christian idea of divine providence, and most notably blended together in the Old English Beowulf and Old Saxon Heliand, to provide a basis for understanding how even the Valar are subject to time and the fate decreed by Ilúvatar.
