ACX's King Ludd: How a Forgotten Celtic River God Reached Tolkien, Lovecraft and Star Wars
Astral Codex Ten · rss · 2026-09-15
Scott Alexander's long-form essay "King Ludd" on Astral Codex Ten traces how Nodens, a barely-remembered Romano-British river god, seeped into mythology after mythology:
- Etymology chain: A young Oxford philology professor—J.R.R. Tolkien—linked Nodens in 1929 to the Irish silver-armed god Nuada, the Welsh Lludd, and King Lud, the legendary founder of London (Ludgate).
- Lovecraft: H.P. Lovecraft, a fan of Arthur Machen (who grew up near Nodens' temple), adopted Nodens as leader of the benevolent gods opposing Cthulhu's indifferent pantheon.
- Tolkien: A curse tablet from the temple asks Nodens to punish a thief who stole a ring; Celebrimbor, the elven smith who forges the Rings of Power, means "Silver Hand" in Sindarin. A ring very likely matching the tablet was unearthed by a farmer and displayed in 2013.
- Modern echoes: Alexander reads a lineage of "silver-armed" smith/hunter figures who unleash powerful technology and desperately try to stuff it back—Luke Skywalker (light-saber, severed arm, metal prosthetic) up to the Luddite name itself—as an ancient anxiety about runaway technology.
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