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So Gandalf and the Balrog of Moria have a little fisticuffs and they both died. Presumably dead bodies lie on the mountain side somewhere.

Gandalf "strayed out of thought and time", gets a can of spinach and a new colour then he comes back sometime after his death as Gandalf 2.0.

The questions are thus:

  1. Did Gandalf's old body get burnt to a crisp, or suffer some other death that meant there was no dead body left? OR
  2. Did his old body get renewed?

Or do we not know? If his body was left in the snow, then wouldn't it have been preserved due to freezing? This seems like an obvious oversight in the story.

I'd like to stick with the book canon, but out-of universe answers are also welcome.

Clarification: I'm not asking about his soul or whether he can die or where he went. I am specifically asking about what was left behind on the mountain.

James Khoury
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  • Possible duplicate of Can the Valar or Maiar die? The tl;dr: the Valar and Maiar don't have mortal bodies in the same way as Men, Dwarves, etc., but clothe themselves in mortal form. Notice what happened to Sauron and Saruman on dying. – Lexible Jan 28 '15 at 04:50
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    @Lexible Nope. I want to know what happened to his body. Did he wake up next to his old one and freak out or not? Saurons body wasn't like Gandalfs. This is mention in some other answer. – James Khoury Jan 28 '15 at 04:53
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    Per my comment: Maiar (including Gandalf) don't have bodies, except as "clothes." – Lexible Jan 28 '15 at 04:54
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    @Lexible I think your wrong. Sauron did not have a body but Gandalf was given one ... two actually. – James Khoury Jan 28 '15 at 04:55
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    see this answer for a reference to Gandalfs body: http://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/13405/7614 "they were embodied in physical bodies capable of pain, and weariness, and of afflicting the spirit with physical fear, and of being 'killed', though supported by the angelic spirit they might endure long, and only show slowly the wearing of care and labour." – James Khoury Jan 28 '15 at 05:03
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    And Saurons body is his own consstruct: http://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/12746/7614 – James Khoury Jan 28 '15 at 05:09
  • Fair, but there's more about it on the dupe link. (Right: "Own construct" = soul clothes.) – Lexible Jan 28 '15 at 05:10
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    @Lexible Sauron is not Gandalf. the link is about Sauron and whether he can die. I was asking about Gandalfs Dead body. I'm not sure how I can make this any clearer. – James Khoury Jan 28 '15 at 05:12
  • Sauron is a Maia. So is Gandalf (and the other Istari). – Lexible Jan 28 '15 at 05:18
  • @Lexible This is the last thing I will say on the issue: Gandalfs body is not the same as Saurons. Even Sauruman left behind bones and skin as per the question you linked. – James Khoury Jan 28 '15 at 05:38
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    This question presumes Gandalf's body was destroyed in the fight with the Balrog - is there a reason you assume Gandalf the Grey and the Balrog's bodies are just lying next to each other? – Robotnik Jan 28 '15 at 07:09
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    @robotnik i didn't assume they were next to each other just on the same mountain side? – James Khoury Jan 28 '15 at 14:23
  • The real question is if Gandalf 2.0 can die from a another round of fisticuffs. I love the wording of your question! – Smeghead Sev Jan 28 '15 at 18:23
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    It was washed in new intensified Tide! :-) – Carl Witthoft Jan 28 '15 at 22:14
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    He would have to go and find his Elven Ring of Power regardless, so it was a good thing they re-used the body. Be embarrassing to tell Elrond and Galadriel he'd lost it. – Oldcat Jan 29 '15 at 01:30
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    @Lexible - the OP's points are correct here; see the Istari essay in Unfinished Tales: "For with the consent of Eru they sent members of their own high order, but clad in bodies of as of Men, real and not feigned, but subject to the fears and pains and weariness of earth, able to hunger and thirst and be slain". This constraint doesn't apply to Sauron, so you're not comparing like-with-like here. –  Jan 29 '15 at 11:28

1 Answers1

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The book suggests that his spirit reinhabited his original body, and there seems no reason to suspect otherwise.

First let's look at the deaths of both Gandalf and the Balrog (quotes from the Two Towers chapter the White Rider):

I threw down my enemy, and he fell from the high place and broke the mountain-side where he smote it in his ruin. Then darkness took me; and I strayed out of thought and time, and I wandered far on roads that I will not tell.

Then Gandalf's resurrection:

Naked I was sent back – for a brief time, until my task is done. And naked I lay upon the mountain-top. The tower behind was crumbled into dust, the window gone; the ruined stair was choked with burned and broken stone. I was alone, forgotten, without escape upon the hard horn of the world.

This makes it clear that he was resurrected in the same place where he had died, but - of course - his body could have been remade. However, and a little further on in the text, we learn that after Gwaihir brought him to Lórien:

I tarried there in the ageless time of that land where days bring healing not decay. Healing I found, and I was clothed in white.

Evidently therefore his body needed healing, which we can reasonably suppose it would not have if it was a new body. Hence we can deduce that it was his original body, not renewed.

If we cross-check this with Letter 156 we see confirmation of the "Gandalf needed healing" hypothesis:

Galadriel's power is not divine, and his healing in Lórien is meant to be no more than physical healing and refreshment.

So there is no oversight in the story; Gandalf evidently just reinhabited his old body, which then needed to be healed of it's wounds in Lórien.

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    I had missed the part about him needing healing. I only thought he had a new body because he was naked. I guess he threw off his clothes in the fight? – James Khoury Jan 28 '15 at 14:14
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    @JamesKhoury Or they were burned off while he was fighting the fire monster. But, yeah, deliberately taking off his clothes in the middle of the fight makes more sense. – KSmarts Jan 28 '15 at 15:01
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    He dies on 25 Jan, comes back to life 15 Feb and by 1 March (all TA 3019) is out in Fanghorn meeting up with Aragorn, Gimli & Legolas (nifty reference). Seems like a fast healer to me ;) – Kyle Kanos Jan 28 '15 at 15:19
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    @KyleKanos - or he recieved fast healing from the Elves. –  Jan 28 '15 at 15:39
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    Maybe Gandalf, delivered naked to Lorien, received a "special kind" of healing from Galadriel? (Cue Marvin Gaye singing "Sexual Healing"). – RobertF Jan 28 '15 at 17:54
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    For what it's worth, the movie has a very brief flashback where Gandalf is lying on the ground and gasps, presumably resuming breathing. He's even not wearing a shirt, iirc. (Always thought that was a bit weird.) That would suggest the movies fairly accurately reflects the book here. Although, this raises a question. What the heck happened to his clothes that he was naked when he came back? – jpmc26 Jan 28 '15 at 21:34
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    Resurrection is also rather an important part of Tolkien's Roman Catholic worldview. Cf. Matthew 28, Luke 24 and many others. – Nathan Jan 28 '15 at 23:20
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    @Nathan Except Tolkien HATED allegory. – krillgar Jan 29 '15 at 13:44
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    @krillgar it's not allegorical at all, just analogous. Cf. somewhere in LoTR there's a conversation about "the heathen burn the dead but we give them a proper burial" – Nathan Jan 29 '15 at 23:11
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    Maybe he needed healing because he caught cold being frikin naked at mountain-top during winter – Pepo_rasta Aug 07 '19 at 10:40
  • I always though that "naked" referred to him being "remade or "re-imagined", he was no longer Gandalf The Grey, the he was becoming Gandalf The White. Ergo he was naked, not so much without clothes, but without colour . . . but also, without clothes. – Binary Worrier Jul 27 '20 at 12:50